Are the criteria for good games changing with the audience?
by JC Fletcher 
{ Jan 2nd 2008 at 2:15PM }
GameSetWatch had an interesting discussion post up today about review scores and their utility for mainstream gamers. This especially applies to Wii games, for which the "mainstream" is significantly more mainstream, consisting of a lot of new gamers with totally different expectations for a good game.Reviews tend to be written by jerks like me who have been playing games every day for 20+ years and expect not only innovation, but quality relative to that whole history of gaming. We may require a lot more out of our games: replayability, novelty, graphics, etc. More casual gamers, on the other hand, don't care about the same things we do. They just want a fun game, whether it's nice looking, short, or even licensed. Easily-understood controls and goals seem to be of utmost importance. Seemingly, so does a basis in real-world activities, like, for example, Carnival Games. So do our reviews, written as they are from our own perspectives, really serve the expanded Wii audience? And how do we tailor our impressions to their needs?
What is even more interesting to us than that aspect of the discussion is that even within "casual" games, what we see as a bad game often becomes very popular. The balancing act for reviewers is to make sure we judge casual games accurately as casual games, and try to realistically gauge whether the problems we have with them would be problems for, say, Grandma. Long-standing series are an interesting issue, as brought up by Simon Carless in regards to Bust-a-Move Bash! Is it a bad game because it fails to improve upon previous games? If so, that realistically would not matter to someone who just got their first game system.
The Wii was the highest-reviewed console of the year according to customer reviews aggregated by Reevoo. Compare that to every games-of-the-year list you've seen on any multiplatform site to get an idea of the disconnect between reviewer and fan opinions.
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
troy @ Jan 2nd 2008 2:24PM
I think its really hard for hardcore gamers or people who grew up trekking through Hyrule in all its iterations to understand the fun anybody can have with a game like 'Mario & Sonic' just because they are so used to the idiom of video games and think of everything in that context even though to others it is merely its own thing. Think how impressed everyone was with Super Mario Bros, that was my first experience, and probably yours (whoever is reading this). Well if some new game like 'Mario & Sonic' or whatever is some new person's first experience, they don't care that the 'HUD' is 'antiquated' or whatever lol.
sadieg @ Jan 5th 2008 2:27AM
You could combat this problem by letting me review games for you ;) I'm a hardcore gamer, but I enjoy casual games more as I'm getting older.
mgroves @ Jan 2nd 2008 2:52PM
Games should be reviewed in the context of their target audience--both the reviewer's target audience and the game's target audience. Games like Carnival Games and Game Party are really, really good--for what they are. Comparing them to BioShock and Final Fantasy isn't fair or useful in any sense.
It's like comparing a Ferrari to a bucket truck. Yeah the bucket truck isn't going to win any races, but the Ferrari isn't going to help you fix the phone lines. But I also wouldn't expect to see a bucket truck review on a sports car site either.
I hope this makes some sort of sense.
Jeff Wilson @ Jan 2nd 2008 3:10PM
I never understood why people listen to reviews. Can you really not decide if a game is right for you? Do you need another person, who might have a completely different taste for something, telling you that you will or will not like it?
JC Fletcher @ Jan 2nd 2008 4:51PM
Well, as a reviewer, I try to spend more time describing my experience with the game, and my own personal reactions to it, than just evaluating it according to some arbitrary scale. So then readers have more information about what the game is like.
SoshiKitai @ Jan 2nd 2008 6:16PM
Strange enough, you're on a review site.
O_o
... I like to form an opinion for myself, but it's always nice to see what other people think of video games. Especially from those who might make a living off of it.
troy @ Jan 2nd 2008 6:06PM
Agreed JC. A reader who can't evaluate a review as it applies to them is like a human who can't evaluate a book as it applies to them. I think Wii Fanboy reviews are great, and I don't even always agree ;) lol
Jeff Wilson @ Jan 2nd 2008 9:05PM
I wouldn't call this a review site. It is a news site more than anything.
I agree with JC. I just don't like the whole scale thing of review sites.
Dan @ Jan 2nd 2008 3:45PM
I look to reviews not for the numbers but the information behind the numbers, why it got the scores it got. Understand, I'm part of that "Wii Demographic:" this is our first console since the Atari 2600, and my PC game purchases have been generally from the bargain bin. When trying to understand whether games are bad/good, I've had increasing frustration from standard gaming sites because, as mgroves indicated, they tend to compare everything to Halo/BioShock. I've been driven off the "mainstream" and toward amazon customer reviews, for example, to get a feel for whether it fits our needs. Part of it is that we bought this with our younger (5 and 8) kids in mind, so we need to know how they'll react to the games (which led me to GamerDad)...What seems to be happening is much like what happens in the movie industry, where you have critics who rate based only on "art house quality" and forget that sometimes (okay, most times) people just go to the movies for "shut your brains off entertainment."
As to Jeff's comment, I look to reviews not as much for the "number" (movie reviews I have, but only because there's a particular reviewer whose tastes pretty well match mine), but the details as to why. The numbers can work as a filter (critics and customers universally giving a game top/horrible reviews, for example), but I'm more interested in the gameplay/style/difficulty aspects, which generally can't be had from reading the marketing material put out by the company. If I see reviewers generally saying the controls are wonky and hard to learn, it's a game I know I want to steer clear of. If the reviewers are panning a game primarily because the graphics/sound (or even "feel") are 3-5 years "old," that doesn't matter as much to me. In other words, I don't look for a person telling me I will or will not like it, I look for a person telling me what I can expect to experience when the game gets popped in the console...
Mr Khan @ Jan 2nd 2008 3:39PM
It's a difference of tastes in a lot of cases, the criteria for a good game should not change overall, but it should be different for the genre of "party games" that are emerging.
I mean, you can't judge a game to be bad just because its in a genre you hate, otherwise i would say that Tetris is one of the worst games of all time (which it isn't, its one of the best rather, puzzle games just aren't my thing at all)
Ghaleon @ Jan 2nd 2008 3:46PM
I'm glad gaming is getting back to "simpler" and "fun" because that's why I started playing games in the first place when I was lil.
Most games that try to be "adult" and epic are a joke compared to good film, the medium they're apparently trying to emulate now, and are def not worth playing for $60 and 20-30 hours.
Geometry Wars > Kane & Lynch
troy @ Jan 2nd 2008 6:09PM
Agreed. Geometry Wars is nearly better than all else lol.
Chaz @ Jan 2nd 2008 3:53PM
As someone who has been gaming since before NES was a household name, I have to completely agree with you the first three posters. I don't bother with most reviews because I'm what I like to call a Hardcore Casual Gamer. I game a lot, love the "awesome" games that deliver amazing sound/graphics/gameplay etc that most reviews hold so dear, but I also really, really enjoy "casual" games that are not meant to be played every day and often panned by critics.
Like mgroves said, reviewers need to stop comparing apples to oranges or Ferraris to bucket trucks and put themselves in the shoes of the person who will be playing the game. The same problem is rampant in the movie and tv industry. I really, really enjoy a lot of "bad" films and TV shows, but I tend to consume media in the context that it meant to be consumed. That "terrible" kids movie is only terrible to an adult if they've forgotten completely what made them happy as a kid.
If you ask me, more review sites need to have reviewers that will take an objective and contextual look at the media that they are reviewing. Not everybody is a hardcore Fanboy that requires the biggest and the best. If anything, the response to the Wii is proof of that.
samfish @ Jan 2nd 2008 4:39PM
My mother looooved Bust-A-Move Bash.
I think a lot of Wii games are akin to early video games for a lot of people. Folks who were playing Pong or Pac-Man back in the day just wanted simple, straight forward and fun gameplay. I imagine most of them would have gotten a sensory overload from a game like Galaxy or Metroid. I know my 4 year old Adventure playing self wouldn't have known where to begin with a game like Twilight Princess.
BUT a lot of those people are now playing games like Mario Galaxy and Metroid today.
So I kinda see the Wii as the next generation of training wheels for a lot of people, you could say. They want simple games now because that's the level they're at. They'll eventually move on to more complex game styles...likely similar to what people like us play but still totally different.
I'll bet, for example, that the first developer to make a soap opera-esque RPG and targets it towards women is going to make serious bank.
Wheathin @ Jan 2nd 2008 4:41PM
JC,
You bring up a lot of excellent points. I can relate myself, as I fit that bill exactly. I'm a casual gamer, I haven't owned or played a video game console system since owning a NES in elementary school.
I now own a Wii and am really starting to get back into it as a casual gamer. It is amazing what Nintendo has done, appealing to thirty something casual gamers like myself. I had friends with Playstations and Xboxs and Segas over the years but I never got into them or even played them as they seemed to complex to control and play for someone who didn't want or have the play time to invest.
A solution to your question is to have someone like myself review games as well and give the casual gamer perspective. It could be a separate review or an add-on paragraph to standard reviews.
I would volunteer for such a role with Wii games. It would be great to do and a lot of fun in my opinion.
If you're interested please contact me I would be interested.
SoshiKitai @ Jan 2nd 2008 6:16PM
I agree with some: Games should be reviewed according to which audience they're associated to.
I'm an all-around "gamer" (I gave up that title when I ran into... fanatics), I love simple games and I love complex games.
But I wouldn't agree that there should be a balance between them, there should be a 2-to-1 ratio for casual games-to-complex games.
Simpler games are a great bolster for creativity, they often give inspiration to larger, more complex games...
Sadly, that isn't the case most times... most times, big games often ignore small games and try to strike it out on their own knowledge...
Which is good, and awful at the same time.
- only the big hitters can get past this oversight, and they are amazingly small in number.
And the sad thing is, the big games take ideas from other big games and make it even bigger. This is what most gamers call "improvement".
...and if you agree with that, then let me ask you this:
"Does the Wii look like it was copied from a big system contender?"
Improvement isn't just a great idea made better, it can be something awful made perfect, or hardly-known to infamous!
Most new games are great and grand... but - - COME ON!!!
Imagine the amazing controls on some mini-games that are being overlooked when new games come out! Trust me, not all of it is "impossible on a large scale"... in fact, that sounds just like an excuse to save money.
I support small games and big games. Even if something doesn't seem "improved", it can seem DIFFERENT (in a good way). Just take the darn idea and shoot it into a different direction! You'd be amazed how impossibly great it can be when it's put into a different environment!
..... can I just get one thing off my chest? :
"WHY THE HECK ARE THERE NO 99% FUN MEDIEVAL (current) GAMES THAT EXIST?!!"
No, not RTS, not Strategy, not RPG, not card, not text-based, not small-action...
I'm talking about a high action, story-driven game that's not a hack-and-slash-button-masher or an overly-pretty-yet-no-real-substance game!!!
=_= I've been waiting for a game that combines the theatrical essence of Japanese Sword games (minus the awfully simple controls and awful stories) that has no stiffness or awkwardness that I see in almost every medieval-esque games nowadays!!! >__<
Darnit, the Wii would be so fun if the Wii can actually make the sword swing perfectly with the controller and NOT be slow (or dangerously awkward)...
... not to mention more good platformers...
- sorry, I needed to get that off my chest, it's been bothering me for the past 7 years...
Justin @ Jan 2nd 2008 6:31PM
i think the fun factor isn't taken into consideration enough. i got Super Swing Golf Season 2 for xmas. This game is really fun, the game is easy to pick up and play and there is a lot of different modes to play in. I would give this game an 8 maybe even a 9 if it had online, but nintendo power gave this game a 6.5 b/c it was too much like the original. Well i didn't play the original game this was my first experience with the game. So if i would've read the review first i wouldn't buy the game. so i guess if it looks good and i have interest in it, i will give it a whirl. The Wii is new teritory of gaming and maybe the games shouldn't be reviewed at all.