I’ve noticed a tendency among some people to give criticism about a movie, book, game or group that is the epitome of bad reviewing. As a paid reviewer of computer games, I thought I’d offer a few suggestions on how to post critiques.
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[li]Criticize the product not the creator - If you watched the movie Minority Report and felt it was full of plot holes and discrepancies, don’t say, “Spielberg couldn’t direct his way out of a paper bag.” It’s rude and very unproductive. That doesn’t tell me why I should not see the movie. It tells me that you have a personal grudge against him, and I don’t take you seriously.[/li][li]Never, ever attack the intended audience - “Anyone who likes Dean Koontz’s novels is an illiterate idiot.” Not only is this going to piss off anyone who actually likes his work, it’s going to alienate anyone who would otherwise have heeded your opinion. I’ll disregard anything you have to say after that, because you’re prone to insulting anyone who has a differing opinion than you.[/li][li]Explain why you like/dislike the work - I’ve read some excellent reader reviews on sites like Amazon.com that fully explain why they liked or didn’t like the product in question. It helps me make the decision on whether to buy it or not. I’ve read far more reviews that said, “This thing SUX.” OK, you didn’t like it. Why? I need more than that. Was it the graphics? Sound? Plot? Voice acting? See, if you told me the game blew chunks because the voice acting was so bad you couldn’t finish the game, I might decide to give the game a chance after all. [/li][li]Everyone who disagrees with you is not an idiot - If someone says they disagree with your opinions, so what. It doesn’t matter. If you said you felt that Linkin Park has a discordant sound and feels too much like a bublegum band, and I disagree, guess what? Neither one of us are wrong.[/li][/ul]
The very first review I did was for Daily Radar for the game, realMYST. The game blew big monkey chunks, and I was paid to express my opinion on the subject. The fans of the game hated me for it, and let me know. The polite ones (including the head of the company) received a response from me thanking them for reading the review and emailing me. The rude ones were deleted unread. One guy wrote an incoherent email that was actually longer than my 1,000-word review. I did actually respond to him with, “I don’t know what you just said, but it was actually longer than the review you’re complaining about.” :wally
Oh, I hate that one. Especially the two-line review: “This game is terrible. That is all.” No, that’s not all. Grrr.
While I’m no professional myself, I’d like to add a couple of review pet peeves.
Don’t review anything you haven’t actually experienced. Occasionally I’ll go to amazon to find a game’s release date and find people already reviewing it. If you’ve got an advanced copy, fine. But if you tell me the game sucks or will be great because previous games by this company suck or all PS2 games “kik ass”, then I have no respect for you. Screen shots and demos are also no help. You don’t have to play the whole game, but at least wait until you’ve played the final release.
Nitpicking is not the same as reviewing. If you start to notice little details in a movie that bug you, this is probably a sign that the movie has failed to capture your attention with fine acting, an interesting plot or vibrant characters. The glass that goes from nearly empty to full to empty again is an interesting note, but is probably not relevant to a normal person’s enjoyment of a movie. Yes, you’re very observant. Now move on.
I run a website devoted to covering video games and reviewing them and conciquently read a lot of user reviews for games. Granted, some are better than the reviews on my site (I never was able to convince one of the co-owners that english should be at least a 2nd language for reviewers) but most stick to one point and look beyond everything else.
Let us use Neverwinter Nights as an example.
Now, NWN has pretty good graphics, good sound. Those can be agreed on with some regularity. However, it has got two very separate parts which appeal to different players.
One is the single player game. It’s long, yet I found it boring, badly written and just plain bad.
The other is the game creation. This allows you to make your own adventures and play through them yourself or with friends, or even be the dungeon master in your world.
Each of these needs covered in a review. Some people only want the single player part of the game and don’t care about making their own adventures. Some people don’t have net access and cannot get these new adventures that other people make.
So, with all that, saying “It doesn’t matter if the single player quest is good, just make your own” doesn’t really help in a review. As a matter of fact, I have yet to read a review which talks about the difficulty in making a good adventure, let alone dealing with the inherent buggyness (is that a word? it is now…) of the creation program.
Mainly, it’s the idea that “It doesn’t matter how bad it seems now, just wait until it’s improved by other people” or “It doesn’t matter if you don’t like the main quest, you can make one yourself”. This maybe a good attitude to have if you’re trying to sell the game, but as a reviewer, it’s completely non-productive and leaves people looking for another review.
You should have mentioned that there is a difference between a review, a critique, and a criticism.
Areview is a consumer rating. You’re talking to people who haven’t seen the movie/book/game and telling them whether you think they should see/read/play it. You can outline the situation and some of the early plot points, but never give anything away that might be a spoiler.
A** criticism** is a discussion meant for people who have seen the movie/book/game. It talks about the points of the film – including spoilers – and looks for both wider meaning and details that others may have missed.
A critique is meant as feedback to the author of the work. It’s best used to describe something like the workshopping of an unfinished work.
The single biggest mistake most reviewers make is to not accept the work on its own terms, but rather to imagine what you’d like it to be.
Yeah, the one and only question I keep in mind is, “Should you buy this game?”
If I’m previewing a game everything I say is positive. It’s unfair to say negative things about an unfinished product, so we come off sounding like a PR person for the publisher.
To hijack my own thread: I got an acceptance from Dragon magazine for an article I wrote and revised at their request! First thing I’ve ever sold that wasn’t a review/preview of a game. And then a few days later, just to keep my humility levels high, I got a rejection from Dragon for a fiction piece I submitted. They said that they are only going to publish previously published fiction writers from now on.
Here’s my pet peeve from Amazon: the only people who bother to review 90% of the music on the site are fans of the band already. Which is good if you’re also a fan, I suppose. But if you’re trying to see if a CD is any good, and it’s not “popular”, it will invariably have a 4 to 5 start review. It’s just useless.
[Cue dramatic music]