Critique: What it's not

Now that I’ve actually done some game criticism and have something to reference, I think it’s good to compare criticism with game reviewing.  On the surface, these things are similar, but in reality, the goals and content of a game review and a piece of game criticism are very much different.

A review’s ultimate goal is to inform potential buyers.  When you walk away from a successful review, you should walk away with a better understanding of what the game is and whether you’d be interested in buying it.  This would be review:

“Bastion is a game with well-executed combat, interesting and well-delivered narration, and a great story.  The soundtrack is great, but it suffers from some minor balance issues and clashing, if colorful, visuals.”

On the other hand, criticism (also called critique) is about looking at the game and getting a “deeper” understanding of it.  Criticism deals with looking at the meaning behind different aspects of the game or how the story is told with the different elements.  This would be critique:

“Bastion’s narrative is delivered in an impressive interactive manner, which creates impressive world and deep characters within gameplay while avoiding a traditional text dump.  This is done through comments made by a narrator triggered by player action.”

There is a clear difference on a very basic level.  Articles that describe the gameplay and story and end with a score and/or recommendation are clearly reviews.  An article describing how to interpret a particular part of a game and the literary background behind it is clearly critique.  But things aren’t always as simple as textbook examples.

The first thing that confuses things is the language for describing this stuff.  “Criticism” generally indicates describing something’s flaws, but that’s a long way from “criticism” when appending to “literary” or in my case, “game.”  Also, a “critic,” is someone who points out flaws (as in the general definition of criticism), and they’re often also a reviewer.  Second, good reviews often do some amount of critique, since it can be a good way to explain a portion of the game succinctly.

A great example is Ben “Yahtzee” Croshaw’s work on the Escapist.  Zero Punctuation is, first and foremost, a review show, since every single episode states in some way whether the game is worth buying, and that’s really the main point behind each episode: how good (or bad) the game is.  But if you sift out the content only there for humor and set aside everything that’s review, you will find gems of game criticism here and there.  This is when he steps back and comments on what games say about society, how a particular mechanic tells the story, or does a bit of interpretation.  As for a specific example, virtually every time he mentions Freud, he’s briefly jumped into critique rather than review.  Often these sections are brushed aside with humor, probably to hide the intellectual games-are-art hippy that he is, but they’re there if you’re capable of not blinking for five minutes straight.

Coming back to the subject of keeping reviewing separate from critique, I think more examples might help.  Finding something that’s purely review is relatively easy, as reviews are clearly labeled and there are a ton of them spread throughout the internet.  Criticism can be harder to find, though, especially outside the depths of forums, and as much as I love forums, that’s a rabbit hole far too deep for a couple of examples.

First, my Youtube channel, Korial00 is dedicated to a series called Game Talk, which is all game criticism, though it’s still in its infancy (as is this blog, of course, at least at time of writing).  Yahtzee’s written column, Extra Punctuation (also on the Escapist) includes game criticism far more often than his videos.  The Game Overthinker by Bob “Moviebob” Chipman posted on Screw Attack has quite a bit of critique.  Extra Credits by James Portnow, Daniel Floyd, and Allison Theus over on Penny Arcade does game criticism whenever they delve into a discussion about a specific game or mechanic, rather than broad issues in the game industry.  I’m sure there are tons of other instances, but these are what I’m familiar with and I’ll happily plug these guys, though not all they do is game critique (not that the other stuff they do isn’t great) and each has its own quirks.  If you know of any other places that do game criticism, share them!

Both game critique and reviews are important, but I think that a very important part in understanding game criticism and studying games in general is to know what different kinds of approaches there are to looking at games.  There’s another whole discussion that can be had about why we make these distinctions and how we should go about it, but that’s taking the meta nature of this blog to a whole new level, and I think I’ve said enough for one post.

Check out the links below for the shows/blogs mentioned and share any others you know of in the comments!  See you next week.

Zero Punctuation by Yahtzee: http://www.escapistmagazine.com/videos/view/zero-punctuation

Extra Punctuation by Yahtzee: http://www.escapistmagazine.com/articles/view/columns/extra-punctuation

The Game Overthinker by MovieBob: http://www.screwattack.com/shows/partners/game-overthinker

Extra Credits by James, Daniel, and Allison: http://penny-arcade.com/patv/show/extra-credits