Exactly. And I think this gets back to the idea that has been so pervasive for decades in games that is only starting to change in recent years which is that “product review” and “critical analysis” were considered the same thing, while most of what was really going on was just the former.
I think that’s why Patrick wanted to bring this up in the first place because a lot of people seem to think that once you make your statement on a thing, that is now your opinion forever and you can’t take it back.
Sure, and I guess I take that sentiment for granted at an non-scoring place like waypoint, that things can always be revised and likely will be.
I admit alot of my feelings are also based on the podcast too, where it really sounded like patrick immediately deferred to Austin’s take and sounded almost embarrassed. This combined with the Waypoint’s twitter clique going super harsh on gow, it all rubs me the wrong way.
Again its fine to hate the game. But this shouldn’t be a community where someone can only like a big popular thing if they immediately jump in a foxhole.
You’re looking at Patrick’s review as a product review
I am actually doing the opposite. If he wants to change his opinion at a later time he can do that, hes not even tied to any score. But this article is telling us not to take his critique seriously in the first place.
One thing Patrick sort of flew past was the concept of sequestering yourself during a review. It’s always been my understanding that the purpose of this was to prevent a single powerful or particluarly persuasive voice from influencing reviews from a variety of outlets. You think reviews are monolithic now? Imagine a scenario where an extremely charming or persistent reviewer is causing the conversation to be standardized before it even starts.
I’m sure I’ve heard stories, probably on the Bombcast, where things like this would happen at review events. Or at least, people tried, whether they were successful or not. My instinct would be that this is less likely today, but groupthink is a powerful thing.
Why would you not take his critique seriously? The entire point of this article is that there might be totally valid critiques that he didn’t notice, like the race politics in Bioshock Infinite. That doesn’t invalidate his critique and the things he liked in the game and the things that he disliked. When Austin mentioned on the podcast that the pacing was glacial in the second half and Patrick agreed, that wasn’t him giving up on his opinion, that was him realizing he hadn’t even thought about the pacing and acknowledging a blind spot. That’s all this article is about.
When thinking about reviews and opinion, I find myself returning to the words of Tom Chick of Quarter to Three, “[reviews] are snapshots in time of my experience with something. There is a date and a byline at the top of every review for a reason”
Yes, having that initial snapshot of an experience is worth something, but experience with a game can go from playing it, to talking about it with friends, to seeing other critisism of it to hearing folks talk about it on a podcast six months later. It does not invalidate that initial snapshot, but taking in much more voices and having time away from it actively changes my reflection on that experience. Thoughts on a game months after playing it are just as valid as the ones had during the closing credits.
As this article, and the podcast two weeks ago, Patrick is just being honest about where he’s feeling right now and I always appreciate that.
I’ve definitely felt that way in Waypoint’s circle of the Internet sometimes (I haven’t finished God of War yet so I have no specific thoughts about this game other than things I’ve read relating to how far I am both positive and negative seem accurate so far.)
As far as this stuff goes I feel like I’m in a similar boat to Patrick so I see his reactions less as deferential to other’s opinions over his own, but just acknowledgement that for most of his life he hasn’t really needed to care about these kinds of minority opinions, and is trying to acknowledge it now and going forward.
Yeah I think as a rule “reviews” do well to be focused pieces from the author’s (mostly) sole perspective, but just that a review shouldn’t be the end for an author’s critical thoughts on a game.
Because that’s exactly what the piece is asking me to do. Why would I read someones critiques seriously if they follow it up with, “who knows this could all be wrong tho.” Of course someone can always go back, thats a given.
And for the record I don’t think Patrick agreed about the pacing, at least not to the same degree that Austin felt. It wasn’t agreement so much as deferment, which is exactly how this article strikes me.
To me, someone admitting they might be wrong makes me take their words much more seriously that someone who pretends they couldn’t be. I think a lot of what Patrick talks about here are things I already assume when I read reviews (certainly reviews that tend towards criticism and away from the product review side of things). And this article is identifying particular aspects of the game that he may wish to revisit or further consider, it’s not like he’s throwing up his hands and saying “who am I to know my own opinions.”
And while you may take it as a given that people can revise and reconsider their opinions in a review, that is not the dominant mode of thinking in the games review space where the attitude “this game is a 9/10 and will be forever and I will fight you if you say it isn’t! YOLO!” is far more typical.
You’re fundamentally misinterpreting this article. Patrick isn’t invalidating his own article, he’s broadening the lens he’s criticizing it with through with other people’s perspectives. Patrick hasn’t worked through the critical lens examining toxic masculinity the same way he hadn’t examined race politics before Bioshock Infinite. It’s a perspective he fundamentally does not have and wants to amplify voices that do have that perspective to encourage broader conversations around games criticism. It’s about adding categories, not invalidating the contents of the old ones.
Game journalists and reviewers aren’t end all, be all experts, the vast majority are massively underpaid, overworked, and are expected to keep up to date with every major release out there, which all take about a hundred bloody hours to fully experience now, because of trying to stay current for the sake of views.
My work alone at HG101, which is a retro site keep in mind, is enough to inform me that I couldn’t stand writing about current games because my opinions, as with most people, shift fairly regularly and it would be expected to perfectly judge a game while I’m sill barely into its meat.
I say this article was great because it’s a rare moment where one of the more significant voices in the sphere admits to something a vast, VAST number of people do not get: judging and being critical of a work take a ton of time, so a good take probably isn’t going to happen when people are rushing to get something out right when an embargo drops.
I had to do that for Shardlight by rushing through it in a week. It was about seven or eight hours and trying to get through and write about it with confidence was one of the most draining experiences I had writing about games because I kept sacrificing my time I needed to spend on other things.
I hate how this medium doesn’t respect anyone’s time, honestly. There’s just not enough time to replay these games for a better view of the work, which is basically necessary now because of choice systems in so many of them, because they can all take up an entire work week with overtime for just a single playthrough.
I am not misinterpreting anything and I would say you are ignoring the context in which this piece was written. The Bioshock Infinite example is actually a good illustration of exactly what I’m saying. It was reasonable for him to change his opinion based on new information, feelings etc.
That has not happened here. Should that ever happen for any reason he should write about it. But until then, he is merely preemptively undermining his own criticisms. I really don’t see how this could be described as anything but a hedge.
I think there’s a fundamental divergence in the reading of this piece. You seem to read it as a pre-emptive “don’t criticize me” piece by Patrick. I read it (and I suspect many others) as an article where Patrick lifts up the curtain and gives us a glimpse of his process as a game reviewer. Perhaps we can leave it at that?
I literally cannot understand how an admission of fallibility is a bad thing. I would much rather have a critic acknowledge their own flaws and blindspots than pretend that they don’t have them. Pauline Kael was very upfront about how a film’s approach to violence could put her off a film, and encouraged readers to look at other critics. That strikes me as infinitely better than, say, Rex Reed, who has fallen asleep during screenings and then just invented things from whole cloth when writing the review.
edit: IMO, being able to hear and appreciate other perspectives an opinions and to onboard those in such a way where it can affect your opinion is a pretty basic sign of maturity and sincerity. No-one knows everything, and no-one can capture every perspective on something, especially on the first look. I’ve gotten a HELL of a lot more out of movies on repeat viewings than I have on first ones.
That is absolutely how I read it, especially in light of the tone of the podcasts and waypoint’s twitter circle’s reaction to the game and his initial review. Its fine if anyone reads it differently but i’ll say again “this shouldn’t be a community where someone can only like a big popular thing if they immediately jump in a foxhole.”
I agree with almost all what you said but disagree that it corresponds to this piece. I think he did a good job of acknowledging his blind spots and flaws in the initial review.
I think Patrick’s admission in this article is really important and necessary for the folks who haven’t yet understood that it’s important for all of us to continue to evolve as people and be willing to expand our perspectives on a given piece of media. If you’re reading this article as someone who is already open-minded and progressive and fully aware that you’ve got blind spots that you need to work to accommodate for, great. Maybe this is all a given to you. But it’s definitely not for everyone. I feel like this article is important for the fact that it admits to the possibility of fallibility in way that will (hopefully) affect some people who feel like they have to die defending an opinion because they once expressed it; I have a hard time believing any of us don’t know some folks like that.
It’s the same reason why I think Waypoint needed to talk about why they weren’t talking about Kingdom Come: Deliverance. We’re in a moment of significant cultural shift here and to bring some people on board we’re going to have to build them a staircase. If you’re already up here, that’s fine, but please don’t be mad at the people who need help joining you. Maybe you were always progressive-minded, but not everyone is–I certainly wasn’t always in every way, as a cis guy–and a lot of people can change if we give them the opportunity and the tools.
I think you’re actually underselling your own point here. Patrick isn’t just undermining and hedging his own criticism, he is - deliberately, I assume - undermining and hedging everyone’s criticism.
And I really can see why someone would think that’s a problem. It’s a big, busy, overloaded world out there. Nobody can be an expert on everything (even if way too many people think they are). It is essential that people can rely on the knowledge and opinion of trusted experts. Short of taking off to the woods and becoming a self-sufficient mountain man, it’s the only way to survive. “Trust, but verify” is a nice saying that makes a lot of sense, but ignores the fact that if we all had the time and means to verify, we wouldn’t need to trust in the first place. It is very easy to read this article as trying to keep one foot in both camps, which makes me wonder if this was the best time/place for it.
Still, I think his point is important, that even people with real expertise, not just the millions of self-proclaimed experts on Twitter, are not as infallible as they or anyone else thinks they are. And I don’t think it’s bad for both consumers and the experts themselves to reminded of that once in a while. I don’t think “of course people are allowed to change their minds” is as self-evidently obvious as you or I wish it was.
