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Flip Yr Wig posted:A preset victory condition that results in some kind of game-ending screen seems like a poor necessary component of a game. Sandbox sims like SimCity or Paradox games have predefined rules for interacting with the world, limits on what can and cannot be done, and clear (if often obtuse) feedback mechanisms that tell the player what effect their interactions have made on the world. The victory condition is decided on by the player within the context of those rules, and almost all of those games lead a player toward choosing certain types of goals over others (ie, make this particularly enticing number bigger). The victory condition is an emergent property of the game and how the player approaches it, rather than a clear ending point, but it's still there. Sandbox games like Lego or Erector Sets have predefined rules for interacting with the world, physical limits on what can and cannot be built, and clear feedback mechanisms that tell the player what effect their interactions have made on the world. The victory condition is decided on by the player within the context of those rules, and almost all of those games lead a player toward choosing certain types of goals over others (ie, make this particularly enticing structure bigger). The victory condition is an emergent property of the game and how the player approaches it, rather than a clear ending point, but it's still there. Ipso facto toys do not exist.
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Jun 3, 2016 18:22
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yeah, but everyone agrees that's a dumb way to do things plus it doesn't impact the biggest studios who self-publish
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Jun 3, 2016 18:24
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Tuxedo Catfish posted:reviews and criticism are not the same thing and conflating the two is a huge part of the reason why games criticism is so bad A big problem with videogame reviews and videogame criticism, either from a "professional" or enthusiast standpoint, is that we're dealing with videogames. This fact alone somehow convinces many people writing critiques or reviews to do their very level best at coming up with some amazing mental gymnastics on the fly, all to support an argument about the game itself, or the people who enjoy it, oftentimes flying in the very face of the actual product they are discussing. Whether it is about the quality of the game's controls, graphics, the plot or the characters within, there's an increasingly annoying trend for people to not actually review or critique the game that is actually in front of them, but rather what they wish that game was, regardless of whether or not they actually like or hate the damned thing in the first place. A game is "transcendental", "good", "mediocre", or "garbage", with very little in between these four basic states a game can ultimately launch in, and for places like Polygon or Kotaku, the actual quality of the game doesn't really matter all that much. To them, reviews or critiques of a game are becoming less about the actual game itself, and more about the writer flexing their thesaurus/that one semester they took a course on ethics/psychology/history any time in the last fifteen years. They are crafting The Story Of How They Came To Like/Hate Things About This Videogame. They are trying to sell you about themselves as a personality "in the biz" to their readers, or selling you the "brand" they represent. Almost as much as they are trying to sell you their review/critique. Discussion about a game, or aspects or a game, quickly go sideways when it starts to becomes very apparently that one party or all parties involved are convinced that people are wrong to agree or disagree with an opinion, or that there are people out there who suffer from the affliction of enjoying the wrong games and are just too stupid to know any better. It's "wrong" if a game is reviewed too poorly or too well. It's wrong to like Franchise A more than B, even if the reviewer in question never brings this up themselves you can expect fans to bring it up. This ultimately extends to attacks on genres of videogames and often the people who enjoy them, particularly when a disagreement gets heated. Some critics become so married to their own words that they outright state that the developers OR their readers aren't allowed to dismiss their criticism in any way without being "privileged" or just wrongheaded. Having preferences in videogames suddenly needs to be justified in other people's eyes, whether it is the latest visual novel or the new GTA. For a long time now, especially on Something Awful, but definitely not limited to it, there's been a disgusting trend of people who unironically and seriously talk about military shooters as "brown people murder simulators". As though I or anyone else who actually is one of those "brown people" they claim to give a poo poo about is supposed to be convinced that they do care about those poor virtual or real "browns", beyond scoring some sick burns on their favorite comedy website whenever the chance presents itself. It isn't just with first/third person shooters of course, they just happen to be the easiest targets. I don't think we can expect this to get any better, especially on the internet. It's so incredibly easy these days to just filter opinions you don't like and stick to sources of information that agree with what you believe. People do that with poo poo that actually matters in their daily lives, so it's not surprising that the act of discussing or critiquing videogames has found itself in a state little better than the sort of tribalistic bleating between people who watch FOX News or CNN religiously. fivegears4reverse fucked around with this message at 19:10 on Jun 3, 2016 |
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Jun 3, 2016 18:43
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That's been a problem since forever with all kinds of reviewing, though; everyone brings their own personal lens filter. I mean, Ben Johnson and Milton criticized Shakespeare for having too much magic and fantasy and wildness in his plays ( http://www.tor.com/2016/06/02/the-fantastical-strangeness-of-william-shakespeare/ ) . It probably is worse now due to the internet as you say but most reviewing has always been crap because very few reviewers have ever been capable of reviewing the actual work in front of them, from the perspective of the audience rather than from their own. Hieronymous Alloy fucked around with this message at 19:06 on Jun 3, 2016 |
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Jun 3, 2016 19:03
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Zachack posted:You can lose, or at least have rendered irrelevant, your argument by having weak or faulty foundations. If I argue that game X should cost me Y dollars on Z date and refuse to adjust either X, Y, or Z then I am specifying what those parameters are and may be wrong. For an obviously extreme example, if I declare that Overwatch should only cost $5 at launch with no dlc and weekly free maps and characters of equal "quality" as those shipped at launch, then I'm making direct statements on how much Overwatch cost to produce and maintain, and probably how much it will sell, and thus could be specifically wrong - Overwatch may need to cost $10 and DLC be released monthy simply to avoid violating California labor laws. When people compare "quality" and price of, say, Fallout 4 to Witcher 3 then again you run into this problem: the cost of developing in the US is not the same as developing in Poland. And this is just a super-rudimentary way of looking at development costs - what if your head programmer gets cancer? Should they be forced to work anyway because you've declared Z immutable? Incoherence posted:The argument is lost in the sense that you are never going to convince publishers that they shouldn't ever put paid DLC in a paid-for game. They may or may not do so in any given game, and there's a whole range of kinds of DLC where different people can draw the line in different places, and you can make fun of people who pay for horse armor, but the DLC genie is out of the bottle at this point.
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Jun 3, 2016 19:08
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fivegears4reverse posted:Whether it is about the quality of the game's controls, graphics, the plot or the characters within, there's an increasingly annoying trend for people to not actually review or critique the game that is actually in front of them, but rather what they wish that game was, regardless of whether or not they actually like or hate the damned thing in the first place. A game is "transcendental", "good", "mediocre", or "garbage", with very little in between these three basic states a game can ultimately launch in, and for places like Polygon or Kotaku, the actual quality of the game doesn't really matter all that much. To them, reviews or critiques of a game are becoming less about the actual game itself, and more about the writer flexing their thesaurus/that one semester they took a course on ethics/psychology/history any time in the last fifteen years. They are crafting The Story Of How They Came To Like/Hate Things About This Videogame. They are trying to sell you about themselves as a personality "in the biz" to their readers, or selling you the "brand" they represent. Almost as much as they are trying to sell you their review/critique. I'm not even saying that people who review a game only on its mechanics are wrong; it's a different perspective, and one I don't share, but if that's all you care about in a game then that's the kind of review you want to seek out. twodot posted:The fact that may or may not do so in any given game seems to suggest the argument isn't lost. This looks to me like saying the argument for not putting objectified women in games is lost, because there will always be at least one person that will do it. Incoherence fucked around with this message at 19:27 on Jun 3, 2016 |
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Jun 3, 2016 19:23
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Hieronymous Alloy posted:That's been a problem since forever with all kinds of reviewing, though; everyone brings their own personal lens filter. I mean, Ben Johnson and Milton criticized Shakespeare for having too much magic and fantasy and wildness in his plays ( I'm not sure that's necessarily what's needed though, since what an audience reacts to can depend greatly on the makeup of the audience. It's the old trouble with media in general - people don't want to read a bunch of reviews and get a general consensus, so they just complain that this particular news source is "biased" (which usually means "disagrees with me").
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Jun 3, 2016 19:30
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Hieronymous Alloy posted:That's been a problem since forever with all kinds of reviewing, though; everyone brings their own personal lens filter. I mean, Ben Johnson and Milton criticized Shakespeare for having too much magic and fantasy and wildness in his plays ( I think it's alright for personal preferences to factor into any review, since that is basically inescapable. I do think it is the individual critic's responsibility to know when they are letting these things get in the way of actually reviewing the product on hand. For a recent example, Arthur Gies wrote a "non-review" of the new Star Fox, and the only reason we know it's not a review or critique of any sort is because he says himself that it isn't a review of the game. He hates the game SO MUCH that he refused to even "properly" review it, whatever that means, and he's let his statement stand on the matter. Of course, that's all ultimately just a load of poo poo. He's not championing integrity or anything of the sort with his rant, it effectively IS his review: "game sucks so bad I'm not even going to take the time to get the site to web 3.0 some fancy formatting on this article, much less put in the effort into THIS game versus any other game I've actually posted reviews for, ostensibly as a gaaaaaames joooooournalist" I think my biggest problem is the reviewer/critic themselves fully embracing the "role" of gatekeeper of the industry, pretending they are some sort of arbitrary watchdog (albeit one that ultimately does very little to influence the industry to the same extent that the industry/their audience influences them). Incoherence posted:I actually don't know what this paragraph means, other than the shot at "Polygon or Kotaku" (why is it always those two? and why does Kotaku come up here in the context of its game reviewing rather than its ongoing series of posts about creepy Japanese bullshit?). If I'm interested in the experience of playing the game, then I'm interested in reading someone talk about the experience of playing the game. There's a reason that the Game Review Rubric (graphics/controls/plot/replay value/etc.) fell out of favor. They get brought up since they are pretty much the most egregious examples of what I personally feel is lovely professional vidyergames journalism, reviews, and critique. Like Hieronymous Alloy says, the problems I bitch about in reviews or critique aren't exactly new, much less limited to videogames. As for the Rubric, I don't think it's fallen out of favor at all. It's just had items on the list edited in and out over the years, in favor of something less cohesive as a review or as criticism. quote:I'm not even saying that people who review a game only on its mechanics are wrong; it's a different perspective, and one I don't share, but if that's all you care about in a game then that's the kind of review you want to seek out. I don't want games to ONLY be reviewed on their mechanics. I want the mechanics of the game to be treated with even remotely the same reverence that drives people to write bullshit like "Sequel Three is the Citizen Kane of Videogames/Is Very Problematic And Here's The Essay I Wrote About It". When I bring up places like Polygon or Kotaku, it's because they exemplify the opposite to the extreme you think I'm pushing for. fivegears4reverse fucked around with this message at 19:47 on Jun 3, 2016 |
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Jun 3, 2016 19:39
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That's just the industry screwing it's employees over, if it wasn't Metacritic Scores they'd use some other excuse. By the way, the work conditions in the videogame industry are a big problem. Hieronymous Alloy posted:That's been a problem since forever with all kinds of reviewing, though; everyone brings their own personal lens filter. I mean, Ben Johnson and Milton criticized Shakespeare for having too much magic and fantasy and wildness in his plays ( 
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Jun 3, 2016 20:21
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among other things wrong with that article, anyone who uses "geek" and "nerd" to imply a hierarchy where being the first is better deserves to be fed live gerbils
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Jun 3, 2016 20:26
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Incoherence posted:I actually don't know what this paragraph means, other than the shot at "Polygon or Kotaku" (why is it always those two? and why does Kotaku come up in the context of its game reviewing rather than its ongoing series of posts about creepy Japanese bullshit?). If I'm interested in the experience of playing the game, then I'm interested in reading someone talk about the experience of playing the game. There's a reason that the Game Review Rubric (graphics/controls/plot/replay value/etc.) fell out of favor. I think part of it is Polygon and Kotaku did think pieces about Gamers (as in the AAA stereotyped crowd) being over, and also was willing to take a stand against GG/for feminists. There's also a pretty solid streak of anti-intellectualism running through it, given lines like "flexing their thesaurus/that one semester they took a course on ethics/psychology/history". Nerd culture has a big problem with people finally looking at it critically, and a whole lot of nerds getting angry that it might somehow invalidate their tastes. You see similar things in comics and video games, where a mass of "normal" people end up raging against the PC/effete journalists. The fact that two of the three guys in thread were complaining about the reviews had issues with people being "sex negative" also tells volumes. I also think a lot of nerds know the games they like are the Michael Bay/Zack Synder end of things, and are more than a little worried that people are starting to act like this might not be the alpha and omega of gaming. Effectively, they want gaming to stay in the kiddie pool, because it's better to be king of an anthill than just being part of a much wider hobby. quote:I'm not even saying that people who review a game only on its mechanics are wrong; it's a different perspective, and one I don't share, but if that's all you care about in a game then that's the kind of review you want to seek out. The thing is reviews aren't wrong in any case. You're asking someone's opinion of a game and they're giving it. The reason why I listen to the reviews that I do is because I find people who have similar tastes and use their reviews. I already know that Beige Military Shooter of the Month isn't my style, so I ignore them regardless of glowing reviews. I'm more interested in indies or jRPGs that dodge the weebiest of stuff, and reviews are often really good at tell me how much Otaku contamination a game has. I do similiarly for movies, though anymore I've seen blowback about this because most movie reviewers are discerning enough to not give good reviews to average/poor blockbuster type films. I think there's just a growing group of low culture lovers who don't like to have their tastes questioned by anyone, and it's spilling over into everything.
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Jun 3, 2016 20:35
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The solution is just to find a reviewer that you like and just read/watch their reviews. It's not like the marketplace is lacking of reviewers. If you want a more "objective" view of the game, there's literally tons of footage of every game on YouTube which should give you the gist of how the game plays. I like the Giant Bomb guys, so I read their reviews. They have a nice mix of talking about mechanics and occasionally talking about the background politics of a game if they feel it's worth talking about. That may not be your cup of tea, so feel free to seek out someone who reviews games in a way that you appreciate. I don't see the need to criticize Polygon/Kotaku, just don't read them.
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Jun 3, 2016 20:37
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Tuxedo Catfish posted:among other things wrong with that article, anyone who uses "geek" and "nerd" to imply a hierarchy where being the first is better deserves to be fed live gerbils That's a totally fair response. Just linking for the factual content.
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Jun 3, 2016 20:44
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fivegears4reverse posted:I don't want games to ONLY be reviewed on their mechanics. I want the mechanics of the game to be treated with even remotely the same reverence that drives people to write bullshit like "Sequel Three is the Citizen Kane of Videogames/Is Very Problematic And Here's The Essay I Wrote About It". When I bring up places like Polygon or Kotaku, it's because they exemplify the opposite to the extreme you think I'm pushing for. As a data point for my personal leanings, the last time I actively followed a single gaming news outlet was the original incarnation of the Escapist (the PDF magazine format), where most of the articles were personal rather than news-driven. (And then they moved far away from that, while keeping their community's overinflated sense of "we're smarter than people who read GameSpot/IGN".)
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Jun 3, 2016 20:53
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Volcott posted:Don't talk about the videogames. Play the videogames. Toplowtech fucked around with this message at 21:01 on Jun 3, 2016 |
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Jun 3, 2016 20:59
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Tuxedo Catfish posted:among other things wrong with that article, anyone who uses "geek" and "nerd" to imply a hierarchy where being the first is better deserves to be fed live gerbils For me at least, I feel like the word "nerd" has been picking up a lot more connections to misogyny and rascism that "geek" hasn't for whatever reason.
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Jun 3, 2016 21:04
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twodot posted:Should statements can't be wrong. If I think Overwatch should cost $5 and have free high quality DLC, it is just a fact that I think that. The cost of producing such a product might be such that were a developer to attempt this, they would end up losing money, but as a game purchaser it isn't my responsibility to ensure that capitalists can rent seek effectively. Having that sort of requirement may mean I never buy a game again, but that doesn't make it wrong to have those requirements.
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Jun 3, 2016 21:10
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Zachack posted:Hence why I included "rendered irrelevant ", unless you're suggesting that arguing for 1860s slavery is a relevant argument (and even then it may still need to cost more than $5)
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Jun 3, 2016 21:45
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twodot posted:What does irrelevant mean here? Do you mean uncommon? "You shouldn't create DLC" is a very relevant argument to game design. Your use of need is also squirrelly, need to cost more than $5 to accomplish what? Things don't have intrinsic prices dictated by physics. "I'm a sovereign citizen of spaceship earth " is an irrelevant argument when complaining about taxes because it shows an unwillingness to engage with even a modicum of contrary arguments and is rooted in fantasy. Game development in 2016 does have intrinsic prices generated by food, shelter, and sleep requirements of humans, to say nothing of labor laws, utility costs, development equipment, etc, so either you need to engage with those largely currently immutable costs in your arguments or accept that your demand of charity/patronage development is likely irrelevant when discussing a game with high production values.
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Jun 3, 2016 22:02
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Zachack posted:"I'm a sovereign citizen of spaceship earth " is an irrelevant argument when complaining about taxes because it shows an unwillingness to engage with even a modicum of contrary arguments and is rooted in fantasy. quote:Game development in 2016 does have intrinsic prices generated by food, shelter, and sleep requirements of humans, to say nothing of labor laws, utility costs, development equipment, etc, so either you need to engage with those largely currently immutable costs in your arguments or accept that your demand of charity/patronage development is likely irrelevant when discussing a game with high production values.
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Jun 3, 2016 22:08
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Only media which support the message of the Party and promote political consciousness among the masses should be allowed
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Jun 3, 2016 22:12
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rkajdi posted:I think part of it is Polygon and Kotaku did think pieces about Gamers (as in the AAA stereotyped crowd) being over, and also was willing to take a stand against GG/for feminists. There's also a pretty solid streak of anti-intellectualism running through it, given lines like "flexing their thesaurus/that one semester they took a course on ethics/psychology/history". Nerd culture has a big problem with people finally looking at it critically, and a whole lot of nerds getting angry that it might somehow invalidate their tastes. You see similar things in comics and video games, where a mass of "normal" people end up raging against the PC/effete journalists. The act of criticism is not an inherent good beyond any form of reproach, no matter how much you might personally agree with what people like Arthur Gies or an anonymous gamergate shitposter have to say. quote:I also think a lot of nerds know the games they like are the Michael Bay/Zack Synder end of things, and are more than a little worried that people are starting to act like this might not be the alpha and omega of gaming. Effectively, they want gaming to stay in the kiddie pool, because it's better to be king of an anthill than just being part of a much wider hobby. Videogames have been, for a very long time, much more than just the Michael Bay/Zack Snyder "end" of things. You'd have to be pretty ignorant to not see it that way. It says a lot about you in general that your first instinct is to assume that people you disagree with in any way are ooooobviously fans of "low art", or are afraid that OTHER PEOPLE MIGHT LIKE VIDEOGAMES TOO. Every console generation since the NES has seen videogames reach an increasingly larger number of people around the world, across a variety genres. I'm not ignorant to the fact that gaming is more than just a hobby for a specific brand of "nerd" you've tried to evoke in your post, and I am okay with this. If all you've really got is to insinuate that I am somehow a supporter of gamergate, I can see how you'd actually think Polygon or Kotaku are a worthy hill to plant a flag on. Incoherence posted:Part of that is that there's a lot less cultural baggage with game mechanics than there is with storytelling, so it's harder to write thinkpieces about mechanics alone, and they tend to be less visible because they're less controversial. No one's going to write an angry response to an article about Overwatch's audio design. A lot of people can and do write angry responses to articles about objectified women, or even about "X is the best/worst game of all time". So, on the one hand, if you're trying to drive traffic, controversy is your meal ticket (the Gawker sites are all basically tabloids so Kotaku fits in very well here). On the other hand, we can't very well just pretend that baggage doesn't exist. For what it's worth as a post on Something Awful is concerned, I don't believe that thinkpieces are a bad idea inherently. I don't think for a second that we can't or shouldn't discuss underlying themes present in games, or other more serious topics connected to videogames. I do believe that there's been some badly written think pieces disguised as a game review, there's definitely been a fair bit of the Gawker-style clickbait that you can find just about anywhere. The articles that have bugged me the most feel like the sort of Gotcha! shitposting that come up from people like rkajdi: no actual attempt to engage with the audience intellectually, it's just someone speaking at you in as condescending a tone as they can manage, telling you that you're just wrong for not 100 percent seeing things the way they do. It's a lot like that whole "we're smarter than people who read GameSpot/IGN" bit you mentioned. I do think you'll find that people will write angry responses to just about anything when it comes to videogames; It wouldn't surprising me in the least to see someone freaking out over the sound design in Overwatch. People have sent death threats over other poo poo in videogames.
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Jun 3, 2016 22:15
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zack snyder is actually a pretty good filmmaker and practically a poster child for being a self-aware nerd
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Jun 3, 2016 22:17
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fivegears4reverse posted:I do believe that there's been some badly written think pieces disguised as a game review, there's definitely been a fair bit of the Gawker-style clickbait that you can find just about anywhere. The articles that have bugged me the most feel like the sort of Gotcha! shitposting that come up from people like rkajdi: no actual attempt to engage with the audience intellectually, it's just someone speaking at you in as condescending a tone as they can manage, telling you that you're just wrong for not 100 percent seeing things the way they do. It's a lot like that whole "we're smarter than people who read GameSpot/IGN" bit you mentioned. So don't read them?
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Jun 3, 2016 22:18
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Criticism is inherently good. As the Talmud says, we were put on this Earth to think. Those that complain about thinking are raging futilely against the LORD their god.
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Jun 3, 2016 22:18
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WampaLord posted:So don't read them? I think its important to not turn a blind eye to every little thing I disagree with, as such I'm still able to read your posts
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Jun 3, 2016 22:41
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I've been reflecting on some of the posts here, and I have to wonder: now that we have the possibility of seeing people review a game on Youtube, with all the live gameplay footage that entails, is there really a need for written reviews, as opposed to critiques? I know that if a game comes to me through other than "this is good" word-of-mouth, what gets me to play a game is seeing people actually play through the start of it, and their reflections as they play. I also know that I rarely read anything by games media, IGN or Kotaku, especially not when I'm making the decision of whether or not to play a game.
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Jun 3, 2016 22:45
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Absurd Alhazred posted:I've been reflecting on some of the posts here, and I have to wonder: now that we have the possibility of seeing people review a game on Youtube, with all the live gameplay footage that entails, is there really a need for written reviews, as opposed to critiques? I know that if a game comes to me through other than "this is good" word-of-mouth, what gets me to play a game is seeing people actually play through the start of it, and their reflections as they play. Written reviews can be well done and probably aren't going away. Not every YouTuber out there is particularly interesting to hear speak about anything, much less a videogame. We still have articles written on websites for newspapers despite the fact that we have 24 hour news channels and the ability to get instant video updates of events outside of our own time zones. In some ways I think a written review/article can possibly do a better job at really describing why something does or doesn't work in a videogame. In other ways a video review or a stream of a game can do a better job than a bunch of text. I don't necessarily put a lot of stock in reviews either, in text or in video form, but I tend to read/watch 'em out of habit. I like seeing how other people have reacted to a videogame, even if I disagree with them. Guess I'm a weirdo though.
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Jun 3, 2016 23:06
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fivegears4reverse posted:The act of criticism is not an inherent good beyond any form of reproach, no matter how much you might personally agree with what people like Arthur Gies or an anonymous gamergate shitposter have to say. My argument is getting angry at a reviewer for reviewing a game "wrong" is an idiotic position, since a review is a subjective thing and doesn't have a correct answer. There is no such thing as an objective review, and to push for a more "true" review that matches whatever viewpoint you have is a rather myopic point to stand on. I don't mind people heaping praise on the latest AAA, just don't complain that not every reviewer agrees and heaps praise on whatever game you love. I certainly don't care if people hate whatever indie darling or casual game I'm playing. It's almost like my enjoyment of something is independent of what other people think of it. quote:Videogames have been, for a very long time, much more than just the Michael Bay/Zack Snyder "end" of things. You'd have to be pretty ignorant to not see it that way. Uh, that's sort of what you insinuated with the whole raging against "Brown People Murder Simulators" criticisms (BTW, you don't get any points by not saying Virtue Signaling if you make the argument long hand) and complaining that reviewers were giving out wrong reviews. If you think that gaming can be for other kinds of gamers, you have to tolerate other kinds of gamers getting reviews that might be helpful to them. My suggestion is that if you don't want to be grouped with a bunch of anti-intellectuals, stop using the same stupid arguments they do. quote:For what it's worth as a post on Something Awful is concerned, I don't believe that thinkpieces are a bad idea inherently. I don't think for a second that we can't or shouldn't discuss underlying themes present in games, or other more serious topics connected to videogames. Again, my argument is that reviews can't be wrong, and playing up some anti-intellectual drivel about people forcing their politics into things (hint: there is no neutral position, antipolitical positions are inherently political) is the standard ignorant idea that is attempting to make sure gaming stays in the quickly homogenizing AAA ghetto that some people have been trying to get away from.
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Jun 3, 2016 23:17
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Absurd Alhazred posted:I've been reflecting on some of the posts here, and I have to wonder: now that we have the possibility of seeing people review a game on Youtube, with all the live gameplay footage that entails, is there really a need for written reviews, as opposed to critiques? I know that if a game comes to me through other than "this is good" word-of-mouth, what gets me to play a game is seeing people actually play through the start of it, and their reflections as they play. Well, that's the whole point of Polygon - sell long-form editorial content to The Millennials (tm) by coating it in slick marketing and aesthetics. I don't think there's going to be an enormous market for that going forwards, but certainly enough of one to support a few major publications. But yeah, your average 14 year old CoD player has moved on to Youtube and Twitch
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Jun 3, 2016 23:21
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icantfindaname posted:Well, that's the whole point of Polygon - sell long-form editorial content to The Millennials (tm) by coating it in slick marketing and aesthetics. I don't think there's going to be an enormous market for that going forwards, but certainly enough of one to support a few major publications. But yeah, your average 14 year old CoD player has moved on to Youtube and Twitch Have Millennials (pat. pend.) not moved on to Youtube and Twitch, as well, except watching entirely different videos from different reviewers? Or possibly the same ones when those are covering different genres?
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Jun 3, 2016 23:26
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Reviews can be as wrong as any other opinion statement is. Plenty of people have opinions s that are "wrong" in the sense that everyone with a lick of sense disagrees. Opinions can also be morally or ethically wrong (for example, racist opinions), can be ruled wrong by someone else with a different opinion and more authority (judicial opinions that are overturned), or can be premised on facts that are demonstrably false (don't sail to China! You'll go over the edge!)
Hieronymous Alloy fucked around with this message at 23:29 on Jun 3, 2016 |
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Jun 3, 2016 23:26
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Hieronymous Alloy posted:Reviews can be as wrong as any other opinion statement is. Plenty of people have opinions s that are "wrong" in the sense that everyone with a lick of sense disagrees. Opinions can also be morally or ethically wrong (for example, racist opinions), can be ruled wrong by someone else with a different opinion and more authority (judicial opinions that are overturned), or can be premised on facts that are demonstrably false (don't sail to China! You'll go over the edge!) I'd summarize it by saying that reviews are open to critique, and critiques are open to critique in turn. It's critiques all the way down.
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Jun 3, 2016 23:31
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Tuxedo Catfish posted:zack snyder is actually a pretty good filmmaker and practically a poster child for being a self-aware nerd We're talking about the guy who made Man of Steel, Suckerpunch, Watchmen, and of course Superman vs. Batman, right? I wouldn't call any of those "pretty good". Hell, the only thing that he did that was halfway okay was 300.
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Jun 3, 2016 23:33
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Absurd Alhazred posted:Have Millennials (pat. pend.) not moved on to Youtube and Twitch, as well, except watching entirely different videos from different reviewers? Or possibly the same ones when those are covering different genres? I think you'll have a full spectrum from long-form editorial content, maybe even something approaching the prestige of a book review periodical, down to the Youtube critic personalities like the Nostalgia Critic or the British guy with rear end cancer and finally to people playing Minecraft and making wacky faces for an audience of 13 year olds. Polygon seems pretty successful, I think the great die-off of written game journalism has already happened and we're in a fairly sustainable state, as long as you don't expect to be paid anything for being a critic
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Jun 3, 2016 23:39
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rkajdi posted:We're talking about the guy who made Man of Steel, Suckerpunch, Watchmen, and of course Superman vs. Batman, right? I wouldn't call any of those "pretty good". Hell, the only thing that he did that was halfway okay was 300. I thought watchmen was a decent interpretation of the source material. On the other hand, he deserves relatively little credit for 300. 90% of that was just the visual strength of Miller's underlying work, just like with Sin City.
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Jun 3, 2016 23:40
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icantfindaname posted:I think you'll have a full spectrum from long-form editorial content, maybe even something approaching the prestige of a book review periodical, down to the Youtube critic personalities like the Nostalgia Critic or the British guy with rear end cancer and finally to people playing Minecraft and making wacky faces for an audience of 13 year olds. That sounds like you're talking about critique. I'm really talking about reviews, as in a summary that is supposed to answer the question: "do I want to play this", as opposed to critique, which is where I would expect more of "how does this fit within the context of the genre and/or society at large." quote:Polygon seems pretty successful, I think the great die-off of written game journalism has already happened and we're in a fairly sustainable state, as long as you don't expect to be paid anything for being a critic I don't feel like uncompensated content creation is sustainable, actually.
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Jun 3, 2016 23:44
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Absurd Alhazred posted:I don't feel like uncompensated content creation is sustainable, actually. it depends on the timeframe - they've been farming forums content to put on the frontpage for a decade at least
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Jun 3, 2016 23:45
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Hieronymous Alloy posted:Reviews can be as wrong as any other opinion statement is. Plenty of people have opinions s that are "wrong" in the sense that everyone with a lick of sense disagrees. Opinions can also be morally or ethically wrong (for example, racist opinions), can be ruled wrong by someone else with a different opinion and more authority (judicial opinions that are overturned), or can be premised on facts that are demonstrably false (don't sail to China! You'll go over the edge!) That's not what's being discussed here, though. We have someone saying reviews are wrong for analyzing games from a perspective he doesn't feel as worthy for a review. Basically, the argument that only certain parts of a game should be part of a review-- if you disagree with the political slant of a game, it can't be part of the review, or else it becomes a think piece. Because these are of course objective things that can't have any overlap.
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Jun 3, 2016 23:45
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Absurd Alhazred posted:I've been reflecting on some of the posts here, and I have to wonder: now that we have the possibility of seeing people review a game on Youtube, with all the live gameplay footage that entails, is there really a need for written reviews, as opposed to critiques? I know that if a game comes to me through other than "this is good" word-of-mouth, what gets me to play a game is seeing people actually play through the start of it, and their reflections as they play. I tend to be skeptical of Major Games Media mostly because I consider them bought and paid for by AAA publishers' PR departments; unfortunately no one really wants to talk about this anymore because some idiots decided to co-opt the term "ethics in gaming journalism" to refer to almost exactly the opposite problem. Absurd Alhazred posted:I'd summarize it by saying that reviews are open to critique, and critiques are open to critique in turn. It's critiques all the way down.
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Jun 3, 2016 23:49
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