Dan Amrich
Los Angeles, CA
Male, 41
I started reviewing videogames professionally in 1993, when Genesis and SNES roamed the earth. Over the next 15 years I worked for magazines and websites like GamePro, GamesRadar, Official Xbox Magazine, and World Of Warcraft Official Magazine, while freelancing for Wired, PC Gamer, and many others. In an attempt to guide the next generation of reviewers, I wrote and published Critical Path: How to Review Videogames For A Living in February. Ask away!
I don't know the current statistics on the percentage of female game players. I'm a reviewer, not a statistician. :) And I think we've both seen games that are marketed directly to female players, so it seems pretty clear that publishers do.
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I believe there are certain elements that all gamers feel are valuable, so I draw on them: an engaging story, a sense of progression and advancement, an abundance of experiences that elicit interesting emotional responses. Pretty graphics, cool music -- they're part of the mix, but they're not as important as what the game does to you or for you. All gamers do not hold all those elements as equally important, nor do all games do not try to incorporate all those elements -- no big story to Tetris, for instance. So while a lot of games have similar goals or components and a lot of gamers expect similar things when they play a game, I've never found a way to truly approach it scientifically, with empirical accuracy. You are evaluating both art and science -- storytelling and emotional resonance, plus technical aptitude -- so you can't use only one or the other to build an opinion. I have worked from templates in the past that leaned heavily toward to the science side -- more like checklists. Rate the graphics; rate the sound; rate the controls. The trick became how to express those elements in a description of the overall experience -- to drop in phrases about those specific things in the discussion of what the game offers as a whole, which strikes me as a more artistic endeavor. Reviewing is analytical writing, but if it feels analytical when you read it, you are doing the audience a disservice. They don't want scientific data so much as personal insight into how that game might make them feel if and when they choose to play it, or even buy it. And if you are dealing with feelings, I think the whole thing leans more toward art. Value is tricky, because some people want X amount of hours of gameplay for Y dollars. Other people don't care about the length of an experience, but how it affects them. I'm one of those people who loved Portal from the first day I sat down to review it. I knew going in it was going to be a 3 to 4 hour experience. Didn't bother me at all -- the quality of those three hours was so amazing and surprising and joyful to me that I still smile every time I think about the game. Whereas I've played 15-hour games where I was begging the thing to end already. Yet some people felt Portal was too short to be worth their money (even though watching a non-interactive theatrical movie for roughly the same money is a shorter experience!). There is an inherent money-is-time value for them, and if the campaign of a $60 single-player game isn't at least 10 hours, they feel ripped off. Sometimes 10 isn't even enough. And if they can burn through a $60 game in 6 hours? It often does not matter how good those six hours are; they walk away angry. The value is not there. But it might have been for me. So I can't quantitatively evaluate the overall value of a game for someone who has different values. I can absolutely say "this is what I found valuable, based on this criteria," and then they can determine if that matches what is valuable to them as well. That's how a review is supposed to work -- here's my opinion, and how I came to it; use it as you form your own.
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It can take the fun out, if you let it. One of the worst but most common problems with the job is that the people who do it can become cynical -- they forget why they loved games and they start actively hating games. I think this is because before you get the job, your strongest memories are your best memories -- you remember the games that made you feel the greatest highs, and then you wind up with a job where there are many more mediocre to bad games than there are transcendent ones, and that's what you spend most of your time writing about. It's very easy to start focusing on the negative, and then believe that nothing can ever be good again. So that factors into how you start seeing games as a chore instead of the escape that they once were. I touched on this in one of the other answers, but it's really a personal path at that point -- you have to will yourself not to turn into a jaded jerk. You have to remind yourself that games are fun, and even if the last three weren't, the next one very well may be. In the book, I suggest that you have to leave yourself open to be amazed. (This is part of the free Kindle you can get from Amazon, by the way, if you want to read that part.) Gaming only really felt like a chore when I had to work weekends. It might seem like "Oh, poor baby, you have to play a game this weekend" -- but when that game isn't a good one, or might be plagued by pre-release bugs, then it really does become a chore. You start wishing you could paint the house or rake the leaves instead. It's frustrating enough to have to replay a level over and over because you can't figure out how to get past a part or beat a boss; it's extra frustrating when the reason you are restarting is because the console crashes due to a software error...and that's something you cannot fix as the reviewer. But your responsibility is to hit that deadline, so now you have to call your editor, who has to call the company, and you're in limbo until it's all worked out...but the clock is still ticking. That really, really makes it feel like a chore, to have a responsibility that you cannot fulfill. I don't think I ever fantasized about going back to being a "civilian gamer," as you put it, but I did constantly remind myself how other "normal" people saw and played games. I regularly discussed games with friends outside of the industry, gamers who did the normal thing of buying three, maybe four games a year and sampling the rest by borrowing from friends or renting. They didn't get to play as many games as I did, but they had more of an investment in the game they played, in both time and money. So I always felt like I needed to ground myself in reality, and remember that when I write, I am writing for people other than myself. My experience is valid, but I have to incorporate the audience's expectations and needs, too. If you lose sight of your audience, you can no longer do them any good.
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I do a lot of my gaming on 360 and iPad because I worked at OXM and it is most available in my free time, respectively, but I could just as easily be doing it on PS3 and 3DS. My playing a lot of 360 should not influence you in the slightest. I am platform agnostic and I have active disdain for the so-called console wars. As if we don't have enough divisive issues in the world, some brainiac decided that one machine dedicated to playing games had to be empirically better than another. Downright ridiculous. Play what makes you happy on whatever you can put your hands on. The important thing is that we're playing games and enjoying it.
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3D Games Developer/Programmer
Is the new Oculus Rift thing as cool as everyone says?
MBA Student
Is business school a party compared to law or med school?
Bartender
How often would you date customers?
You can only review the experience you have. People seem to think that if a review does not reflect their personal experience, then the review is wrong. Well, no; their experience was different from yours, but both experiences are valid. If something like DRM/always-on connections affect your experience of the game, then they should factor in. But if they did not affect the reviewer's experience at the time of review, it's hardly fair to expect them to say "But maybe the game isn't actually as good as it was when I played it for myself." Whose opinion are they writing anyway? Their own, based on their own experience. But it is absolutely responsible to note "this game has significant DRM" or "this game will require an always-on connection" as part of the review's information, as those will factor into the game experience. As you note, a game is more than just its content, and every game is more than your personal money investment, it's a time investment. Reviews can't just factor in "is it worth your money" -- they also have to ask "is it worth your time?" Whether DRM or technical factors weigh into the score or not depends on whether that reviewer felt it was a detriment or a boon or neither. At the very least, the consumer should be given that information so they can factor it into their own decision. But they cannot control the game once it is released any more than you or I can. If a game has significant issues after the review is posted, add an update to the review, or post a news story about the current events. You don't have to ignore reality, but I also don't feel the reviewer's experience should be rendered invalid because of temporary technical issues. Problems will arise and problems will be solved. I know of very few top-tier games with online components that don't experience issues during launch week and don't have adjustments on the back end to deal with those issues. Based on the last several years, I now accept that games will evolve after release, and that the release week may well be problematic. It's reality.
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Keep in mind that this is entirely subjective, and I can only comment on the games I've played or reviewed (well, yes, I have played all the games I've reviewed, you know what I mean...) I think the worst games I ever reviewed were Combat Cars for the Genesis (a top down racer with no mini-map) and Chicago Enforcer for Xbox, which was a very very bad 1930s FPS. I was just amazed that it made it through certification. Best? I have too much nostalgia for the old days of arcades to say anything other than Robotron 2084 or Tempest, but they still kick my ass today. Any game that remains challenging 30 years after it was created deserves the title "classic."
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No. Games are like films or books -- very much a product of their time. I have a great respect for what came before, but I think if you force someone to play, watch, or read something, they are not approaching it with an open mind and will likely not appreciate it the way you want them to. You can recommend, but shoving it down their throat isn't good. Sorta like a game review -- it's advice, but not imperative commands.
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