[Article first published as Call of Duty: Black Ops Awarded "Best Video
Game Ending" World Record, "Shenanigans" Called Worldwide on
Blogcritics.]
I found some interesting information the other day.
Unbeknownst to me, Guinness (the record book people, not the beer people) have
been releasing a “Gamer’s Edition” of their book for the last few years.
That I did not, in fact, know about it should tell you something about the
worth of said tome. Many companies have discovered gamers as a new target
market over the last few years and it sure seems that everyone wants a piece of
the group. We spend all that money on consoles and building gaming rigs
and buying games right? We must have disposable income we’re willing to
spend on anything, including the most inane crap that manufacturers can come up
with, right? There’s Mountain Dew “game fuel” that has tie-ins with Modern
Warfare and World of Warcraft. There
exists a thing called “Gamer
Grub Performance Snacks” so you can “think fast and win more.” Hell,
why do you think they put pretty people on G4? If there’s one thing I
hate, it’s being pandered to. And if there’s another, it’s people eating
it up. And that’s one of the two reasons Guinness has insulted me this
week.
The second is one of the latest “records” to be set in the
2012 edition of this worthless journal of so-called achievement. They have given a record for “Best Video Game Ending” to Call
of Duty: Black Ops. Let that sink in for a bit as you think about
all of the world records you’ve seen. The world’s tallest man. Most
one-armed pushups done in one hour. The longest Moto X dirt-to-dirt
backflip. They all have one thing in common. They’re 100% quantifiable,
regardless of the level of ridiculousness they bring. For example, the loudest purr by a domestic cat is set by a furball
named Smokey in the United Kingdom. Ridiculous? Absolutely.
But measured on record at 67.7 dB (86.3 dB LCpk) by
a Class 1 sound level meter NA-28 by RION at a distance of one meter in the
presence of a veterinarian. That’s an irrefutable hard measurement.
There's evidence that it's the loudest damn purr on record.
Measured. With science. So what kind of similar
measurement can be used for judging the best ending of a game?
The fine folks at Guinness, who fail to recognize the large
overlap between “nerd” and “gamer” and couldn’t possibly foresee irking the ire
of myself and my math-loving ilk, did it the most accurate way they knew how:
by surveying 13,000 people. I can’t even guess how many immeasurable
qualitative variables are involved with asking just a single person their favorite
game ending. Did I think Black Ops had
the best ending? No. I thought it was unoriginal and reminded me of Fight
Club. In my opinion, the “best ending ever” should have at least some
unique qualities. But then again I’m biased — I prefer action and RPG’s
to first person shooters. I grew tired of the war FPS genre in college,
years ago. I’m just flat out better at other types of games. All
three of these points, whether I think they do or not, could cloud my opinion
on this topic. Or any topic I’m surveyed on for
that matter. So while this would make a great project for a middle school
math class, I don't see the value in the damn Guinness Book of World
Records.
I also question the type of players they surveyed. The
“Top 50” which you can see over at GamePolitics included four Call of
Duty titles and three Halo titles, with the top 2
being Black Ops and Halo: Reach.
… Pardon? That’s like saying the ending to The
Fast and the Furious is better and deeper than the ending of Seven.
There are definitely games on there that deserve to be
there, but it looks like their “representative sample” are primarily Xbox Live
bro-gamers and kids nervous about their SAT’s who don’t know much beyond Halo and Call
of Duty, because the number of games that didn’t make this list
is amazing (we are talking of all time here). Well I
guess some people did say Super Mario Brothers, but
based on the rest of the list, they were probably “retro” picks so they could
sound like they knew what they were talking about.
So the final tally... Pandering to gamers?
Check. Bad math? Check. Bad statistics? Check.
Please allow me to provide a little parting wisdom to our friends at Guinness:
if you don’t have enough material to fill this book, don’t publish it. It
is embarrassing on a number of levels, a number of levels that may just qualify
you for technical fowl's book of world records.
