Videogames you love, videogames you hate thread

[Sol]

Well then if that's true then all the games I like suck and belong in the garbage, right?

Not at all! The last thing I was trying to do was say you aren't allowed to like the games you like. I'm just saying that personal experience and technical quality are different things.

It's like with sprites! You might see a set of sprites you really like even though their lineart is kind of off and the color choices could be better, and the sprites suffer all around as a result. But something about those sprites, whatever it is, you find really charming. And that's fine! But there are established techniques, conventions and rules that generally, when followed, can make the sprites better. That's what allows us to critique sprites and decide when they need to be improved and how they can be. Can these rules be broken? Yes, sometimes, and if someone is clever about it, the sprites are that much better for it. The same can be said for games!

When you base the quality of the game on specs alone, you're just as inaccurate as a person who bases their opinion solely on their enjoyment. A game could run a perfect physics engine and still not be fun. Does that make it a good game, because its programming has no flaws?

You need the combined, yes, opinions, of people with a developmental knowledge and people with an entertainment perspective, and just a touch of history, to determine if a game is good or not.

In direct response to Sol: Knowledge of development does not make any individual's stance on the quality of a game any more viable. It only makes their opinions on the quality of the techniques utilized more viable. These are different things.

I realize my post made it seem like opinions should completely removed from judgements of quality, so I'll fix that by saying that I'm not sure that they should be, altogether, nor would it be possible to do so. But knowledge of game design does in fact make your word more viable when it comes to games.

Designers do not just judge the techniques used to make a game, they judge how each aspect fits within the big picture, and how those aspects interact with each other and with the player.

Design is more than just the quality of the pieces used to put the product together, I agree. (I never said otherwise in fact) I also agree that it takes more than just designers to assure a game's quality. (Which is why you have playtesters) But to say that the end product can't be judged objectively by experts in the field any better than the average player is kind of ridiculous.

(sorry if I'm rambling, I am apparently terrible at structuring paragraphs. x:)

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Also Jetters I completely, completely agree that people shouldn't be made fun of for what they like to play, but making fun of you for liking a game is different than judging the game itself. (although people sometimes do both at once, unfortunately)