Aspires to be someone who gets people fapping.
When I first wrote down the title of this article, it was still late November 2018, and the Game of the Year winner at The Game Awards 2018 (TGA) had yet to be announced. Most players were still riding the high of “I can’t f***ing praise RDR2 enough.” It seemed a foregone conclusion that Red Dead Redemption 2 (hereafter RDR2) would take TGA’s Game of the Year—unless TGA wanted to prove once again that it was a joke of an award. But December arrived, and the honor actually went to the new God of War, released this spring. Clearly, the new God of War thoroughly deserved the award. Still, perhaps because the ceremony fell closer to the release of RDR2, which had been out for little more than a month, many people still felt sorry to see that Western world, brought to perfection, miss out. Yet if we take up the idea circulating online that TGA welcomes innovation in established series, we really do have to admit something: beside the new God of War’s reinvention, as drastic as cutting off one’s own hand, RDR2 looks more like the addition of incomparably exquisite carved balustrades and ornamentation to a palace already magnificent beyond compare. Of course it is more perfect than its predecessor; it is just that the tone for this perfection was set eight years ago.
Here, though, I want to go back to an earlier dispute. Around November, people were already posing a question in various gaming forums and online communities: which is the better game, Red Dead Redemption 2 or The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild (hereafter BOTW)? After a brief round of arguments among graphics-first players, platform loyalists, and assorted others, a consensus emerged among most people: these two games cannot be compared. Admittedly, in today’s fan communities devoted to literature and the arts, casually declaring one work better than another is often regarded as “flamebait” that disrupts community order. Rashly comparing outstanding works with large followings of their own is an especially unforgivable offense. This norm is understandable: such disputes often reach no conclusion and instead provoke and encourage personal attacks between rival camps.
But the question itself has not gone away. Perhaps we really cannot reach a reliable conclusion through these “flamebait” comparisons aimed at deciding which game is better; still, analyzing the question itself can teach us something more general. What do we mean when we confidently say that RDR2 and BOTW cannot be compared? Why do we think they cannot be compared? One explanation often heard in gaming forums and communities is that games of different genres cannot be compared, just as we should not compare watermelons and apples to decide which is the better fruit.
This response, however, seems to face two problems:
- a. Once we are sufficiently clear about what we want from a comparison, comparison seems possible;
- b. The distinctions between game “genres” are themselves full of ambiguity.
On point a, we can indeed offer reasoned analyses of which game is better in particular respects. BOTW’s 720p graphics, for example, are still stuck in the previous generation, while RDR2’s Western landscapes are extraordinarily magnificent at 1080p. RDR2 builds its open-world experience by “piling on” detail, while BOTW’s Hyrule is fresh and fun through and through. RDR2’s main story is moving, while BOTW’s story is barely better than none at all. RDR2’s combat feels somewhat mediocre, while BOTW has a very deep combat system… Comparisons in these various specific respects do allow us to arrive at statements that can be defended to some extent, such as “RDR2 has better graphics than BOTW.” More rigorously, we could also say, “RDR2’s graphics have a higher resolution than BOTW’s.” The same goes for other aspects.
In “Metacriticism of Animation I: Critical Statements as a Problem,” I tried to develop a naturalistic approach to animation criticism based on part–whole analysis. In fact, this approach can also be applied more broadly to criticism of literature and the arts. Following it, we can imagine dividing a game into components such as graphics, story, music, and gameplay. Each component can then be divided into subcomponents: graphics, for example, into frame rate, resolution, textures, lighting effects, and so on. Where possible, these subcomponents can be subdivided repeatedly. Such subdivision depends on context; its purpose is to keep our evaluative statements as free of ambiguity as possible. It does not mean that resolution and frame rate can actually be detached from a game’s graphics as evaluatively self-sufficient subcomponents. Viewed this way, the division into components and subcomponents should rest on consensus within the discussion, rather than on an a priori structure of the game itself.
The only question, then, is whether we can establish such a consensus in discussion. Given the actual state of online communities today, it goes without saying that seeking this consensus seems rather difficult. Even under ideal conditions for discussion, we would still disagree over the standards for evaluating subcomponents. Take graphics again: we can say that many subcomponents of RDR2’s graphics are superior to those of Octopath Traveler, but most people would not agree with the claim that “RDR2 has better graphics than Octopath Traveler.” In any case, simply summing up this difficulty as “games of different genres cannot be compared” is not only too sweeping; it also encourages a misconception: that games of different genres intrinsically possess their own particular dimensions of evaluation, and that these dimensions are incommensurable across genres. Yet if this view really were sound, we would have a hard time explaining the game industry’s shift to 3D that began in the 1990s.
Overall, agreement and disagreement over evaluative standards alike rest on consensus within a context, rather than on some predetermined intrinsic standard. Historical developments such as the shift to 3D may reveal trends that seem to have a certain “objectivity,” but those trends do not commit us to the existence of context-independent evaluative standards within games. Rather, at the level of cognitive science, they can only indirectly suggest an aesthetic commonality among human beings, and that commonality is purely descriptive, with no normative force.
In light of our discussion of point a, then, perhaps “games of different genres cannot be compared” needs to be worded more precisely: even games of different genres can be compared in specific respects. Or we could put it this way: because we lack a minimum degree of consensus, games of different genres cannot yet be compared.
Point b takes us deeper into certain metaphysical themes. In a sense, whatever justification the claim that “games of different genres cannot be compared” may have rests on the intuitive metaphysical thinking of everyday life.
In many texts, discussions of “types” involve the relationship between the general and the particular—a relationship debated throughout almost the entire history of metaphysics. Naturally, this short essay cannot give an in-depth account of the subject. I do think, however, that some discussion of essence can be brought to bear on game “genres” and evaluation. Although the various essentialist positions in contemporary metaphysics each face difficulties of their own, in everyday settings our discourse constantly invokes essence, consciously or otherwise. The connection between type and essence is a typical example. We often say things like “The essential feature of this kind of thing is X,” and even assume without thinking that we classify things on the basis of our knowledge of their “essential features.” Sometimes, even if we do not think a type must be defined on the basis of an essence that precedes classification, we still accept that we can identify certain essential features common to things of that type.
This way of thinking is understandable. We need certainty in everyday life, and the same is true of game genres and evaluation. Players expect to experience shooting from a first-person perspective in FPS games; developers expect their experience developing earlier FPS games to help them develop future games in the same genre; critics hope that traditional standards for evaluating FPS games will apply to another game in that genre. All these expectations require us to identify some degree of commonality among games bearing the same genre label. If games of the same genre share some relatively determinate features, however much variety they display on the surface, then this commonality can be called an essence. Everyday discourse needs essence, and so does the evaluation of games. A genre’s essence may not directly specify the standards for a “good game” within it, but it clearly rules out certain inappropriate evaluations. When evaluating the Civilization series, for example, the vast majority of players would reject a criticism such as “Civilization VI lacks a first-person combat system.”
But this is not the whole story. For works of literature and the arts, including games, genre and essence are usually far from clear, especially as games incorporate an ever-richer range of elements. For Chinese and Japanese players, typical games in the ACT (“action game”) category include titles in the Devil May Cry, Ninja Gaiden, and Bayonetta series; for European and American players, the Call of Duty and Battlefield series can readily compete for Best Action Game at TGA. This is only an ambiguity in usage. The more important problem is that genre definitions are fundamentally liable to become blurred, which often leads to endless attempts in gaming communities to clarify or dispute a particular game’s genre.
Take ACT again. Even if we force the following criteria into the definition of “action games,” the problem remains: “Ranged shooting must not be the main means of combat during play, and different button combinations must produce different combat effects.” Suppose a new entry in the Bayonetta series, “Bayonetta 3,” were to place extreme emphasis on story, with more than an hour of superb cutscenes added between one level and the next. Suppose, meanwhile, that a new entry in the Devil May Cry series, “Devil May Cry 6,” discarded the experience gained from developing earlier games and sought to make stealth the best way to complete the game. Both games could still fall under ACT, yet we would plainly use two radically different sets of standards to evaluate them. Unless we define game genres with such extreme precision as “At x minutes and x seconds after the game begins, the content presented should be xx,” genres will always tend to blur so long as developers have any ideas for innovation. But such an extremely precise definition is neither realistic nor necessary. Finally, there is the blurring of genres brought about by the ever-richer range of elements within games.
The problem of genre and essence thus comes into focus. Ideally, when we acknowledge a game genre’s essential features, those features can play certain normative roles in game criticism. But when genres themselves tend to blur, is there really an essence with normative force? Works of literature and the arts, including video games, are always seeking innovation. Developers can always add elements that are less than typical of a given genre. It is not entirely impossible that a new Civilization game might retain all its existing elements while adding a first-person combat system. So when we say that “games of different genres cannot be compared,” we are in fact presupposing a not entirely appropriate essentialist position. In many cases, an essence derived from shared features is merely a way of describing things. More precisely, a game genre’s essence is a description of the past. Future innovations and transformations cannot be judged wholly by the old standards, even though they cannot entirely escape the shadow of the past. Conversely, when we regard RDR2 and BOTW as games of different genres, their respective genres do not, for the purposes of game criticism, contain normative essences insulated from one another.
Yet even if genres are always tending to blur, we still intuitively find it difficult to regard two utterly different games in the same light. We think they are different and cannot be evaluated by the same set of standards. We should not demand RDR2’s visual standards of BOTW, nor need we demand BOTW’s rich and fun open world of RDR2. The greatest problem with doing so is that contemporary video games are the culmination of systems engineering: it is hard to know whether BOTW could still have reached its present heights had it adopted RDR2’s visual standards. What we can say with certainty is that, for Rockstar and Nintendo alike, the finished games now presented to players are the optimal choices within their respective circumstances of time and place.
But does this mean we must accept that “games of different genres cannot be compared”? Put another way, if we think games of different genres can be compared, how should we compare them? The greatest value of such “flamebait” lies beyond the blurred boundaries of genre. RDR2 has reached new heights in immersive storytelling, while BOTW has become a milestone for open worlds; the significance no longer lies entirely within the games themselves. Perhaps, then, we should begin attending to the grand questions. Does the appeal of virtual worlds ultimately lie in living through life’s joys and sorrows, its partings and reunions, or in breathing with the mountains on the vast, open earth? The future may hold more than one answer.
Editor’s note: The editor who proofread this piece hasn’t played, but now wants to.