Game Criticism vs. Game Reviews

Greg Costikyan, founder of Manifesto Games, and resident cynic at PlayThisThing! offers an interesting and thought provoking post on the topic of "game criticism." If I had to pull a headline out of this story to get your attention it would be that Greg draws a distinction between game reviews and game criticism by saying that game reviews aren't criticism in the traditional sense. You'll have to go and read the whole thing to get the crux of his argument on the subject.

My short answer on this story is that I agree with him on much of what he says but I disagree that there are no writers out there that are real "critics." If you want an example of this, check out Tom Chick's review of No More Heroes, which is more than just a "buy this or don't buy it for reason X." Sure, there’s a score at the top of the page, but simply ignore that and read the article. You will see Tom doesn’t just jaw about mechanics and gameplay.

There are plenty of writers out there like Tom (though I'll freely admit I have Tom Chick trading cards) that don't just gloss over the feature set and give you a rating. I do get what Greg is saying, and he's mostly right - but there are a few exceptions.

And while we are on the subject, if you want to see game criticism in practice you owe it to yourself to go visit Playthisthing.com. These fine writers aren't pumping out product reviews, they are putting a critical eye on the products they highlight. For an excellent example of this, check out Greg's critique of ICED.


Game Criticism, Why We Need It, and Why Reviews Aren't It