Plus there's the time-old phenomenon that game developers view games in a fundamentally different way to non-developers, and often have tastes that seem utterly bizarre compared to their own products. They like the stuff they don't/can't make themselves, because they aren't approaching it while thinking 'is this fun', but rather 'how would you make this? How does it work?'. I've noticed the same thing in writers, musicians and painters - some of the folks with the best work like the most retarded stuff. That's why I'm far from certain that Cain was being sarcastic when he listed Oblivion as the best crpg of the 2000s - it did what he was never able to do: make fuckloads of money.
Reminds me of a 3d animator / designer I know who specialises in making CGI for TV/films/ads and occasionally games. Smart guy, great knowledge of the arts, was a stage actor for a while and knows his classics in literature, film and stage. Before he went into CGI professionally, his favourite crpgs were fallout and PS:T, favourite game was System Shock 2, and had played the RoA, Wizardry and Ultima series when they came out. But by the time Mass Effect came out, he was doing CGI professionally and was utterly convinced (and still is) that Mass Effect is the greatest game ever made. When you manage to extract why, it just seems that he was so blown away by how it achieved the 'cinematic feel', and little nuances in the way faces were done, that every other aspect of the game (the textures, the dialogue and, well, the fucking gameplay) just seemed irrelevant to him.
I suspect that's very common. I've known a couple of musos who have had some limited commercial success - won't namedrop, but they had a couple of UK top 20s before fading into obscurity. You get them to listen to ANY piece of music, and because they're into electronica and guitar every other piece of the song seems invisible. Doesn't matter how repetitive the vocals or how plain shit the song is, they'll latch on to some aspect of it and go 'holy shit, how did they do that', and declare it fucking awesome.
It's why in the golden era of stage, papers ensured that film and theatre critics weren't 'wannabe' or 'washed up' actors/directors/script-writers. It might 'sound' like a good idea to have someone 'in the business' do the review, but they are coming from a very different perspective than the general audience, or even a narrow audience segment made up of people who liked the reviewer's film/stage work. A good reviewer/critic ought to be from the audience and on the side of the audience. The last person whose opinions I'd trust about a game would be someone who makes games.
of Jeff Vogel
