Critical Failure

As the Internet has developed more complex networks of opinion and influence, however, things have changed. Sites like Metacritic happily aggregate review scores without concerning themselves with the suitability of the review for the product in question, leaving most kids' games - even the most successful ones - languishing at the bottom of the review score pile. Meanwhile, the increased influence of social networks on search results means that a vicious, negative review of a kids' game that's judged to be funny by the young adult audience of the website on which it appeared is likely to be the first thing seen by any parent popping the name of the game into Google.

It's not all negative, of course - parents have their own social networking circles and often listen to word of mouth from very different sources, which allows them to get solid, helpful advice from other parents on games for their children. However, it's also the case that a huge swathe of new parents are gamers themselves, and will turn to specialist publications for their information - only to be put off or frustrated by the often dreadful coverage of games aimed at families or pre-teen children.

Solutions, sadly, aren't immediately apparent - the only effective one being for publications and journalists to develop a respect for the wider audience, rather than simply continuing to write polemic that's aimed at, well, people just like themselves. Film reviewers are usually perfectly capable of reviewing kids' movies without giving them a kicking for being simple, bright and accessible, and the same goes for those who write about books and TV - but then again, these are fields where criticism is much more mature, and rather less dominated by young men in their first job out of school, as is sadly the case with many parts of the videogame criticism business.

It's not just kids' games which are touched by this malaise, of course. Games aimed at niche audiences regularly get savaged by critics who don't understand why every game can't be aimed at Modern Warfare and Madden aficionados. Products aimed at children, women, older adults or minority groups aren't reviewed, they are thrown to the wolves, and those doing PR for those products find themselves wondering whether they might be better off simply ignoring huge swathes of the press and focusing on advertorials and marketing instead - which, of course, robs consumers of the chance to read unbiased opinion before investing their money.

The general treatment of kids' games, along with the treatment of other games aimed at the wider market, should be a call to the expansive media business which covers videogames and purports to be evolving a mature form of criticism: grow up. Good, professional criticism isn't about excess verbiage, flowery language and showing off how many books you've skimmed the summaries of on Wikipedia. It's about being able to see past your own biases, to understand the audience that a product is aimed at, place yourself in their shoes and view the experience from their perspective. Sometimes it's about refusing a review commission because you know you're not qualified to talk about games for that audience, and it's certainly about commissioning editors treating all products with respect, not just the ones that the fanboys will go crazy for.

Good, professional criticism, in other words, is hard work - but if the press is going to remain relevant as the industry expands into new demographics, if it's going to provide a useful service to important groups of people like the parents of young children, and if it's going to act fairly towards the developers whose lives are devoted to creating software for groups other than young men, then that's hard work which the games media needs to face up to.