Fifty Days of UFO 50: Day 26
One of the things I was expecting to want to write about once I'd tried out all the UFO 50 games was another big rundown where I stack rank them all based on personal preference, or some sort of "Top Picks So Far" roundup to mark the blogging project's halfway point...
Instead, I find myself mentally and physically exhausted at the prospect.
Over the last month, I've gotten just a taste of what it must feel like to review video games for a living. Sure, I've written Steam reviews before; who among us hasn't? Writing about how your play "shook out" to a deadline, though; totally strange and different beast. I wonder how the public's view toward reviews and release coverage would change if most gamers got a taste of what it's like to do a little stint in the content mines.
I was at least peripherally aware of how covering games alters your relationship with what is ostensibly an entertainment product, because I've been paying attention when games journalists talk about their experiences on podcasts and such. My mistake was assuming development experience would inoculate me against some of these feelings of being burned out on bouncing between playing a thing and writing about it. Making games does fundamentally alter your relationship to them, in both broad and specific ways, but thanks to this project I've discovered a sort of "third superposition" of lacking the strength to engage with a video game.
Taking notes and screenshots during play disrupts the intended experience and prevents immersion. Getting the experience down in writing and then dipping back into play to confirm things during editing is superficially similar to playtesting, but with none of the "next steps" of being able to pour those ideas and experiences back into the game. You're just scratching your perspective onto the relative surface of the interactive object; the outermost interpretive layer of the work.
Well, that rapidly veered into "making a game is much more interesting than critiquing one" territory!
My point is, we fundamentally design these things to be played, not to be "reviewed." The intended experience definitely isn't one of being chained to a computer for a month, trying to witness as large a percentage of the content as possible without any external guides to give yourself editing time before the release embargo. And indeed, the relative value and social impact of game reviews does seem to have fallen off a cliff over time. Many players would rather watch someone else play a game for a little bit, see if it looks fun, and then pick it up or not based on the content of a live stream or VoD. Anecdotally, it seems like gamers are turning to reviews and Metacritic scores seeking validation of held opinions, rather than purchasing advice.
That said, this project absolutely does not represent anything more valid or interesting than a review might. I think a review would, no matter how long or multifaceted, serve as an entry point for those that haven't played the game yet. Fifty Days of UFO 50 probably isn't even readable unless you also happen to be ensnared in the unique process of navigating this one-of-a-kind thing.
Before getting back on this particular blogging horse, I'm going to have to think about how the most interesting pieces of journalism about a game are inevitably going to be published in the weeks and months and years AFTER its release; when people have had time to actually digest the art.
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