So maybe check out Extra Credits and watch their episodes on Aesthetics of Play and Depth vs Complexity.

Note: A good story doesn’t mean a good Fantasy. You can be an incredible ordinary character but the game can still deliver a good drama.

I’m also a little shocked at Fish’s idea that CoD games don’t involve place or fantasy. These are games that are referred to, with a wink, as “click on people’s heads,” but I think that formulation of the CHALLENGE of these games, and how it so clearly doesn’t describe the sometimes joyful experience of play, makes it clear that other elements are essential to these games. Playing CoD, even multiplayer CoD, isn’t just about clicking on people’s heads, it’s about pretending to be a (rather theatrical) soldier. Just like when I was a kid, playing war (or cowboys, or cops and robbers). If you distill multiplayer shooters to just their challenge, you’re missing a lot of the appeal. There’s a reason that their developers spend so much time and money on art design!

1. To be fair, ‘great graphics’ can be a major component of Feel and Place. They’re a convenient rhetorical target, but…they do actually matter.

2. To be fair, last I heard Ebert had made himself a nonissue by saying (summarised) ‘I was wrong to dis games without any knowledge of the medium. The idea of playing games so I could know what I’m talking about fills me with irrational ennui and disgust. Therefore I’m sorry and will shut up about games.’

I agree that the current state of game reviewers don’t do enough to explain why a game is good. In fact with a lot of major sites its frustrating because when they focus on those metrics, they tend to review games as great that aren’t really that great, and miss some gems. How often have we seen the “great graphics” review? This method is light years better than what we currently see at game review sites.

It also even gives a good method of looking at games as works of art. And interactive art they can be, that raise questions or can strike emotions as good as movies. But at the same time I can’t help but to this this is still just a better metrics method and there still is something missing. Ben Croshaw speaks of games having souls. I agree that there is something unquantifiable by metrics, but moments, and how a vision comes together.

Whether you like Ebert or not, if you look at his approach to reviewing movies, there’s not necessairily a rating of metrics but a consummation of all his experiences at the movies. Games are the same in many ways, though Ebert doesn’t seem to agree (probably because he is scared of the demise of movies), but they differ in that their interactive nature they need souls to really come alive. That’s why I’m more in favor of the contrarian approach to looking at games as I think it is the future of reviews, though the traditional approach though I think it will still have a place. Again excellent article.

“What you’re being asked to do” isn’t the same as what you end up doing, or what happens to you, or where you do it.

I might have phrased it too vaguely in an attempt to avoid repeating the word challenge: really it’s “How much you enjoy the challenge of what you’re being asked to do.”

other than that, I´m not sure I fully understand number 1 (challenge).

“How much you enjoy tackling what you’re being asked to do.”

surely that´s just another way of saying “are you having fun?” which would be too general a category…