Barnestorming #879- The Day Board Games Criticism Died, Valkyria Chronicles, Don't Look Now Hot

Good article but you missed the point on one item. Not reviewing a game until you've played 20,50,100 times is nothing whatsoever to do with waiting to see if the game s good. Far from it, it's a game showing that it's got enough to keep you interested for those plays and not just those first 5 plays when you're fascinated by the newness of the theme or mechanic or story. It's also about the reviewer understanding the nuances of the game, uncovering hidden depths and strategies and having a full grasp of how the game works on a fundamental level without having to think about it because they understand how the game works deeply. I'd say a game that you didn't want to play many times isn't worth playing, that didn't keep asking questions or surprising and to be honest I think that takes SOME amount of table time, whether it be 10,20 or100 plays. Of course there must be a difference between games you are trying to master, typically euros and abstracts rather than thematic games where perhaps the experiential and storytelling aspect is more to the foreground. Maybe there it's more relevant how much the game grabs you, but at least as far as I can see it, the allure of games like, say brass, is that you need to play it a lot to really say that you get it. And it you don't get it, you've no fucking business writing a critical analysis about it. Sort of why I get annoyed at some of the stuff now, it's still based on a half dozen plays and some fancy words. Bollocks, come back when you've played enough to call yourself a master of the game, I wouldn't want to read a chess book by some clown who kayed 10 times and has a notepad just of game theory terms to literally masturbate with. I'd sit up and read something by Kasparov. On a lesser scale' I don't care is smart you think you are, or what can y words you use, or what long and storied history you have, your half dozen plays of a preview copy, or new game puts you in the same group as the chess nerd who doesnt have a clue really.

Ps and screw you mr iPad auto correct, make me sound even more of a retard than I already am. And NO I don't want your American English dictionary either. Dickwad

After skimming the article a thought crossed my mind. I wonder if there is a kind of analogy (which are problematic in their own ways) between a piece of music and its performance (e.g., Beethoven's 5th symphony as performed by Chicago Symphony Orchesatra or your local high school orcehstra) and a game and its being played.

You mention about how a group who plays the game is important and how that affects the game. I know there are times when I play a game and I'm in a hot zone. Other times for whatever reason I can't seem to get strategy or interaction or whatever to click. My bad play obviously affects my perception of a specific game "performance" but does it not also affect the other players? Well, maybe in some low interaction games, no, but you get the point.

Likewise I've experienced some embarrasing performances of some good songs. The song is not in question, the performance however is.

In a similar vein people critique certain pieces of music very differently. Some people really enjoy classical music, others don't, some like certain specific pieces. I can't stand Bolero but other people really enjoy it. What it means is I will avoid performances of Bolero like the plague whereas others might seek them out. Whether or not it is a good peformance is a whole different question.

I like Twilight Imperium, others hate it and avoid playing it. I hate Caylus and do what I can to avoid playing it, but other people seem to think its the cat's meow. That in itself leaves me boggled but hey, if they want to waste a couple of hours with a game that I won't play, that's their decision.

This is getting long for some random thoughts so I'm gonna quit for now. I don't know if this even helps or not.

T

The article is the KO punch in the whole meta-criticism discussion, I'm still not sure what to say. The analogy to musical performances above is a good one to think about, though; Beethoven never made a recording so that he could tightly control what it was you heard, and there are DRASTICALLY different interpretations of some Beethoven symphonies (compare Klemperer's Heroica vs. a performance supposedly using Beethoven's metronome markings).

Also, the criticism of Race for the Galaxy that I nearly always bring up is that the game actively discourages trash-talk and verbal interaction through its very rules and mechanics; while of course it's POSSIBLE to play it with lots of trash talk and jokes, the fact that everyone is playing simultaneously with no downtime, and is encouraged to move quickly or run the risk of stalling what should be a short card game, makes it actively difficult to talk to each other in the game. The focus on a constantly-changing hand of cards also encourages you to bury yourself in your hand rather than your opponents' faces.

You also talk about your Descent game and your Arkham game: it was clear to you in both of those cases that you were playing contrary to the intent of the designer, so when you can easily see the intent like that, then no, it doesn't seem fair to critique a game based on a play like that, any more than you'll critique a Beethoven Violin Concerto based on hearing it played with an electric guitar instead of a violin. So I don't think sessions like those should cause a problem for the reviewer.

Unrelated to games: this is the first I heard about Winter Soldier! It was extremely noticeable, however, in the first Cap, that we were not shown Bucky's body; I thought it was actually so conspicuous, particularly considering how often in any kind of action movie someone seems to be dead but then turns out not to be, that it completely ruined the emotional punch of his death.

I found those first few Mark Waid Daredevil issues in our recent move, gotta read that. I take it your Sandman comments mean you bought someone else's? :-[

DON'T LOOK NOW, one of my top five horror movies for sure! And I haven't even watched it since having a kid (though when we were considering moving somewhere with water nearby, flashbacks to the opening of this movie might have been part of what convinced me not to...)! I'll always remember the screams of my friendat the

Fucking pain-porn bullshit Antichrist doesn't deserve to be mentioned in the same paragraph. I have almost zero faith in Lars von Trier's ability to say anything interesting. I think he's got great technical chops, though.

interestingly with the music analogy no one can be quite sure (especially with classical and older music) quite how it was meant to be played. Does the Bach we here sound like what Bach thought it was supposed to sound like. Music script has to be interpreted.

good article. I love playing Tsuro with my game group, but i don't think its a great game and can see how it would totally suck with other groups. in my group we all charge straight for the centre and try to take each other out. I don't know whether this is how the designer thought it would be played. Equally, it seems unlikely, based on his comments in the rule book, that Martin Wallace ever expected anyone to strip their deck down a handful of cards when playing AFAOS. I wonder what designers actually think of the games they create, and how, or in what spirit, they expect their games to be played. Most of the stuff we read from them is promo material.

On: The Day Board Games Criticism Died

I am speechless. This is more or less in line with my thinking as well plus this week I'm trying to get off my lazy ass to write an article on exactly this to basically set up a theoretical references which enable us to go into exploring playing experience and interaction. This exists - art theory, theory of reading and so on.

I got mobbed at TOS for starting some tangential discussion on this topic (okay I provoked a bit) and one if the impressions I got is that most people consider gaming experience as something subjective, something that can't be analysed or talked about. It can - it's a dialogue between the "game" and the gamers, where game can try to get what it wants and gamers try to invest in it (btw: what game wants, might not be the same as what the designer wants, hence: houserules)

yes. What people consider a game (rules, pieces, protocols) is for me only potential for a game. What people call "gaming experience", I call a game. I love this quote.

The article about board game criticism.... That was the fucking shit.

Board game reviews as performance art? See... Shut Up and Sit Down... Pretty close.

Ooh, you're getting into some interesting stuff about the dialogue between game and player, what the game "wants" and so forth. There's definitely fertile ground there for some interesting discussion. House rules are very interesting issue in all of this...I've never cared for them unless it's just something minor because I do believe in the authorship of games...but if you have more fun doing it another way, why not?

It's also interesting that you're going as far as to describing the game materials as "potential" and the experience itself the "game". I think there's something there. But then again, the product is a game, the collection of object is a game...definitely a semantic kind of thing there, but what you're getting at is significant.

The music comments are good, I remember reading similar ones a few years ago and I think there's something to be said for the concept of game playing as an interperative action. No doubt, the number of variables introduced in the performance of a piece of music are exponentially greater than in a game. I think you could also follow that same line of reasoning and look at games as theater pieces as well, and how different direction, set design, costume, lighting, and so forth can generate different interpretations that may not necessary hew to the writer's intent.

Stout, I think you're going to really like those Daredevil books...there's a real sense of joy in them that I'm not really seeing in any other current superhero books. It does reflect Murdock's new lease on life, so to speak...but it also really reminds me of that kind of cheerful enthusiam you see in a lot of Silver Age Marvel books...all the New York stuff drives it home too. I absolute LOVE the first issue, it's one of the best single books I've read since my comics renaissance started. I smiled through the whole thing...and it's a Daredevil book!

Shifting gears completely...I actually liked Anti-Christ, I totally got what he was doing with it and yes, it's definitely pain-porn but I think that's exactly what he wanted to do- to make an arthouse pain-porn movie, and to also use the language of that subgenre to tell a deeper, transgressive story. I think it does compare to Don't Look Now (which is the superior film, no doubt) in many of its themes. But like I said, the resolution of grief is very, very different.

Oh, the Sandman books. Get this. I stop into the used book store around my house saturday afternoon with my kids to see about getting them a new movie (Black Cauldron, yay) and BOOM, there on the graphic novel shelf is ALL of the Sandman TPBs, three of them hardcover and all are the newer reprints. And it just so happened that I had $120 worth of credit from a couple of trade-in piles I've been hauling up there. So I just bought the whole damn lot, even the first one to replace my old smelly one.

Oh, newsflash. There is a SHITLOAD of Batman on sale at Comixology. All of that Snyder Detective Comics run, which is highly recommended...but also the full runs of Long Halloween, Dark Victory, Death in the Family,No Man's Land, Grant Morrison's Gothic and Batman & Robin...You can get all of Year One for four bucks, Dark Knight Returns for four bucks. Great sale, probably the best I've seen. I haven't read Dark Victory so I grabbed all of 'em. The sad thing is I saw the sale AFTER spending a bunch of money on other stuff, so I blew my funbucks budget for the next two weeks entirely.

hey, dont have a go at Von Trier. While Antichrist was a bit of a mess, Melancholia is wonderful, especially if you've ever encounter serious depression in one form or another, very resonant movie experience

Apocalypse now used to by my all-time favourite film until I saw the "director's cut". I have no idea how much Coppola really had to do with it, but it completely ruined the film adding in two long badly-paced sequences that spoiled the careful narrative arc of the original cut, as well as apparently adding in some tits for the sake of it.

One day I'll watch the original again and fall back in love with it. But not for a while.

Ah, but the BGG crowd are primarily thinking of Eurogames. And one of the side effects of the hyper-analytical, balanced design approach that characterises Euros is that it squashes much subjectivity out of the game. For many heavy Euros there is a "right" way of playing and failing to meet that standard will earn you the scorn of "serious" players. That doesn't leave you much scope to do anything subjective with the game other than play it in a cod-Yorkshire accent.

In fact now that I think about it, this probably isn't a side-effect but a design goal of this particular school of thought. Making me wonder currently whether or not this element of subjectivity is a key part of Euros (and games generally) that I actually like. Many of the things I seek for in games: variety, player interaction, theme, could be taken as contributors to allowing subjective enjoyment.

You're just now realizing that VC is good?

That's so 2008.

But yes. It's "Hey remember the first time you played Shining Force?" good.

Definitely players make or break a game, and they are a variable for each and every game session whether it be for review, tournament, friends or family. My friends will play a game differently to yours.
Also there has been times when I have thought that we are not playing the game as it was intended. I could see what the designer wanted us to do, but our group wanted to do something else. Some times that works, other times it doesn't.

Sam

Seriously, what's with all these recent articles about "is game criticism even possible" and "are we important at all"? Is there some epidemic of existential crisis going on among F:ATties?

Literally everything y'all said about tabletop game criticism could be said (with very little modification) about any other kind of criticism: music, film, painting, literature, what have you. You can easily enjoy a very shitty movie if you are watching it with close friends and had a couple of beers, and even the world's most important and deepest movie can be a shitty experience if watched with a bunch of jerks who don't get it. A fantastic piece of music, that revolutionizes what you thought about music before can easily flop, when you play it in the disco. And I could go on. There is a subjective element in almost everything, but that doesn't mean that there is nothing to talk about objectively, and nothing to analyze.

There was also a lot of talk about whether there is a demand for serious, analytical game criticism. Well, I say, who cares? There is no big money even in game reviews (as far as I know, Barnes is the only one who ever got paid for it), so everyone is doing it simply because they enjoy it. If you feel the need to write serious, analytical critical articles about games, then fucking do it, and don't give a shit about how many readers you have. Don't do it for them, do it for yourself.

Not to mention Dogville, which is easily one of the best films ever. I can't think of any other film that made me so emotionally involved, despite its completely abstract visuals.

Interesting read!

However I'm not sure what you are defining as 'criticism'. Do you want to be able to determine for Game A whether group of players B will enjoy it? I think that's doomed to failure from the start. Do you want to analyze what makes a game tick and how it fits into the broader context of history and design? I think that's achievable.

Game Design (and hence criticism) is like any other creative process in that it relies heavily on what the consumer brings to the table. In the world of film, I think "Scott Pilgrim vs The World" was brilliant. I'm sure my mother would disagree. Miyazaki's "Spirited Away" left me a bit cold because I do not have the cultural background to understand much of the symbology. Comedies can be really dependent on your mood and the mood of the audience. Watching a comedy in a crowd that is laughing hysterically will bring you along for the ride. It's much harder to get into that mood sitting at home watching it by yourself. I had that experience with "The Gods Must Be Crazy". My friends saw it and loved it and everyone was laughing hysterically. When I saw it the theater was dead for some reason, and the experience was 'meh'.

So I think the difference with games is at most one of degree, not one of kind.

Geoff

Jesus Murphy.

There's two types of criticism:
1. Criticising, as in negatively talking about something
2. Critical Analysis, as in looking to the nuts and bolts

He's not talking about writing negative articles or going deep into a game he's played a couple of times. He's talking about writing deeper pieces looking at the underlying mechanics or looking at differences between two types of game. He's certainly not talking about doing "product reviews".

Shellie was right...people are using the term "criticism" to mean two different things.

I guess this makes sense as to explain why somebody would think that "subjectivity has no place in gaming", but then again I never said game experience is something subjective (more like dialectic - part game, part group playing it). For me it's more a question of closed and open designs. Open designs give more freedom to the players, but are more fragile as a result as they often need the right kind of players with the proper attitude and willing to put in the game the investment it needs in order to work. They offer much bigger reward for those interested in investing in it at the price of limited audience. For me closed designs have something more to do with family euros than heavier (probably the influence spread from former to latter (I don't play the heavy euros)) - it's a question of foolproof design that would offer the same kind of experience with whatever group at the price of experience being well a bit average, but it makes sense in the market german publishers are addressing. And yet again - old school euros for me are quite open and prone to "subjective" element - games like Genoa, Catan, even Modern Art (gasp) or Bohnanza. The trick with open design is that it's not a problem if the games are open in the same way so that the audience knows how to invest - so the trading genre of german games (mostly being 12 years old) was natural fit to Settler of catan influenced audience, however the same games have problems in today's low interaction euro culture (Genoa flopped so hard in my eurogame club, trading doesn't work if people don't want to talk much and be inventive in their trades.).

Question is which school?

My take is that it's a part of designer's attempt to control the playing experience and make it uniform. There are some interesting comments by Mac Gerdts on Imperial - the game that was nearly 20 years in development. When they started playtesting they found out that other groups were confused by negotiating part of the game that the core group loved and it was thrown out of the game (but Gerdts did offer it as official optional variant later, which is in general the best way to adapt a game to a gaming group). When we ask ourselves how the designs in euros changed from talkative late 1990s to silent worker placements of today (from open to closed interaction) it's part the path that designers were pushing and part the audience's demand. Why today's gamers (or nongamers) are more shy of conflict than years ago is maybe a sociological question, but it probably shows in gaming. Another thing are gaming patterns - gaming clubs have grown and are big enough to be a target audience in their own right. And as gaming clubs are a space with high fluctuation and low social integration of people who meet there, hence: no interest in interaction (as people don't know each other), constant flow of new games - cult of the new (so that newcomers wouldn't be in "disadvantage" towards experienced players). And then again - games made in this mold will draw in people who are comfortable in this mold and wouldn't actually enjoy more open, interactive or competitive designs. (These I've found I rather enjoy in a friendly company).

My conclusion is - there's not one boardgaming hobby, but several of them.

Agree, but I'd take subjective out of this, not the best term. I'd say: an open design that allows the group to invest themselves (individually and as a group) in the game. Though thematic investment is a bit solitary on,. I'm against "subjective", because it seems like it's arbitrary and partial to "the game", while it's a particular kind of design that allows and wants this or that kind of investment. So even if each person invests in a thematic game in the solitude of their own mind, it's not subjective, because everybody playing the game is doing it (it's as subjective as reading - each reader will paint the picture of what's going on in their own way, but they'll be reading the same book, and the book will want them to picture what's going on in their own way).

Nice article Barnes. It raises some really interesting points...especially about the particular group you are playing with. There is a lot to think about and your conclusion seems fairly plausible. Boardgames simply aren't like other forms of entertainment.

Perhaps criticism isn't possible, but here are a few things that should be in any review worth it's salt.

- No simple regurgitation of the rules (this should be obvious by now)

- Enough knowledge of the hobby to be able to draw comparisons to previous games, and or mechanics. Just knowing a bit about boardgames (all types not just Euros or Ameritrash) should be a prerequisite. For example, if you're reviewing Lost Temple and you've never played or heard of Faidutti's Citadels then you probably aren't the best person to be criticizing it

- No "first impressions". If someone has played a game ONE time and gone off to do a review...it simply isn't worth anything. A game needs to be experienced multiple times before any sort of critical analysis should begin (at least in my opinion)

- If possible, the game should be played with different people a few times. This one is likely never to happen due to the amount of time it would take up. Say you had three different groups and each was required to play the game 3-4 times...that would be ideal, but honestly its not gonna happen

- This is probably subjective, but the review/critism should not be a consumer report. Rather, it should be something that explains the game in a slightly deeper way. Though as you might have concluded...this might not actually be possible

It's sure is an interesting topic to think about and discuss. You mention how everyone experiences movies the same way and that is technically true. However, go watch a comedy by yourself. Then watch the same movie a year later with a bunch of friends. The experience is certainly going to be different (probably filled with a few more laughs). Same thing could be said about a horror movie. Watch it alone in the dark with the lights off. It might scare the piss out of you. Watch it again with a group of friends in a more casual atmosphere and they might laugh at you for even considering it scary. I generally agree with you that movies are experienced the same in that they don't change with each viewing. However, one can alter the setting in which you experience the movie.

I dunno. I'm rambling on at this point. Just wanted to say nice work on the article and thanks for raising the level of discussion. Well done.

Yes, quite. I've used the terms "open" and "closed" games myself in the past and you're correct. They are more relevant to this debate:

http://fortressat.com/analysis-toc/1064-an-open-and-closed-case

http://superflycircus.blogspot.com/2011/12/this-is-how-we-dooooo-it.html

It's not that hard, and it's not that time consuming, at least in my opinion.

I have no problem with "first impression" stuff, but I only ever find it useful when there's some kind of follow-up. I've had lots of games where the initial impression wasn't one that held up, and it's cool to see how those shift. Of course, that doesn't usually happen.

I've always known that.

Perhaps not...but you (and a few others) seem to be the exception though.

Some great thoughts there, but there are a couple of points that I think are off-the-mark.

The physical media that delivers the content exists when we don't observe it, but I would argue that none of those things are truly "dictated" experiences. They may have a narrative structure that games generally don't, but they absolutely provoke engagement on a creative level. They probably do so much more often than board games do in that they are constant and widespread sources of inspiration. Even art that is as permanent and unchanging as sculpture does this. And our experience of them is also just as susceptible to set and setting as with board games - that experience can change drastically depending on circumstance and prior experience.

I think that executive spectatorship is not so great a distinction. Execution can even sometimes require much less engagement from the participant than observation or internalization. Just because you are pushing pieces around doesn't mean you are more engaged than if you are deeply reflecting on the authorial intent or the meaning of some piece of art.

You could claim that Beethoven's 9th wasn't a masterpiece, but no one would take you seriously. And rightly so, because in that case your subjective experience of it is pretty much, more or less wrong. Everyone has their own tastes, but there is a level of objectivity necessary for any form of criticism to be anything more than a bunch of opinionated blog posts. This is largely lacking from game reviews (IMO mostly because gamers on the whole don't even want to agree on some common ground).

I'd argue it's because there's no consensus on what constitutes a great game. Any game review worth a damn (one that isn't just a session report or component breakdown) will judge a game by some set of standards. The problem is that those standards are often not shared by game reviewers, when they are by other scholarly critics, by and large.

I think, again, that is putting far too much emphasis on the "instance" of playing a game over that of watching a film or reading a book - those too can lead to radically different experiences from the same source material.

When I started reading Barnes' article, my gut reaction was super-defensive, ready to defend that the same subjective/objective issue applies to movies and every artform. But that fell apart, because it just *doesn't*. The amount to which I contribute to a film or a book or a comic is completely incomparably to the amount to which I contribute to a game. Musical and theatrical performances are somewhere in between, and perhaps point to where game criticism can go.

That said, just as each play of a game is a specific *instance* of that game which could be bad or good, and the same goes for performances of music or plays: while we have less control over it, movies are *definitely* the same way. A showing of The Dark Knight Rises on a real IMAX screen is going to be a completely different instance of that movie than a viewing on your iPad, and I think it's just as unfair to judge the movie based on an iPad screening as it is to judge a game based on a session played in an unintended way. You might have a hell of a lot of FUN playing a game in an unintended way, just like you might have a helluvalot of fun cracking jokes after every line of a movie, but you wouldn't critique a movie based on those cracks just like you wouldn't critique a game based on that play.

Nothing to gasp about there! Modern Art is a spectacularly interactive game that's all about psychology and understanding people, and very directly so, not buried under extraneous crap like Race for the Galaxy is (which is also theoretically about reading people).

PS: Barnes, you mention in the article that you've wondered what you were thinking about some Game of the Year choices, which surprised me as I believe you've stood by each of those specifically, outside of a very slight backing-off for Labyrinth; which do you mean? Jesse Dean posted a revision of his top 10 for 2011 list along with comments, which I thought was interesting. I also thought it was interesting that in his revised top 6, four of his top 6 match four of Barnes' top 6!

/Lars von Trier derail

Man, I would love to get into a Lars von Trier fight, but not in this thread. My use of "porn" was terrible wording; I didn't mean to imply the typical "torture porn" connotations, that the audience gets off on watching horrific violence or pain: with von Trier, I feel he is sadistic to his actors and audiences out of pure sadism's sake, that HE's the one who gets a kick out of being cruel. And since cruelty and depression is "serious", and since he really is a brilliant visual stylist, and gets great performances out of his actresses, he's beloved by arthouse audiences. When really, he's just the evil Spielberg: nothing to say, but great at manipulating you into feeling things. But Spielberg's movies are fun; von Trier is just manipulating you into feeling shitty for no good reason, and THINKS he's saying new things about e.g. the death penalty.

More power to ya if you actually get something out of it, though. As with several artists, if you want to maintain respect for him I recommend avoiding reading or watching anything that he says outside of his movies.

/end Lars von Trier derail

Heh...yeah, Von Trier says the darnedest things, doesn't he?

Barnes, you mention in the article that you've wondered what you were thinking about some Game of the Year choices, which surprised me as I believe you've stood by each of those specifically, outside of a very slight backing-off for Labyrinth; which do you mean?

Oh no, I do stand by choices- my point is that in particular instances of play, I've sometimes wondered if I made the right choice in retrospect. But there again, that has to do with the critical review part of it being my approximation of the kind of experience that a game offers based on the materials it provides us.

But case in point is Yomi, a game I liked enough to put in my year's best list and that I reviewed extremely favorably. I played it a lot, but I had more than a few games where either the other player didn't get it, didn't like it, or it just wasn't clicking. That made me wonder if the experiential part of it was consistent enough or too dependent on other things to warrant the review and shortlist appearance. In the end, I think it holds up overall and I can see that the bad instances were, at least for my part, anomalous.

The problem with Labyrinth is that it's just not a very played game...I never hear anyone talking about it, I never hear about anyone playing it. I thought it was brilliant, and the subject matter as well as the designer's interpretative approach was very progressive. But should have been GotY? I don't know, because instances of play are so few. I haven't played it since I reviewed it myself.

I think that was your best article ever, bar-none. Well done, sir!

[Haven't commented here in many moons, but I love the article, Barnes, especially the metaphor of alchemy]
For all the help critical thinking about games will have to get from other genres of leisure (like music, movies, literature) I've always thought some of the impasses we get into are created by trying to force categories from music criticism et al into boardgame criticism. So I like how this article is trying to move away from the subjective/objective debate. In terms of the author's control over the experience, games are clearly more in the subjective hands of the players=readers. but there are other ways that games can be evaluated far more objectively than literature or music. For example, the idea of a 'broken game,' which, although it can be taken to absurd and self-defeating extremes, should be an important principle of game criticism because it is native to the medium of a game. If a player just needs to do x and will always win, that is a flaw in the game. Now this principle needs to be nuanced as we get to more complex games (e.g. the examples of Arkham Horror and Descent in the article have little to do with brokenness and winning), but I think it is very valuable to think about principles like that which are native to the medium. There is no way to win Beethoven's 9th, but desiring to win and going about trying to win are very important to the pleasure of a game (this is not the same as being pathologically competitive, it is just the way most all games are designed, to some degree or another, to work). Narrative, room for creativity and negotiation, and even the managing of honed efficiency engines work in boardgames generally (something like Arabian Nights which leans so much toward roleplaying would be an exception) as styles of struggle, aesthetically pleasing ways of trying to win.

I'm rambling a bit at this point, but along these lines: if board game criticism needs to not be merely session report and product description, what is its relation to a strategy article? As the sheer number of games has proliferated the strategy article has been displaced for all but the most popular games, but it is a venerable genre and distinctively a game hobby genre, and one it adopted, not from criticism of music or literature, but from the long tradition of thinking about games like Chess. Surely that way of looking at a game (which is one way, if sometimes a ruthless one, of analyzing how the game works, both mechanically and in the experience of play) has something to offer the game critic?

In sum, I think focusing intently on the uniquenesses of games and gaming experiences (and not trying to use games to work through traditional art arguments like subjective/objective) has got to be the way to go.

Strategy articles are an interesting thing to bring up; I can sometimes learn more about whether I'll *enjoy* a game from its strategy articles than from its reviews, since you get a great idea as to what the important decision points are for an experienced player, as they are usually written by players who have thought more deeply about the underlying structure of the game than a reviewer. Is the strategy article going on about how you have to count cards or memorize tile distribution, as in Carcassonne? Does it spend an inordinate amount of time on how to stay behind the lead in a game that's not about bicycle racing, as in Power Grid? Is a lot of strategy focused on exploiting the edge-y parts of the game, like component limits, instead of the main structure the game is running on, like in the no-hotels strategy in Monopoly? If so for any of these, I'm probably not interested in the decisions the game has to offer in the long-term, even though the strategy-writer is typically very enthusiastic about the game.

PS: and yeah, I was tempted to call it the best Cracked LCD article ever as well.

I believe there's something fundamentally wrong about this entire discussion about writing about games we've been having here the last weeks, but unfortunately I can't quite put my finger to it. In some cases it seems like people want an academic discussion about games, but in a review medium, but at the same time reviews should just be about fun. And as an academic I can tell you that analysis is no fun at all. Exciting, thought provoking, etc., but in no way fun. So, instead of writing something really clever and ... well, interesting, I'll just go for some random comments that may refer to stuff in this thread or maybe some of the other stuff we've been discussing on the subject of reviews.

1. If you, as a reviewer, cannot even from very few or sometimes even a single play see what parts of the game that make it fun/interesting/whatever to play and what parts that don't, you should maybe consider something other than being a reviewer. I'm not saying this because I'm a good and rather arrogant reviewer (I'm not good), but because that is something you really should be able to. And as such you should also be able to see too what extent all the fun and interesting stuff (or most of it) come from the people you play with because of the game or in spite of.

2. I don't believe you have to play a game lots of times to write a good review. A good review - in my opinion - captures some of the things you felt and experienced while playing and as such the number of times you've played do not matter. Also, I've played lots of good games that kept getting better (Starcraft, I'm looking at you), but not many that got better if they weren't good to begin with. And so what if a game doesn't hold up to multiple plays? If the first few times were tons of fun, who cares? Instead of seeing games as something we should be able to play forever and ever, I firmly believe that we should see it more as we would a book or a movie.

3. When reviewing a game you often need to say something about the rules, components, and all that jazz. For instance, if you review Death Angel and don't somehow try to convey how the "board" is made, that would be like reviewing Dogville without mentioning that the entire scenery is made out of white lines. However, having a vocabulary - like Dudes on a Map which is a brillant definition - will help with this.

4. Games are different. In many ways they are like dramas(I'm a theatre major) in that they are but a basis for an experience. Like a drama needs to be performed and experienced in order to be actual theatre, so does a game need to be played. But unlike dramas, most games will be played by a different set of actors every time. So that makes games extremely vulnerable as an experience. But still, while a shitty game can give you a great experience, you'll most likely know the game had nothing to do with it. But at the same time a good reviewer needs to tell you why a certain game worked with certain people. Not like: "this game may appeal to ...", but more like when you talk about how some movies just have just the right or the completely wrong actor cast for a role.

5. We should - all of us - really talk more about games and less about talking about games.

I think that writing things in an academic manner is difficult. I think that it is especially difficult if you feel like you are the first to develop a critical language of discussing it. To be successful, you really have to have your fellow reviewers adopt the same type of language. There has to be an accepted "standard" by which games are discussed, or, at the very least, a common lexicon.

Having been a member since the blog days of F:AT (and currently a book review editor of a scientific journal), I see two things that keep this language from being adopted:

1. The first is what you article is about. There is a certain subjectivity that is present in games. Arguably, that subjectivity could be accepted and reviews could take place on the objective foundations that are established by the field. I think that this is somewhat hindered by the fact that, as you stated in your previous article, games are meant to be fun. No one wants to be seen as the guy robbing someone else of their version of fun. For the most part, the liberal arts education -- which most boardgamers have -- ingrains the "each to their own attitude" that permeates most game writing, and is especially prevalent at BGG. That doesn't mean that games can't be reviewed - a very defeatist view; it just means the hurdle is steeper.

2. The second issue is one that I think you have more control over. It will sound critical, but is meant in the purely constructive sense. I think that, over the years, you have introduced many valuable ideas into gaming (emergent theme, differences between theme and setting, authorial intent, etc.). Often, these ideas are embedded in a review - or perhaps a more academic piece. It is quite interesting because we actually see the ideas germinate, then matriculate through subsequent reviews and writing. However, to really grasp the idea, someone would have to read your entire body of work and see it from formation, through usage, and then to finalization. What would be exceedingly helpful would just be an article about, for example, emergent theme. In fact, it could be titled "Emergent Theme in Games". There you could lay out the entire conceptual framework from beginning to end, show contrasting examples, etc. It would basically require an academic paper on each of your ideas. Now, I know that is: (a) a heavy burden, (b) not terribly exciting as a writer because you have already crystallized what it means in your own mind by the time you would be ready to write it, (c) perhaps difficult to convince an editor to pay you to do, and (d) not necessarily what your readership desires.

However, I think a series of articles like this is absolutely necessary to provide a common lexicon that is easy for someone to reference. There has to be a minor degree of homogenization among reviewers for any of this to move forward. Without that, then you are likely correct in that game criticism -- at least how you envision it -- will likely not survive.

What remains to be seen is whether Mr. Barnes is ahead of the conversation or behind it, for this article is a solid rebuttal of the bandwagon everyone leapt onto one short month ago. Boardgames deserving high-brow criticism may become a moot point if the product is so unfinished that it defies all efforts.

Perhaps reviews that show the pieces, explain the rules and provide a tepid opinion are just what the doctor ordered?

I'll be pulling this article apart for awhile to learn from its prose and exposition. It's exceptionally good writing, better than that of most popular journals and (very refreshingly) far more succinct.

S.

I disagree. Humanistic approach would be a bit different. Vocabulary is not as much important (or not at all) as is methodology. Art theory has been borrowing terminology and methods from philosophy for decades. And while for instance ideas as looking at artwork as event has been highly influential (viewer looking at picture counts as event happening in view/mind of said viewer) and is usually quoted from Badiou or Delleuze, one doesn't need this references or even terminology to write about a piece from a perspective that is heavily influenced by this same ideas. In short we use philosophy (and literature and art theory) to help us think, without bothering the reader with where we picked our methods.

To just list some of these ideas used in art criticism (and should probably write about them in some future). one is looking at artwork (or Hollywood movie or whathaveyou, strip comic)as an event between the spectator and the work, each "work" is therefore a potential for several kinds of events/experiences. Each works offers its recepient entry points which help them navigate through the work and letting audience know what to invest in the work (this can be in the work, or outside - like the genre (comic book, detective novel, worker placement, dungoun crawler etc) or the place where the work is presented (gallery, street, inside the context of an eurogame or ameritrash game, etc.)).

The objective VS subjective confines are counter productive. For instance, the theatre/art reviewers don't care what a piece of art work is, we care about what it does. What the game does is the effect it has on people playing it: the way it shapes or limits interaction, the kind of input it wants from the players and the kind of investment it needs (wants players: to calculate and optimise, to invest in theme, to invent trading or negotiation deals with other players, ...) in order to deliver what the game in question is possible to deliver. You can say that each game of Intrigue will differ from a group to a group (and failed when matched with inappropriate expectations or unwillingness to invest), but there are protocols included in the game which shape interaction and will try to produce a certain kind of experience each time around - and this can be observed, researched and reviewed. This type of observation is neither objective nor subjective (it's in between) and each reviewer might have their own methodology and entry points and that doesn't really matter to make it more or less valid. Reviewer is basically trying to figure what the game wants from players and what the players want from the game and hopefully guide the reader towards the proper attitude to play a game (finding the right kind of audience for it).

"to each their own" has some merit (and some it doesn't have - anything goes attitude should stay somewhere in 1990s) as I think in boargaming were dealing not with audience but audiences - who expect different kind of rewards from their games which in turn are demanding different kind of investment from them. Willing to push your mind to solve a puzzle makes sense in games made to provide the achievement of victory to most optimising mind, but makes no sense to players and games where one invests imagination in order to put together pieces of thematic narrative in their mind, or games that create a web of protocols enabling players to create a space of interaction between them. And honestly I don't see a reviewer who'd be equally at home in all the gaming (sub)genres.

I'm not so sure. Yeah this kind of articles would be neat as it would give us more of a grasp behind the idea of "emergent theme", but that being said, I don't find it necessary for reviewers using this terminology, talking about it however would help people think in this direction. For instance for the last 3-4 moths there's been constant talk on TOS on deeper reviews and how review should provide reader about how the game plays and today I've read Pete's review which pushes all the buttons people were talking about (Banditos review. I was really impressed). I know Pete was reading these discussions and I wish to think there was some kind of influence going on. (at least before Pete officially renounces it). I don't care what terminology we use in our discussions but what our discussion create - hopefully something that pushes us to think in certain directions.

I'd be rather pushing for community of reviewers instead - this can move things forward. And a couple of months or years later some words will be invented which will frame this kind of community.

I spent 2 hours today responding to fucktards and geniuses alike in review threads. I actually got a TOTALLY bullshit 30 day ban for responding to a friend that his wife would like the game, which was clearly misconstrued as 'disruptive'. I spent another 20 miuntes trying to figure out what the fuck happened.

I spent from 10PM until just now creating bad ass little ship cards for my bad ass little miniature ships that I will be playing using my bad ass little Seastrike game that I've been jonesing over since I played it the first time with bad ass little counters.

I even spent an hour making a bad ass little template in Paint.Net and a bad ass little ship calucaltor so I can play Seastrike using authentic post-war ships.

The latter was fun. It was leading up to something better. It was art. The former was a headache, a total waste of time and energy. I found myself energized and excited doing the latter and exhausted and demoralized doing the former.

Criticism IS dead. It's BEEN dead. We're the only fuckers still trying to wave the flags of discontent while the great unwashed masses just want to be told how shiny and pretty their new version of the same game they played last week (for the first, and last time) is.

And I hate to say it, but I'm very rapidly coming to the conclusion that I really don't need this shit. I could be far more satisfied pimping my games out, playing games, or really, ramming a ball pein hammer into my scrotum than dealing with the ridiculously thankless job of trying to save people some money...when they don't REALLY want to be saved.

Yeah, I think the Circus is going to just fucking die of malaise at this point. Chapel was right, all along. There really is no point in this. Just fucking play some games, drink some beer, cruise around Lake Travis, and shut the fuck up with it already. Nobody really gives a shit. They don't really want or need criticism, they want infomercials.

It's quite simple for me. "Games Criticism" is a review with why's that I can relate too. Reviews that are "the game is A, but B and C and D, but gosh it's SO DAMN FUN!" can be useful, but not as much as what I feel as games criticism. The whys are much more important. There are very few people that can pinpoint what's fun in a game, and fewer more that can articulate them in a way that readers can understand.

Some reviewers do that in gushing style, but it still feel very descriptive (Vasel), others use more wordy explanation and analysis(Barnes). I like both style, because they (usually) manage to point the most important things in the game. While I'm not always agree with the review, I'll know why, and to what degree can I actually use the reviewer's recommendation.

Is that a BGG ban? If so, consider the source. It was a one day ban there that got me here. I sure as hell wouldn't give up writing about games over it. Hobbyists need reviewers and critics. We have to get our information about a new game somewhere. We certainly can't playtest every single game before buying it. The more respected and knowledgeable the reviewer, the more credibility he has and that's how we filter this shit.

When it comes to reviews, more is better. That's why we have a free press. You get your information from a variety of sources so you can make up your OWN mind. Reviews are highly subjective anyway. We all see the world through our own little filters. Like Wice, I don't see the need for an existential crisis over it.

I really like your reviews Pete. Even when I don't agree with them, I always learn something. And I don't think I'm alone in saying I'd miss your no-holes-barred, take-no-prisoners approach.

In an era of ever increasing bullshit, the honesty is refreshing. I say fuck the world...and keep 'em coming.

Nolite te bastardes carborundum!!!

http://www.2d6.org/2012/07/wooden-cubes-iron-soldiers-everybody-hates-jesse- dean-with-special-guest-jesse-dean-episode-10/

22:00

Jesse talks about this.

Read the first two issues of Mark Waid's Daredevil; they're good! I especially love the battle between DD and Captain America, where they're using each other's weapons (the "high point of my day" line is great). The comics that made me stay away from Mark Waid were his beloved Fantastic Four run, full to the brim with really awkward attempts at jokes and *awwwww* family moments, and the Flash/Green Lantern miniseries, which felt like it had something like "Two heroes. Two men. But most of all: two friends." in every issue. It felt like an after-school special about friendship.

I have fond memories of his Ka-Zar, though, that was underrated! And Daredevil seems to have a lot of grace to it so far, both in the writing and especially in the art. Not to mention it's unbelievably refreshing to read a not-tortured Daredevil.