By far the most successful review I have written to date on Indie Haven was something I actively avoided labeling as a review. I went out of my way when writing To the Moon: A Story of Women and Aspergers to ensure it was not formally a review in the way we usually handle them. It was not labelled a review. It did not have a score at the end or a box breaking down the pros and cons of the experience as a whole. It unashamedly examined my deeply subjective personal perspective on one aspect of an interactive narrative, dug into my personal feelings on experiencing the media and acted as an academic critique for players who had already experienced the product than a buyers guide style review.

Regardless of this, to this day I still get semi-regular emails from people thanking me for writing that “review” of the game. It has been read more than any other piece of critique I have done for the site, it has had the longest tail with interaction, engagement and relevancy. It’s my most successful review, and I feel like that says a lot.

So, should a review be academic critique or a buyers guide?

To hugely oversimplify my discussion, the core argument at stake here is about where reviews should sit within the scale of academic critique to buyers guide. For the purposes of this simplified discussion we are going to treat academic critique as a review of a piece of art that has been experienced, and a buyers guide as a value judgement on a product someone has not yet experienced.

I wrote about To The Moon seeking to create an academic critique, a view of the artistic value of an aspect of a work free from the requirement to handle the value proposition angle inherent in a standard review. I felt like having to break down the gameplay, the graphics, the length and pacing of the experience would detract from what was, for me, the core of why the experience is such a valuable one. If I had written a buyers guide style review of To The Moon it would probably not have mentioned this personal aspect of the experience at all for fear of spoilers, or would only have been able to praise it within the context of critiquing aspects that need more negativity applied to them.

Here’s the thing though, this personal opinion, waxing lyrical about why I found an aspect so important, has seemingly sold more people on the value of the experience than any of my standard reviews. Maybe subjective personal perspective on a work has an impact on it’s value to a potential consumer? Who knew?

This feature is written a little in jest, but I think there is a serious discussion to be had in terms of why there seems to be such a fight from some readers at the moment to keep subjectivity out of traditional-style reviews. Why could I not spent three-quarters of a review discussing the single aspect that made it valuable to me? I may be a little presumptuous here, but I suspect a lot of the call of objectivity in games critique and academic review currently is actually a lot more to do with removing the experiences of people who are not straight, white and cisgender men — or at least is about silencing opinions that don’t outwardly favor that demographic.

If straight, white and cisgender men are the entire perceived vocal audience of a product, their subjective perspective becomes the standard: the objective viewpoint. This is the core of the issue, we have an audience for game critique who views SWCM as the default buyer and their perspective as the one relevant to buyers. Any other perspective belongs in an un-scored piece of academic critique, as it’s about a perspective of it as an artistic product outside that of what our most vocal audience largely perceives to be the buyer’s perspective.

If we start to look at women with Aspergers for example as people who might read a review, suddenly the importance of personal perspective becomes more apparent. For those with Aspergers, a review that discusses the academic perspective of the portrayal of characters with Aspergers poses a huge value to them. That is going to be a big part of the value of the game and to them, an important part of assessing the value of To The Moon as a product.

So basically, I think I’m trying to get to this point: academic critique and buyers guide reviews can co exist. Critique of representation in media and cultural context as art can be relevant to reviews as buyer guides. Let’s discuss who the review is for more often and critique aspects of media as they matter to us.

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