作者：Ben Serviss

我们所看过的每一篇书评都遗漏了什么？最后的数值。看着书籍，这一拥有数千年历史的艺术媒介在上个世纪中全力抵抗着已经侵入电影，食品，游戏等领域的数值分类难道不是件有趣的事吗？

尽管在20世纪20年代末，星级系统才开始得到了广泛普及，即提供了快速方法去总结冗长的电影评论，但是专业的游戏评论者们却早已开始使用这一方法，特别是以计分形式表现出来。但是当我们深入研究这些评分系统在互动游戏中的使用时便会发现，它们并不是非常融合。

让我们先说说电影。因为电影是线性的，并且投入的时间也都差不多，所以其标准似乎都较合理，而问题便会变成“一部90至120分钟的电影是否与其它90至120分钟的电影一样优秀？”因为页面的范围和完成阅读的时间限制，书籍中总是会遗漏这点，特别是当人们是以不同速度进行阅读时。现在，你拥有关于媒体消耗的变量（并非瞄准电影），即进一步复杂化了电影评论所提供的简单比较。像这种分配主观评分的评论是基于统一的体验。

当你着眼于食物评价，特别是关于餐馆的评价时，所有的一切将变得更加困惑。比起单纯专注于进食体验，你还需要评价尝试所有食物的体验，以及餐馆的环境，摆设，布局，清洁度，服务员的态度，厨师的水平等等。

餐馆评价通常可被归结为一个纯粹的数值或者星级评价，但是从电影和书籍的线性体验转向环境和食物质量的结合会出现显著的差异性。

然后转向游戏。

menu-comparison（from gamasutra）

（左图：纽约Porsena餐厅的菜单。右图：《光晕4》的菜单。）

当你第一次来到某间餐馆时，你会先看到什么？当你第一次开始玩一款游戏时，你会先看到什么？没错，那就是菜单。这是首个能体现游戏与餐馆（而非其它传统线性媒体）之间共同点的第一个元素。

在餐馆中，你会先阅读菜单而做出选择——决定吃什么将影响着你的整体用餐体验。而在游戏中，菜单屏幕则呈现出你在当时所寻找的所有类型的体验（当然这是取决于不同游戏）——单人玩家故事，多人玩家体验，挑战模式，合作模式等等。

尽管该选择在游戏中并非永久的，但是都需要玩家做出相同的最初输入。一旦你进入游戏中，你所采取的每个行动从本质上来看便是所有游戏内部选择的更小的菜单选择。通过做出每个决定，独特的游戏体验将能反映出玩家在特定时期的心态以及设计师所精心设计的选择。

就像在《光晕4》中，当你决定奔跑，狙击或向敌人投射手榴弹时，游戏将呈现出你所决定的体验（游戏邦注：如白刃战/远程枪击/躲避式军事演习）以及相应的模拟体验。因为你做出了这么多选择并定制了属于自己的特殊体验，所以它们的重要性便得到了均衡的稀释，从而创造出一种持续的控制杆与长久的沉浸感。

而将其与餐馆评价做比较时会发现，虽然我们在餐馆中所面临的选择较少，但却能够更深刻地影响着乐趣体验。参与者将受到更多代理的引导（就像沙盒游戏），并以此取代了专业配备好的餐点所带来的主导式体验（如基于故事的线性游戏）。

着眼于这些线性和互动媒体，我们可以将其区别总结为：

在电影，文学和线性记录媒体中，每一次你都会拥有相同的体验。

在游戏，进食和互动体验中，参与者都会面对相关代理，尽管他们在每次参与时也有可能获得相同的体验，但是媒体的本质却并不鼓励这一点。

这是前人遗留下来的评价系统的局限性。如果游戏体验是基于代理去决定最终结果，那么基于评论者去量化其特定体验将问题重重。

相反地，将评论者的特殊体验作为所有可能体验的指标将为游戏创造出更加合理的方法。通过各种实验去寻找更好的表达方式，就像《Game Buyer》杂志的租赁或购买排名，而Kotaku的排名系统则最接近这种实践，即提出了“你是否应该玩这款游戏？是/不是？”的简单问题，并罗列出了一些原因去支持判断。

也许这不一定是最完美的系统。但是在面对互动体验的复杂性时，越简单的方法可能会越有效。

（本文为游戏邦/gamerboom.com编译，拒绝任何不保留版权的转载，如需转载请联系：游戏邦）

The Problem with Game Reviews (And Why Games Are Like Restaurants)

by Ben Serviss

What’s the one thing missing from every book review that’s ever been written? The number at the end. Isn’t it interesting how books, an artistic medium thousands of years old, has resisted the kind of numerical classification that has invaded film, food, games, and even prospective romantic partners within the last century?

While the widely used star system may have been popularized in the late 1920s to offer a quick way to summarize lengthy film reviews, its ubiquity in film has long since been adopted by professional game reviewers, most often in the form of numerical scores.Yet the more you look at the usage of these grading systems for the unique medium of interactive games, the stranger the fit appears.

Start with film. Since films are linear and take approximately the same amount of time to complete, the criteria seems reasonable, with the question coming down to “Is this film that is roughly 90-120 minutes as good as this other film, which is also roughly 90-120 minutes?” Books arguably escape this rationale due to the wide range in pages and time needed to finish reading, especially since people read at different speeds. Now you have a variable in how the media is consumed that isn’t present for film, which complicates the simple comparison afforded by film reviews. Variables like this complicate assigning a subjective score based on a uniform experience.

It gets more confusing when you look at food reviews, specifically restaurants. Now, instead of looking purely at the experience of eating, you’re rating the entire experience of all of the things you could possibly eat, as well as the restaurant’s ambience, furnishings, layout, cleanliness, friendliness of the waitstaff, skill of the kitchen staff that night, etc.

Restaurant reviews still often boil down to a blunt number or star ranking, but the shift from the direct linear experience of film and books to the ‘big picture’ composition of the atmosphere and the food quality is a significant difference.

Then you have games.

Left: The menu for Porsena in New York. Right: The menu for Halo 4.

When you are first seated at a restaurant, what do you see? When you first start up a game, what do you see? That’s right, the menu. Far from linguistic serendipity, this is the first indication that games have more in common with restaurants than they do with traditional linear media.

In a restaurant, you study the menu in preparation for your few key choices – the meal decisions that will drive your experience. In a game, the menu screen is a launchpad for whatever type of experience you’re looking for at the moment (depending on the game, of course) – single-player story, multiplayer, challenge mode, coop, etc.

While this choice is much less permanent in games, both require the same initial input used to begin. It goes deeper – once you’re in the game, every action you take is essentially another, smaller, menu choice of all of the in-game options available to you. With every decision, a unique experience unfolds that reflects the aggregate choices of the designers and the mindset of the player at that given moment in time.

In the case of Halo 4, as you decide to rush, snipe, or grenade your foes, the game will ‘order up’ the experience you’ve decided on (melee battle/long-range shootout/evasive maneuvers) and serve you the corresponding simulation. Because you make so many of these choices as you sculpt your particular experience, their significance is diluted on average, leading to a sustained sense of control and lengthened immersion.

Compare this to a restaurant, where your choices are few, but have dramatic effects on your enjoyment. Better yet, look at buffets, where even more agency is given over to the participant to guide the experience (sandbox games) in exchange for giving up the authored experience of a professionally prepared meal (story-based linear games).

Looking at these linear and interactive mediums, the difference can be summed up easily:

In film, literature, and linear recorded media, you will have the same experience every time.

In games, dining, and interactive experiences where the participant has agency, while it’s possible to have the same experience every time, not only are the odds against it but the nature of the media discourages it.

And that’s where the legacy review systems show their limitations. If games are experiences that so depend on agency for their end results, relying on a reviewer to quantify their particular experience in a hard number is bound to be problematic. Remind me, what exactly is the difference between a game that gets a 6.8 and one that earns a 7.2?

Instead, looking at the reviewer’s particular experience as an indicator of all possible experiences that could be had with the game leads to a much more reasonable method. Building off of experiments to find a better way to phrase this, like defunct magazine Game Buyer’s Rent or Buy rankings, Kotaku’s rating system has come the closest to putting this into practice with a simple “Should you play it? Yes/No” question, with follow-up reasons to support the verdict.

Is it a perfect system? Probably not. Yet in the face of the complexity afforded by interactive experiences, sometimes the simpler ways are the best.(source:gamasutra)