[arg_discuss] Re: Communities and resources

[Michael Monello]

On Apr 8, 2006, at 10:19 PM, adam wrote:
> How is that a review, or a preview?
>
> Aren't a pre-game teaser (produced by the game owner) and a review  
> (produced by an independent 3rd party) fundamentally different?

Pre-game teaser is like a movie trailer, right? Try to give the  
audience a flavor of what's to come. Same thing with a feature story,  
like putting Superman on the cover of this week's EW -- there's no  
review, no analysis of the movie, but a story about what one could  
expect to see if you buy a ticket.


> I should have been clearer, but I was looking at it from the non-PM  
> perspective, thinking about how valuable a review will be to a  
> player, how relevant, and how necessary. Mainstream games care  
> about reviews because the reviews exist because the players need  
> them. If the players dont need them, they wont pay much attention  
> to them, causing them to have little value to the game developers  
> (as you say yourself - we're all going after the eyeballs; if  
> reviews aren't read much, we're not that interested (commercially),  
> although we still care artistically).

So a feature story like this:

http://www.mtv.com/news/articles/1528282/20060410/index.jhtml? 
headlines=true

has no value to you?

;)


> The experience, yes.
>
> But .. the film itself?

How can you separate the two? I love some of the worst music ever  
made just because they mean something to me because of the  
environment I heard them in, or the age I was when I heard the song   
-- first date with my wife, for example.

And I have a friend who insists Annie Hall is the worst movie ever  
made because it beat out Star Wars for an academy award. I guess I'm  
saying that movies and music and other forms of media don't live in a  
vaccum.

> Could [insert favourite movie here] become a "bad" movie if you saw  
> it in bad circumstances, or does the art itself transcend the  
> environment in which you view it?

Well, I saw it all the time and I've screened well over 100 movies  
for critics and seen the responses vary according to environment.

I realize what you are going for here and while I generally agree I  
don't think there is that wide a gulf between them either.

>
> How much of that would you be comfortable revealing in the text of  
> a review?

Well, I am making a case for feature stories, not reviews up front  
since I think the reason you can't get a review is because you can't  
mount the entire experience for critics before going public like you  
can with movies or traditional videogames.

I would be fine revealing almost anything that wasn't a major spoiler  
for the narrative in the context of a feature story.

Best,

Mike
__________
haxan | films | http://www.haxan.com