Playing Through
Part One: What It Means To Re-view
Sept. 13, 2008
By stealth_toilet

It’s no secret, but it is something that is rarely ever explicitly stated. There is a rather wide disconnect between those who review gaming experiences, and those who have gaming experiences. Quantifying the enjoyment received from a video game, via letters, numbers, or other arbitrary rating scales, is universally recognized as flawed. Reviewers at the highest level will admit that their own unique systems and approaches to reviewing a game are ultimately, at best, not applicable to everyone, and at worst, applicable only to the person who created it.

The saving grace often cited by most craftsmen of this particular trade is that the reviews themselves, that is to say the words that explain how x rating was reached, are a necessary component of the review. To some extent I agree, insofar as to say that just reading the number without reading the review is worse than reading both. But to insinuate that people in actuality read reviews instead of just looking at the number is to succumb to naiveté, and even if that weren’t true the fundamental problem still exists in both the written word and the assigned rank. People who play video games to review them are playing them to review them, and their experience with the game is undeniably different from someone who is playing the game at their own pace in their leisure time.

I don’t wish to nominate reviewers and the publications they belong to for crucifixion, but I do want to expose the mechanism under which they operate as invalid. Through no personal desire to create or even perpetuate this mechanism, gamer culture and the establishments which cater to it have become entrenched in an opening-day mentality and feeding the insatiable desire to play a game as soon as is physically possible. Either through some specific, industry-wide marketing conspiracy, or as some kind of symptom of consumer culture meeting the fast pace of technological innovation, gamers not only indulge in disposable gaming experiences as their interest is drawn more often then not to games that don’t yet exist, but they actually demand it be this way. This is the backbone of the all mighty review. Someone who has played the game before it is released tells you if it’s worth buying or not. Ignoring all the obvious problems with the review system (such as subjectivity) the fundamental divide between reviewers and gamers therefore comes down to two things; time and money. Some people (reviewers) are paid to play videogames and write about their gaming experience within a strict and non-negotiable amount of time, and other people (everyone else) pay to play videogames with the purpose of having a positive gaming experience that lasts as long as possible. The former, while their intentions may be admirable, are simply unqualified to determine if the latter can exist with any given game.