Game Journalism is shit for another very specific reason.
Essentially, Lead Q/A level of ability would be required for all game journalists if I had a say in it (in addition to being able to write in a structured and coherent manner).
Film critic or book critic does not require good motor skills.
This does.
this post is dumb because it's based on a faulty premise
if your game is structured so that you have to have a pro-level set of motor reflexes in order to experience it properly and it doesn't train you to acquire them, then you have failed as a game designer
Well, I don't know if I agree with that necessarily. It's obviously nice when a game can do that, but we also don't need books to instruct us on vocabulary and the meter of prose and so on. But we don't expect all criticisms of a book to be absolute in its scope. Different people will find different modes of analysis as they experience gameplay differently. Yeah, it creates a struggle with author intentionality, but we've already been dealing with in other media forever.
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UnbrokenEvaHIGH ON THE WIREBUT I WON'T TRIP ITRegistered Userregular
Game Journalism is shit for another very specific reason.
Essentially, Lead Q/A level of ability would be required for all game journalists if I had a say in it (in addition to being able to write in a structured and coherent manner).
Film critic or book critic does not require good motor skills.
This does.
this post is dumb because it's based on a faulty premise
if your game is structured so that you have to have a pro-level set of motor reflexes in order to experience it properly and it doesn't train you to acquire them, then you have failed as a game designer
Well, I don't know if I agree with that necessarily. It's obviously nice when a game can do that, but we also don't need books to instruct us on vocabulary and the meter of prose and so on. But we don't expect all criticisms of a book to be absolute in its scope. Different people will find different modes of analysis as they experience gameplay differently. Yeah, it creates a struggle with author intentionality, but we've already been dealing with in other media forever.
I've seen plenty of movie/book/music reviews where the reviewer just didn't "get it", and some where a good, but difficult movie was reviewed poorly because the reviewer just didn't understand it.
I rarely see difficult games get reviewed poorly for being "too hard", unless the difficulty is unfair/the game cheats, but I've seen more than a few where the reviewer warned that the game was very difficult, but didn't hold it against the game that they weren't skilled enough to complete it. Demon's Souls and God Hand spring to mind, and of course VVVVVV and Super Meat Boy.
There are exceptions of course - Yahtzee's entire review of Demon's Souls was him bitching about the difficulty.
Game Journalism is shit for another very specific reason.
Playing games takes hand-eye co-ordination.
Playing games well, takes well developed reflexes.
It is an abstract skill that is unfortunately (in my opinion) a must if you plan on being in the business of deconstructing game mechanics and underlying intentions of the developer, and gauging accurately how the intention matches up with the finished product.
But here's a simple example of what I mean.
One can certainly play the game like that. I'd imagine that is how an average person plays.
This is however, how the game was meant to be played.
Wait a minute.
The game is not meant to be played the way an average person plays it?
This whole post is so weird. I don't expect or want people reviewing games for me to be crazy ultra-gamers who put tons of hours into perfecting timings and exploring the theoretical limits of a game.
I want them to be like me. I want them to be able to eloquently describe whether or not someone like me is going to like playing the game as an average gamer.
Just the break in logic there...the average gamer is most of us. The guy who made that walkthrough video is not an average gamer. He represents a very tiny fraction of the product's market. Why would you want reviews for the masses to come from a tiny niche perspective?
God I want to punch this asshole in the face and he hasn't even said anything particularly stupid or offensive yet. That's incredible.
I think it was when he pronounced manga as "menga" and gave a retardedly circuitous description of yaoi when "gay porn aimed at women" would've been sufficient. He doesn't even get the genre right, because yaoi is porn and he's describing Boy's Love comics.
WHY DO I KNOW THIS? WHAT THE FUCK
The proper NIPPON vernacular is Shounen Ai!
Please do not butcher the language....
Viscount Islands on
I want to do with you
What spring does with the cherry trees.
God I want to punch this asshole in the face and he hasn't even said anything particularly stupid or offensive yet. That's incredible.
I think it was when he pronounced manga as "menga" and gave a retardedly circuitous description of yaoi when "gay porn aimed at women" would've been sufficient. He doesn't even get the genre right, because yaoi is porn and he's describing Boy's Love comics.
WHY DO I KNOW THIS? WHAT THE FUCK
this guy is dumb. Yaoi is porn. Porn. There is sex in it. If there isn't sex, it ain't yaoi.
hey what is this thread even about- OH, VIDEOGAMES? LAME.
God I want to punch this asshole in the face and he hasn't even said anything particularly stupid or offensive yet. That's incredible.
I think it was when he pronounced manga as "menga" and gave a retardedly circuitous description of yaoi when "gay porn aimed at women" would've been sufficient. He doesn't even get the genre right, because yaoi is porn and he's describing Boy's Love comics.
WHY DO I KNOW THIS? WHAT THE FUCK
this guy is dumb. Yaoi is porn. Porn. There is sex in it. If there isn't sex, it ain't yaoi.
hey what is this thread even about- OH, VIDEOGAMES? LAME.
i think there's definitely such a thing as a video sport, just as there is such thing as a video text. the problem is that the way we speak about videogames is as 'videogames'. despite the vast differences in the purpose of any two given games, we still judge them by the same criteria - graphics, sound, presentation.
i think as the industry grows, the media will begin to part along with the games, and we'll have more definable categories - and a better language for discourse particular to those categories
Except it was someone reading a straight hentai manga.
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BarcardiAll the WizardsUnder A Rock: AfganistanRegistered Userregular
edited January 2011
90% of all games journalism seems more like company press releases. Imagine if 90 % of our other news was just press releasesahwhoamikidding they are games yayayahaya
I don't think you need to be able to do a perfect run on a video game to be able to discern its quality as an entertainment product.
It's not really this all-or-nothing, though. Game mechanics can reinforce or recontextualize other elements of the game, and your capability with those mechanics can affect how you understand the game. Mirror's Edge may be a poor example, because those game mechanics didn't exist before, but there are established genres where your experience comes to bear in how you play the game. There are plenty of grades between pro gamer and guy who reviews movies, not just one big ol' "average gamer" toggle in between. Familiarity with a genre's gameplay may totally change how you understand the story.
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UnbrokenEvaHIGH ON THE WIREBUT I WON'T TRIP ITRegistered Userregular
Game Journalism is shit for another very specific reason.
Essentially, Lead Q/A level of ability would be required for all game journalists if I had a say in it (in addition to being able to write in a structured and coherent manner).
Film critic or book critic does not require good motor skills.
This does.
this post is dumb because it's based on a faulty premise
if your game is structured so that you have to have a pro-level set of motor reflexes in order to experience it properly and it doesn't train you to acquire them, then you have failed as a game designer
Game Journalism is shit for another very specific reason.
Playing games takes hand-eye co-ordination.
Playing games well, takes well developed reflexes.
It is an abstract skill that is unfortunately (in my opinion) a must if you plan on being in the business of deconstructing game mechanics and underlying intentions of the developer, and gauging accurately how the intention matches up with the finished product.
But here's a simple example of what I mean.
One can certainly play the game like that. I'd imagine that is how an average person plays.
This is however, how the game was meant to be played.
Wait a minute.
The game is not meant to be played the way an average person plays it?
This whole post is so weird. I don't expect or want people reviewing games for me to be crazy ultra-gamers who put tons of hours into perfecting timings and exploring the theoretical limits of a game.
I want them to be like me. I want them to be able to eloquently describe whether or not someone like me is going to like playing the game as an average gamer.
Just the break in logic there...the average gamer is most of us. The guy who made that walkthrough video is not an average gamer. He represents a very tiny fraction of the product's market. Why would you want reviews for the masses to come from a tiny niche perspective?
Exactly the point.
The only way to truly give an objective review is to be able to experience THE ENTIRE spectrum, not just the low end.
Yes. Most people reading this thread play the game like the first video showcases. It's simply the law of averages.
Yes, the game should be optimized for the majority.
Yes, the above game I linked to fails to do that (more specifically, mechanics are missing for the unskilled person to be able to have a seamless experience).
The unskilled (hypothetical in this case, but pretty much everyone these days is) reviewer that is reviewing the game is incapable of making this distinction, because their ability to judge rests solely on the low plateau. Therefore they can't say for example "game sucks for the average person, but for those who have moderate hand eye co-ordination would get a lot out of it". He can't score the game based on this. The score the game gets is "pretty colors, horrible gameplay, 4/10, the end".
Would you say that's accurate, for the people capable of playing the game properly?
Should there be no distinction and should the reviewers just assume that everyone playing is as handicapped as they are?
Is that an accurate way of judging anything?
Here's an analogy: An average 12 year old girl reviews Citizen Kane. Is that a good, trustworthy review? Is an average 12 year old girl capable of understanding Citizen Kane?
I rarely see difficult games get reviewed poorly for being "too hard"
You see it all the time, you probably just don't pay attention to it. It's always a part of the review that's not handled directly. Usually you need to filter the comments on the gameplay to see this aspect rear its ugly head.
Man, I am all over the place today. I should sleep or something.
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Viscount Islands[INSERT SoKo HERE]...it was the summer of my lifeRegistered Userregular
edited January 2011
Games hardly ever get penalized for being too hard. It's if they're hard because they have shitty controls or just poorly thought out situations or some other flaw.
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I want to do with you
What spring does with the cherry trees.
But what if you thought that they have shitty controls if you're incapable of utilizing them?
A critic doesn't have to be absolutely objective or right. They just need to take a position and be intellectually rigorous in addressing it. If they had a problem with the controls, and 95% of the other critics didn't, a consensus will form. That may or may not affect the general merit of the first critic's position on the game.
But what if you thought that they have shitty controls if you're incapable of utilizing them?
A critic doesn't have to be absolutely objective or right.
They should try to be. They should at least be capable of being objective and right.
They aren't.
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UnbrokenEvaHIGH ON THE WIREBUT I WON'T TRIP ITRegistered Userregular
edited January 2011
BlackDove -
I'm not quoting all that, but all a reviewer *can* do is give their own experience with it - someone skilled can no more describe the experience a novice would have than a novice describe high-level play. If someone reads a single review and takes that reviewer's opinion as gospel, then yes, they will get a narrow and incomplete view of the game.
However, if someone reads multiple sources and they're all having the same problems, a more complete picture is formed. You saw this with Demon's Souls. If someone were to watch the Zero Punctuation review and nothing else, they'd come away thinking the game was unfair bullshit. If they were to look deeper, they'd start seeing reviews like this one that paint a very different picture. Also, Quintin Smith is a fucking excellent games journalist.
Granted, most people aren't going to do that kind of research, and will buy or skip games based on poor or incomplete information. Hell, most won't do any research at all, and most of those who do probably won't look past the Metacritic score. Is this a problem? Yup. But the problem doesn't lie with the individual reviewers lacking the skill to play the games. If a reviewer is giving their honest opinion of their experience with the game, then they've done their fucking job.
ALSO LET'S LOOK AT THE CITIZEN KANE ANALOGY BECAUSE IT'S FUCKING BULLSHIT
First, a comparable situation isn't going to happen. The vast majority of the people professionally reviewing games aren't doing so with motor skills comparable to a 12 year old girl watching classic cinema. If you're reading a guest column in the local paper where the gossip columnist reviews Red Dead Redemption, maybe, but anyone reviewing games for a living is doing so because they enjoy playing them, and spend a large amount of their time doing so.
Second, games can be hard, but they shouldn't be impenetrable. If someone can't figure out the basic controls and mechanics of the game, something is wrong. The whole cliche of "easy to learn, difficult to master" is there for a reason. Not to mention knowing your target audience - if you want your game to have broad appeal, design it that way. If you want it to appeal to the hardcore niche, that's fine too. Just be prepared when novice reviewers hate your game.
Third, Hydrophobia is a great example of why blaming the reviewers "not playing the game properly" for poor review scores is stupid and wrong.
Posts
oh cool
sketchyblargh / Steam! / Tumblr Prime
So watch my let's play.
(Also mori, DE?AD and Jansons)
Well, I don't know if I agree with that necessarily. It's obviously nice when a game can do that, but we also don't need books to instruct us on vocabulary and the meter of prose and so on. But we don't expect all criticisms of a book to be absolute in its scope. Different people will find different modes of analysis as they experience gameplay differently. Yeah, it creates a struggle with author intentionality, but we've already been dealing with in other media forever.
I've seen plenty of movie/book/music reviews where the reviewer just didn't "get it", and some where a good, but difficult movie was reviewed poorly because the reviewer just didn't understand it.
I rarely see difficult games get reviewed poorly for being "too hard", unless the difficulty is unfair/the game cheats, but I've seen more than a few where the reviewer warned that the game was very difficult, but didn't hold it against the game that they weren't skilled enough to complete it. Demon's Souls and God Hand spring to mind, and of course VVVVVV and Super Meat Boy.
There are exceptions of course - Yahtzee's entire review of Demon's Souls was him bitching about the difficulty.
Wait a minute.
The game is not meant to be played the way an average person plays it?
This whole post is so weird. I don't expect or want people reviewing games for me to be crazy ultra-gamers who put tons of hours into perfecting timings and exploring the theoretical limits of a game.
I want them to be like me. I want them to be able to eloquently describe whether or not someone like me is going to like playing the game as an average gamer.
Just the break in logic there...the average gamer is most of us. The guy who made that walkthrough video is not an average gamer. He represents a very tiny fraction of the product's market. Why would you want reviews for the masses to come from a tiny niche perspective?
which is, of course, how they should be reviewed.
PSN: Robo_Wizard1
You do need some basic understanding of the limitations of the medium, which is why you can't hand a 360 to a movie critic and say "get crackin'"
The proper NIPPON vernacular is Shounen Ai!
Please do not butcher the language....
What spring does with the cherry trees.
this guy is dumb. Yaoi is porn. Porn. There is sex in it. If there isn't sex, it ain't yaoi.
hey what is this thread even about- OH, VIDEOGAMES? LAME.
Tell me about THE INDUSTRY, kochi.
Those are guys women pay for them to go on a date with them and pretend to be into them.
What spring does with the cherry trees.
i think as the industry grows, the media will begin to part along with the games, and we'll have more definable categories - and a better language for discourse particular to those categories
Final score: 7/10
Highlights:
Gay sex
gay rape
swordfights
swordfights
gay sex.
Reviewer notes: Gay, but just not gay enough. Characters need to be younger.
More tears
What spring does with the cherry trees.
let's start a website
What spring does with the cherry trees.
Except it was someone reading a straight hentai manga.
It's not really this all-or-nothing, though. Game mechanics can reinforce or recontextualize other elements of the game, and your capability with those mechanics can affect how you understand the game. Mirror's Edge may be a poor example, because those game mechanics didn't exist before, but there are established genres where your experience comes to bear in how you play the game. There are plenty of grades between pro gamer and guy who reviews movies, not just one big ol' "average gamer" toggle in between. Familiarity with a genre's gameplay may totally change how you understand the story.
That is precisely what I was getting at.
More below.
Exactly the point.
The only way to truly give an objective review is to be able to experience THE ENTIRE spectrum, not just the low end.
Yes. Most people reading this thread play the game like the first video showcases. It's simply the law of averages.
Yes, the game should be optimized for the majority.
Yes, the above game I linked to fails to do that (more specifically, mechanics are missing for the unskilled person to be able to have a seamless experience).
The unskilled (hypothetical in this case, but pretty much everyone these days is) reviewer that is reviewing the game is incapable of making this distinction, because their ability to judge rests solely on the low plateau. Therefore they can't say for example "game sucks for the average person, but for those who have moderate hand eye co-ordination would get a lot out of it". He can't score the game based on this. The score the game gets is "pretty colors, horrible gameplay, 4/10, the end".
Would you say that's accurate, for the people capable of playing the game properly?
Should there be no distinction and should the reviewers just assume that everyone playing is as handicapped as they are?
Is that an accurate way of judging anything?
Here's an analogy: An average 12 year old girl reviews Citizen Kane. Is that a good, trustworthy review? Is an average 12 year old girl capable of understanding Citizen Kane?
You see it all the time, you probably just don't pay attention to it. It's always a part of the review that's not handled directly. Usually you need to filter the comments on the gameplay to see this aspect rear its ugly head.
What spring does with the cherry trees.
What spring does with the cherry trees.
Then it should have come with more intuitive controls.
A critic doesn't have to be absolutely objective or right. They just need to take a position and be intellectually rigorous in addressing it. If they had a problem with the controls, and 95% of the other critics didn't, a consensus will form. That may or may not affect the general merit of the first critic's position on the game.
they exist
no one reads them, and they don't have corporate backing
it's a vicious circle
They should try to be. They should at least be capable of being objective and right.
They aren't.
I'm not quoting all that, but all a reviewer *can* do is give their own experience with it - someone skilled can no more describe the experience a novice would have than a novice describe high-level play. If someone reads a single review and takes that reviewer's opinion as gospel, then yes, they will get a narrow and incomplete view of the game.
However, if someone reads multiple sources and they're all having the same problems, a more complete picture is formed. You saw this with Demon's Souls. If someone were to watch the Zero Punctuation review and nothing else, they'd come away thinking the game was unfair bullshit. If they were to look deeper, they'd start seeing reviews like this one that paint a very different picture. Also, Quintin Smith is a fucking excellent games journalist.
Granted, most people aren't going to do that kind of research, and will buy or skip games based on poor or incomplete information. Hell, most won't do any research at all, and most of those who do probably won't look past the Metacritic score. Is this a problem? Yup. But the problem doesn't lie with the individual reviewers lacking the skill to play the games. If a reviewer is giving their honest opinion of their experience with the game, then they've done their fucking job.
ALSO LET'S LOOK AT THE CITIZEN KANE ANALOGY BECAUSE IT'S FUCKING BULLSHIT
First, a comparable situation isn't going to happen. The vast majority of the people professionally reviewing games aren't doing so with motor skills comparable to a 12 year old girl watching classic cinema. If you're reading a guest column in the local paper where the gossip columnist reviews Red Dead Redemption, maybe, but anyone reviewing games for a living is doing so because they enjoy playing them, and spend a large amount of their time doing so.
Second, games can be hard, but they shouldn't be impenetrable. If someone can't figure out the basic controls and mechanics of the game, something is wrong. The whole cliche of "easy to learn, difficult to master" is there for a reason. Not to mention knowing your target audience - if you want your game to have broad appeal, design it that way. If you want it to appeal to the hardcore niche, that's fine too. Just be prepared when novice reviewers hate your game.
Third, Hydrophobia is a great example of why blaming the reviewers "not playing the game properly" for poor review scores is stupid and wrong.