Is a lack of features a valid criticism?

[clyde]

I just played a bit of Timberman and it's kinda fun.

http://wip.warpdoor.com/2014/07/16/timberman-digital-melody/

As I play, I quickly see opportunities for things that are not there that would make the game feel more significant for me. My criticism of games often relies on a sense of missed opportunities. But when is this valid criticism?

Timberman consists of a stout lumberjack at the base of a two-dimensional tree on which chops may be cut from the left or the right side. As the chopping continues, branches advance towards the ground in a obtusely predictable fashion. A meter at the top of the screen gains incrementally in relation to how productive the lumberjack is chopping chunks out of the tree; over time the meter drains faster. The lumberjack can die in two ways. If the player makes a chop which lowers the branch upon them, the lumberjack will die. If the meter at the top drains completely, the lumberjack will die. When the lumberjack receives their inevitable death, a tombstone is placed on the side of the tree where they last stood.

I'm not going to say that Timberman is the Modern Times of video games, but I was reminded of one of the film's implicit messages. One might feel that any endless runner communicates the same thing, but this selection of theme, mechanics, and elements evokes it in me very succinctly. It's possible that my personal history which includes being employed as a ground-person for a tree-service may give the game extra flavor for me. The day I quit, I had nearly been injured by a ambitious team-manuever and watched in horror as my colleague was hit in the leg by a 200-250lb chunk of branch as it rolled around a separate tree he was using as cover. He shook it off. Immediately after this miracle, we did the exact same manuever with the next chunk of branch. Afterall, we were being paid to get the tree out of the yard without damaging the client's house. I finished up that day and called my boss in the evening to inform him that I was retiring. I have a lot to offer, I'm not going to be killed at work when I know that the potential for injury is unacceptably high. I don't gamble.

The productivity-meter, the work, the danger, the death were are all the essential representations of the day I quit that job. I applaud it for that, but find myself asking for more. A permuted array of content in epitaph-form could reveal why the lumberjack is risking their life for pay (if the player taps on the tombstone). If the game was organized in phases that began with a Paper's Please style ratio of quota/productivity expectations, then those who never have worked for a tree-service might have more to identify with. But this is a simple game that does what it does well and these features swuld change to tone of the game entirely; I'm not sure that it is valid criticism.

Edit: I accidentally called it Timberland a bunch so I went back and changed it.

[prawks]

Personally I think it's difficult to criticize a game for not being ambitious enough, precisely because of what you pointed out in your last sentence: it has the potential to change a game in a way that steers it away from what the author(s) aimed to do. All art (? I'm by no means an art critic, and making broad assumptions about art is a dumb idea, but here goes) is created with an intent, and I think critiquing a game about its lack of features is very close to critiquing the artist's intent. Perhaps the author(s) of Timberland wanted to create a very evocative experience for people familiar with the tree-cutting domain, and getting the general populace to feel the same was outside of their goals or deemed too much for them to tackle.

 

However, I think it's completely valid to want more of a game. I feel uneasy about critiquing a game for lack of content (as long as its priced fairly, I suppose), but there are always great games that I want to play endlessly. I'd love it if there were 6 more guilds in Skyrim, or if Mark Of The Ninja had as much content as an Elder Scrolls game. But I'm also of the mindset that what makes a work of art great is all-encompassing, and includes the amount of work/content in it. Tampering with that may taint my considering it a great work. In short: I don't know what I want, and what I say I want is probably not all that great.

[clyde]

What would be a good context in which to list the missed opportunities you perceive? Maybe saying "What I would have liked to have seen" at the end of a critique?

[Reyturner]

You should review a game based on what it is and what it says it wants to be.

You can criticize a game through whatever lense you like.

[prawks]

You should review a game based on what it is and what it says it wants to be.

You can criticize a game through whatever lense you like.

 

I like this. I guess it implies that reviews are objective and criticism is subjective, and I think that's fair.

[Twig]

EDIT: Ugh I'm not doing another "what are reviews" argument. Nevermind.

[Reyturner]

I would say reviews are consumer advice, not objective

[itsamoose]

Personally I don't see the problem with calling out features that a game should/you wish had, but I don't necessarily think this always qualifies as criticism.  Sure if something doesn't work properly or has some glaring omission fine, but imposing a different value system on a game design is really more speculation than anything.  For example imagine a game that asks you to parse a large amount of data (quests, skills, items, whatever), but doesn't give you a search function.  The game still works, just not in the way you would like.  Now any comments regarding the effect this has on your enjoyment of the game is criticism, but to say the game would be better with a search feature is a critique of the game's design as opposed to a critical analysis of the game itself.

I think both have a place, but usually the two get lumped together.

[JonCole]

I think some element of reviews is context and if a game purports to have a level of scope and vision and then delivers something that doesn't meet that mark, I think there's something to be said for criticizing it. Also, when a game is like "I'm like X game but with MOAR" and then it's actually "like X game but with LESS" I think there's a little bit of culpability. Not that every game should be directly compared with every contemporary that looks somewhat similar, just that if a publisher/developer invites the comparison it's fair to criticize based on that criteria.

[clyde]

I think the Sims 4 no-pools-or-toddlers is an interesting permutation on this discussion. More widely, why is the lack of previously included features so likely to be received as valid criticism?

I also think that the threshold at which the theme of the game stops being simulated is an interesting place to be critical. Whether or not a car gets banged up in a racing game or if shooting another character has longer term consequences.