At MAGfest I was lucky enough to be on several panels as part of the MAGES wing of the conference! You can see the panel I headed up about Game Critique and Reviews, here now on this video on YouTube! Joining me are Chris Totten, Luke Peterschmidt, and Bobby Schweizer.
It’s hard to see the slides (which are a bit text-heavy), but you can check them out on my OneDrive or on SlideShare.
To be honest, I’ve wanted to cover this topic in my blog for literally years. I’ve had an item sitting in my draft folder since August of 2012 asking “what is the value in game critique”? The problem was I never came to any real conclusion about it that worked well as an essay. So I boiled my feelings down into this panel talk instead and invited many to take part. There’s a lot of great questions, discussion, and diverse opinions. I know the panel videos are long (and yeah the concert vids on MAGFest may be way more interesting to most people) but I hope a few people will check it out and get something out of it!
The info in this panel is already out of date – as I was making the slides, Joystiq decided to stop using review scores, but now, just like that, Joystiq as we knew it has come to an end. Today, however, Eurogamer has announced they’re dropping review scores, so the debate continues. I’m in favor of this method, but curious what other people think!
If you want to see more about how I personally review a game, you can read my latest, too: Hyrule Warriors.
I’d like to thank MAGES for inviting me, and everyone who took part in this amazing discussion!
Leave a Reply