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Video game reporting
For discussing any issues related to ethics in video-game related media.
For my take, if I could sum up the problems with video game media in one word, it would be Metacritic. Because while other media rely on reviews as a guide, e.g. movies and Rotten Tomatoes, the key phrase is "as a guide". Metacritic has an undue influence on game producers since that arbitrary aggregate number out of 100 plays a significant role in their business decisions. One of the more infamous cases of this was Fallout: New Vegas costing employee bonuses just for getting an 84 instead of the target 85 score. There's no meaningful difference between the two numbers, and it's a case study in lies, damned lies, and statistics. Yet publishers and the players themselves make a big deal out of the number, more so than the actual reviews. Because of this symbiotic relationship, a review, which is simply supposed to be a guide for whether a player would like a game, goes beyond that and exerts an undue influence on what kind of games are made, in some cases being reduced to a mere sales pitch. And I think all parties have some share of the fault: the players for taking the number so seriously, the publishers for targeting Metacritic bait over the quality of the game itself, and Metacritic and reviewers themselves for encouraging the "quality by number" attitude (If you're a user, Gamespot actually judges your taste based on the average score of all the games you list as having). Really, the scale should be simpler like the 4/5 stars used for movies.
Further reading: http://ca.ign.com/articles/2012/07/16/is-metacritic-ruining-the-games-industry
Comments
For what it's worth, I don't use these scores or typically read reviews. The most reviews I read are of the informal kind, asking friends for their opinions or filtering out the junk from the meaning in Steam reviews sections and using that to tweak my idea of what a game is like.
If anything, half of the time I decide whether to buy something involves me teasing information about whether I'd like a game out of a trailer. (Trailers full of cutscenes are pretty much completely and utterly useless in this regard.)
Then again, this may be related to the consumer style/role I play -- which is that person who doesn't even buy big-name stuff within a year or two of release (albeit for not necessarily relevant reasons, such as lacking suitable hardware), and aside from going on filtered recommendations of close friends (and sometimes peer pressure for still not having played a game already), mostly has a practice of making small purchases out of curiosity.
So, while I am on one hand immune to all of this, I also don't have a good sense of the pulse of this stuff. I have a slow diffusion process, where my discovery of other media uses information that supersedes numeric ratings anyway.
(Also, on one hand I could say that I wait until all the dust settles to conclude whether to get a game or not, which sounds like a good thing. On the other hand, I am not sure to what extent the dust settling is biased by the process that I'm not participating in, in the first place. I guess I try to help by being as open to games that are less famous as I can be...)
As a person kinda looking in from the outside, I have noticed that Metacritic scores ("metascores") kinda work like this:
* highly-touted games that are new releases and/or with cool new features: high score
* older games that everyone likes: high score
* games that don't have cool new features: mediocre score (~70~85)
* obscure games: no score at all
So honestly, metascores are really not that useful. Again, the tried-and-true approach to reviews holds: read the content, not the score.
[user deleted]
Probably my favourite microcosm of metacritic asshatery is this page. A baseball management simulator scores high-enough to show up on Metacritic's PC all time list (mostly due to an unusually small selection of review, mind you)... so its user rating is predictably flooded by idiots who cannot conceive that it got over muh favourite game qqq ;-;.
"A sports game like this getting tied for the greatest video games of all time??? with Bioshock and Half Life? Are you serious? What on earth happened here?"
Much has been written on how incompetent, inbreed and corrupt vidya journalism is. And indeed, it is! But I don't think enough has been said on the role vidya players play in this sad state of affair.
Well, Arthur Chu was one of the few to point that out:
Game reporting is always going to be kind of incestuous with developers, by sheer virtue of games being a good 6-8 times more expensive and basically requiring some amount of free stuff to report on. The most expensive movie theaters around here still cost less than dinner at nearby fast food restaurants.
This is, for the record, the main reason I try to ignore most game reporting beyond "this is a thing that happened / will happen". Beyond that, subjectivity etc. If I'm not sure I'll want a game or not, I'll youtube it.
EDIT: Another thing that has to be considered is that bad reviews really do hurt games worse than movies. People will drop a few bucks to watch a terrible movie with friends and will still probably get their money's worth in riffing and laughs. But rather few will put down $60 to own a game they already know is mediocre and takes potentially days to slog through until your patience wears out -- or even $15 to buy it used several years down the line when they care even less about it. It's not particularly fair, but it's how the market works when your product is more expensive and time-consuming.
Just recently reminded of this travesty:
I think I remember how I learned to hate self-proclaimed "gamers" now. This is an example of game reporters often being little more than fanboys with a pay-cheque as well as "hardcore gamers" deriding anything other than what caters to their narrow demographic.
Also, the first paragraph is pure "Now you care about being realistic?"
UPDATE: Last comment on the bottom of this page is worth reading.
I like how all but one of those are "it's not about killing so it isn't a game."
Someone tell me how old this Crispin Boyer guy was when he wrote this?
Because it sounds like a 14-year-old trying too hard to be edgy.
36.
So I've been reading PS4 Daily apologize for overhyping Destiny, and that got me thinking about the whole idea of AAA games. It seems like they are the analogue to Oscar bait films, in that both are deliberately targeted towards reviewers' sensibilities in an attempt to get good reviews and awards. The difference is that AAA games are about production values and Oscar bait has an artistic merit connotation.
I remember when I frequented GameSpot's infamous System Wars subforum, AAA referred to a 9.0+ score, and if a game was hyped that high, even if it got 8.8 on GameSpot while every other site gave it 9.0+, it was a flop. Of course, the forum was self-aware enough for many to realize how ridiculous that was, but it does show how crazy high Internet nerd standards (at least) are. I haven't followed them as closely, but I can't imagine film critics being like game reporters. Usually reports from, say, the Toronto International Film Festival are along the lines of "This is one to keep an eye out for," relatively restrained compared to the huge promotions game sites give upcoming AAA games (I could be wrong, though). Then again, game reviewers have nowhere near the journalistic cred film critics do, and their prose is amateurish in comparison.
As an aside, I must admit that as a Nintendo nerd, we tend to have this complex in which we think we're better and more inclusive towards different kinds of games and players compared to fans of other systems. On the other hand, we're also low on the "gamer" totem pole.
I think the issue is two-fold: the review copies deal which forces the hand of the review sites, and the effect of metacritic on the low level workers. I mean, bonuses being dependant on an arbitrary number in an aggregator is just the tamest of those, at worst the enitre group is laid off because they didn't meet the set that the publisher wants. It's just cannibalism of the self. Generate hype through press and expect, regarldless of quality in the game itself, for the product to be held as if it cannot be judged but only commended for effor.
Relevant(warning, tourneytard alert, but his points are pretty relevant on gameplay being hard to describe): http://www.gatheryourparty.com/2014/07/16/tripping-on-air-why-game-journalists-cant-describe-games/ ;
What he says is true, but on the other hand, the point of a review is to answer the question, "Should you play this game?" Reviewers have to sit through a lot of games and get the review out close to launch day, which doesn't lend itself well to becoming intimately familiar with the game mechanics. Also, as you hinted, most players don't have time to explore a game in depth. Unlike a timeless tabletop game like Chess, video games are marketed as temporary, disposable consumption akin to films. More in-depth reviews a month after release should be encouraged, though, maybe as retrospective reviews. It also shows again the fallacy of review scores, since the quality of a game on the surface and after a month of playing can change dramatically.
Then again, Roger Ebert admitted when he was out of his depth, unlike most video game reviewers (e.g. IGN's Sonic Unleashed video review showing the reviewer deliberately jump into a pit).
It seems the problem here is that the videogame press is seen as a hype machine in the first place.
The problem is that there are many different types of videogamers, and thus many potentially different answers to that question. But people want to come out with a single consensus score out of this.
Am I allowed to say that this bugs me?
Also, this is most definitely NOT how I see videogames. I see every single game I acquire as a lasting addition to a library. (Am I weird in doing this?)
Open question: In what ways does it matter that Nintendo fans are "low on the 'gamer' totem pole"?
Well
I don't think I've heard of any person who does that with every single X they acquire. I mean, there's bound to be things you don't actually like.
Third point: Yes, it is annoying. But that's how consumerism rolls. If consoles weren't made to expire every few years, that would be a different story.
Fourth point: To me, it means I roll my eyes whenever I hear about gamers as a whole being persecuted.
^^ Well I don't consider them all to be equal in stature, or anything close to that.
Though I do log them on Backloggery. That includes full-scale games, as well as ROM hacks, flash games, and even Minesweeper. In the sense of, "this is something I've done before".
I also happen to keep careful track of the games I buy these days -- though this is more so because they show up in bundles and such, and I want to avoid re-buying things I already have.
^ I guess my perspective is different since I usually get in after a console's "expiration" in the first place...
Also, heh.
Well, chess (and a few others like checkers and backgammon) is one game among thousands that have existed, also it exists in itself, without requiring a platform to play it on. Still, you've got games like Pac Man and Tetris that have acheived a similar status (though our timeframe of comparison is much more limited).
This is what I was about to ask -
- then I figured this strays off the topic probably a bit too much.
Today's review scores on chess.
Rock, Paper, Shotgun: "An aging format that mostly caters to old white dudes. Plus, it's problematic that the white pieces are allowed to go first."-7/10
Kotaku: "How Chess Repaired The Broken Relationship I Had With My Dad"-8/10
Gamespot: "Chess is the quintessential ageless GOAT"-10/10, site is plastered in Drueke ads
In all seriousness, with regards to the question of so many games, so little time: there's a difference between exhausting every single option of the game for a complete picture, and giving a detailed breakdown of the core mechanics and how it compares to other games in the genre, ideally by assigning reviewers more by game type than is currently the case.
I feel that way, too.
Actually, now that I think about it, AAA hype is akin to tech gadget hype in general: e.g. Google Glass. Tech blogs were salivating over the specs and potential, while most other people were concerned about privacy issues and it being a crime against fashion. Naturally, it flopped because people ignored the social aspects. It was the tech equivalent of The Emperor's New Clothes. I've noticed that the gaming press tends to be similarly uncritical of AAA games until they flop.
Oh, it already flopped?
sweet, now i don't have to hear about it again[user deleted]
I've always liked Chinese chess more than western chess, for some reason.
I'm no good at it, but still.
On Videogame Reviews by Tevis Thompson.
It's a long read, but an interesting one where the author lambasts Bioshock Infinite and particularly game reviewers for shallow, uncritical analysis.
One interesting thing to note: in the context of typical game reviews, 2 out of 10 may seem harsh for, among other things, the reverse racism twist, but that was actually generous of Thompson. When The Life of David Gale pulled a similar stunt, Ebert gave the movie zero stars. In fact, Ebert makes judgments based on personal or political views all the time, and yes, occasionally at the expense of judging a movie on its own merits (e.g. his review of The Happening). Yet he is arguably the most respected film critic out there. So the idea that politics do not belong in reviews is bullcrap.
[user deleted]
So this is why Burial at Sea retconned the Fitzroy's attempted killing of the Founder child..
Even though I'd disagree on his take on BioShock infinite, because I didn't truly feel that it engaged in a false equivalence but then, I am just a guy without the actual racial history baggage presented in the US.
You know, that sounds eerily like a /v/ pic I'm failing to find in my folder: a comparison of Half-Life 2's can scene and the ball throwing scene in Infinite and holding players by the hand. Furthermore, the notion that the upgrades are superfluous to the difficulty, and tying the politics to gameplay in that they don't challenge the player(both the victims and the villains are cardboard cut-outs sprinkled in a superficial coating of historical imagery to make them look deep) is miles better then only criticizing it on a narrative level.
The straight white able-bodied middle-class hetero cis male gamer claptrap is as tired as ever(it reeks too much of fun=just a cover for not wanting to ponder your privilege), but the person GETS how to do a total picture and tie all of these into a cohesive review(the Gone Home remark shows that narrative does not get to rule over gameplay). This is stuff I can get behind, even if it would call me a manchild pissbaby for loving glitz and everyone-is-bad plots.
Somehow, you always manage to use a whole lot of words to make bog standard tone arguments. "Oh, he expresses his feelings the way I like it, so I can forgive him for bringing up a white male audience regarding a white saviour narrative." Also, your narrative "not a game" argument is as old as Myst, and text-based adventure games at one point were the dominant genre. Splitting hairs over "not-a-game" is inane and stupid, as you could always call it "software" if stuff like that so offends you.
I feel mildly peeved at your constant denigration of interactive fiction since I'm a fan of the adventure game format. But only mildly because of the gap between said comments' perceived and actual insightful quality.