News "All games journalists should make a game"

Depends on how you are critiquing the game I'd imagine, the viewpoint on which the criticism, the "review" falls. Are you measuring a game based on the perspective of the developer, how it was made, the quality of the craftsmanship. Or are you examining it based on the perspective of the person playing, what experience they may have, the end product. Both are valid, but they are also different and require varied mindsets and also levels of experience.

Should a game *player* be required to make a game before they can enjoy another one? The answer to that question has to be the same for a games critic who is taking the "player" point of view.

Now it has to be said that games Journalist and games Critic are not the same thing. Just being a critic I don't think makes you a journalist. We as an industry have a problem with mixing the two, especially since criticism (reviews) are such a big part. But it very well may be that he was talking about Journos, not reviewers, and in that case he may have a point. But that means it's not about review scores and critical assessment. But the people writing news pieces, feature articles, etc. Pretty much every games journalist that moves onto games development always has the reaction "Oh my god, I never knew how hard it was! I knew nothing of how games *really* were made!".

 

Reviews are the opinions of the person / people writing them. One person might think it's awesome, another might think it sucks...it all comes down to personal preference.

Though I think all Bit Tech staff should design and manufacture a motherboard. *insert evil laugh*

 

but i read a lot game ice cream reviews where the reviewer has a negative bias on cherry because they like banana flavor. Or some more ridiculous ones like homemade vs leading brand, even though the homemade was pretty damn good.

 

Game reviewer? Check.

Writing a game? Check.

Guy needs to stop now.

 

From the top Watson,

1) As I get up I should know they chemical processes that release me from sleep and the circulatory and respiratory differences between sleep and wakefulness
2) As I drink my morning protein shake, I think about the process of plastic manufacture and the trucking/shipping infrastructure that brought that and the protein itself to me
3) As I check the news, I consider the entire process of news gathering and all the people that went into that, and the electricity grid and the geopolitics involved in getting the oil transformed into energy.
4) As I remove my girlfriends clothes I consider the endorphins rushing through her slender young body as I touch her and the 400 million years of evolution that make sex so pleasurable
5) As I use the shower I think about how if water in its solid form did not float we would not be here
6) As I take the tube to work I wonder at the man hours put into tunneling and quickly think about the grand daddy of them all, the Chunnel.

I could go on, but we do not live this way. We live in a very highly specialized society where we build on each others work (often ignoring it like the tube and mammalian evolution) and provide each other services. I would be happier with game "journos" writing good in depth reviews (see the american magazine Computer Gaming World before it folded) and game devs writing incredible games (see EVE and most of Valves games, both available on Steam, lol).
We can not and SHOULD not try to get too in depth into other peoples areas of specialization.

I am going to go use the internet now, and not think about how all the packets of this insightful post get to the server in the UK 1000s of miles away.

Yours in Specialized Generalist Plasma,
Star*Dagger

 

he kind of has a point, a lot of more indepth reviews don't stick to the playability of a game. they rip apart the building blocks of the game and question the way the game was put together.

those kinds of reviewers - it would benefit them to have some experience to validate their comments

 

Well... yeah, actually.

 

Another idea could even be to look at running game servers. Especially for mod servers you really can get a better idea of what people are looking for in a game. I have been running game servers for years and it gives me a different perspective on upcoming game releases.

 

@Star*Dagger:

As a Physics Teacher though I WANT to know why everything is happening. If you don't understand something then people don't have any right to criticise it as they can't understand it fully. How can people critique anything without knowing the system is beyond me!

 

If a game is sh!t, learning how it was made isn't going to make the game any better.

 

hmmm

That makes me think that to criticize a critic you will need to be one yourself. So, no game developer should criticize journalists.

 

have to agree.. and he is a dev

if he was writing games like mass effect or witcher.. I'd listen, but he's writing donkey code and can't sell it on steam oh well!

 

LOL

Though saying that, Tim and Bindi probably could...

 

Jayne: You ever been shot?
Simon: No.
Jayne: You oughta be shot. Or stabbed, lose a leg. To be a surgeon, you know? Know what kind of pain you're dealing with. They make psychiatrists get psychoanalyzed before they can get certified, but they don't make a surgeon get cut on. That seem right to you?

 

Oi! Jayne doesn't say that, Jubal early does.

 

Appreciating the hard work someone puts into something is not the same as being able to critique their creative output.

In order to critique a dev's workmanship and technical ability, yes Journos should learn how to dev themselves. But they don't, they are critiquing the games, and to do that all you need to do is know how to play games, and what makes a good game.

He'd have a point if he said "All games journos should know how to play games!", because it's true. But they all do, so no problem!

 

****. Quoting from memory, I knew it was a psycho I just picked the wrong one.