First of all, I don't want or deserve to define the word "game", but we can discuss the value of games for people in order to discuss the word "game". Sometimes we say "games are the ninth art", which tends to favor creators and reflects the similarity in structure between games and works of art. Games bring a certain satisfaction of expressive desire to creators, or more abstractly, they bring emotional value to creators, such as the satisfaction of expressive desire. Similarly, it is the same for players. I think games are a "tool for entertainment", but what I want to emphasize is that the key to "entertainment" is not "joy", but rather the emotional value it brings to users (players). It can be not only happiness, but also sadness, inspiration, resonance, and can trigger thinking, and all other emotions that humans can have. So, I think games, including other things like animation, comics, novels, movies, etc., from a functional perspective, they are all tools that bring emotional value to people.
Secondly, my personal gentle attitude is that a work is given a "life" at the moment it is created, just like we can really measure the value of life. Do we really need to distinguish a work as superior or inferior? Evaluation inevitably appears superior and lacks emotional warmth. So, I would appreciate any work that can convey emotions to the audience. But just as a logical system that can prove or disprove any grammatically correct term is actually useless, simply affirming or denying does not produce any value. Therefore, although I hold an affirmative attitude, it is necessary for us to critically evaluate works.
So, when we "evaluate", what are we really talking about? Are we "evaluating" its users? Are we "evaluating" its "purpose" / "moral orientation"? The former can refer to the above image; as for the latter, I think it is unnecessary, which may be due to political intentions, ideological conflicts, different creative environments and user environments, and I won't elaborate further. I think "evaluating" works (games, animation, comics, movies, etc.) should focus on analyzing, criticizing, and reflecting on their "technical" aspects. Here, the term "technical" refers to a broader sense, such as for games, it may refer to "gameplay", "storyline", "graphics", "music", "UI", "optimization", etc. This is the scope of our "evaluation". Secondly, how do we "evaluate"? Here, I want to criticize a certain argument that says "xx movie has a garbage plot, so it is garbage". According to the shallow definition of games mentioned earlier, no matter how we evaluate a work, it should ultimately come back to its functionality, that is, how much emotional value it can bring. For example, take the daily-life anime "Yuru Camp" as an example. Its plot may not have deep thoughts or profound meanings, and even from a technical perspective, its plot may not have the so-called development, climax, and resolution. It is just a simple and ordinary daily life. But you cannot deny that it can bring relaxation, warmth, and healing emotions to a large part of its audience, whether they are ordinary viewers or fans. Another example is "Odd Taxi", which has received high praise in recent years as a plot-driven work. Its audiovisual performance is just average for Japanese animation, but it does not hinder its plot and character development, bringing a sense of mystery and tension. Therefore, evaluating a work indeed begins with a technical analysis and deconstruction, but it should not end there. It should not be extreme and generalize based on a biased view. The parts we analyze and deconstruct are for a better understanding of the whole. The evaluation should ultimately be based on the functional emotional value of the work, such as the "gaming experience" or the "viewing experience". The formation of such arguments, in my imagination, is due to the fact that most users do not have the ability to comprehensively express their opinions on a work and can only express subjective and one-sided thoughts. More polarized and labeled viewpoints, compared to comprehensive critical thinking, are more contagious. Such arguments only give up thinking and exist as a resting area for thinking, and should not be lingered on for too long. Secondly, I criticize the quantified standards for evaluating works. Here, my expression is that the quality of a work is not a total order relationship, or whether it can simply be assigned a score, with high being good and low being bad. This kind of solution is undoubtedly the most feasible and more practical, but it is definitely not a better or more objective standard, at least not a total order relationship. Looking back at our shallow definition, here I should measure the quantity of the same emotion, the superiority or inferiority of different emotions. Can this really be measured well? For example, watching a comedy, the more times you laugh and the longer you laugh, does that mean it is funnier? Is a touching work better than a funny one? I think not necessarily, it is unnecessary. Here are a few solutions that may have poorer operability but are relatively more reasonable, such as categorizing and ranking works; dividing the evaluation criteria of works into several parts and using a tuple to represent the scores of different parts, quantifying them with a high-dimensional partial order relationship. Note that we don't simply add or weight them.
Finally, what I really want to discuss is that evaluating works requires more comprehensive standards and being cautious of biased and emotional polarization.
Other related thoughts: