If what Kevin Van Ord says is true, and why shouldn’t it be since he is a Senior Editor at GameSpot, we are to believe that GameSpot views video games as an art, and as such can be reviewed on its artistic vision, morals or message. However, I put together a few points both refuting these assertions.
1.GameSpot, in its own review guidelines, mentions the word “art” only once, in the form of a medal given for artistic design, which in my humble opinion would have nothing to do with the “message” a game is trying to convey, but rather artistic graphical achievement. This is further proven by the following sentence quoted from these same guidelines: “But the medals aren't limited to facts about a game's audiovisual presentation.” Again, this DIRECTLY follows the mentioning of artistic design. To further that point, nowhere does it mention a moral code of any kind whether it be the games or the reviewers. Not only that, but please read the “Bottom Line” of their review policy: “We believe games are meant to be enjoyed, and our reviews seek to express what it is about a given game that is or isn't particularly enjoyable, entertaining, fun, amusing, interesting, memorable--any and all of these things, and more. Our philosophy is that if we succeed at reviewing each game on its own merits, against the standards of the point in time at which it was evaluated, then overall consistency of our ratings should naturally result. Ultimately, we believe that each of our reviews should be useful and engaging to you as a prospective player.” Where does a reviewers’ moral agenda fit into your “Bottom Line”? So I would say to Mr. Van Ord and the rest of the staff and management at GameSpot, if your policies have changed, update them to show them to the world, or follow them, but please stop breaking your own rules.
2.Not all games strive to put forth an artistic or moral message, just as not all movies strive to do so either. Borat cannot be put on the same level as Citizen Kane, nor should it. Beyond this comparison, we must also consider the fact that not all videogames are indie art house projects. Van Ord states that film critics do not just review costume design etc, but when a movie passes their desk that is intended to be a popcorn action flick or a raucous comedy, they do not judge it as if it is the English Patient 2. This does not hold true of your reviews, as you hold all games to some artistic vision that you have set for them. This brings me to point
3.While your guidelines state that you review a game on its own merits, this is again proven false by this review. GTAV does not strive to have a moral message. It strives to tell the story of gangsters and gang bangers and throw in a little potty humor while they are at it. While I am neither a gangster or gang banger, I would tend to doubt there is much room in that world for strong leading female characters. And getting back to films for a moment, can someone point out the strong female character in the Godfather or GoodFellas.
4.Torture is ok but misogyny isn’t. In Caro’s review for GTAV she has an entire paragraph devoted to a torture scene. However, the message from Caro at the end of that paragraph is that the game took leaps of logic with its characters, not that torture is bad or hard to watch. Yet the games misogyny is wrong and evil enough to be placed in the “Bad” section of the review, with torture decidedly missing. Heck if you look at GameSpot’s review of Hotline Miami, “gloriously violent” is a plus!
5.Kevin’s definition of objectivity is horse manure for lack of a better term. If your moral beliefs color a game to the point where it affects the score you should not be reviewing that game, period. Caro is the wrong person to review the game and whoever assigned it to her dropped the ball. It does not fit her moral code and should not be judged by someone that it was not intended for in the first place. GTAV has some juvenile humor in it, as does South Park. Many people are offended by South Park, but does that mean that say, IGN should have someone who is offended by their humor review the episodes for the site? Of course not, because there is no way that reviewer could be OBJECTIVE, they would be sitting there, angry, with a knot in their belly while they watched the show. This would be evidenced by their review, because it would be nigh impossible to remain objective. Does this remind us of anyone?
6. Objective vs. Subjective: Of course you should let readers know that a game lets you commit horrible crimes in a horrific manner, but don’t tell me that you don’t like the fact that I have the ability to torture someone in a game. Tell me that I can sleep with a stripper in GTAV, but don’t tell me that if I do I am a misogynistic monster. You can elaborate on the quality of what the game set out to do, but you should not hold all games to a moral code they never intended to keep. See the difference between objective and subjective?
7. Now this is where it gets dicey for me. I cannot believe the pompous arrogance of Van Ord telling people not to frequent GameSpot or any site in search of game reviews, because we do not agree with his polices, which as discussed are not GameSpot’s policies. As stated before, if your policies changed, state them on the website. Where is your journalistic integrity, when you cannot even follow your own made up rules? Beyond this, most websites, while having some flaws of their own, tend to keep things more objective and do not let the morals of the game, or their own conflicting morals taint their reviews. You do, you state you do, and you tell your readership to pound sand because they don’t like it. You are not a business man are you? Do the business men you work for like the fact that you break your own coda and tell your readers to screw?
8. Speaking of business men; do you think that possibly in a crazy scheme to make money, strippers and such were intentionally put into the game because it is what their audience actually wants? Or do you think that these immoral elements were added just to get on people’s nerves? Rockstar is a for profit business. All the elements of the game are put into place with the intention of being fun and making money. You cannot judge a huge commercial release with many millions of dollars on the line the same way you would judge an indie game where the developer just wanted to put his vision out there.
9. Kevin brought up some other reviews. His review of Happy Feet for example, he wasn't a fan of the phonetically spelled subtitles and their sporadic use. I ask you, 1. Did it lower the games score? 2. How big do you think the games QC budget was? 3. Do you think that was on the top of the list on fixes on a game you gave a 3.9? And in regards to ALL games mentioned in Van Ords’ post only one of them listed any kind of moral issue in the “bad” section of the review, and that only said “weird dabbling in morality". So these moral infractions couldn't have been all that bad. Certainly not on the level of what GTAV has done, since it is "profoundly misogynistic; right Caro?
10. Know your audience GameSpot. I am not sure because I am not privy to such metrics, but I imagine most of your audience in male, straight and younger than middle aged. Now I hate to tell you, but that audience actually likes scantily clad women. Right or wrong, that is what it is. As a game journalism website, keep your opinions on the morality of games to editorials. If you want to be a niche site that discusses the artistic merits of games or stands up for minorities, the LGBT community, the disabled, or anything else, go for it, more power to you, but do not masquerade as something you are not, and when you are called out you just tell your readers to leave.
11. Maybe your ads should change as well. If you are so against the misogyny in GTAV, why take a paycheck from a company that gets its money from links like “50 hottest female athletes”. Little double standard?
So there you have it; my rebuttal to Kevin Van Ord’s post. Hope it clarifies a few things that were said by Kevin.
@ExtremePhobia @MasterOfMordor Ok, I'll ignore the fact that you called my post pointless, because you obviously just missed the point of the post. But while you say I took KVO's lines of text out of context, you seem to do a poor job of explain HOW I took them out of context. But moving on.
1. We agree that the policies need to be changed, so we are on the same page there. So far so good. That is all I want from them, to change their policies, or to be more objective in their reviews.
2. You missed, my point, what I was saying, is that film critics do judge different types of films differently. The Hangover is well rated for what it is, a raunchy comedy. It does what it wanted to do well. But if it were reviewed as more of an art piece like Dr. Strangelove, it would come up short. GameSpot seems to be reviewing games as if they are all art pieces nowadays and don't allow games to just be a raunchy comedy type game, they all have to be Dr. Strangelove.
3. From Google-Satire (noun) the use of humor, irony, exaggeration, or ridicule to expose and criticize people's stupidity or vices, particularly in the context of contemporary politics and other topical issues. Art is not in the definition, so I will consider the point conceded However, I will say that if I were to speak to Cliffy B I would be happy to tell him that Gears of War is not art. A fantastic game, yes, art, no.
4. If you are going to bring up one issue a particular group or minority may have, why not bring them all up. How are black people portrayed? Is it fair to only account for one group of people. And bringing up the violence was to show that one form of potentially offensive material is considered a plus, while another is considered a negative. Is that fair either?
5. Caro was a bad choice, you agree with me, so that ends that discussion. And to 5A, if what he said is their review policy, then place it in the review guidelines and I will stop posting, and also probably stop visiting the site, because I want to know if a game is good, and fun to play. If I buy GTAV, I know its going to get a little (or a lot) effed up. I just want to know is the storyline interesting, is shooting fun, is driving tight. I don't need to know that the strippers hurt your feelings. If that is the route they are going, then I get off at that stop.
6. Again, I think you misunderstood my point. It was not aimed directly at that review or that game. It was intended as a general statement of the difference between objective and subjective writing, when putting a game review together. I apologize if that was not clear.
7. We must agree to disagree on this one, because I read and reread Kevin's statement and come to the same conclusion as my original post. And again, please read part one of my post. This above and beyond everything else is the crux of my argument. If you are going to write subjective reviews about how a game makes you feel emotionally and change the score however slightly based on your emotional bias. And if you are going to treat games as art pieces and therefore allow them and their scores to be at the whim of someones morals, agenda, lifestyle choices, then put it up on your website as your official policies, and I will have no issue. When the actions don't follow the mission statement you are lying to your readers, not conducting yourself in a manner befitting a real journalist and just plain making donkeys of yourselves. I read many reviews, from this site and many others, I use those reviews to influence my purchases, but when I am thinking of buying GTAV, I don't need to know that her feelings were hurt.
8. Again, you missed the point (you have missed a few). GTAV cost many millions of dollars to make, jobs are on the line, many people are counting on it's success. So the devs of GTAV are more likely to cater to the lowest common denominator in order to attain that success. However, a game like Braid was done by one man, wanting to get his vision out there. He can be a lot more likely to throw caution to the wind and say this is my vision, love it or leave it. In the end his game has one mouth to feed. How many does GTAV have? I am not saying that both games aren't important or fantastic, in fact I would choose Braid over GTAV any day. What I am saying is the success or failure of the game is more important to more people in GTAV, and therefore, they are more likely to cater to the masses, not the few people that have to turn the tv off when their wife walks in the room.
9. Kevin brought up racism in Happy Feet, um, it is Happy Feet. First of all, I doubt anyone intended racism. Second of all, it is Happy Feet! If there is racism in Happy Feet, I certainly didn't expect to see it so maybe it should be mentioned. But when you buy GTAV, you know you are going to get a LOT of bad behavior of all types from its characters, so why single out one type of bad behavior, what about drinking? drugs?, why not mention them, maybe a recovering alcoholic wants to play, can't we let him know? You go down a dangerous path when you start talking about the morals of the game. In the Happy Feet review, Kevin should have just stated that some words were spelled phonetically that probably shouldn't have been and left it at that, leaving racism off the table.
10. Do you REALLY think millions of people who hate seeing or are put off by seeing women in little outfits want to play GTAV? Really? I don't doubt there are millions of people that don't like near nude women, but I do doubt that is the same demographic looking to get their GTA on. As for you, you still gave Rockstar your $60, so they are happy no matter what you do when your wife is in the room.
11. If you were an animal rights activist, would you work at a cosmetics company that does animal testing. If you would, shame on you. But more to the point, Caro is obviously a feminist to some degree, but she takes her pay from a company promoting women as nothing more than sex objects. I am curious how she sleeps at night. It is a choice she and Van Ord and anyone else at GameSpot that cries about how women in games are depicted as sex objects etc, but gets paid from the ad money that does exactly that. How is that not the definition of double standard? I would love to know.
To end this post, I would just like to point out that there was nothing selective or out of context that was used in either my past post or this one, and no argument you have made proves otherwise. So you are welcome to play again, but prizes aren't handed out for empty arguments, no matter how well put. I do however like your icon, so there is that.
@pal_080 And you brought nothing to the table besides useless words. You are what is wrong with the comments section of any and all websites. The person that can only make useless statements but who is unable to articulate anything of worth. Sorry pal, but it's true.
@MattBassAce @whoamancool Matt, please read my somewhat lengthy posts above. I think it may give you a bit more insight into why some of us are complaining, and that we are not just horrible people looking for a reason to complain.
@MattBassAce @PumpkinBoogie Her personal life is most definitely hers, but that being said, she should check that personal life at the door when she goes to work. That includes her feminist views and agenda. Those views should not be allowed to color a supposedly objective review of the game.
@PumpkinBoogie Pumkin, please read my post above. I think if you do, it may lend some insight as to why some people are upset, not just about the review but about the direction of the websites reviews in general. Remember, reviews are supposed to be objective. If they stop being objective they stop having value to the reader. The longer we let it go on without saying anything, the worse it will get.
@ArataWata There are games that can (should?) be treated as art, but not all games fall into that category. Is The Hangover art? Is Transformers art? I would say not, but you can make a great case for movies like Citizen Kane or A Clockwork Orange as art. Why are games not the same? if you read my long but informative post above, I think you may have a change of heart.
@Sonic89pdc GameSpot used to the THE site for game news and reviews. But the days of Kasavin, Gerstmann etc, are long behind us. Some of us would rather fight to get the site we love back, rather than run to another site and watch GameSpot be reduced to one huge editorial masquerading as a site with journalistic integrity.
If what Kevin Van Ord says is true, and why shouldn’t it be since he is a Senior Editor at GameSpot, we are to believe that GameSpot views video games as an art, and as such can be reviewed on its artistic vision, morals or message. However, I put together a few points both refuting these assertions.
1.GameSpot, in its own review guidelines, mentions the word “art” only once, in the form of a medal given for artistic design, which in my humble opinion would have nothing to do with the “message” a game is trying to convey, but rather artistic graphical achievement. This is further proven by the following sentence quoted from these same guidelines: “But the medals aren't limited to facts about a game's audiovisual presentation.” Again, this DIRECTLY follows the mentioning of artistic design. To further that point, nowhere does it mention a moral code of any kind whether it be the games or the reviewers. Not only that, but please read the “Bottom Line” of their review policy: “We believe games are meant to be enjoyed, and our reviews seek to express what it is about a given game that is or isn't particularly enjoyable, entertaining, fun, amusing, interesting, memorable--any and all of these things, and more. Our philosophy is that if we succeed at reviewing each game on its own merits, against the standards of the point in time at which it was evaluated, then overall consistency of our ratings should naturally result. Ultimately, we believe that each of our reviews should be useful and engaging to you as a prospective player.” Where does a reviewers’ moral agenda fit into your “Bottom Line”? So I would say to Mr. Van Ord and the rest of the staff and management at GameSpot, if your policies have changed, update them to show them to the world, or follow them, but please stop breaking your own rules.
2.Not all games strive to put forth an artistic or moral message, just as not all movies strive to do so either. Borat cannot be put on the same level as Citizen Kane, nor should it. Beyond this comparison, we must also consider the fact that not all videogames are indie art house projects. Van Ord states that film critics do not just review costume design etc, but when a movie passes their desk that is intended to be a popcorn action flick or a raucous comedy, they do not judge it as if it is the English Patient 2. This does not hold true of your reviews, as you hold all games to some artistic vision that you have set for them. This brings me to point
3.While your guidelines state that you review a game on its own merits, this is again proven false by this review. GTAV does not strive to have a moral message. It strives to tell the story of gangsters and gang bangers and throw in a little potty humor while they are at it. While I am neither a gangster or gang banger, I would tend to doubt there is much room in that world for strong leading female characters. And getting back to films for a moment, can someone point out the strong female character in the Godfather or GoodFellas.
4.Torture is ok but misogyny isn’t. In Caro’s review for GTAV she has an entire paragraph devoted to a torture scene. However, the message from Caro at the end of that paragraph is that the game took leaps of logic with its characters, not that torture is bad or hard to watch. Yet the games misogyny is wrong and evil enough to be placed in the “Bad” section of the review, with torture decidedly missing. Heck if you look at GameSpot’s review of Hotline Miami, “gloriously violent” is a plus!
5.Kevin’s definition of objectivity is horse manure for lack of a better term. If your moral beliefs color a game to the point where it affects the score you should not be reviewing that game, period. Caro is the wrong person to review the game and whoever assigned it to her dropped the ball. It does not fit her moral code and should not be judged by someone that it was not intended for in the first place. GTAV has some juvenile humor in it, as does South Park. Many people are offended by South Park, but does that mean that say, IGN should have someone who is offended by their humor review the episodes for the site? Of course not, because there is no way that reviewer could be OBJECTIVE, they would be sitting there, angry, with a knot in their belly while they watched the show. This would be evidenced by their review, because it would be nigh impossible to remain objective. Does this remind us of anyone?
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