Video Game Industry Thread: This is the old one, go to the new one

fragglefart

JCRooks wrote:

Also, I think a large part of the "problem" with review scores really has to do with us ... the hardcore gaming community. Why should we care what score a game got? Most of the rage I see over review scores is from a super-fan who thought a game should have been ranked a lot higher than it is. For me, reviews/ratings of anything (be it movies, games, restaurants, etc.) is really meant for someone-who-doesn't-know to get a general idea on whether or not they should buy something. It's not the be-all-end-all measurement of that item's "worth" or quality. Now granted, reviewed/rated enough times across a broad and large number of users (a la Amazon reviews or Rotten Tomatoes) ... you'll probably get a good idea of quality. But there aren't that many game sites out there, and I'd rather have reviewers with varied tastes than everyone saying the same thing.

Yeah I'll agree with that.

Some folks don't want to play Gears and would rather collect gold coins, some folks don't want to play Mario and want chainsaws all up ins.

Whatever 'score' these games get really doesn't matter to these folks enjoyment.

I love playing Fruit Ninja Kinect, think the game deserves great reviews; do I expect everyone to enjoy such a title? Hell no!

Automaticzen

JCRooks wrote:

We all are, actually, if we're posting on gaming forums. I know for restaurant reviews, I actually rely pretty heavily on sites like Yelp or CitySearch.

Ah, connection. I do use the UrbanSpoon app to find restaurants in my area.

AZChristopher

If anything we should be using this info to make lots of money.

JCRooks

Henroid wrote:

Why should we care what score a game got?

We should care, for the record, because investors make decisions for the industry. Something we love may not sell or score well, and investors will say "fuck that."

You just made a huuuuuge leap there from game reviews to investors. Do you know what the biggest impact to a game's review score is? Hint: it's not Metacritic or the review site. It's the actual development of the game.

Granted, any one person can say anything they want about a game. The wonderful thing about entertainment is that it's subjective. However, I'm firm believer that if a movie/TV show/game/etc. was produced poorly ... user feedback will generally reflect it, if the sample size is large enough.

I'd love to hear of an example where a game rated/reviewed really poorly among a large number of critics ... yet really was "outstanding" (or vice versa) among a large number of gamers.

Aegeri

Well, I bought Dead Island based on word of mouth and it hasn't been getting fantastic reviews at all. Gamespot IIRC gave it a 7. Personally, for me seeing a game is more important than the score and if it looks fun - usually it will be fun. I usually watch the Quicklooks that Giantbomb posts and thus far, not once have I been led wrong by one. I bought Renegade Ops and Dead Island based on their Quicklooks and haven't regretted it at all. There is something very illuminating about just watching someone play a game without any bullshit that makes a decision to buy much easier.

Henroid

JCRooks wrote:

Henroid wrote:

Why should we care what score a game got?

We should care, for the record, because investors make decisions for the industry. Something we love may not sell or score well, and investors will say "fuck that."

You just made a huuuuuge leap there from game reviews to investors. Do you know what the biggest impact to a game's review score is? Hint: it's not Metacritic or the review site. It's the actual development of the game.

I disagree so much. The article on the previous page notes itself that investors can and will base decisions on scores. When a stock drops after a metacritic score is out or gets note, the board and the publisher will look at it and make a decision about the future of the franchise. It's business, afterall.

Further, the biggest impact to a game's review is the reviewer. Development takes a backseat to that, 2nd place. I would say distant, these days. Look at IGN and their practices. Look at all the shit about publishers pulling review copies from review sources (or threatening it).

JCRooks wrote:

Granted, any one person can say anything they want about a game. The wonderful thing about entertainment is that it's subjective. However, I'm firm believer that if a movie/TV show/game/etc. was produced poorly ... user feedback will generally reflect it, if the sample size is large enough.

It's why I choose to run fact checking, of sorts, against reviews or opinions on games. This game sucks? Let me check with a few people. This game is the best? Let me check with a few people. So I guess another problem is second opinions.

L Ron Howard

JCRooks wrote:

Henroid wrote:

Why should we care what score a game got?

We should care, for the record, because investors make decisions for the industry. Something we love may not sell or score well, and investors will say "fuck that."

You just made a huuuuuge leap there from game reviews to investors. Do you know what the biggest impact to a game's review score is? Hint: it's not Metacritic or the review site. It's the actual development of the game.

Granted, any one person can say anything they want about a game. The wonderful thing about entertainment is that it's subjective. However, I'm firm believer that if a movie/TV show/game/etc. was produced poorly ... user feedback will generally reflect it, if the sample size is large enough.

I'd love to hear of an example where a game rated/reviewed really poorly among a large number of critics ... yet really was "outstanding" (or vice versa) among a large number of gamers.

What about DNF? The game spent years in development, and looked awesome. It had people wanting it from the few teaser videos that were coming out after Gearbox (or whomever, I forget) bought it. And yet, when people played it, it wasn't as much fun as people thought it was going to be. And, if my shitty memory is correct, didn't investors panic because of it? Or was that another game? Kane and Lynch? Where it was supposed to be a AAA title, got bad reviews, and the investors shat a brick?

AZChristopher

Aegeri wrote:

Well, I bought Dead Island based on word of mouth and it hasn't been getting fantastic reviews at all. Gamespot IIRC gave it a 7. Personally, for me seeing a game is more important than the score and if it looks fun - usually it will be fun. I usually watch the Quicklooks that Giantbomb posts and thus far, not once have I been led wrong by one. I bought Renegade Ops and Dead Island based on their Quicklooks and haven't regretted it at all. There is something very illuminating about just watching someone play a game without any bullshit that makes a decision to buy much easier.

Agreed. The problem is that those buying and selling stock aren't going to do that. They are used the numbers and press announcements so that is what they use.

I use quicklooks, podcasts, and this forum to help decide what I buy.

Games that I'm completely on the fence with I'll get from Redbox, however, I have not been convinced to make a purchase on any of those yet.

Aegeri

To be honest, most of my choices in buying games are rather independent of reviewers anyway. I've bought Gears of War 3 (pick it up in 3 hours from now, whooo!) and I will be buying Batman: Arkham Asylum, Rage, Battlefield 3 and Mass Effect 3. It's the stuff I buy in between those that I need reviews and word of mouth to decide on. Even so, I would have more than enough to play without buying another game soon anyway.

JCRooks

Henroid wrote:

JCRooks wrote:

Henroid wrote:

Why should we care what score a game got?

We should care, for the record, because investors make decisions for the industry. Something we love may not sell or score well, and investors will say "fuck that."

You just made a huuuuuge leap there from game reviews to investors. Do you know what the biggest impact to a game's review score is? Hint: it's not Metacritic or the review site. It's the actual development of the game.

I disagree so much. The article on the previous page notes itself that investors can and will base decisions on scores. When a stock drops after a metacritic score is out or gets note, the board and the publisher will look at it and make a decision about the future of the franchise. It's business, afterall.

Further, the biggest impact to a game's review is the reviewer. Development takes a backseat to that, 2nd place. I would say distant, these days. Look at IGN and their practices. Look at all the shit about publishers pulling review copies from review sources (or threatening it).

First of all, I do agree that investors can and will base decisions on scores. I wish that weren't the case, but it is what it is.

However, I disagree vehemently on your second paragraph. Do you really think that one bad game review (regardless of whether or not it "deserved" it) is enough to sink a game? When publishers pull review copies from sources, I think it's a vast overreaction and probably does more harm than good. Also, if anything, Metacritic solves the problem of a rogue critic going to town on a game, thanks to aggregation. Ultimately, if a publisher pulls review copies from site A, yet sites B, C, and D and user feedback are all saying the same thing about the game's quality/etc. ... again, it's a problem with the game. As I said before, I'd love to see an example where a bunch of sites rated a game really low, yet consumer belief (via user ratings?) is quite the opposite.

Hahnsoo1

Aegeri wrote:

Well, I bought Dead Island based on word of mouth and it hasn't been getting fantastic reviews at all. Gamespot IIRC gave it a 7. Personally, for me seeing a game is more important than the score and if it looks fun - usually it will be fun. I usually watch the Quicklooks that Giantbomb posts and thus far, not once have I been led wrong by one. I bought Renegade Ops and Dead Island based on their Quicklooks and haven't regretted it at all. There is something very illuminating about just watching someone play a game without any bullshit that makes a decision to buy much easier.

Dead Island may not be the best example, since it's made by a small Polish developer (small compared to EA, Squareenix, etc.) and published by a German company. I don't think they are expecting Dead Island to sell 5 million copies to make the return on their investment.

cloudeagle

Good ole China.

Add Angry Birds to the list of Western products and services that have wound up used without license in China.

A theme park inspired by the popular mobile game opened Sept. 1 in Changsha, a city in China's Hunan province, where visitors take turns with giant slingshots that shoot the birds at pig balloons.

http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2011/09/16/scitech/main20107294.shtml

Hahnsoo1

cloudeagle wrote:

Good ole China.

Add Angry Birds to the list of Western products and services that have wound up used without license in China.

A theme park inspired by the popular mobile game opened Sept. 1 in Changsha, a city in China's Hunan province, where visitors take turns with giant slingshots that shoot the birds at pig balloons.

http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2011/09/16/scitech/main20107294.shtml

From the article:
""This [Angry Birds attraction] serves as a method for people to purge themselves and to gain happiness," a park official told the Chinese gaming website Gamersky.com."

Somehow this made me laugh. Probably a mistranslation, though.

Sheep

Don't worry. Dead Island sold enough that the sequel will probably get picked up by a major distributor and they'll adjust the review scores appropriately.

Santa Claustrophobia

UncleSporky wrote:

Hahnsoo1 wrote:

Henroid wrote:

You're the outlier. Metacritic's major mistake is doubling out of 5 scores to convert them to the % shit, and just... god fucking damn it, a 3, a score that's "Hey this game is okay," is not a 60%. Jesus.

The problem is that percentage grades are inflated by academia and primary education. People expect a 90/80/70/60/FAIL scale (corresponding to A/B/C/D/F), because that's what has been drummed in their head all of their lives. It shouldn't be that way, but it is.

Even so, that just means that the really great games (the ones people score at the top of the genre, 5 out of 5 and 90%+) are moved by bias to the top of the list, which is all that anyone ever reads anyway. The conversion may not be accurate, but the net result is the same.

At first I thought this was the problem, but then I realized it's probably not...instead, the problem is that even if 7 should mean "pretty dang good game" and 6 is "better than average, still recommended," people just don't have the kind of cash to drop on games that are merely recommended and not universally beloved by all. Lots of people just buy one game every couple months and it has to last them that whole time. Why risk it on a game that scored a 6?

This is a reasonable position. And other than the fact that consumers should probably already be picky about how they spend their money anyway, it assumes that all gamers will buy are AAA, 90%+ games. That anything else is ignored or avoided because it obviously can't stand up to 'better' games.

Of course this leads to many people lamenting their backlogs and unable to stop themselves from buying the next shiny that gets a 93.

There is no guarnteed fix for the rating problem. Humans have an almost compulsive need to quantify things. The only real solution is for consumers to be more practical (which may have an effect in driving the industry to be more efficient with their dev cycles) with what they purchase. But we don't have time for rational solutions.

JCRooks

L Ron Howard wrote:

What about DNF? The game spent years in development, and looked awesome. It had people wanting it from the few teaser videos that were coming out after Gearbox (or whomever, I forget) bought it. And yet, when people played it, it wasn't as much fun as people thought it was going to be. And, if my shitty memory is correct, didn't investors panic because of it? Or was that another game? Kane and Lynch? Where it was supposed to be a AAA title, got bad reviews, and the investors shat a brick?

I think there was some panic/backlash over DNF's low review scores, but the game apparently sold quite well regardless (people buying it despite all the criticism because they just had to check it out). DNF appears to be an example where low critic scores and user feedback isn't enough to doom the game sales-wise, but obviously it was a very special case.

Anyway, I still can't think of an example where game was widely panned by the press, but loved by gamers-as-a-whole. I'm not talking about "8 versus 10" stuff either. You sort of see this all the time with movies, where critics tend to hate summer blockbuster flicks, yet your average movie-goer still enjoys them. I know there are several examples of the opposite, where critics loved a game but it just didn't get a lot of consumer love or attention.

Aegeri

Actually, I remember reading that DNF barely scraped up to a million units (if that). It was profitable for 2k, but that would be obvious as DNF was largely self funded by 3drealms before the split and subsequent hissy fit (and gearbox finished the game). It's a pretty resounding failure for the hype and development it had - but at least it didn't manage to do as badly as Daikatana. Barely.

Cantido

Nintendo says mobile phone games can go fuck themselves.

Good to hear. Now there's just that issue of Nintendo not believing in the Internet.

L Ron Howard

Yeah, I quickly ran through M/C to find a the game, or a better game than DNF as an example, but couldn't procure one on the spot.
Maybe I have to go back to Psychonauts or something? I know that it was kinda 'meh', but people loved it, and it didn't sell too well.

cloudeagle

Well, there's Metroid Other M, which got a 79 on Metacritic but STILL induces vein-popping rage among fans whenever it's mentioned. Hell, I'll be shocked if this thread doesn't get more bitching simply by bringing up Secretary in Space.

cloudeagle

Actually, let's pretend the Other M mention more or less Godwined this thread, and start up another:

http://forums.penny-arcade.com/discussion/148941/video-game-industry-thread-capcom-vs.-western-developers