Schools of criticism

[clyde]

I love the Grand Theft Auto series and fail to appreciate the Saints Row series. Of course I know that one is not better than the other, but I do believe that games within a series tend to display some amount of consistency. As I try to describe what I like about GTA, I find that the details I list are present in the Saints Row series. This makes me suspect that I have no clue what I actually like about specific games. I'm just picking details that are in games I enjoy and that are not in games I do not enjoy, and just assuming causation. This is apparently a useless school of criticism.

What if the unifying factor of games I enjoy was something as basic as being within a small range of latency. What if I enjoy every game that delivers audio or visual feedback within 20-10 milliseconds or whatever, and only those games. My claims that Spelunky is great because of chains of causation and resource management, and that Civilization 5 is amazing because of the sense of history-building, can all be reduced to how fast something happens when I press a button.

I'm not saying that this is the unifying factor, but I can't figure out what Saints Row doesn't have that GTA does, so I am no authority on what causes me to enjoy some games and not others. I wonder if there is a school of criticism that can reliably tell me whether or not I will enjoy a game before I play it.

[darthbator]

You particular chosen example is even stranger IMO because GTA has undergone a few complete shifts where their "low core" mechanics changed a lot. Everything from car physics, to actor motion, to gun play cursor changed greatly between GTA games (even when using the same engine). There might be other commonalities that you're keying onto (how tight are the feedback loops, how great is the second order motion). Or simply stylistic presentation differences that push one over another. 

[thestalkinghead]

it's hard to tell why we like the things we like without an in depth personal analysis of our entire life, in short you could just say GTA has the special secret ingredient that saints row doesn't have.

 

there are some thing which you could say were objective like the "polish" of the game, but really all reviews are subjective, just like the appreciation of any art form 

[juv3nal]

It's not really possible (or worthwhile spending the time trying) to boil things down to a formula or checklist like that in my experience. Something I really liked 15 years ago, I can be pretty meh about today. It's not the game that's changed; any specific thing you could have picked out that game as having 15 years ago, it still has today.

[mikemariano]

of criticism

[Reyturner]

What if the unifying factor of games I enjoy was something as basic as being within a small range of latency. What if I enjoy every game that delivers audio or visual feedback within 20-10 milliseconds or whatever, and only those games. My claims that Spelunky is great because of chains of causation and resource management, and that Civilization 5 is amazing because of the sense of history-building, can all be reduced to how fast something happens when I press a button.

 

I'd say the things that GTA, Spelunky and Civ5 have in common is that you always feel like you are making important decisions: 

• In Spelunky, any false step could mean the end of a play through. Its a game rendered down to its utmost essentials, without a trace of fat.
• In Civ5, every choice feels important; you can imagine possible consequences of building this harbour or attacking that barbarian camp. Again, a tightly designed experience. 

That takes us to GTA. If there's one thing GTA consistently does right is creating the rich, believable worlds, especially compared to Saints Row. Instead of cutting the fat, they marble it lovingly throughout the game world. The streets of Liberty City are just close enough to being real that it is easy to forget that every car and person you see is almost instantly deleted as soon as they leave you field of view (though not as suddenly as they are in SR). I know I always have a couple hours of totally suspended disbelief when I play a new GTA; I'll be walking at the pace of foot traffic, avoiding collisions in cars, answering the phone (or at least feeling vaguely guilty when I ignore it). It feels meaningful to bash into a random guy on the street or to flip a car over while running a red light. It's a while before I start intentionally going ape shit, driving on the sidewalk and shooting people for no reason. And then, when I do go crazy, my choice seems more real, more satisfying and natural. The fact that your so free to be totally shitty and amoral in this believable world while at the helm of this fairly real seeming guy is the reason the term "ludo-narrative dissonance" exists.

 

SR just goes "fuck it, this is a video game" and even though it plays much better than any GTA, there is zero effort put into making Steel Port feel like a real place where there could be actual consequences to your decisions. The people are just foul-mouthed abuse sponges for you do perform wrestling moves on or to kill with dubstep. They then push you through scripted missions where every meaningful decision you make beyond how stupid you want your guns and outfits to be was put there in advance.

 

What I'm getting at is that I don't think it is how fast the game responses to your button press as much as how much of an impact you feel that button press made. 

 

If this is correct, feel free to just ask me what games to buy and I'll let you know.  

[osmosisch]

I think focusing only on what you like is the problem. Saying 'these games all have things I like therefore I like them' is only discussing part of the picture.

[clyde]

These responses are inspiring some interesting thoughts.

I have an exciting hypothesis after considering what y'all have written:

I enjoy games that maintain comparatively high levels of expected behavior in their simulations while increasing my sense of personal influence.

This actually leads to some weird shit if you extrapolate the logic of this lense. You are right Osmosisch, I'm basically saying "I like dinosaurs so I like games with dinosaurs in them!" and it's not working. Reyturner was able to provide a pretty compelling argument that gave me a place to start. I think the sense of meaning or influence is likely a function of the player's ability to change the simulation and the simulation's believability. Believability seems related to expectations of realism, but expectations of reality isn't necessarily realistic which brings up TheStalkingHead's suggestion that analysis should include my life experiences. My expectations of what makes a realistic strategy game has changed massively as my political beliefs have gone from referencing nightly news reports, G.I. Joe cartoons and Encyclopedia Britanicas to watching content from Democracy Now, reading Reuters, and (in a frightening feedback loop kinda way) playing strategy-games. My expectations of realism change. This is also a good spot to address Juv3nal's point that games may not be enjoyable 15 years later. This may be happening not only because my expectations of realism change over time, but my expectations of the level of realism I can expect from a video-game can change over time. My expectations for the level of player-influence in video-games (the other side of the equation) can also change over time.

Things like tighter feedback-loops, scale of influence, width of potential actions, and perceptible chains of causality all increase the sense of player influence; but they also tend to decrease expectations of realism. I suspect that I enjoy games that find a way to increase the sense of player influence while maintaining a level of expectations for realism. Higher jumps are expected from cartoon characters; the influence of nation-states is expected to be on a larger scale, long-term consequences like being investigated and going to prison can be post-poned or explained away with narrative. It seems like a pretty good hypothesis.

Let's check out some of the odd extrapolations:

Hypothetically, sense of player-influence could be increased drastically while maintaining expectations for realism if the person playing is a meglomaniac. Wouldn't it be interesting so see if game preferences of someone were predictable based on psychological assessments of narcissism? This could explain some of the effects hallucinagen or stimulant use has on gameplay experiences. Wasn't there a games-writer that played GTA IV during a stimulant binge?

It's also interesting to consider what happens when the sense of player-influence goes much lower that realistic expectations. Maybe that's where empathy-games fit into the picture. This is especially interesting if you consider the possibility that experiences in a game may influence your expectations of realism.

I'm going with this school of criticism for now: examining the ratio between expectations of realism and level of player-influence. I think I can get a lot out of it. I think it explains my current confusion about Saints Row and GTA.

My steam handle is signalflow Reyturner, tell me what to buy.

[sclpls]

I think focusing only on what you like is the problem. Saying 'these games all have things I like therefore I like them' is only discussing part of the picture.

 

That's a good point. Looking at other mediums, criticism is never considered predictive. Good criticism makes a robust argument about what is meaningful in a particular work.

[osmosisch]

I forgot to include this in my previous post, but I appreciate this thread a lot. It's definitely a worthwhile effort to try and understand one's tastes (and by extension oneself) better, and I applaud the wariness of post-hoc arguments about why you like certain games. It made me think, for sure.

[Reyturner]

On the subject of thinking about games and understanding one's tastes and general "good"-ness, you could do worse than reading these books: 

 

The Characteristics Games

 

The Art of Game Design

 

Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance 

[thestalkinghead]

i think we often know why we like games/films/books etc. but certain aspects are to personal or to complicated to explain, so we generally talk about things that are easy to explain or things we don't like, because talking about personal reason why we like something has no relevance to other people, even if we are purely stating our opinion we generally try to state it in a way that other people would understand, so it is our opinion buy filtered through a broad understanding filter.

[Sententia]

You might also read Let's Talk About Love: A Journey to the End of Taste.