Games Aren't Numbers

The hardest thing for me to write about games is always describing the gameplay. Taking everything they teach you in their tutorial levels, with all their fancy videos and images, and then summing it up in a couple of paragraphs of mere text is a little challenging. The times when I have to do this, I don't expect my readers to acquire a deep comprehension just from my writing, but at least be able to understand what I'm talking about. Even this proves to be challenging though.

There are assumptions I need to make about the reader. Has he or she never played a game in this genre before? Is he or she familiar with the dozen previous games in the franchise? I want my writing to be accessible by the widest audience possible. A useful shortcut is to compare a game to similar ones, but that only works as long as everyone has played the other games. In addition to this I often dislike comparisons just for the sake of comparisons. After one has been made the game will always be seen as in the context of a different game, which robs it of the chance to stand on its own.

One possible method (and seems to be the most common) is to simply summarize the gameplay in a paragraph as it would be in an instruction manual, with a few stylistic differences to make it more readable and in the context of an article. There's a problem which almost always arises though: no one really wants to read that.

This review of BIT.TRIP BEAT is more of a scientific analysis than a review. Its thousand word length is almost entirely dedicated to describing every detail of the gameplay. It's boring to read. Every once in a while it will insert insights such as “this is interesting” or “it's very well done.” It's clear the writer had virtually nothing to say beyond his final score. The entire article could just be replaced by the trailer and a comment afterwards. This is the 21st century Internet after all, there's no reason why we can't embed videos in our reviews.

That article is an extreme example of when someone isn't able to explain gameplay in any skilled manner. Most offenses are in the same category but to a lesser degree. Even if your boring description is only one paragraph, it's still a boring description. You may have wonderfully insightful comments afterwards, but when an article introduces itself with that kind of stilted writing my chances of not reading the rest go way up.

One way to patch away the problem is through a disclaimer. “If you haven't played Dragon Space Fighter Blood 8 yet, allow me to explain it for you. Otherwise, skip this paragraph.” Functionally this gets the job done but the form is still a mess. I would use this as a last resort if I absolutely could not find a better way to incorporate a gameplay description.

As with most things in life, there isn't a magic technique that will automatically make an article better. It's whatever combination of writing methods and styles will best get the point across. Personally, I prefer gameplay to be described in thoughtful and, more importantly, entertaining ways, and with careful use of judgement to decide which details deserve a mention or not.

This would be a boring, unentertaining paragraph:

BIT.TRIP BEAT is like Pong set to music. You control a paddle moving vertically up and down the screen. You have to align yourself with the oncoming pixels in order to deflect them. The more you deflect the higher your score goes. Some of these pixels are very fast and move in strange patterns that are hard to hit, so that's the real challenge. The highlight though is the music which is very chiptune inspired and matches up with the gameplay. To top it all off there are some great visuals.

Isn't that so boring? Lets try something a little more fun:

BIT.TRIP BEAT is Pong meets Rez. Thirty seven years later your job is to once again take control of a line shaped paddle and do anything to stop the onslaught of square balls. Only this time you're in a technicolor outer space, not a blank ping-pong table. Another difference, aside from setting, is that it's not another human you play against but rather some invisible, and presumably square, batting machine (paddling machine?) which has malfunctioned and can't stop shooting an endless stream of balls. BEAT follows the sci fi the tradition of allowing sound to travel through space, so catchy chiptunes can be heard everywhere. They're so catchy in fact, that even the colorful square balls can't help but dance to the beat. I'm sure there's some symbolism here, and it probably involves drugs.

This quick and simple paragraph is a far less “objective” analysis, but it's fun to read. It's humorous, makes amusing observations, and at the same time gives you an idea of what the game is like. Should every article be exactly this style? Of course not. This is just an example of what can be achieved by putting a little bit of effort into trying to entertain the reader.