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Originally Posted by CorsiHockeyLeague

There is actually a third option here, which has to do with groupthink and critical consensus sometimes just being wrong (in fact you'd expect that to happen in at least a percentage of cases), or some aspect of the thing under consideration was distracting the critics from its other qualities. There's even a fourth option, which is that they were right in the first place and the subsequent following a piece gets is undeserved.

I don't think either of those options exist with art. I don't believe consensus can be wrong, because it is a collective of subjective opinion. If I view something differently than the consensus, they are not wrong because I am right, there is simply a difference in subjective opinion.

The fourth is just silly. No following is undeserved, that's just a made up way of placing superiority in some subjective opinions on art over others. For that you would have to define what is deserving of a following, and then evaluate each piece of art on that made up criteria.

Originally Posted by CorsiHockeyLeague

Not necessarily, I agree, but as soon as you admit that the former has something to do with the latter - that a story without construction issues is more likely to be interesting or compelling than one that has those issues - you've already admitted that there is an objective element to both things.

But a story without construction issues is not more likely to be interesting or compelling than one with. Just as a piece of classical music performed by trained musicians is not more likely to be interesting than a song performed by a group of punks. Technical skill =/= creativity.

Originally Posted by CorsiHockeyLeague

Well, sure, but only because there are other things that go into a good story beyond its construction. I am a bit surprised given the position that you're taking that you're simultaneously saying that there's even such a thing as a perfectly constructed story.

Well, there is, but it's a very basic formula. There are seven story archetypes and five parts in the basic story structure. Building a story within these structures will lead to what we would define as a "perfectly constructed" story. Like any piece of art, stories too have technical elements that can be executed perfectly, but don't necessarily dictate the quality of the story.

Originally Posted by CorsiHockeyLeague

You seem very sure of your position about the roles of objective and subjective judgments in criticism of art, and it's hard to go much further here without doing exactly what I said I didn't want to do in my last post by diving into aesthetic philosophy. So, suffice it to say that there is a whole field of literature you can discover if you ever decide you're interested and want to challenge your preconceptions in this area.

I'm well versed, and I'd probably agree that it's not a conversation worth getting into here as I don't run into many people who want to talk about philosophy when we're talking about zombie videogames. I think saying "go look into aesthetic philosophy" is a bit simplistic, as there are many theories and movements within that field that are worth consideration, so I'd be at least curious who or what you're referring to.

That said, I'll just restate my point to make it clear: there are no objective reviewers of art. I am not saying objectivity plays no role in how we process art or define what art is, but the idea of the objective reviewer is false, as subjectivity cannot be separated from art. Do objective elements like adherence to colour theory inform our subjective interpretation of beauty? Yeah, but the subjectivity doesn't cease to exist, beauty is still defined as that which gives us pleasure. Our final interpretation of any piece of art, even videogames, relies on the subjective.