Games as art or games as consumer good?

So, as promised, and way earlier than promised, I want to say a little bit about games and price and how that effects our perception of them.

Right now there are several levels of price stratification in video games. PS3 and Xbox 360 games are $59.99 when new. PC games are $49.99, often for the same experience as their console counterparts. Wii games, $49.99. Downloadable titles, whether they be WiiWare, PSN, Xbox marketplace or something casual can range from free to the same price as console games. If we are talking about reviews though, does this matter? Should it matter? The answer to the first question is yes, yes it should. Criticism of mediums outside video games may be more advanced in the sense that they can look at art for art's sake and make a judgment, but they still use a grading system of some sort to tell their consumer if they should spend the time to get to know whatever artwork is being reviewed. When the now defunct GFW magazine did away with scores for their reviews, there was a revolt and the scores came back. So, obviously readers expect some sort of quantitative something, whether it be numbers, grades, a buy recommendation, or whatever. That doesn't mean that it should be the sole purpose of a review to decide if people should buy a game or not. Rather it provides a base metric for determining if it is worth the money. A game like Portal was and is worth more than Valve charged for it and I believe that reviews reflected that. It may be short, but it is fantastic. If Valve was charging $300 for Portal, could anyone really say that the price wouldn't affect their view of the quality of the game. We are always making decisions based on how much we will get out of our money. It's no surprise that video games are affected as well.

Wait! You say. Doesn't that make game reviews simply a consumer guide and not a meditation on the artistic value of a game? Well, it certainly makes the consumer angle something to consider. I think we would do ourselves a disservice if we completely disregard the fact that people come to reviewers to see if a game is worth their money. However, that shouldn't be the sole purpose of reviews. When I read reviews, the first thing I look for is a reviewer I know. If I know their likes and dislikes and how those align to my own, I can compare their thoughts to mine. I also tend to look at the score. That colors my reading of the review, possibly a problem I admit. If I am interested in a game, though, the most important thing to me is the review itself. Did the game lose points because it was too easy? I don't care, that's fine by me. Did it lose points because the gameplay gets repetitive and boring? Warning lights. Did it lose points because the story is ridiculous and poorly written? That's not helping it in my book. These things matter more to me than the score itself. I wouldn't buy a well reviewed game that was extremely repetitive or overly difficult. I'm not buying Mega Man 9 and I don't feel bad about it. In that sense, the review can speak to the game as a game and not a consumer product.

I'm not sure I've really solved anything here, but I do feel that examining games in isolation of cost is foolhardy. Cost should never be the primary concern, but I have limited financial resources and a limited amount of time to game. I'll gladly play a flawed but interesting game if it is cheap, but I'll be damned if I'm going to pay $60+ for a fundamentally flawed game. It doesn't make sense to me and I want reviews to reflect that concept.