What is "Good"? Opinion vs Fact.

Hi all...
I'd like to know your thoughts on this:
 (Fallout is merely an example... let's not discuss that.)


When people say "Fallout 2 (or any other 'good' game) is good", it is taken to be a truth. To say that it is not would make you wrong. A person may not enjoy the game, but it is still good because it satisfies various criteria of technical goodness... the person perhaps doesn't understand how to appreciate it.

However, its goodness is still surely only opinion, albeit the opinion of many people... but something being popular does not make it good, such as pop music and McDonalds. Perhaps there is such a thing as 'innate greatness.'

More frequently these days, I'm lead to believe that there is purely objective greatness in the world, but can there possibly be such a thing? In the same way that it can be said that 'art' can be defined as something recognised to be 'art' by people who study/understand 'art', maybe that's as objective as we can get. Fallout 2 is good, because a majority of people who know what they're talking about say it is.

This is probably explained in some very basic philosophy... if so, link me up and excuse my ignorance.

What are your views?

One problem is terminology. Words like "good" and "nice" are ridiculously vague. Better questions would be "Is this game enjoyable?" "Is this game innovative?" "Is this game accessible?" "Does this game perform within its genre to an excellent degree?"