Been There, Done That developer Dan Marshall believes that if you want to be a so-called games journalist, you should be forced to make videogames yourself. As both a games developer and a PC magazine writer, he believes that dabbling in both fields is a required goal.
"I think all games journos should be forced to make a game somehow, see how they get on. It gives you a more rounded perspective," explains Marshall. "It’s really interesting, because as a developer I think you’re slightly more understanding of the process involved, but as a gamer you know whether or not you’re having a good time."
I disagree. While Marshall doesn't explicitly say it, this smacks of the "let's see you do better" argument that has been a fallacy for many years. I personally don't think making games makes you a better journalist in the same way that I don't think abducting children makes you a better policeman. You don't need know how to make a game in order to know when a game sucks, and in fact your opinion might be clouded a bit too much by developer sympathy if you've been there.
What do you think? Does the gaming media need to make games? If Dan Marshall could help me reorganize my stupidly busy schedule so that I'm not writing about and playing crappy games all day, then maybe I'll take him up on the challenge. Until then, however, no dice.
Jim Sterling serves as reviews editor for Destructoid.com, head of the Podtoid podcast, and produces a number of news stories, original features, one-of-a-kind videos. With his passionate argumentative style, controversial opinions, harsh delivery, and dedication to brutal honesty Sterling is a name that you can't help but recognize.
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Contest:
11:20 AM on 10.13.2009
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I'm right there with you on that one. Its called a conflict of interest and would make horrible journalism.
Yeah, that's not arrogant or anything... People like to do numerous things, if one of those things is reviewing video games, then why should another necessarily have to be creating video games? I certainly don't think all video game developers should review video games, and, of course, vice versa.
Reviews, opinions, and all the other things that games journalists do should always be done by GAMERS, not developers.
I wasn't there during the development process of your game. I also wasn't alive during the Second World War. Yet, formulating well-informed opinions about these phenomenon is perfectly valid.
A lot of times I see reviews of mediocre games make disparaging remarks about the abilities or commitment of the developers (The PS3 version of Ghostbusters is a good example). I've worked on (non-gaming) projects that didn't turn out as well as I hoped, but that doesn't mean I didn't do my best to make it succeed. I take Dan Marshalls comments to mean journalists might be more inclined to fairly review the developer rather than the game.
Mainly because his idea may be seen as slightly insulting to games jurno's who will obviously report on the issue and say the guy is talking crap... it will be then read by gamers who think their own opinions on games are good enough to be in print, and as such will view it as a slur against them as self proclaimed games critics.
I personally think he has a point; I don't think some one reading a review needs to sympathize with development constraints... but I think some one with hands on knowledge is better equipped to give you a guided tour of a product, especially if the reader has interest in the development, the industry, etc.
Yahtzee is a brilliant critic and he also made games, there might be no connection between the two, but I would bet my money there is.
I think it's a good idea. I don't think you need to make a game to critique a game but it could result in some really detailed and intense reviews. I think it could result less sympathetic reviews. Not more.
The fact is, making a game and being a games journalist are really different skills.
I suck at math and could not survive as a coder, I'd have no clue what to do- it is a real talent. No denying it, even the worst games have skilled individuals on them.
But I still know a turd when I see one, and for every coder they have, games like Turning Point and Legendary still blow, and I don't need to be a designer to tell you that.
Hint: Its not just slapping together a blog and hitting the "submit" button.
I expect a reviewer to know the genre he's talking about, have some understanding of the production process and have finished a game to completion before he post the review.
But how many reviews have you read where that's not the case? I've read plenty. This unfortunately gives the "let's see you do better" argument some merit. Its happened quite a lot. There's also cases where gaming sites have let their need for ad revenue get the better of journalistic ethics. See: Kane and Lynch, Gamespot.
Its sort of silly for a critic not to be able to handle a little return fire. I don't think a developer just has to sit back and take it, especially if the reviewer had it wrong.
I do get a bit of a passive-aggressive "let's see you do better, smarty pants" feeling here, but that doesn't mean he's completely wrong-- he just may have ulterior motives:).
If you ever find yourself criticizing the game developer, then I think that you probably do need that experience in order to do that correctly.
But I will admit that actually going through the process of trying to create a good game offered a lot of insight on both game design as a whole, and how it relates to how I review games these days. It makes you loads pickier, to be honest, with your games.
So...in a way I think he's right. If we made all the destructoid members sit down and create the best indie game they could, I bet they'd come out much better informed on how to write game articles (not that you don't do a good job now, you do fantastic, it would just bump it up a notch or two).
it probably would, but it tends to alienate people when reviewers get too technical. Some of Anthony Burch's reviews(not all) just wouldn't make any sense to a lot of gamers.
For example, I remember when Anthony was talking about randombullseye's game "Bonerquest" on Podtoid and he really tore randombullseye a new ass hole for updating the game's executable files 3 or 4 times after its "release" in order to fix bugs. So I think that it was ironic that when his own game Runner came out, the game had to be taken down and repatched a number of quick updates after its release as well to fix errors.
I guess I imagine that prior to Runner, Anthony pins down these last minute bugs that randombullseye was struggling with as poor planning or poor QA whereas after Runner, I suspect that he releases that sometimes these things happen (most often than not they will happen) and it's not necessarily something you can easily just blame someone or something for.
So yeah, I guess that while I don't agree that game journalists ought to make games, I feel that those that have certain gain something from the experience.
Now that demos are much more readily available though I don't think reviewers are as useful as they used to be. :X
Games don't need to be "Well, they tried their hardest." No. If your game sucks, it sucks. Bottom line. I'm not saying that experience in making games wouldn't make reviewers think more about what they want to say, just as long as sympathy doesn't cloud their better judgment when reviewing a bad game.
Obviously you should avoid reviewing your own efforts, but knowing more about the process doesn't automatically make you less objective -- as a writer, you are responsible for assessing your own objectivity level. Having hands-on experience in the world of development doesn't make you unfit to write, or biased to "give a pass" to subpar efforts. On the contrary, the added understanding of what happens "under the hood" should lead you to construct better critiques that are more on target, and more relevant.
As a side note - I think it's cool for the relationship between developers and journos to be a little bit adversarial. You're supposed to ask them the hard questions, and you are after all critiquing them - a little trash-talk keeps everyone on their toes. The best thing that can happen for a journo is for people to acknowledge what they're saying, and the best possible outcome is that a developer uses the input to make a better game.
Articles like that are far more common than not, and as someone who worked in dev for a bit I can say that the point of view of these articles comes from a severe lack of knowing how games are made.
Marshall isn't saying that you should excuse bad games. What, I'm assuming, he's saying is that if you understand how games are made, you'll just be more likely to write something like "I can see what they were going for here, but it's pretty obvious it didn't come through and it's kinda fucked up and shitty" as opposed to the more common type of pov instanced above.
I mean honestly, that's like saying you can't have an opinion on anything unless you have done it personally.
If you think about it, we are all critics. we all talk on here bout our love for games, our passion for it, and how we love or hate certain games, and why. I don't know how many of us have made games, but surely that passion isn't only justified if you are involved in making games? Making games is not everyone's forte. I know it's not mine. But that doesn't mean I'm not gonna say if I think a game sucks or not.