
Settling Video Game Arguments, Part 1: Game Reviews - Darthy
http://jeff-vogel.blogspot.com/2017/11/i-settle-all-video-game-arguments-part.html
======
LeoJiWoo
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.

~~~
chiaro
The sticker price for games has stayed rock steady for _decades_ now while
budgets have only exploded (not to mention inflation). AAA budgets, $60
titles, and no microtransactions or subscriptions is absolutely a 'pick two'
scenario, and will continue to be.

~~~
izacus
That completely ignores the fact that audience and number of sold copies had
grown as well. Games that have once sold 1 million copoies now sell in 5-10x
as much. If anything the profits are now higher than ever.

~~~
chiaro
And budgets have exploded 200x from the 1-3M N64 game days. It's utterly
disproportionate. If you look at the most profitable games (Blizzard, Valve,
Riot) they're moving away from sticker prices altogether.

~~~
izacus
I'm not talking N64 days, e.g. typical EA example is Dead Space - the first
one sold 1 million copies and was considered a huge success. Such a success
that they bootstrapped a whole franchise. And that's not a N64 type game.

It's third installment, Dead Space 3, was slated to sell minimum of 5 million
copies. With less than 5 million, EA decided that it's not going to be
profitable enough. It also had microtransactions and DLCs on top of those
required 5 million copies sold.

Who's greedy here?

------
lobotryas
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
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
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
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.)

------
sotojuan
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).

~~~
theresistor
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
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.

------
Feniks
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.

~~~
PhasmaFelis
There's a lot you don't learn from watching gameplay videos. You don't learn
what the controls feel like, how responsive it is. Many games look like a
confusing mess if you haven't played through the tutorial stages yourself to
understand what the player is doing and what drives the decisions they make.
And unless it's a first-time playthrough, you don't learn what it's like for a
new player. There's a great big pile of streamers who've been playing Dark
Souls for thousands of hours, and you will get a very very wrong impression of
the game's difficulty if you just watch them.

A good review gives an accurate impression of a game's strengths and
weaknesses in 5 minutes of reading. I've bought games based on overall
negative reviews before, because the writer was even-handed enough for me to
judge exactly how my tastes differed from his, and see that I could live with
the bits he hated and love the bits he thought were just decent.

~~~
dkersten
I agree with this. The Dark Souls reference is so true (but applies to every
game)

> here's a great big pile of streamers who've been playing Dark Souls for
> thousands of hours, and you will get a very very wrong impression of the
> game's difficulty if you just watch them.

Hell, when I play dark souls now, I just kinda ignore all the enemies. They're
like flies that get swatted if they get too close, but that's it. This is NOT
the experience a first time player will have. Instead of flies, each enemy is
an angry bear with a time bomb strapped to its back, with robot claws. Every
enemy strikes them with fear and apprehension. All of this goes away as you
become accustomed to the game.

When you watch an experienced player play, you obviously see the former and
not the latter and what you see is NOT the experience you will have.
(Although, you can of course watch a video where someone new to the series is
playing... but the majority of videos are by existing fans)

------
problems
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?

~~~
kenning
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
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.

~~~
jorgec
Videogames use art but its not art. Or more specifically, its not created for
their artistic value. Videogames are a amusement product over an artistic
product.

For example, a stunning artistic videogame but boring versus a ugly game but
funny.

~~~
hexane360
There are many types of videogames with many different audiences, similar to
movies. You can argue that videogames aren't art by pointing to Call of Duty,
just as I can argue that movies aren't art by pointing to Suicide Squad. If
you argue that movies are art by pointing to Citizen Kane, I'll point to Spec
Ops: The Line or the Stanley Parable.

I also think you're conflating "art" and "visual design".

~~~
eropple
Even within _Call of Duty_ , I would certainly call the single-player
campaigns, from the original game up through today, successive iterations on a
presentation of a narrative message even completely divorced from the ephemera
of play (which is itself artistic in nature, though less universally obviously
so).

 _Quake_ would be a better example, but I'd hold, too, that the decisions and
the ephemera of _that_ are art as well. Nothing says you can't play art.

------
apozem
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."

------
fartcannon
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
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
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
_> 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
Why do you feel that's an extraordinary claim?

~~~
eropple
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.

------
hexane360
"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
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.

------
shmerl
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.

~~~
TheCowboy
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
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.

~~~
TheCowboy
I think professional critics are more useful in fields with a longer
traditional of quality criticism. I haven't really found a set that are useful
when it comes to video games for myself, and rarely even touch a game anymore.

Part of the problem might be that the time required to become fully versed in
video games is immense, if finishing the games are required. One can get up to
speed on the history of multiple film genres in less time than it would take
to play through the genre of RPGs. Some games are meant to be disposable
rehashes (e.g. modern war FPS) that just push the edge of graphics tech (which
is OK), so it's easy to judge if the graphics suck or not.

I think another issue is that some people want the experience of the critic to
match their own. A kid growing up will find a lot of ideas to be fresh that
are tired and cliche to anyone with a childhood of [gaming,movies,etc.]
experience. The drawback is that though peer reviews are useful, they don't
always challenge you to think critically beyond what your peers think.

~~~
shmerl
I agree, games are a more complicated medium to review because they require
more time. That's why opinions of those who actually play them make more
sense. They can evaluate game approach and highlight strong and weak aspects
of it, in game design, story branching, writing and etc. I suppose technical
aspects are easier to review for those who don't invest that much time in it.

It's for sure difficult for RPGs, but even for FPS, take something like Shadow
Warrior (remake). Without finishing the game, one can't know the story twist
and full evolution of the main character which kind of puts the whole game in
a different light. It's just a work of art IMHO. For any critic to adequately
review it, they need to finish the game.

------
bitwize
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.

------
firefoxd
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.

~~~
pault
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
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)

~~~
dkersten
I tried to return a game I bought on playstation network and Sony flat out
refused because I had played it (how else would I have known it wasn't good?
If reviews etc had helped, I wouldn't have bought it to begin with). They told
me to direct any further complaints about it to their legal department. I
didn't bother.

------
awill
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.

------
chickenfries
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
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
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
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.

~~~
chickenfries
I don’t think the developer of cuphead should HAVE to do anything. They made a
really good game, which I paid for because I loved the art style. And honestly
they’ve been very straightforward about saying “yes we were aware that the
cartoons were drawing from were very racist but we loved the style so much we
wanted to seperate it from the racism.” But once the audience is aware of
where the tropes come from it’s hard to look at the games features and not
think about where it came from.

To borrow a review on cupheads Wikipedia page:

> Brandon Orselli of Niche Gamer defended the game as a tribute to that art
> style, writing that it was not meant to deliver narratives, or "go anywhere
> beyond where it needs to go in terms of its basic and child-like
> storytelling"

That is a perfectly fine defense of cuphead IMO. But personally I like games
that go a little bit beyond “child like storytelling.”

I’m having trouble thinking of an a way that the tropes could’ve been
subverted or a game that does this really well. But ultimately what it comes
down to is that, personally, I think great games go beyond simple stories and
simple pastiche of art styles. Copying the style is and creating all of this
art is a marvelous technical achievement. But if you just swap out the racist
characters for cups and dice, have you not missed an opportunity to also write
a story that borrows from the past while also subverting or otherwise
questioning its tropes?

And I acknowledge that plenty of people will read this and think “who cares,
it’s just a game?” And I will admit that if it’s all “just games” then my
thoughts will seem pretty irrelevant. That’s okay. But I’m going to keep
taking about games as if they were any other form of art, because that’s how I
see them.

------
jorgec
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.

