Ranking Games: Perception of Values
E3 is over and the process of gathering a mountain of data in the form of notes, briefing handouts, demo materials, and the actual games and creating order from the chaos is invariably the most difficult part of the process of covering these events.
When we are on site at the Expo and actually experiencing the games, there are two types of notes that we take -- the more or less official notes, which preserve what we are told and what we see, and the personal notes that preserve our impressions of the games while we are experiencing them. Often it is the latter that has the most value to us, especially when we are creating pieces like Top Ten lists.
The 2011 Electronic Entertainment Expo was the biggest event so far this year, and will likely be the biggest gaming event extent when we consider it purely from the value of new games and game reveals, with 153 games featured at the show, and another two dozen that were mentioned but not demonstrated there.
Due to the size of the show and the number of games, we have chosen to break them down by genre in addition to by the show for the Top Ten Lists -- and the first list that we created was The Top Ten Action-Adventure Games of E3 2011 which when it was posted to N4G (we often post our pieces there to help in providing links for other sites) it instantly drew criticism in the form of negative comments from two of the users on N4G.[size=16][b]majiebeast[/size][/b]
Horrible list is horrible rly uncharted 3 at 10. While Xcom a mediocre generic fps is number 1... and tintin adventures at 6 a bleeping movie game.
[size=16][b]zeal0us[/size] [/b]
10.Uncharted 3: Drake's Deception
9.Gears of War 3
8.BioShock Infinite
7.Assassin's Creed: Revelations
6.The Adventures of Tintin
5.Dead Island
4.The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim
3.Saints Row the Third
2.Hitman Absolution
1.XCOM
To save your time. I sense some rage will ensue.
You do not have to be the author of a piece to submit it -- in fact most of the people who submit pieces to N4G have no official connection to the sites whose pieces they submit -- the function of N4G is to provide a central source for news about games and gaming so that the operators of websites that serve that audience have access to news for linking on their site. It is an incredibly valuable and useful service.
The comments left by the pair may not seem important, and when their position as critic is evaluated, even less so, with most writers who find themselves seeing this sort of negative comment simply shrugging it off or outright ignoring it -- and them -- as their reaction.
The thing is, their reactions -- and comments -- are incredibly valuable in their own right, and useful as well, not for the substance of them as that is based only upon the fact that it is their opinion, and as neither is an expert on the subject, or an experienced games journalist (as far as we can determine) any value that their opinions have is purely subjective. No, the true value that those two negative posts have is that they provide a focal point that we can use to address an issue that is certainly far more valuable than their comments even taken together.
That focal point is the Ranking of Games, and their Perceived Value.
At the birth of home console gaming, Pong was a runaway hit, and is largely credited with spawning the entire home video game industry. Today few gamers would consider it an interesting or challenging game. Entertainment is where you find it...
Drive-By Game Ranking
It has often been pointed out that anyone can publish on the web, both as a measure of the empowerment that the World Wide Web has brought to the world, and as a means for expressing the value of information found there -- or more accurately the lack of value. It is true that anyone can publish on the web, and a lot of people choose to do so -- and the burden for determining the value of the information found online is squarely upon the reader.
In the gaming world, personal reputations and the perceived value of entire websites have been created by the simple process of offering an opinion. The more people that read -- and trust -- the person or site, the more valuable that opinion and information is. This is especially true for game reviews, previews, and valuations.
The important criteria in judging the value of information like that of a Top Ten List goes beyond the site or the individual, as its very basic element must begin with the answer to several basic questions, starting with the source of the information, and the reasoning behind it.
The Source of the information that was used to create the Top Ten List was our opinions, which were obtained through direct first-hand exposure to the games at the Expo. Rather than relating an opinion that is based upon the type of game -- which is what majiebeast does when he comments upon his valuation of the games based upon the fact that he believes that XCOM is "a mediocre generic fps" and "tintin adventures at 6 a bleeping movie game" because he assumes that knowing that information is valuable in assessing the entertainment and play value of the two games.
The comment left by zeal0us simply quotes our list, and then observes that "I sense some rage will ensue" as the meat to their opinion.
In practical terms these two comments amount to little more than drive-by game rankings made by a pair of users who have no experience with the games, and who were not present for the demo's. As far as we can tell their judgement is based exclusively on their presumption of the value and quality of the games.
Making Information Useful
A Top Ten List is at its most basic level the numerical qualification of the inherent value of a given list of objects or items. In the plainest terms, it offers an opinion as to where these objects stack up against each other.
The criteria that we used in ranking these games was a simple question of how much entertainment value they have. Not how long they are, or how much they cost; we did take into consideration whether they were part of an established series, and how popular the previous games were in that series if they were in fact part of a series. The question being settled was the entertainment value of these ten games -- which are all neatly pigeon-holed within the Action-Adventure Genre.
Having established the criteria for the question we were answering, the next step was to determine the data that we would use -- which in this case was a mixture of our own impressions of the demonstrations and, where applicable, our own hand's-on play time with the titles. In addition to that, we also included the opinions of the other attendees that we spoke with while visiting the lines to get the average view and impression of the show and the games.
It is critical for you to understand that those people are not all games journalists -- many of them were simply fans of the games or the series or video games in general. The vast majority of the people who attended E3 were not writers or editors -- games journalists were the small minority at this event -- but are drawn from a huge cross-section of the different elements that participate in the industry.
To our certain knowledge many of the individuals that we talked to about the games are employed in the retail side of the street -- clerks in the actual stores that sell the games to the gaming public, and others worked at game studios, publishers, and as PR's.
What we were seeking was their personal opinion of the games, and that is what we got. To flesh that out we would ask why they felt that way, and then evaluate their answers and compare them to our own. It may be an unscientific method, but it is effective, and by combining all of that information, we formed the conclusions that caused us to rank the games the way that we did.
The important thing to remember here is that we are evaluating the Top Ten Games in the Action Adventure genre for their entertainment value. Another way you could choose to view that is that we were ranking how happy the games might make you, or how interesting you might find them. How unique their overall impact would be, which could include any number of different criteria, from story to game play.
The Choices Behind the Choices
Our Top Ten List for the Action-Adventure Games came down to the following ten games in these positions, and they arrived where they did for some very good reasons -- not the least of which includes the value of the games as it is effected by their presence as a series offering.
10.Uncharted 3: Drake's Deception
9.Gears of War 3
8.BioShock Infinite
7.Assassin's Creed: Revelations
6.The Adventures of Tintin
5.Dead Island
4.The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim
3.Saints Row the Third
2.Hitman Absolution
1.XCOM
Of the top five games in our list, the first four are actually part of a series or as is the case with XCOM, are the re-imagining of an old series and not necessarily the next offering in an active series. The bottom five include four that are part of a series, and one -- Tintin -- that is a new IP.
How they stack up is not an accident or a coincidence, and directly relates to their entertainment value, especially if you have played any of the previous titles in their respective series.
The biggest issue that the two users who commented on N4G had -- and most of the people who emailed us about the list have -- is seeing what they consider a major title (Uncharted 3: Drake's Deception) outranked and outclassed by what they consider to be an unknown title (XCOM).
The important bit here is just that -- and the reason for their concern is largely the reason why XCOM scored so much higher than Uncharted 3.
The Thing About XCOM
If you were an active gamer in the 1990's chances are good that you played at least one of the XCOM titles -- and as those games still have an active cult following today, it is possible that you have played some of them within the past five years.
This new XCOM is intended to be a reboot of the series by its developer, and during the demo it was revealed that some of the people who worked on the game are actually members of that fan base that gave the original series its cult following. In spite of that, they did not allow
The first game in the original series was the most popular and had the biggest commercial success -- and it is often voted as a best video game of all time -- having twice attained the honor of #1 on IGN's Top 25 PC Games of All Time (2007 and 2009), as well as #2 Best Video Games Since 1992 by Pelit (2007), #3 & #11 Top 50 Games of All Time by PC Gamer (2001 and 2010 respectively). It scored #3 in the Best Games of All Time by Computer Gaming World (2001).
Because of the incredible success of the first game and the series, it has been used as the inspiration for a number of other games, including UFO: Aftermath (2003), UFO: Aftershock (2005), UFO: Afterlight (2007), Rebelstar: Tactical Command (2005), UFO: Extraterrestrials (2007), UFO: Alien Invasion , and Xenonauts , which is currently in development.
The official titles that are part of the series include UFO: Enemy Unknown (1994), X-COM: Terror from the Deep (1995), X-COM: Apocalypse (1997), X-COM: Interceptor (1998), and X-COM: Enforcer (2001), and the game has been cited by a number of sci-fi authors as partial inspiration for books, movie and TV scripts, and at least one off-Broadway play. It was, in other words, a very influential game that had significant impact on the gaming community.
None of that is why it made Number 1 on our list.
Instead of leveraging the established popularity of the games -- which would have been the easy way to go -- the team at developer 2K Marin chose instead to carve out a new path, and while they necessarily needed to use the stories from the original series and the related canon, they felt that there was no reason why they had to force the game play to conform to it.
The result is a cerebral shooter that rewards thinking outside the box and still retains the classic elements that helped to generate the buzz and popularity that gave the originals their cred. The mechanisms used in the game are unique to it, but more important than that, they are fun.
In evaluating the game, it occurred to us that the demo and reveal of the game at the 2010 E3 was a mistake, because the game clearly was not ready. In fact the differences in the game that we saw last week and the game that they showed at last year's E3 are so marked and large that it may as well be considered a different game!
The impressions that were formed from the 2010 reveal was of a game that played out like the X-Files, having the feel of a Police Procedural to it, whereas the game we saw last week is a well-balanced Action-Adventure shooter with elements of RPG and group strategy to it. There is a new risk-vs-reward system in place and the focus is no longer so much the detective game that it appeared to be a year ago.
This and That and the Other Thing
Uncharted Three: Drake's Deception is going to be a great game. It will be fun, it will make series fans happy, and it will be one of the more popular PS3 exclusives. Gears 3 will be popular, as well Assassin's Creed Revelations and Skyrim -- but they will all still be continuations with derivative elements and, even though they will be exactly what gamers are expecting them to be, they will still be exactly what gamers are expecting them to be -- which is the whole point behind where they placed.
BioShock Infinite is a prequel, and it is just different enough to make it a unique game that happens to have some familiar elements. Hitman Absolution is an entirely different experience for series fans, who will suddenly find themselves playing not from a position of power but from a position of weakness, and it has the promise of being one of the best games in the series, and a real contender for Game of the Year.
Both Dead Island and Tintin are packed with potential -- but for different reasons. Tintin is a game based off of a movie, and ordinarily that would be the kiss of death, as very few movie games ever get the type of development or the treatment that they need and deserve in order to stand on their own and be judged with Independence from the film upon which they are based. Fortunately for Tintin it is an IP and story that originates from a very well established and loved comic series, and if the rest of the game is anything like the parts we saw in the demo, it has an excellent chance to throw off the curse of the movie game and really make something of itself.
The real gem of the bunch though is Saints Row the Third -- because the studio made a bold decision to abandon the path of the previous two games and stop trying to compete with games like the GTA series. Instead, they have gone in another direction, making an over-the-top gangster romp that is at once both serious and hilarious, and is certain to the the source of a million funny YouTube videos in the next few years, because it has that potential.
They pulled out all of the stops, they gave it as much leeway as they could, to the point where the game laughs at itself, and that is always a good thing. When you can play naked wearing a bobble-head mask and flying a fighter jet while still improving your characters reputation as a gangster you are clearly playing a special game.
Entertainment is where you find it, and when we ranked these ten games, that was where we found it. The important thing is this: regardless of where they placed in this Top Ten List, all of the games on the list are worth playing, worth owning, and very likely never to serve as a source of regret from the purchase of them.
We took a look at them as saw that they were good -- it is the question of how good they were and how one relates to the other that is the source of contention over the list. We can live with that -- and we stand by the list.
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