Notices where this attachment appears
-
Introducing Christi Junior’s Based Morality Rating System for video games! Well, it’s not my rating system exactly, but a modified version of the +4/-4 Moral–spiritual value ratings used by Catholic film critic Steven D. Greydanus:
http://www.decentfilms.com/about/ratings
Now, I really like his system, for 2 reasons in particular: First of all, it distinguishes the artistic qualities of a work from its morality, while still acknowledging that a well-crafted work that promotes genuine evil can not be recommended. Something Greydanus is exceptionally good at, unlike most “moralistic” reviewers, is engaging with even an Evil work as a piece of art, and critiquing its strengths and weaknesses as art in an even-handed way. His review of Million Dollar Baby is a great example of this (the overall F score is solely because of its -4 moral value, because the artistic/entertainment value is actually rated relatively highly):
http://www.decentfilms.com/reviews/milliondollarbaby
Another good example, much closer to home, would be our very own @SerfnUSA's review of 86, which while disgusted with the moral content of the work not only praised aspects of the story, but made genuinely unique and insightful points about how it successfully utilized the light novel medium for storytelling purposes:
https://bae.st/notice/ATZrfOIMq2OYY2RzdI
Not all Enemy media is obvious garbage like Netflix anime adaptations or race/sex-swapped rehashes of old movies. Some of it is intelligently structured and expertly crafted. It’s helpful to be aware of this, without of course losing sight of the fact that such works are not only still evil, but more dangerous than they would otherwise have been.
The second reason I really like Greydanus’s rating system is that it allows for simultaneously positive and negative moral ratings (as well as a purely Neutral rating when appropriate), sometimes spanning almost the entire rating spectrum:
http://www.decentfilms.com/reviews/seventhseal
This I find rings very true. Indeed, most JRPGs I’ve played would certainly be getting mixed scores in the Based Morality department, since they’re huge games that cover a lot of ground, including moral, religious and political terrain, and due to it not being kiked goyslop it’s usually not uniformly supportive of everything that’s bad in the world.
Why even have Morality ratings in the first place tho? Both for the sake of convenience and for the sake of making comparisons. Whenever I talk about a particular game, I often see people ask stuff like “wait, I heard this game was pozzed, are you saying it’s actually good?”, so it will be nice to quickly and easily be able to give an idea of where it lands in terms of its Pozitivity, as well as how it compares to other similar games. Also, ever since Christ Centered Gamer went away, I don’t see anyone openly rating video games in terms of their moral content anymore, and given the state of the gaming media, they’d just further reward Evil if they did anything. So I definitely feel like there’s a void that needs filling here. But what do I mean by Based Morality? I’m so glad you asked…