if you look carefully at this formula, you might spot a factor called "tilt", and you might wonder what that represents.
the way this works is:
- you decide to review a videogame, and you decide to give it a score, to help compare between things
- but what makes a videogame good? well, i guess if it has good graphics. if the gameplay is fun and engaging. if the audio is good, too, i guess. if it's good value for money, too, that's important.
- so you give scores for each of those
- and then the final score is all of those, weighted by how important they are
- this makes sense! this is a logical way to do things!
- except, you look at this and you feel kind of unsatisfied. sometimes a game has a little bit of magic to it. you're writing the review and you use the phrase "more than the sum of it's parts" and you feel like the score doesn't actually capture that. the game spoke to you, it took you somewhere and did something that couldn't neatly fit into "gameplay" or "graphics" but nevertheless meant something meaningful to you. how can you possibly communicate this to your readers?
- i know, let's add an extra factor to the score
it's perfect logic, there's no arguing with it.
it's the category which tries to categorize the uncategorizable. it's the most important component of a game - the part which refuses to be a component. it's tilt.