Personal biases when judging the quality of a game

Rui

Rui

Karamatsu Boy
Administrator
If we're coming out here, I completed Portal 1 and didn't like it enough to buy the sequel. From what I could tell that was the right decision as the wisecracking male actor in it really annoyed me, when I heard it being played by others.

The original game bothered me because I suck at first person action and sometimes I could easily see the solution but be unable to actually finish the puzzle for some time due to the design. At one point I became so angry at repeatedly failing a jump with an obvious solution that I had to stop playing for a few hours to calm down (I'm not an angry person normally!). I had hoped that it would be more about pure puzzling, not reflexes and timing jumps. I also fluked through some of the puzzles unintentionally due to dodgy physics, which ruined them. Nice idea, shame the implementation didn't meet my expectations.

R
 
Rui said:
If we're coming out here, I completed Portal 1 and didn't like it enough to buy the sequel. From what I could tell that was the right decision as the wisecracking male actor in it really annoyed me, when I heard it being played by others.

The original game bothered me because I suck at first person action and sometimes I could easily see the solution but be unable to actually finish the puzzle for some time due to the design. At one point I became so angry at repeatedly failing a jump with an obvious solution that I had to stop playing for a few hours to calm down (I'm not an angry person normally!). I had hoped that it would be more about pure puzzling, not reflexes and timing jumps. I also fluked through some of the puzzles unintentionally due to dodgy physics, which ruined them. Nice idea, shame the implementation didn't meet my expectations.

R
Click to expand...
I suck at puzzles and I thought Portal relatively okay. You'd tear your hair out at some of the puzzles in Portal 2 though.
 
Rui said:
If we're coming out here, I completed Portal 1 and didn't like it enough to buy the sequel.
Click to expand...
Literal disbelief, I can't even begin to...

The original game bothered me because I suck
Click to expand...
Ah, as long as you realize this. :p

fwiw, I would place Portal on that list of "games where you are wrong if you don't rate them highly". It's fine if you don't personally get on with it (obviously), but it has that rare level of objective quality.
 
ilmaestro said:
The original game bothered me because I suck
Click to expand...
Ah, as long as you realize this. :p

fwiw, I would place Portal on that list of "games where you are wrong if you don't rate them highly". It's fine if you don't personally get on with it (obviously), but it has that rare level of objective quality.
Click to expand...

People who suck deserve good games too ;_;

I liked the idea of it very much (GladOS was a darling) but it had been sold as a clever puzzler, and those aspects were completely overshadowed by the design problems I had. My friends who are less rubbish enjoyed it very much, but for a game to get the level of praise Portal has received I'd have expected more.

I'd have been outright disappointed if I'd bought it standalone, but I picked up the Orange Box for TF2 originally in the first place, so as a freebie bonus game it wasn't as depressing as it could have been. I suck at TF2 as well but never in the same anger-inducing way.

R
 
Hmm, on one hand I agree (everyone deserves good games), on the other hand those don't have to be the same games. Chess is not a worse game because thickos can't play it well, for example, nor is Portal any worse for your below-average dexterity. Poker is one of the deepest and most robust games you'll find, but a hideous game when played by people with little aptitude for it.

On the other hand you have games like Uncharted and God of War, or Snakes and Ladders, which have no depth past their first blush, but are great in their inclusivity.

It would be no more fair for me to find a puzzle game you do like and criticize it for its lack of dextrous requirements. "For all the praise Scrabble gets, it sure is easy to put those tiles down on the board".
 
I would have found it less frustrating if I was getting stuck due to the actual puzzling, rather than the annoying jump windows of opportunity. I think that's where it differs from the chess example for me: chess is sold as a strategy game and a person who can't handle that would hopefully know to outright avoid it (oh, this ties into my Twilight moan the other day :D), whereas Portal is most definitely praised as a puzzle game, when the action elements of it are actually more important. I've never lost a game of chess due to being too incompetent to physically move the pieces right (thankfully). The interface got in the way of the gaming experience I wanted to have.

If they tightened up the physics and rereleased it as a less annoying design I'd have probably had a better time with it. I shouldn't be unintentionally fluking through entire levels of a puzzle game due to clipping the scenery at high speed; that's not what I expect from a game sold with emphasis on thinking through solutions.

R
 
You see, to me, that just reads as "went into game with certain expectations, turns out I was wrong". There are way too many uses of the word "I" in your argument for it to even remotely read as a criticism of the game itself, rather than your specific experience of it (which we have already established that no sane person would argue with you about - you clearly didn't personally like it).

You would only have to have watched or read the briefest of preview coverage to see that Portal wasn't a pure-thought puzzle game, imo. The very nature of video games is that they can offer that extra level of dextrous challenge and interaction - I'm not even sure why you would turn to them to provide the kind of experience that it sounds like you were looking for.

I also don't see the significance behind the differentiation of "physical incompetence" when playing Portal and "mental incompetence" when playing Chess. The "interface" of Chess is inherently the ruleset which governs how the pieces move and therefore whether your moves are good or bad in the context of the game. This is an impenetrable barrier to a lot of people.
 
I thought this was a discussion about Steam sales? I'm one of those pre-order Portal types but I can easily see why someone wouldn't be a fan.

OT/ I'm also waiting on the Christmas Deals for the extra crazy prices! Although I haven't even got threw all the games I bought during last year's sales. :S
 
ilmaestro said:
fwiw, I would place Portal on that list of "games where you are wrong if you don't rate them highly". It's fine if you don't personally get on with it (obviously), but it has that rare level of objective quality.
Click to expand...
As much as I like Portal, I feel I need to point out that there is no such thing as objective quality because you cannot eliminate personal preference and bias.
 
Of course you can, at least to the extent that you need, with intellectual and rational analysis. It is perfectly possible to be aware that you are enjoying a movie that isn't actually "good", for example, because you can be aware of your own biases.

But I agree with Voddas, this is going further off topic than I think anyone intended, so I apologize.

The GotY edition of Oblivion is Steam's Daily Deal today, for anyone who hadn't played it before but has maybe had their interest piqued by Skyrim.
 
ilmaestro said:
Of course you can, at least to the extent that you need, with intellectual and rational analysis. It is perfectly possible to be aware that you are enjoying a movie that isn't actually "good", for example, because you can be aware of your own biases.
Click to expand...
Being aware of your own biases does not mean you have eliminated them. That is simply accepting that they exist. Also, "Intellectual and rational analysis" sounds like a very vague method of determining if something is good or bad. You cannot prove that your way is more intellectual or rational than another method when you have your own interpretations of intellectual and rational thought.
 
I am upset that you require someone else to invent a clear measurement of something before you will accept it.

Or, what a sad world we would live in where someone can be good at running because we have clocks, but can't be good at painting because you can't paint by numbers.

Wait...
 
You can say someone is good at running since time is tangible because it can be measured and is a simple way of measuring. That is very different from talking about why a game is good or bad when you have to take into account the experiences of those that observe it, and that is not something you cannot measure.

It is impossible to prove that you have eliminated the human element, no matter how much you insist you can.
 
I am not suggesting you can prove it infallibly to every person or measure it, it is an odd suggestion that you need measurable proof to believe that something exists. That is a very limited way of thinking imo.
 
I don't think that's what Maxon is suggesting. It's not whether a definition exists, it's that appraising something objectively requires a definition. We can't create an objective definition of what makes a good game, film, piece of music or art because what people enjoy about these things is the emotional response they have to them, which is subjective. It would be like creating an objective definition of beauty, which we all know is in the eye of the beholder.
 
ayase said:
I don't think that's what Maxon is suggesting. It's not whether a definition exists, it's that appraising something objectively requires a definition. We can't create an objective definition of what makes a good game, film, piece of music or art because what people enjoy about these things is the emotional response they have to them, which is subjective. It would be like creating an objective definition of beauty, which we all know is in the eye of the beholder.
Click to expand...
Thanks for summing it up. That's basically what I'm saying (though I'm not good at expressing myself).
 
Then that is a subtly but crucially different argument to the one that I am putting forward - you are saying no one can tell for sure if something in particular has "objective quality"? I am saying that I believe some things do, and am not concerned with the current limits of human "definitions". :)

Or to reply to ayase's post directly...

ayase said:
which we all know
Click to expand...
I do not consider us as a species to "know" something just because it is the current common opinion, and is nicely wrapped up in a catchy saying.
 
Thing is, that isn't just common opinion and catchy sayings. I can prove for a fact that people have different subjective opinions of art by pointing at a Damien Hirst and saying "What do you think of that?" One might say "Brilliant!" while another says "Crap!" There is no way to prove either of them wrong without creating an objective definition of what constitutes art which can then be used to prove one of those opinions wrong. You might not be concerned with definitions, but that's what objectivity requires. Objectively, something is either true or it isn't. Objectively, two people can't hold different opinions and both be right. And even if we were to find that there are fundamental truths of everything, wouldn't it mean that ultimately, everyone should have the same opinions about everything? And if they don't accept the truth, then are they liars or insane? People who liked the work of certain artists would be thought of like flat-earthers.

(of course, if your argument rests more on the fact that you personally believe some things have objective quality then just disregard everything above, because I wear myself out arguing with people's personal beliefs...)
 
You can demonstrate that people have different subjective opinions, you can not demonstrate that they are of equal worth and validity. I am saying that they aren't, based on thousands of years of evidence that some humans excel more than others in pretty much every skill and discipline ever devised. Whereas, to me, you are essentially saying that they are "because we don't know 100% for sure whether they are or not so let's not be too committal until someone else invents a measuring device for me".

So yes, it is my personal belief, but not to any greater or lesser extent than it is my "personal belief" that people exist and have some sort of capacity for learning.

Reasons for opinion that rails against what is objectively good or bad would be/remain many and varied, subtle results of psychological and environmental influences resulting in the kind of personal biases that we already agreed, quite obviously, exist. The main issue that Rui brought up with Portal is a perfect example.
 
Back
Top