An Echo, A Stain

Interesting analysis on the recent high profile assassination from Winter Patriot. Following his line of thought, it is curious to compare the US and Pakistan. I mean, one's a nuclear power with poverty, powerful political dynasties, corruption, questionable elections and an economically uncertain future... And other has only been around for 60 years or so.

Ok, that's a little cynical. But if I'm falling into the fashionable trend of complaining about the US, its only because on some level it still feels necessary, as a kind of counter balance to the seemingly prevalent US outlook on the world. For a long time, down under at least, we looked at the insular nature of parts of the American populace with a kind of detached smirk, even though we're probably not much better. In the post 9/11 world, misunderstandings in the US of the outside world seem somehow threatening, worrying.

So, by making comparisons between US history and recent or historical effects in the world at large, perhaps what we're really trying to do is to appeal to the American people to be empathetic, compassionate, caring. To try to understand wider issues, and particularly the other side of the argument.

This is what I think, at least, when I see comparisons between US christian extremism and Islamic extremism. By drawing lines between the two, and recognising the existence of christian extremism, not only do we understand US Christianity better, but we also understand Islam better (and perhaps we'll even gain some insight on the third Abrahamic religion).

When I say that we can compare the two, I don't necessarily mean that the two are the same--clearly, in many ways, they are quite different. Really, we can learn as much be identifying the differences as we can the similarities. And in time, perhaps we'll all learn to see more clearly the good side; and the bad side; and the side that gives us cause for concern for the future.

Together, we can oppose hegemony

Let's be clear. Certain games, their mechanics, internal logic and the way they are played, are of endless fascination to those who understand the shape and form of the video games industry. Right about now, World of Warcraft happens to be one of them; though in the case of this game, it is largely due to the way they are played. On line games naturally lend themselves to the study of how they are play, for obvious reasons—but this game in particular, because of the size and varied demographics of the audience it attracts.

Consider the lengths to which players will go to compete at the highest levels. This may not be clear to the outside, but the serious player will seek to understand, inside and out, the mechanics of the game. Effectively, they are reverse engineering the game from within it—in much the same way as we reverse engineer the physics of the real world. Like physics, they are at any given time, some accepted truths and many unknowns. Like physics, player use many methods to discover the unknowns, and learn how to maximize the knowledge they gain. This involves not just a simple process of trial and error; it quite often involves semi-scientific experimentation, custom built analysis programs, massive statistical databases and an active and shared process of hypothesis.

Eventually the community, as whole, arrives at an understanding of how the underlying mathematics of the game work. This is then disseminated about the playership through the various community models, and all interested players seek this information out and educate themselves. This then leads to a very complex series of analyses called min/maxing, which essentially mean finding the best results possible within the system. This, in turn, feeds back into the simulation itself. That is, unlike the rules of physics, the rules of World of Warcraft are constantly changing. Sometimes these changes are due to inconsistencies found by players or balancing problems (that is, where the min/max point is too easy to find or too obvious). Over time, we see a gradual increase in the complexity and subtly of the simulation, because the creators recognise that a more educated audience is a more demanding audience.

This is a very curious situation because of two things: the way in which certain pioneers in the community take it upon themselves to discover the secrets of the simulation and disseminate the results; and the way in which other players actively seek out knowledge, become education, and then learn how to turn these abstract rules and equations into practical benefit within the game.

World of Warcraft is, of course, at its core a microcosm of the world; but here we see a very real, active and functioning microcosm of science and engineering. Given the extreme simplistic of the microcosm, compared to the real thing, this in itself might not be so astounding; except for the fact that it is a microcosm in which the community as a whole is participating. This means players from a vast range of ages, locations and background, and people who would otherwise have no interest in either science or engineering. In other words, the game has found a successful way to invoke the curiosity of the scientist and the practicality of an engineer, and is, in some way, teaching the world not only the value of these things but also how they fit into society.

This principle, the value of a microcosm, is something that may be of particular interest and significance to the massively on line genre moving forward. But perhaps it has wider ramifications, also? This is a form of education through our medium, one that seems somehow different from what we traditionally mean when we talk about education in games. Is there a hint here about how we might better use the medium to teach our audience real world skills?

This is a question that has been rolling about my mind for a while now. It may even offer some hope, however dim or distant, to curing my ennui. But we'll see.

One interesting thing to consider is how other mediums deal with the same types of issues. Having been recently exposed to holiday programming on BBC Prime, I've discovered that there is a considerable abundance of Top Gear and What Not To Wear, so I'll use those as examples.

What Not To Wear is great example in that is ostensibly simply a program that teaches women, directly, how to pick out clothes that suit them. But, if you look closer (that is if you're one of the few people reading this who are likely to have seen it), you'll find that the rules of correct and incorrect dress decisions make up only a small part of the show. A much larger part of the show focuses on the story of the featured women, even to the point of very personal details about their life and psychology. They also seem to value a progression to their stories—so that the women leave the show not just better dressed, but happier people, more confident people. Count how many times they refer to self-confidence on a typical show. Therefore, we might conclude that the real message of the program is to show how important clothes are to many women's self confidence, how lack of self confidence can result in poor dress decisions, and how easy (and under what situations) one might come off the tracks, so to speak. The first thing the witch in Stardust realises, after becoming beautiful, is the dreariness of her surroundings. Following this line of thought, the show is effectively teaching, or attempting to teach, women how to become more confident.

Top Gear is often more about the joy of being an automobile enthusiast, than it is about the cars themselves. Ultimately the comparison between one sports car and another is often not the most practical information, in that the audience is unlikely to be watching the show in order to inform a purchase decision. So perhaps what we're really learning is how to, and why to, love cars. So in Top Gear, also, perhaps the direct information is eclipsed by the indirect information.

Lastly, let me tell you a story of a high school student. He was an average student, not doing particularly well, but not failing either. But that, unexpectedly, he was getting very high marks in world history, often coming top of the class. He wondered about this, and asked himself, “Why am I getting such high scores is history? Why can I remember this information so much more easily than information from other classes? Ah, I know. It's because I've heard all these names and terms before. I have a pre-existing framework for this information, so that each new fact can fit nicely into its own spot. And that framework and these names are very firmly in my mind because they are reinforced by visuals and personalities. In other words, it's because I've played Civilisation.” This story is hypothetical, but it's actually based upon reports I remember from a very long time ago where students reported a head start in geography because they had played Pirates!.

So; its been established elsewhere that when you bring games and play and education together good things tend to happen. This has resulted in many teaching aids being built to teach mathematics and languages and whatever. That's all well and good, but let's put that aside for the moment. Those types of games aren't directly relevant here because of three things: they teach in a “direct” fashion and that is their only purpose; they borrow very little, if anything, from the entertainment part of the industry; and they teach topics that already have good teaching methods, involving non-interactive media, and then to be designed as companions to larger courses.

But what if there was a type of educational game—well not so much an educational game as a game that teaches—that we haven't thought about much yet? A game that we played, not to be educated, but for its entertainment value? A game that fed on an inherent curiosity of a topic, rewarding investigation with ever more difficult challenges? A game that taught us, however gradually and indirectly, practical information that we could apply immediately to the word around us? A game that showed us a topic that we're all interested in, and is simple enough for us all to understand, and was previously only kept from us by ineffective teaching methods? A game that was clearly mainstream oriented, in so much that it couldn't clearly be distinguished from mainstream games, and that was exciting and evocative and rewarding to play?

And why would we want to do this? Well, clearly not take the place of any established form of education. More realistically, maybe we would want to leverage the natural instinct of curiosity to provide a head start on certain topics, or simply a framework to make organising and retaining facts easier. Or perhaps we teach a topic that is not usually taught elsewhere—like What Not To Wear. Or perhaps our ultimate goal is to make a point, but to do so we need the audience to understand a certain amount of background information.

In other words, this is an idea very distinct from what we think of an educational game. It is instead a way of imbuing a traditional mainstream game with a little something extra, a hidden secondary effect that the player may not even notice, but will have deeper and longer lasting impact than even the primary effect. While it may be tempting to imagine that I'm trying to suggest the like of Typing of the Dead--or other similar contemporary games that, while clearly being learning aids, use a game component as a reward mechanism--this, I think, is missing the true possibilities. To grasp the full potential of this idea, we need to think longer and deeper.

Well, I'm starting to believe that such a game exists. It has been made in the past and it can be made again in the future. Now, we all know it is difficult to try to appease two masters, in that you run the risk of having to prioritise either gameplay or education when they disagree, but this can be overcome with inventive thinking.

If the game can be made, however, I think that finding it may depend largely on finding the right topic, the just the right domain of knowledge that will suit the medium perfectly. To that end, I have tried to enumerate what might work below.

Domains that have an inherent process; an element of cause and effect. This, I think, is critical. Certain domains are naturally procedural, in that they involve a large set of rules that work simultaneously and sequentially, and a sense of one thing changing another and potentially involve feedback loops. These systems are typically difficult to understand because we tend to see then mathematically, which means inventing many abstract concepts and complex interrelating equations. They tend to be very difficult to visualise and require learning a lot of incomplete fragments of knowledge before you can get your head around the big picture. Each individual concept might be easy enough, it's just seeing and understanding them all in concert that is tricky.

These kind of domains can be thoughts about as a system with many “actors,” each with their own ruleset and working in a selfish manner, but interacting with the other actors. In other words this, curiously enough, is mathematical game theory. So perhaps we might find that those domains that are best modelled using game theory would be a good candidate for games that teach.

While traditional education methods may not be well suited to this, games are—because games are inherently procedural themselves. Furthermore, the rules that constitute typical games mechanics are very similar to the rules use game theory simulations. So we can end up in a situation quite like the World of Warcraft situation, in which the player is attempting to understand the model and rulesets from the inside. And, I think, that game shows how an interested player can learn not only the ins and outs of a surprising complicated system in this manner, but also use that understanding to practical use.

Practical domains, those with real world impact. This idea, I think, will work best if we can inspire a sense of curiosity in the player. One way to inspire this is if the game concepts resonates with what they might see in their daily lives—that is, there should be some cross-over of ideas and knowledge between the game and life. If a game was pitched at a very specific audience, then the domain could be very specific; for example, if we pitched a game at mathematics students, then mathematics fits the bill fine. But since most games are pitched at a very wide audience, for the game to resonate effectively, it needs to have some relevance (perhaps indirectly) with the things that effect us all in everyday life. In other words, the more practical and ubiquitous the topic, the better.

Domains we are naturally curious about. Naturally, some domains are more interesting to us than others. Some have a sense of mystery about them, others we are continually reminded of and attracted to. Sometimes we become curious about a domain because it continually cause strange or seemingly unintuitive things to occur, but we aren't sure how to find out why. Others we're curious about because we think they might, if their secrets were revealed, offer some improvements in our lives—but we're not sure. If a game can tap into this sense of curiosity, the player will naturally want to step beyond simply see the game as entertainment only, and begin to analyse and drill down to discover what lies underneath.

This idea of drilling down, I think, is particularly important. Imagine presenting the player with a final simulation, where the player is only invited to interact at the topmost level, and all the lower level details are just given as is, like “black boxes.” The curious player will want to understand those low level details, not only to improve their game, but also just to understand it better. That voluntary drilling down into the details is the educational part.

Domains that require some memorisation and/or repetition. Often educational games target memorisation, because this is generally thought to be combinable with play and interactivity. It works well for language software and like. It can also play a part here because even in mainstream games, ideas and concepts and facts can be very firmly planted in the memory.

Domains that have some relation to or baring on evocative and exciting themes. Clearly, if we want to appeal like a mainstream game, we must use the same methods as mainstream games. Therefore, whatever message we want to teach indirectly must relate in some way to the main themes of the game. These themes can be things like history, warfare, romance; all the things that we find in our entertainment media. This seems to be a somewhat difficult requirement to fit, but it's also potentially a very important one.

Domains that have clear positive and negative outcomes. Scoring, and success and failure, are important for providing a rewarding experience for the player (that is, because it's necessary for rewards). So our domain should ideally be scoreable and break down into a set of clear and accepted rules. Most domains should lend themselves to this just fine, with the exception of those that are a little too people oriented.

Domains that require little pre-existing knowledge and skills. Generally players don't expect to need some pre-existing knowledge to play a game, apart from a little common sense. You wouldn't expect to, for example, find “calculus” in the list of minimum requirements. So, we should avoid domains that require a lot of specialist knowledge to even approach them. This doesn't mean we have to avoid all but the most simple domains, however, because we can use the computer to do all of the mathematics and as much of the grunt work as possible.

Domains that involve some form of competition or interaction between multiple parties. Some sense of competition and friction between agents is almost mandatory to building a set of game mechanics, and ideally our domain should reflect that. A domain that allows multiple players to participate and compete against each other works even better. Competition against a friend or stranger is a great way to motivate the player to dig deeper and seek to understand more.

Domains that have a clear visual element. Some domains lend themselves to imagery, others don't. Visuals are, of course, very critical to games, so we need to avoid those domains that can't be depicted in any way, or can't be depicted at reasonable performance levels.

Domains that we are naturally attracted to. Some domains have a natural attraction, in that we value and admire the skills involved, and those people who understand it. Other domains can have the opposite effect. Of course, we want the game as a whole to be attractive and we don't want the player to feel put off at the idea of learning about that domain, so we should prefer the attractive domains.

Domains that can tell a story. Story is critical in game, be it as simple as a feeling of progression, or complex interactions between characters. Ideally we want our domain to allow and support a story. This doesn't mean that it necessarily has to involve people, though that helps, but we at least don't want the domain to get in the way.

Domains that result in positive psychological boost as the player learns. Sometimes learning hits the right psychological buttons and just feels good. Typically this is things like life skills and artistic skills. Obviously this isn't a required property, but can provide significant benefit.

So, will it cure my ennui? Only time will tell. However, this idea and its implications, such as it is, has caught my attention where all other ideas have failed. It's likely that it will not be immediately clear why, though. More on this, perhaps, a little later.

Like Drawing Blood

Recently, I've been reading two books.

"JPod", by Douglas Coupland. This is a story about a video games developer, working in a cubical alongside 5 other disillusioned developers whose last names, extremely curiously, all begin with J.

and

"My Name is Red" by Orhan Pamuk and translated by Erdağ Göknar. This is a story about miniaturists, or book illustrators, working in Istanbul. Four miniaturists are working on a very special book, but one has recently been murdered by one of the others. Meanwhile, their old friend returns from an extended exile to find that both Istanbul and the love of his life are not exactly as he remembered.





So... Which one reminds me most of my old work, do you reckon? And which one will I bother reading through?

Well, as a kind of hint, I'll endeavour to answer at least one of the questions of the master illustrator here. He asked three questions, designed to separate the great miniaturist from the pretender. However, I will answer them not from the point of view of an illustrator, but instead from the point of view of a video games coder.

Dactylic hexameter

"Today, in order to determine just how genuine a young painter is, I'd ask him three questions."

"And what would they be?"

"Has he come to believe, under the sway of recent custom as well as the influence of the Chinese and European Franks, that he ought to have an individual painting technique, his own style?"

Style and Signature

ALIF

Once, in ancient times, there were two great warlords. The first warlord, Genghis, was a fierce and successful conqueror, feared the world over. His army of thousands of the strongest and most accurate archers could decimate any so bold as to resist him. Their arrows would soar through the air in perfect unison, forming a dense and ominous blot in the sky and a dark shadow on their unfortunate victims.

The second warlord, Zheng, was also a valiant and respected conqueror. His army of expert horseman had brought him riches and plunder from all the far reaches of the world. Their skills in the saddle were unmatched, and Zheng's military tactics were the envy of the world. The was renowned for his cunning, so often would he take a foe by surprise.

In fact, so great were both Genghis and Zheng that they feared no-one. No-one, that is, except each other. Realising this Zheng sent a messenger to Genghis one day, and asked to meet him on neutral ground. He received a reply in agreement and the two met at a temple on a tall mountain, just above the cloud layer.

“We should form an alliance,” said Zheng, “so as to best maximize our wealth.”

“I agree,” said Genghis, amicably. “Our different strength complement each other and we shall be a force unlike any in history. But I must be the one in command, because I will submit to no man and you do not know the way of the archer.”

“Nor do you know the way of the rider. So great are we both at our respective talents that neither deserves to be the lesser. We must fight together, but each using his own wisdom and holding his own council.”

And so they agreed and from that point on, Genghis' archers and Zheng's horsemen fought together but separately and they split up the winnings from their campaigns evenly. The combined strength of the two armies was very great and each warlord became much more successful and much richer than before.

One morning they were attacking a village in a valley near the front of both Genghis' and Zheng's empires. Genghis stood on a tall hill, where he could survey the battlefield and surrounding area by looking down the steep slope to the village below. He saw Zheng's horsemen below, but saw they were moving away from the village.

“Where are they going?” he asked himself. “There's nothing in that direction except a town that is part of my empire.”

He put it out of his mind for the moment, and prepared his strategy. Later that afternoon, he came back to the hill and looked again. “They are still moving away!” he exclaimed. “That Zheng, he is launching one of his famous surprise attacks against my empire. I must launch a counter attack.”

But the horsemen were already too far away and moving too quickly to be caught up with. He instead gathered up his archers and rushed to the closest town in Zheng's nearby empire. He ordered his archers to attack and they quickly killed all the men of the town and this plundered it and burnt it to the ground.

After they were finished, Genghis sent a messenger to the town that he had seen Zheng heading towards. The messenger returned and informed him that Zheng had indeed attacked the town and his men had raped all the women there. “I knew it,” said Genghis, “but my keen mind saw through his cunning tactic that has surprised so many before.”

The messenger then said that Zheng desired a parley. Thinking that Zheng would prostrate himself and call himself defeated, Genghis agreed.

The meet in the deepest part of the desert, where the red rocks stood tall and reached for the sky. “Traitor!” said Zheng, when Genghis came into sight. “Why have you forsaken our alliance and attacked my justly conquered town?”

“It is you who are the traitor,” replied Genghis. “I saw you quitting the battlefield to attack my town and took it upon myself to repay in kind your treachery.”

“Then it is worse than I though, because you are not a traitor but a common fool. Horses cannot travel down steep hills swiftly and I was not leaving the battlefield, but moving stealthily around the hills to the village's most vulnerable point.”

Genghis was silent, and Zheng continued. “But now you have pillaged by town and I have raped your women in reply. There is no reconciliation for that and so we must conduct war!”

With that, they began one of the most vicious and unrelenting wars the world has ever seen. They slaughtered each other's armies until both warlord had spent all their equal wealth and lost all of their men. Eventually only Genghis and Zheng survived and even then they did not stop. They launched at each other in one on one combat, until both were too exhausted and wounded to stand. They fell on each other and collapsed to the ground, where they lay until all their blood had drained from their bodies.

"I felt like destroying something beautiful"

A couple of military leaders from recent history have caught my attention and interest lately. General Tito (mentioned below) of Yugoslavia, and one Mustafa Kemal, otherwise known by the epithet “The Father of the Turks,” Ataturk.

Ataturk was the bane of the Ottoman empire. He brought sovereignty to the people of Turkey, ending the Caliphate and causing the last Ottoman rulers to exile themselves to England. And so the first world war claimed its only major world power casualty; this despite the fact that the crippled empire desperately wanted to remain neutral and fought only one significant battle—one battle that it conclusively won.

Ataturk is very fondly remembered in Turkey, even today. He was, by all accounts, a man larger than life; and now larger than his own mortality it seems. I've heard him described as a man out of his own time, a throw back to glorious old days and legends of conquerors; perhaps something like Alexander the Great, the young Macedonian who marched over Turkey and is also fondly remembered for his benevolence. Ataturk was born of the same stuff as those awe inspiring legends; because Ataturk was born in battle, in glory and guts and passion, in the moment of his most remembered command, in victory on the beaches. This is how the Ottomans lost the war: they made Mustafa Kemal into Ataturk, the man who could order an entire division to die, and a nation to live.

One brings with it the other, don't you see? The ancient Greeks knew it. The Turks knew it, also. They wouldn't trust so greatly as to follow him into revolution. But for this man, tens of thousands had followed his man's outstretched pointing hand and traded their lives for a few seconds of diversion on the battlefield. He was to be trusted; and believed; and followed.

And he revolutionised them. Wear hats, he said, write like an Englishman, we are modern men now! And so the new president and the new nation took on the image of those who had once been so close, within easy throwing distance in the next trench. It was Ataturk who brought the sides together after the war; he decreed that the fallen from both sides would be accepted into the Turkish bosom and receive the great respect of the locals. Perhaps he understood that both sides hadn't really being fighting each other; in fact, in may ways, they were all fighting side by side, for the one and same goal.

The ancient Greeks understood this, also. This was the same region as their greatest, most remembered and most import war, after all. This is were the subjects of millions of reliefs, sculptures and paintings had arisen. This was the birth place of the Hellenistic identity, where the Adonis ideal arose. This was where ten thousand black ships arrived, under a weak pretence for war, to find for themselves the greatest and longest lived glory in history. They held siege for 9 years, fighting as the opportunity arose, and waiting for the moment when noble and skilful opponent would stand and reckon them, and they would engage in one on one combat to the death. The stories were passed around with greatest reverence for centuries before Homer could collect them up. And even today, the siege of Troy is recognised as special moment of history, a profound singularity.

In the First World War, the Great War, Hellen wasn't a beautiful woman, however. She was Russia, and the pretence was to open the straights for her supply shipments. And yet, there were no Russians fighting there, just confused troupers, like the Indian Muslims who heard the call for prayer and wondered, who are we fighting?

And yet, the allies found something there, also, in that mythical land. They didn't fight with against their enemy, they fought with their, soon to be glorious, enemy. Because there is a belief that great nations are born in war, a belief that would seem evident from history. There is something that flows from war, something otherwise unattainable. It made the nonconformist Kemal into Ataturk, it made the Mycenaeans, the Minoans and the Cycladeans into Greeks, by way of shared heritage. But what did it make of the wanderlust Australians and New Zealanders who suffered from the lack of a war back home?

The Antikythera Mechanism

This is a 500 billion Yugosalv Dinar note. 500 billion of of the poor little buggers. How did such an extraordinary thing come to exist? Well, it's certaintly didn't involve Bill Gates immigrating.

It turns out, during an uncertain part of General Tito's state, the currency went through an inflation rate of 5 × 10¹⁵ percent per month (prices double every 16 hours). To me, that seems facinating--because it seems more like an abstract mathematical or distant astronomical oddity. But it's not. It was a real phenonomen arising from a real, practical, human oriented system. This was hardly a one-off event, either. We saw and studied many occurances of hyperinflation during the 20th century.

More details here.

Picture courtesy of the National Bank of Serbia. By the way, current Serbian Dinars are far more reasonably valued.

The Horns of Moses

Recently a new game journalism scandal has broken out concerning the termination of a prominent online games magazine editor, which has resulting in a number of allegations being levelled at the bias and credibility of a major web magazine. Scandals of this type break out every now and again though they, perhaps by virtue of the generally juvenile and undiscerning readership, have not yet appeared to result any immediately recallable corrective actions. Rather, they tend to instead drop away from their temporal position of absolute criticality and hurtle back down into whatever obscurity they came from, allowing a peaceful return back into the industry's better working of things—better, in this case, being a relative term. Whether or not any of the parties involves acted with impropriety is beyond the scope of this document, it only sets an interesting background onto which to exercise a thumping ranting muscle.

Current scandal aside, this document is not about the behaviour of games magazines—perhaps I wouldn't be alone in regarding the current fuss as no great epiphany; the integrity of the game reviewing press is something I think they've struggled with for quite some time. Maybe the fact that these scandals catch such an enthusiastic reactions hints to a general undercurrent of scepticism among the general readership, also—kindled in, I'd hazard to guess, the gaming public's opinionated and rebelliously youthful fire pits by the occasional lack of correlation between observed and promised impressions. That is, the ease of the readership to accept the possibility of such a high profile magazine being manipulated by economic interests points to a pre-existing scepticism. But the question this document seeks to address is not tied to the going rate on a good review; by biggest issue about our press is not that they can be bought, instead I'm more concerned with something that goes back before publishers were big enough to believe they could, and should, muscle and flatter and manipulate the media. What I want to discuss actually has more to do with audience than it does with integrity.

Audience is a curious concept in the game industry. My observed belief is, even inside the game development community, we still haven't really worked out how to deal with it. Many designers don't understand how to speak to a specific audience, and too many publishers are afraid or unable to segment their customer base. So, it's somewhat ironic that we come back here with respect to the game reviewing community.

The gaming press, I would imagine, attracts a very young audience, quite imaginably significantly younger than the gamer market in total. For the most part, it's easy to believe that they are impressionable, excitable, and tend to be attracted to like pretty, shiny things—that is, “pretty” both in terms of visuals and in terms of concept. Marketing clearly reflects who this audience decides to buy; and that is, so some large extent, based on its “oooh, cool” impact—does the fantasy appeal, is it evocative, is it reminiscent of cool things. The industry has been developing, over some time, the realisation that, as far as sales figures are concerned, the quality of the game is a less significant factor than might be generally hoped. Yet, this is essentially what reviews attempt to zero in on—the simple, objective and measurable quality of the product. Sales analyses have been used to show the somewhat feasible idea that, from the audience's standpoint, some abstract numbers at the bottom of a body of text might be interesting to discuss with friends, but have a reduced impact on purchasing decisions. Instead, fundamentally, it takes an evocative fantasy to trigger the buy impulse. That's why we decide what games we are going to buy before they are released, before they are reviewed. That's why all the best games are just about to be released, why so many are disappointments and why developers believe that only games with a serious advertising budget sell. That's also why a game preview is more important than a game review. If the preview works, the reader will decide to buy there and then.

Recalling that the soul and only purpose of game reviewing is to inform the purchases of readers, and considering that a game preview is really just a regurgitation of carefully limited and massaged information from publishers, then I put to you this: the advertisements in printed and online games media are at least as important as the actually editorial content, in terms of fulfilling the media's purpose. Advertising material here meaning traditional banner ads, as well as publisher-provided screenshots, video, booth footage, etc. After all, the advertisements have infinitely higher production values, are quite often produced by more skilful people and function perfectly well even when they have no integrity. Seen from a slightly more extreme viewpoint, you could say this: the media is largely a means of delivering advertising, some editorialised, some not, to a primitive and undiscerning audience. Fortunately, this is exactly what the reader wants—they want to be inspired by what cool things they'll be playing next summer. The blocks of text and numbers that come along with it are, to an increasing extent, little more than noise hitching a ride.

Seen from that frame of reference, the idea that some of this noise was biased one way or another should hardly been seen at the forefront of concerns about a large and dysfunctional industry. However, it should be noted that the media itself can been seen as largely a victim, rather than a perpetrator of this situation. It might be tempting, then, to replace a finger sternly wiggled at the magazine and the potentially manipulative publisher with a deeply unimpressed sigh. But forgo judgement for now, because it seems that many have already reached a conclusion, albeit probably partly based on completely unrelated events. This is important, because under the propaganda, that large and vocal group of the prematurely decided are expressing one impactful thing: a general and overarching dissatisfaction with the predominant games media, based in part on a basic distrust. And that voice is what this document is about; not so much because of its content, but for the fact that it can be harnessed and transformed, hopefully for the benefit of the industry as a whole--though perhaps not for the ends that might be expected.

Some reviewers nowadays seem to have a very odd way of describing themselves as journalists. It seems strange because journalism is typically associated with news and current events; for example, a film journalist might be expected to cover the latest important events in the industry (the writers strike, the rise of Bollywood, the latest cheap location to outsource to, whatever), rather than the actual product itself. A film reviewer, on the other hand, might only be expected to be interested in the product. There's a third type, also, someone who may seem similar to, but is fundamentally different than a reviewer—a critic.

The difference being, in my mind at least, this: the reviewer fulfils the purpose outlines earlier, to inform the audience's purchases. He speaks only to the product's audience and discusses only those things that will determine their interest in the product and only in terms that make sense to that audience. A review is successful if those who follow his advice enjoy the products they are directed to. A review informs the market's buying decisions, which in turn, through the mysterious forces of capitalism, informs future product development.

A critic, on the other hand, at least in the classic sense, speak not to a product's audience, but to its creators. His interest is not to inform the audience's decisions, but to inform the product's creators, and their peers, about the product itself. He is interested in the specific functioning of the product directly, where it works and where it doesn't work, and to find ways to speak about the nature of the product. He is also an educator, by virtue of the fact that he identifies what is important and can analyse how and why it works. He works in a more analytic mode and is interested in not just the final product, but also the process that produced the product. His ultimate goal isn't a happy audience, but rather a more effective and more rational craft. Rational, in this sense, meaning decisions are made based on direct intentions to meet some goal, rather than the arrival at that goal through the arcane invocation of trial and error powered by the great bootstrapping feedback loop of the market.

More simply, a reviewer speaks to the potential buyer, a critic speaks to the maker.

The idea of criticism has been a theme throughout much of human endeavour; not least of film history in the very recent past. Early criticism led to an understanding of the structure and fundamental of the art, and the development of various “grammars,” critical developments that allowed rational understanding and discussion of the medium. The game industry, however, as testament to its always surprising irrationality and juvenile procrastination, has never developed a functional culture of criticism. There are no game critics; or at the very least, none which are effective enough. And yet, this is where the industry needs to be. It must, finally, develop the skills to understand its own product and to discuss it on a large scale. It must move out of the irrational dark ages and we must do it soon—before the technology runs out and before designers are finally faced with the great challenge of having to support the industry alone, and so have to learn how to reliably produce satisfying crutch-free product. We cannot allow the industry to stumble, because any stumble—even a small one—could result in a tremendous crash.

It's important to note, and fundamental to my key argument here, that effective criticism can also be very interesting to the product's audience, as well, even if its goals are so lofty as those described above. It provides a number of important secondary effects such as education of those wanting to make the jump from audience to creator; encouraging the audience to be more discerning and critical in their own evaluations; and potentially sparking a new interest in a tired old industry where, on the surface, everything just seems like the same old same old. That is, the transition from reading reviews to reading criticism can be a smooth one, assuming criticisms written with this intention in mind--which an author may very well want to do, if only to cement a readership of curious outsiders.

The industry needs to develop some form of functional, viable criticism—not as a replacement of the current form of game reviewing media, but as simply a new element to the mix. Kicking off this type of movement can be difficult, however, even if it need only be a very small and very localised one because, in order for it to be truly successful, it must reach a large number of people. The weakness and self-deception of--and dissatisfaction in--the contemporary reviewing media provides a wind to raise a sail to in the hope of building something new. Something of a parasitic headline, if you will, a sign of weakness to exploit and benefit from. A manipulation upon a manipulation, because integrity is relative and not required if being sufficiently analytical (or, perhaps more accurately, a manipulation upon a misunderstanding of a hidden personal conflict, as I am leaning to believe). And while the contemporary media may never change its spots, at least we might build something useful from these scandals that so reliably happen before so reliably disappearing again, unresolved.