I’m pretty damn late to the party on this one, but it’s worth mentioning anyway.
Greg Costikyan got on a bit of a condescending soap box back on February 24th, and posted a piece about games criticism.
Read it yourself – it’s worth it – but in brief, he’s saying that criticism and reviewing aren’t even remotely the same thing, but they’re often taken to be synonymous by games journalists (and gamers). He says that reviews are all well and good, but they’re not going to help move games forward as an art-form (or even an entertainment medium), whereas criticism might. Then he bemoans the fact that while we’ve got plenty of games reviews, we’ve got no games criticism.
He’s not wrong, of course, but then I came across a topic (containing massive, massive spoilers) on the rllmuk forum talking about Braid, Jonathon Blow’s interesting rewinding-time platform puzzler. It seems to me that what’s happening in that topic is exactly what Costikyan wants to see from games criticism.
Greg says a definition of criticism could be:
“Criticism is an informed discussion, by an intelligent and knowledgeable observer of a medium, of the merits and importance (or lack thereof) of a particular work. Criticism isn’t intended to help the reader decide whether or not to plunk down money on something; some readers’ purchase decisions may be influenced, but guiding their decisions is not the purpose of the critical work. Criticism is, in a sense merely “writing about” — about art, about dance, about theater, about writing, about a game–about any particular work of art. How a critical piece addresses a work, and what approach it takes, may vary widely from critic to critic, and from work to work. There are, in fact, many valid critical approaches to a work, and at any given time, a critique may adopt only one, or several of them.
Some valid critical approaches? Where does this work fall, in terms of the historical evolution of its medium. How does this work fit into the creator’s previous ouevres, and what does it say about his or her continuing evolution as an artist. What novel techniques does this work introduce, or how does it use previously known techniques to create a novel and impactful effect. How does it compare to other works with similar ambitions or themes. What was the creator attempting to do, and how well or poorly did he achieve his ambitions. What emotions or thoughts does it induce in those exposed to the work, and is the net effect enlightening or incoherent. What is the political subtext of the work, and what does it say about gender relationships/current political issues/the nature-nurture debate, or about any other particular intellectual question (whether that question is a particular hobby-horse of the reviewer, or inherently raised by the work in question).”
Now, I can’t say how intelligent the people at rllmuk are, I’ve never met them. But they seem pretty informed about games and about Braid’s themes, and they’re not trying to persuade anyone to buy the game (in fact, it’s a massive spoiler of a topic: if you haven’t completed the game, you shouldn’t be reading the topic in the first place). They’re discussing interpretations of Braid’s story, interpretations which take into account Braid’s predecessors and its gameplay mechanics, as well as the ‘pure’ story contained in the books dotted about the game. I’d say it counts as criticism.
And that’s all very interesting, of course, but it raises even more interesting questions if you look at the wider games community. The topic on rllmuk isn’t the only place this sort of discussion’s happening – there are lots of boards engaging in Braid-criticism. But aside from a brief section in an episode of the 1up Show and some discussion in the GFW podcast, I haven’t seen any ‘professional’ criticism. It’s got me wondering whether that’s because criticism doesn’t work very well in a purely didactic medium such as a magazine (EDGE is probably the closest thing to games criticism I’ve seen in print, and I find the magazine almost uniformly pretentious and boring. Much as with Sight and Sound, to be honest) or whether it’s because Braid is the first game with fairly mainstream appeal that has enough going on to be worth criticising.
For the record, I don’t think it’s the second option. Mind you, I don’t really think it’s the first either. Perhaps it’s just that Braid is where a more vibrant criticism is going to come from and in a year or two’s time we’ll be able to find decent game criticism. I hope so.
