Rampant Games - A Tale of Two RPG Reviews

I always get the most from reviews when I can relate to the person reviewing it. If someone starts the review by saying, "I am a huge fan of Baldur's Gate and old-school RPG designs, and this game I'm reviewing is AMAZING!", then I will feel a stronger tie to that review and it will influence me more.

I don't believe in an objectively good or bad anything, so for my own reviews I hope the people reading know a little bit about me, my preferences and the things I find interesting. Then they can determine for themselves what to make of my opinions.

Also, I tend to be descriptive in my reviews to try and explain how the game functions and what it seems to accomplish, so in that sense they are a bit educational. I also freely give my own opinions, and if the person reading it knows me, I hope they will get something from it.

Originally Posted by HiddenX
felipepepe recruited her, for his CRPG book.

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Originally Posted by Barca84
I would wholeheartedly disagree with any suggestion that there could ever be an "objective" score or review for any game, much the same way I would object to the idea that there could ever be any "objective" review of a piece of music, a painting, etc. To claim that something is objectively good (or bad) necessarily requires that there is a universally (or at least nearly universally) accepted set of criteria for determining those things. But there isn't. Hence, getting to know the idiosyncracies of a particular reviewer when determining whether or not, or to what extent, to take their views into account is, in my opinion, pretty important.

Art is probably the only area in society where crappyness can be disguised by interpretation, and even then the people who professionally produce 'crap' tend to come from informed backgrounds and the art is in the controversy as much as the technical aspects of the piece. On a purely technical objective level a five year old's stickman in thick red paint is not objectively comparable to the Sistine chapel. Some people might prefer to look at the 5 year old's scrawls, for emotional/subjective reasons, but, objectively, they are not comparable.

In terms of music, if you ever heard me play an instrument (extremely badly) you'd soon know what makes for objectively good music

Someone made a car analogy earlier (or on another thread?) and this is probably a better analogy than art or music. A Rolls Royce is objectively better than a Robin Reliant in almost every possible way except fuel consumption and price. If you have two identical cars but one has air conditioning and the other doesn't then the one with air conditioning is objectively the better car in every respect other than price.

I know it's tempting to argue that everything is subjective, it's a very easy argument, but it's just as incorrect as trying to argue that everything is objective. More to the point, if you go down the pure subjectivity route as a strict philosophy you might as well just give your wallet to a mugger…

Thanks for the thoughtful reply. Anyway, I fully realize that the "everything is subjective" argument can be abused. That being said, it doesn't mean the argument is wrong. Crap is crap, as you say, and it's very tempting, when one discovers a particularly malodorous specimen, to say it's objectively so. I think any disagreement we might have is over the meaning of the terms subjective/objective, in that I am using a very strict definition of "objective."

The car analogy, for example, has a built-in assumption, viz. that having air conditioning is objectively better than not having air conditioning. In almost all circumstances, that's true, but off the top of my head I can think of instances where it wouldn't be. Suppose, for example, that an aficionado of a particular car wanted to rebuild a perfect replica, and that the original build didn't include A/C. In that instance, such a car with A/C would be, to that person, worse than the exact same car without it. Now, admittedly, that's an extreme example, but I would argue that it supports my point. Even if 99.9 to the nth% of people can agree on a particular criterion, that criterion remains, using the strict definition I'm employing, non-objective (i.e. subjective).

In practice, of course, such distinctions are trivial, but the philosophical point remains. If 99.9% of people agree that a game, or a piece of art, or your instrumental musical ability (or mine, for that matter) is crap, then it probably is. Just not objectively so.