11 ms·

Settling Video Game Arguments, Part 1: Game Reviews

• fartcannon 9y ago
  As a counter arguement to the one put forward in the blog, it's also ok to care deeply about how journalists in the game industry behave because it's ok to care about stuff, even if it's not politics.
  • CocaKoala 9y ago
    The article doesn't say "Nobody should care deeply about game reviewers"; it says "If a game reviewer gives a game you like a bad score, that's okay; it means that you and the reviewer disagree and you should disregard their opinions on games because you are probably looking for different things than they are".
    • fartcannon 9y ago
      If a reviewer gave a game a bad score, it could also mean that the reviewer is being paid to write a bad score. And a good score could be paid for, too. And I think it's OK to care about who is being paid to say what.
      • eropple 9y ago
        > If a reviewer gave a game a bad score, it could also mean that the reviewer is being paid to write a bad score. Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. Until then, this is static.
        • Gargoyle 9y ago
          Why do you feel that's an extraordinary claim?
          • eropple 9y ago
            Because I'm familiar with both the games press and games PR. I understand how those interactions work well enough to be very, very skeptical. There is some minor possibility of good reviews in exchange for advertising--except that sales and content at any outlet significant enough to be called the "games press", from Kotaku to Giant Bomb, has a wall between sales and content and publishers (when they bother to notice the games press at all) know that bad scores are, occasionally, just part of the package. The last major break of that I can think of was Gamespot and Jeff Gerstmann, and the people involved in causing that were so roundly shredded that I don't even think most of them are in the industry anymore. So while vanishingly unlikely, sure, there's a possibility of payola there. But getting paid for bad reviews? Come on. Substantiate--with evidence--those wild claims or don't make them. If he'd said "games YouTube"--now, that's a different thing, as the interactions between influencers and publishers (in ways that are deleterious to the public, to be honest) are pretty well-documented across the board in ways that are not "some rando with an anime avatar said so". But even they aren't incentivized in any way that I've ever, not once, seen substantiated to give bad reviews. So, again, that's a put-up-or-shut-up.
      • pjc50 9y ago
        Good scores often are paid for, perhaps indirectly through influence, access and advertising. Not exclusive to games, of course; eg Telegraph /HSBC. Credible allegations that bad scores are paid for are very rare.
• LeoJiWoo 9y ago
  I found the recent EA Battlefront 2 controversy hugely interesting. Gamers rebelling against micro-transactions, then being attacked for being greedy or selfish by the games media. It really brought into picture that various interests of major players in that community are not inline creating a huge amount of tension. The journalists are basically a PR arm of the bigger corporations or a specific political agenda. This article seems to ignore the fact that often groups or tribes often form to protect their own interests by creating various forms of economic and/or social moats. The various groups are all trying to reduce competition by creating monopolies or gatekeepers, which in turn increases the tension or hostility between gamers and the mainstream journalists. It's pretty interesting seeing this occur in real-time. I'm still not sure how the "gamers" are organizing or whether its just an emergent reaction.
  • pvg 9y ago
    What 'specific political agenda' are people who write about games part of?
    • dawnbreez 9y ago
      One might cite news sources which oppose Gamergate as having a political agenda, since Gamergate quickly stopped being about the "five guys" allegations and became about the party lines that both sides drew.
    • supercanuck 9y ago
      Increasing the $ per entertainment hour games provide.
      • pvg 9y ago
        That's not a political agenda.
        • MsMowz 9y ago
          Politics is, broadly, anything to do with interacting with other people. It's a recent phenomenon that only electoral politics is considered politics.
• problems 9y ago
  Interesting - I've never cared for professional reviewers or anything of the sort - instead I just look for the biggest user review site around, which is currently probably Steam and read the comments a bit and then if I'm on the borderline I'll watch a YouTube video of actual gameplay. I can understand why they existed before, but what's the benefit of professional reviewers in this day and age, when it's far easier to determine what the common opinion of something will be?
  • PapstJL4U 9y ago
    Depending on reviewer, the review could be equal to a recommendation by a friend or colleague. This can give you more insight into the reason for a particular review.
  • kenning 9y ago
    Video game reviews usually have opposing goals: journalists want to elevate video games to an art and to elevate their criticism to art criticism, but users want them to quickly provide a helpful recommendation (which is represented by a number score). Steam reviews are concise by design and give you a better idea of whether you'll have the same kind of positive opinion (for example, if all the positive reviews are memey, that says something significant). So I'd say they're definitely better. I think some people who were video game reviewers will go on to become popular youtube "video essay" producers like this guy: https://www.youtube.com/user/Matthewmatosis https://www.youtube.com/user/Matthewmatosis and the rest will get new jobs.
    • eropple 9y ago
      The games press doesn't "want to elevate video games to an art". Games are art. And there are both game reviewers and game critics and the distinction is pretty clear once you've spent a few minutes figuring out if that particular person's thinking matches your own enough to be worth considering. > users want them to quickly provide a helpful recommendation (which is represented by a number score) Speak for yourself. I'm a "user". I also appreciate criticism that places a game in a historical, textual, and social context and that often tells me more about whether I'll like the game than "oh yeah, it runs at 60fps solid on my 1080Ti". A game reviewer might have put me off of Wolfenstein 2: The New Colossus or NieR: Automata because of gameplay ephemera they didn't like; game critics turned me onto both games because they were must-play experiments in how we tell stories.
• shmerl 9y ago
  I don't care about "critics'" reviews or most media reviews for that matter. To evaluate something, I prefer to ask those who like given genre and can express an educated opinion.
  • eropple 9y ago
    How is that different from what a no-airquotes-needed,-thank-you critic does when it comes to media? Find ones who like the genre and can express what you consider to be "an educated opinion" (and that one does get the airquotes). They're probably out there.
    • shmerl 9y ago
      The difference is, I can get way more valuable input about games from some gaming forum, than from a media site. That was my experience at least. May be I was just lucky and found interesting communities.
  • TheCowboy 9y ago
    You don't care about critics, you care about critics. I understand what you're trying to say, but I think you're dismissing criticism at the same time. You want a critic who has a familiarity with the genre that is beyond superficial, and preferably on a deeper level. You want that critic to express an educated opinion, which should be a minimum for any form of criticism. There are some critics who take a larger frame of reference, who might try to represent general audiences who are less familiar with a genre. Some critics can shift in an out of different perspectives. A good movie critic can talk about the merits of an over-the-top action movie without dismissing it. It is perfectly reasonable to find the general critic less useful than the niche critic, both forms are still valid criticism.
    • shmerl 9y ago
      What I meant is that I don't care about "professional critics" most of the time, unless they are well informed. I'm more interested in informal reviews coming from actual gamers.
• sotojuan 9y ago
  Many times I've read a game review by someone who has no interest or experience in the genre. While a different point of view is always interesting, I personally enjoy reviews and writing by someone at least knowledgeable about the subject matter and its context. An example was a review for the Crash Bandicoot remakes by someone who has never played or been into classic platformers. Therefore, the review was mostly complaining about how you go back to the beginning if you lose all your lives (!?). -- Personally, like others have said, I rely on friends and communities devoted to a few specific genres I like (turn based JRPGs make up 80% of my game library).
  • Gargoyle 9y ago
    Similar to what seems to constantly happen on AV Club with their TV reviews. A reviewer who has no interest in the material is assigned and their reviews are awful. The saving grace, though, is that the comment threads on those shows are often wonderful anyway. They somehow have a solid community despite their terrible review strategy. Possible something like that could happen with a game review site.
  • theresistor 9y ago
    See, that Crash Bandicoot review sounds useful to me. I also did not play the originals, and vaguely wondered if I should play the remakes to see what I missed out on. Knowing that it is a frustrating experience without the nostalgia factor is quite valuable to me.
    • dkersten 9y ago
      Going back to the beginning isn't necessarily a frustrating experience though. It depends on other factors such as how far back you go and how frequently it happens. I personally don't find Crash frustrating or particularly hard. If you don't play platformers (I do), then perhaps it would be frustrating for you. But.. yes, games have become more accessible than they were in the 90's when Crash was created.
• firefoxd 9y ago
  One thing I still try to understand is the anger flared when a game/movie sucks. I think the only thing anyone should do when a game sucks is not buy it, and not watch it anymore. But for some reason some people make it their mission to make it a vendetta against the developer.
  • jon_richards 9y ago
    It makes a ton of sense when you think about all the hype, preorders, franchises, exclusive IP grants, etc. that go into these events. Battlefront 2 (2) is a great example. AAA game, so people felt comfortable preordering. Has the Star Wars IP, one of the most famous universes there is. Is continuing the old Battlefront 2, an insanely popular game and likely a cherished childhood memory of a large part of the now adult population making the purchases and complaining. And despite all the bad press, it is generally considered a good game, it's just that greedy policies ruin it for a lot of people.
  • pault 9y ago
    The problem is you usually don't know if a game sucks until you spend $60 on it. The younger gamers who are more likely to participate in mob action can't afford to waste $60 on a shitty game. If someone takes your money for a product that is obviously broken and shouldn't have made it past QA, it's hard not to feel burned.
    • ZeroGravitas 9y ago
      If this was genuinely the case, wouldn't documenting ways to get a refund be more worthwhile? I believe in the UK you can return anything bought online within 2 weeks. There's plenty of other large stores that pride themselves on no quibble refunds. I've never felt money was a key driver here. (Unlike say, platform rivalry, which I've often put down to the fact that it's a massive investment for young kids when they choose to buy one platform and a bunch of games and peripherals, so hearing they've made a bad choice may inflame emotions)
      • PostOnce 9y ago
• apozem 9y ago
  This article reflects an opinion I've long held about game reviews - it's okay for other people to have different opinions. All a review can be is one person's opinion. It might be insightful, helpful, great, terrible, but it's all just an opinion. There should be room within artistic criticism for critics to have different opinions. If Polygon wants to analyze games through the lens of left-leaning politics, that's fine! Readers who want games examined in that way will find that useful. If Totalbiscuit wants to rate games based on their PC ports and framerate, that's also fine! He has an audience that enjoys that. It is acceptable and even valuable for there to be a wide variety of opinions and criticism for an art form. Forget Metacritic bonuses. It's not our job to worry about that. When you read criticism you disagree with, have the confidence to say, "I understand why you didn't like that game, but I did and that's okay."
• lobotryas 9y ago
  Jeff's article is spot-on as always. I'm a bit surprised that any of this still has to be mentioned, but I guess people forget. It's the same reason why I would never go to Roger Ebert for a movie review: he and I like drastically different things. That said, please allow me to make two suggestions to anyone reading this: 1) Check out more of Jeff's blog. His writing is fun, excellent and educational. Even if you only care about tech it will be interesting for you to read Jeff's frank discussion of his game sales numbers and the challenges he has overcome almost single-handedly coding and writing his many games. 2) Give Jeff some of your money. His games are unapologetically targeted at people who enjoy rpg elements, turn based combat and an interesting story. If that sounds like your cup of tea then buy one of his games if you like the gameplay video.
  • eropple 9y ago
    Jeff's blog has been amazing for as long as I can remember. I've been reading his stuff on a regular basis since I was in college and I've been playing his games since I was seven, downloading them off of AOL and getting mad at the Shareware Demon who told me I couldn't go any further. Exile II remains the only game I ever cracked (I don't mean with-a-keygen, I mean with-a-hex-editor; I never got into games pirating from other people), because I was like nine years old and hex editors were easier to come by than credit cards, but I'm pretty sure I've made up for that by buying everything he's released since. Blades of Exile was the first game I ever bought through the mail, Geneforge was never my jam but I bought them all anyway on principle, and I still want a Nethergate 2.
    • lobotryas 9y ago
      You should send Jeff a quick email explaining how you became a life long customer. I am sure he would get a kick out of it! Jeff wouldn't be writing games after all these years if he was in this strictly for the money.
      • eropple 9y ago
        We've corresponded before. ;) I tried to get him on a podcast once, but he's not big on them. Maybe someday! (This is unrelated, but loads of people find it very difficult/intimidating to reach out to people who do interesting stuff. I love shooting emails to people who've done stuff that I find awesome and just about everyone is responsive and extremely gracious.)
• Feniks 9y ago
  If you really think about it game reviews are outdated. This isn't the 90s anymore. Go to YouTube and search for the title of the game followed by gameplay. Example: "cold steel gameplay". Now go to page 3 of the search results to make sure you're NOT getting advertising or ecelebs. You're looking for that random guy who is just recording the game. And doesn't talk. Very important detail. You want that video with sub 100k views. And now you can see for yourself exactly what you will get and can make an informed purchase. But I suppose its just one of those things people want to do that has nothing to do with practicality.
  • arbie 9y ago
    Reviews consider the game in its entirety, not any single X-minute segment. It would be incorrect to assess MGS5 on base-management sections of gameplay, for example.
    • jamesrcole 9y ago
      And I don't think you can always get a clear idea of what it's like to play a game just from footage of it
  • nwjtkjn 9y ago
    Alternatively, do the same thing with Twitch. I watched some random streamer with 3 viewers play Skyrim an hour or so a day for several days, asking him what he liked/disliked about it, before purchasing it.
  • chris_st 9y ago
    Often, a good reviewer will give a good description of gameplay, and a good idea of how steep the difficulty curve is, how the game changes, whether it gets repetitive later on, etc. These things are really hard to get from someone doing a several minute video. That said, I do pretty much what you said (although I just pick one of the first page results, since I don't seem to get the 'ecelebs' (?) you get.) Although, once I read a review of Jak and Daxter II, and the reviewer said it was fantastic up to a particular point, which was impossible to get through, and thus it ruined the game for him. So when I played it, I kept waiting for this unbearably difficult bit... and made it all the way through the game! I went back to the review, and (having played the game) recognized the area he was talking about. It was slightly difficult, in that it might have taken me three tries to get through... :-)
• awill 9y ago
  I thought an important part of this article was to avoid sites where a different reviewer reviews games chosen seemingly at random (like the mainstream IGN, Gamespot, Polygon). Just because you agree with/like John's IGN review of game A doesn't mean you'll agree with Mark's IGN review of game B. Instead find a review site with consistent reviewers whom you like or agree with and read them. For me, I like RockPaperShotgun and Destructoid. Both of those sites seem like they are written by gamers who love gaming, not paid critics. I'd be interested in hearing about other high quality game review sites.
• hexane360 9y ago
  "Look, I love laughing at game professionals flailing at games as much as anyone. Remember when that unnamed Polygon writer tried Doom and showed no signs of ever having played it (or any video game) ever before? That was a hoot. (My favorite bit is when the player unloads a full shotgun blast into a health pack resting on the ground, in what I can only assume is a post-modern deconstruction of late-stage capitalism.) But some people watched that video and said, "Wow, I should never buy this game," and were right to say it. So the video was useful after all." I feel like he brushes this criticism off without really confronting it. A reviewer who's experienced with gaming and good at it can gauge difficulty, one who's inexperienced and terrible can't reliably. Reviewers shouldn't be perfect mirror images of the people they represent. They need to be above average to have cogent criticism and to communicate that to gamers effectively. Terrible analogy: No one is arguing that war correspondents don't need to know anything about geopolitics because "most people who read about geopolitics don't understand it, and they deserve correspondents who advocate for them."
  • ng12 9y ago
    Yeah, that part seemed particularly bizarre. I would never accept a gig writing reviews for Jazz performances -- I don't know anything about Jazz and I can't fathom why anyone would care about what I have to say.
• jorgec 9y ago
  A journalist is like a Lawyer, they think that they are good at everything but they should be specialized, for example, a business lawyer trying to act in a criminal case. In this case, a game journalist should be specialized in some kind of games. Its not as simple as "i play xbox" or "playstation". For example Flight Simulation games or Wargaming. All of them are niche, and if you don't get it, you could considers it as a boring game, and yes, they are bore if you aren't part of the target market. Cuphead is an example, a apparently good journalist trying to play a game where hes clueless. IT WAS PATHETIC.
• chickenfries 9y ago
  Good video summing up "outrage" that occurred around Cuphead: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_-P9_oUV9Gw https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_-P9_oUV9Gw
  • ygaf 9y ago
    The author(Shaun) is very reasonable, as are the SJWs who expand on the vid in response to 'secretagentlucario'. But even after that user's efforts to discover what the problem in problematic is, they fail to make it clear. Everyone ends at "it's worth talking about", everyone denies wanting anything loony like inserting PSAs before videogames that want to use a 30s american animation aesthetic. What is there to talk about? I don't blame gamers for concluding those tweets were an attack on Cuphead; that's what 'problematic' is, an airheaded attack.
    • chickenfries 9y ago
      I can't speak for the people having the discussion, but if I were to put a "game critic" hat on I would say that Cuphead seems to have missed an opportunity to borrow an art style but subvert the racism of the genre, but instead chose to sweet it under the rug. That's a shame, it could've made a great game even greater to smartly acknowledge the fire it was playing with. I agree that "problematic" should be retired because it's lazy shorthand that has gotten out of control. But to "academic" types saying something is "problematic" is really banal: literally everything is problematic, in some way or another to a critic. That's okay though, and it's true of all other forms of art that are criticized and theorized. So I agree that the language and jargon of academia is, well... problematic :) > I don't blame gamers for concluding those tweets were an attack on Cuphead; that's what 'problematic' is, an airheaded attack. I blame the people like the youtuber in at the beginning of Shaun's video, which I think is the point: there are people out there stoking the flames of outrage for profit based on misreading (on purpose or otherwise) of fairly banal things said by academics and critics.
      • ygaf 9y ago
        Thanks for the response, I posted to a non-front-page thread knowing you specifically (if no one else) might see it. I would like to know what you mean by subverting the racism / acknowledgeing it, without tinkering with the developer's vision. I believe the video that the plot (which brings with it the dice character) was inspired by racist cartoons, but I don't think the art style alone should have to excuse itself.
• bitwize 9y ago
  Here's the thing: Game journalism corruption has been a thing for decades now. When Bubsy first came out, there was a media blitz in magazines like GamePro, who had fulsome praise and promoted Bubsy as the next Sonic. Of course anyone who's played the game knows it's rather terrible. So I think when we see outrage against games journalists, what we are really seeing is a skeptical audience and that's a sign of health in the community. Games journalists who praise a bad game as good because they were paid to, or who criticize a good game as bad because they can't be arsed to learn to play it and somehow, to them, it's the game's fault, are not fulfilling their ostensible function of informing the potential audience for these games. That said if you're going to call out a games journalist, it's important to be gentlemanly and civilized and not act like a rabid chimp.