Sunday’s talk was… interesting, in some ways. I enjoyed verbally sparring with my two peers, Jason Hill of the Age and Bajo of Good Game. I sort of underestimated my own popularity, though, and the embarrassment factor came in when I realised that 99% of the audience consisted of the weird fanbase I drag around that corrupts everything it touches.

The event was run by some really very nice people who didn’t deserve the mass outbreak of retardation that was visited upon them. Really, guys, I know it was frustrating that only a third of you could fit in the audience space, but what was with all the banging on the glass and yelling and generally being a bunch of titwhistles? What Soviet gulag did you grow up in where that’s an appropriate way to behave?

Yikes.

On the other hand, Yahtzee’s dismantling of pretty much every game he comes across makes it that much more noteworthy when he really enjoys something. While I would never avoid a game because he criticized it, I would definitely buy a game basd on his recommendation (I’m looking forward to trying No More Heroes, for example). That’s something else I can’t say about any other games “reviewer.”

I’d say one of the reasons Yahtzee has been successful is that you can’t boil his reviews down to a 7.0 or an 8.5. There are plenty of interesting reviewers — people with real insight and who know how to put a sentence and a paragraph and an essay together — but as soon as they give a numeric score they allow people to avoid engaging with the content of the review.

I can only speak definitively for myself, but Yahtzee has absolutely influenced both how I think about games and my perception of their importance (though you’re right that he probably has no effect on sales). If you read the comment threads for his videos at The Escapist, I think you’ll find that the same is true for other viewers. As a random example, his video lamenting the “safeness” of Uncharted: Drake’s Fortune informed my thinking about Twilight Princess in relation to Ocarina of Time.

Another thing I’ve been thinking about is how people actually anticipate Yahtzee’s reviews — they email him, solicit his opinion on specific games, and look forward to each week’s review. Who else in the industry is like that? Most reviewers are interchangable; Metacritic collates their scores, and we assess their opinions in aggregate. Yahtzee bucks that trend. He’s one of the few voices in video games that people really pay attention to, and I think he has important things to say underneath his trademark vitriol. That’s why I think of him as a tastemaker.

Robert, I’d love to hear how that talk goes, if you end up attending. Thanks to both of you for your comments!

I’m going to try to see Yahtzee’s talk at the Game On exhibition in Melbourne in mid-May:

What’s a Good Game?

How does one rate a good game? Leading game reviewers Steven O’Donnel (Bajo), Jason Hill (The Age) and Yahtzee Croshaw (Hyper and PC Gamer) argue the finer points of game reviewing, and offer some insight into the best and worst moments of playing games for a living.