Game Work: Language, Power, and Computer Game Culture

4 Making Meanings Out of Contradictions: The Work of Computer Game Reviewing

Sifting through the day’s mail on the front porch, Melanie was glad to see at least one piece that didn’t make her anxious: her kids’ issue of Computer Gaming World. She sat down on the steps and paged through the magazine, skimming the ads and reviews. Melanie had agreed to the subscription when, after studying several issues, she noticed that it didn’t depend on the “sex sells” ploy as much as other gaming magazines seemed to. With the new subscription had come a new house rule: she got to read the magazine ¤rst. Partly she did this because she wanted the chance to get educated about the new games her kids were bound to ask for. More than once she had prohibited a game because of the magazine’s detailed reviews. And more than once she had been able to make an informed recommendation to them for an alternative. Melanie’s kids, of course, were on to her. They knew that the real reason she wanted to read it ¤rst was that she was an avid gamer herself and just liked to learn about the latest games before they did. She wouldn’t deny this. Regardless, because of the magazine, Melanie had managed to get the whole family interested in The Sims, a game where players try to lead virtual characters successfully through all the trials and tribulations of real life: making friends, setting up a house, working and playing. For several months, they’d all played the game together and were all neighbors on the same virtual block. Melanie smiled a little as she remembered how she had used the game to start coming out to her kids as a lesbian. When her character, “Ms. Crystal,” kissed “Boots,” a virtual neighbor, in public, people both in the game and in the real world were surprised. Melanie used the opportunity to explain to her kids that same-sex partners were just as normal as manand -woman partners. It was only a matter of time—about two weeks, she 4 Making Meanings Out of Contradictions The Work of Computer Game Reviewing recalled—before they asked her with the beautiful candor of childhood: “Mom, are you a real lesbian too?”  Game reviewing, like other kinds of rudimentary media analysis,both evaluates its subject according to certain criteria and establishes those criteria as valuable. Every month, dozens of new game reviews are published, most in fan magazines and on Web sites, and a few in the popular press. Since 1999, for example, the New York Times has carried a feature called “Game Theory,” a misnomer actually, since the pieces published there are simple “worth it/ not worth it”computer game evaluations. Similarly, Time magazine regularly publishes game reviews, mostly of titles that are adult-oriented but that are relatively inoffensive; to date, for example, the games Hitman: Codename 47 and Soldier of Fortune have not been reviewed in Time, despite their popularity . The programs on G4, an all-video-game TV network, however, review even the goriest games and give viewers a chance to see the latest titles in action. Even many smaller markets carry computer game reviews: the Arizona Daily Citizen, the Topeka Capital-Journal, and Morgunbladid (an Icelandic newspaper) all regularly solicit game reviews from staffers and locals. As computer games have become ubiquitous in industrialized countries, so too have pundits interested in separating the wheat from the chaff. Even more indicative of the ubiquity of game reviews is that the game industry itself is self-policing, albeit on a voluntary basis. Like Hollywood movies, computer games are now rated by an independent panel of reviewers called the ESRB, the Entertainment Software Ratings Board. The ESRB’s rubric , which runs from “Early Childhood” to “Adults Only,” is meant to function as a protective measure for consumers, giving them the chance to select or avoid titles with particular kinds of material. The ESRB attributes the increased popularity of computer games in the past several years in part to their rating system, which they claim makes parents especially more comfortable buying software titles that have been independently and consistently reviewed. Needless to say, such “protection” is not welcomed by everyone, and the ESRB has many critics both inside and outside the industry. Foremost among these critiques is the fact that the ESRB is the policing mechanism created by the Interactive Digital Software Association, a trade organization comprised of companies like Sony, Atari, Sega, Electronic Arts, and Nintendo. Critics argue that...