so i fairly recently played Blood on The Clocktower once and shortly after drafted this post titled "blood on the clocktower is good i think", which I never posted because I then played it a second time which gave me a bunch of additional thoughts about the game that superseded my old ones, and then I played it a third time and it wasn't as good that time and unpacking that while also praising the game would be slightly complicated1. And then I played Wanderhome, a game which I've heard really great things about, and the experience was... just okay. But neither the one bad game of Blood on The Clocktower or that game of Wanderhome actually reflect on what I'd call the quality of those games. This has got me thinking about subjectivity again.
There's this whole thing I want to write but never will, or maybe already have and then forgot about, or maybe it's actually secretly the rest of this post, titled something like "Media reviews reveal the unavoidable subjectivity of all experience". See, if that third game of BotC had been my first or I didn't already trust that Wanderhome was actually really good, I would probably be less forgiving. I would take those experiences as being representative of the games themselves. There's a hypothetical universe where these games are exactly the same but I think they are much worse.
What's interesting about social games is that, compared to singleplayer games or movies or books, those universes are much easier to imagine being in. Or, what I really mean is, social games are naturally a lot more variable in their experience. It's not just what you take to the game and get out of it, it's what you and the 2-15 other players all contribute, and what your relationship is to those other players, and the environment you're playing in. In the less-good game of BotC, multiple players had to leave early without prior warning, the room we were playing in was louder so it was harder to properly communicate, and I believe at least one player was intoxicated. The game of Wanderhome was with people I didn't really know (not a problem for BotC but roleplay requires more familiarity for me), was a bit rushed, was also in a loud room, and I've also got barely any TTRPG experience myself.
With all these external factors actually reviewing or recommending social games is super weird because I truly believe any game, no matter how excruciatingly terrible, could be an absolute blast if played with just the right group of friends under the right conditions. You'd probably at least agree it was a bad game, but it could be an amazing experience. And any game no matter how good be can be a dreadful experience under the wrong conditions. I do think it's fair to try to review games based on your own experiences, so long as you can consider and explain what conditions you think lead to those experiences. And some of my favourite experiences with social games have been those that require very specific circumstances to really work at all. I greatly respect the game design style of "this game will be amazing for just the right people" - a game that always works is a bit less likely to feel special like that.
Ok, the weird thing is that I think the same variability of social games applies to all media, perhaps all experiences you can have. Like it's one thing to think, "this would surely be a lot of fun if I played with good friends and not strangers", but it's quite another to think "I'd really like this film if I was a fundamentally different person". That second thing is so hard to imagine that it's quite easy to think of your personal experiences as being somehow objective. If you don't like it, clearly it's a bad film, right?
And this is why I love reading negative Steam reviews for popular games. Why do people dislike stuff that's almost universally agreed to be good? Reviews are often written in a sort of objective language where personal experiences are described as innate qualities, so reading a negative review for something I really like can often have me wondering if they even played the same game.
Though sometimes it's possible to work out what happened. I played this minesweeper-esque logic game called Delete with some friends in a voice call once (we were trying to beat it as fast as possible having never played it before, or in other words, do a sightread race2. I don't recommend you play it like this). My review: the game's fine, really, it's pretty much exactly what it advertises itself as. But the Steam reviews were interesting. Almost all of the negative reviews mentioned having to guess mine positions as a point against the game, often the only thing. But my friend who is rather good at logic puzzles (and was the only one of us to complete the race) insisted that at no point did they need to make guesses - there's always a logical path through the game. The puzzles aren't randomly generated, so I trust my friend over the Steam reviewers here. I believe what's really happened is that Delete requires some difficult bits of deduction - you have to interact with the mechanics it adds in some weird ways - that some players aren't able to work out, and thus believe the only way forward is guesswork.
The thing is that these people aren't wrong about their actual experience with the game! It did require guesswork, for them. No one can objectively view an experience just by experiencing it. In this case we have a specific piece of evidence for this, but usually it's not so clear. It's just a matter of taste.
You know, I like "taste" as a word for describing the ways that different people like different things. Not in the sense of having "good" or "bad" taste - more so that it's a good metaphor. Food is weird: the kinds of food that you like the taste of is both very cultural and very personal. What you grew up with probably tastes fine to you, and anything else at least a little weird. And yet, you might have the gene that means cilantro tastes bad, you might really like some obscure combination or not be able to stand something extremely common, or just dislike most foods - hell, whether or not you like a specific food, pineapple on pizza, is one of the standard pointless arguments people have. Taste in food is very subjective, and so it goes for a lot of things.
Maybe my own tastes are weird: there's a lot of weird indie music and video games I like and most people simply can't get into, and I absolutely hate Shovel Knight despite its reception from literally everybody else. A lot of the discussions people have about taste make it seem like they think certain tastes are somehow right or wrong, perhaps even morally. The aforementioned "good" and "bad" taste: some things are just definitely good and others definitely bad, and if you disagree, there's something wrong about how you experience the world. And I admit it's partially self-defence but I think this isn't a useful framework to have. I'm not saying there's no difference between good and bad things, just that personal experiences with things vary more than you might expect, and there's nothing actually wrong with that. Whether your tastes align with what's popular or any other measure is a neutral quality.
I've long since decided to not consider my own thoughts objective. But I still like sharing them just in case somebody has the same taste as me.
And I still really want to play Wanderhome with some friends, in a nice quiet room somewhere. I'll get around to it.
1: and then played it several more times since writing this part of the post so honestly it's a mess.
2: the standard speedrunner terminology I've seen for this is "blind race", but this is at least confusing. Importing "sightread" from rhythm games (and music in general) is fairly natural and if you know the word already you can surely work out what it means in this context.
