Hard Analysis and Understanding Games

Watching several counter-strike tournaments over the past two years has clued me into several different approaches to game analysis. Across both traditional and electronic competition, broadcasts employ a play by play commentator and a color commentator. Play by play is straight forward. The guy makes what occurs on screen palatable to the audience via his gravitas, strong word choice, and levels of excitement. He also has to be gifted in setting up his partner, the color commentator. The color man's job is to give quick insights into the game so that the audience better understands the meta and the decision making of the players.

I've come across two approaches to color commentary in competitive gaming. First is soft analysis, which features superficially descriptive, historical, and subjective insights into a game. A commentator will broadly remark on how a team is approaching the game, how the team has historically played the game, and his interpretation of how this affects the match he is watching now. Narrative, history, and visibility is the key to soft analysis. The commentator in CSGO will mention who is playing what position, how effective he historically is at playing that position, and with that contextual insight hopefully illuminate the current match for the audience. This kind of commentary is good for most people in the audience who have general to moderate interest in the game.

To use an example, here is the color commentator Semmler giving us insight into the Swedish player Olofmeister. At this time, Olof is the greatest player in the world in CSGO. Semmler discusses how historically, Olof's team places him as an entry man onto Cobblestone's B site. He either lurks or is the first man in on the B plateau, as his ability to get the first kill and then storm the site is much better than anyone else in the world.

This reminds me a lot of the way games journalism and analysis is done. The audience gets general insights into the way a game plays. We get descriptors such as the ability to hold two guns, the amount of recoil, guns feeling light or heavy, etc. These are important concepts to note in a game and give the reader a general idea about the game. In fact for many people, that is all they need to know. But that is soft analysis. I don't just want to know how little recoil a gun has, I want the writer to shoot a wall and show me whether there's a spray pattern. I want to know if it's possible to compensate for it consistently or if there's randomness. If possible, I'd even like to know what the hard metrics are for recoil, spread, and friction/acceleration in movement.

To truly understand and critique a game, these values must be explored and understood. For example, if a new game comes out and a character accelerates quickly but slides before coming to a stop, it is not enough to say that movement feels loose or slippery without putting that into the context of the game and even including some values as the game is data mined later.

Hard analysis in competitive gaming contains insights on the hard metrics of a game. This is a bit more difficult to parse out because one cannot describe it using flowery or colorful language. Hard analysis requires enthusiastic levels of knowledge in a subject. In Counter-Strike, that means understanding the amount of time actions in game take, how certain plays affect a team's game economy, and how plays affect the opponent's perception and morale (mind games). This analysis goes beyond the narrative and gets into the actual numeric understanding of a game. To use the example of the hypothetical game that feels loose, a critic with familiarity of harder metrics would focus on the ingame values regarding movement. He would say that the game feels loose because the avatar accelerates quickly but the lack of friction in the world causes him to slide around. He would remark on what this means when taking on enemies and how to approach them given the imprecision of the movement, most likely by discussing whether guns are accurate while moving or if counter-strafing in the opposite direction one is moving in order to quickly stand still allows for higher weapon accuracy.

Here's some hard analysis from a North American CSGO tournament in which the color commentator Launders discusses the weapon buying in the match's second round. The terrorists got a bomb plant the first round but died and the counter-terrorists defused the bomb. So the Ts got $1400 for losing plus 800 for planting the bomb while the CTs got $3500. The Ts are still in a good position overall because they can force buy armor and pistols . The defused bomb plant allows them enough to perform a rush and force the CTs to spend all of their money on a rifle, armor, and grenade buy. A defused bomb plant usually telegraphs to CTs that they must spend a lot of money on the 2nd round in order to play long angles and stop pistol armor rushes. Thus his comment that the CT's buy reflects their anticipation that the Ts will force buy armor pistol.

Hard analysis takes into account not only the overall play, but the minutiae involved in decision making. It looks closely at metrics and the variables behind them to illuminate the game in a much brighter way than soft analysis ever could. Typically it is longer winded and requires someone with great appeal and gravitas to be able to keep an audience interested. Most viral videos of commentators are of excitable play by play commentary during sick plays.

Dupreeh! and Hiko are you kidding me? are two historic soundbites in the same round in CSGO

https://youtu.be/SCqsIwF085U?t=7

So what does this mean for game's criticism? Games journalism is like play by play commentary. It focuses merely on the general, what is going on and how does it look with varying amounts of emotion and purple prose thrown in for good measure. Every so often there is some soft analysis, but given the kinds of people writing it generally focuses on the narrative or some quick dimly lit illuminations of a game's mechanics before complaining about representation of genders or races in games. These topics are heated and quickly pull in clicks from the divisiveness they cause.

These kinds of pieces don't have to go anywhere. In fact, given their popularity, I'd advise continuing to use them. Compare the abysmally low level of engagement in the comments section of a Polygon feature or investigative piece to a review of a AAA game, a Destiny article, or a clickbait opinion piece about sexism? In fact the only features with over 100 comments on Polygon are about sexism in games. The most profitable pieces, regardless of their triviality, should remain on sites. That way more niche and serious pieces which provide less in the way of money but more in the way of actual journalism and criticism can continue to exist.

As a competitive gaming spectator, I love those exciting moments punctuated by affable commentators. As a gaming enthusiast, I read gaming news nearly every day. But video games need people who understand the core of the game. They need an analyst to really illuminate the game by making boring numbers and minutiae sound exciting. The hard metrics of a game influence everything: how fast an avatar can move, much damage a weapon can do, and how a stats system works. All these parts of a game influence the overall way a game works. Having someone who understands this is important to games overall. I want people to enjoy games, but more importantly, I want more people to feel like they understand them.