In the immortal words of icarusfall, this thread sucks. Why the fuck is it stickied?
Printable View
In the immortal words of icarusfall, this thread sucks. Why the fuck is it stickied?
this is all magazines. Subscriptions and newstands barely pay for magazines to get to the consumer. All the real money comes from advertisersQuote:
Originally Posted by Joust Williams
Yes, but the "ads" in this case are the product reviews. I know there is overlap (as you pointed out earlier in the thread), but here it's 100%. And the payment isn't even real money. It's "trips to a hotel".
On another site I sometimes post at, this guy wrote a website where he somehow got on Metacritic and used that to go on every publisher junket he could and give all those games 90%+. Publishers don't care because there is a direct correlation between Metacritic and sales. There's really no way I can take any of this shit seriously.
This is not the biggest concern I have with game journalism right now.
First, let's stop pretending like there's some crisis about the integrity of game reviews, especially in terms of how "accurate" the fucking score is. What makes a review good is not the number at the end, but whether or not it was interesting, entertaining, and informative. And if it makes some analytical insight on top of that, all the better. Same as any kind of arts criticism. You know a good review when you read it.
Also, I think a lot of the pressure is more implied, maybe to the point of being imagined altogether. Most of the time, they're more concerned with responsible, fair, timely coverage than they are with positivity. Realistically they don't snub publications over a negative review unless the problem goes beyond negativity into the review being inaccurate or just dismissive and shitty. The only time I was ever pressured to change a score was to make it lower, for what that's worth.
I'm far more concerned with rapidly eroding editorial standards, both in terms of writing quality and research and fact-checking. I think a lot of the major players out there who are gradually bleeding traffic to the smaller sites feel like they should be copying them. For example, you see a lot of features at major sites these days that essentially read like blogs that could have been written by anyone and contribute nothing more than an opinion and common knowledge. A large publication's edge over the blogs is that they have resources to hire professional writers with strong research abilities and good connections that can write superior content, but they just don't want to do that anymore.
I think at some websites, particularly in this era of comments and interactivity, the writers just don't respect their audience. They think they're dumb and they try to dumb down their content to match. That really bothers me. I know when I write something good, and when I do, I always see an overwhelmingly positive reaction. If all the comments are negative, you actually ARE doing something wrong, they're not just "haters." Readers need a good headline and a subject they can relate to, but they always appreciate smart, well-written content over half-assed template garbage.
So yeah, let's talk about that. Fuck if you think that game was a B, but the guy gave it an A.
What about a game that is a C at best and has an A metacritic rating like MGS4?
You just made up that letter in your head based on how you feel, it's not a real thing. If it was a C, there'd be just as many or more people claiming it should be an A, because they too, do not understand that they are not the arbiters of reality for the rest of the world.Quote:
Originally Posted by dave is ok
You probably think your mother is an A, too, but I say she's a D- at best. Grown men should not be even having this conversation. You're an asshole for even wasting a thought on it.
If gaming journalism is no better than a machine that assigns arbitrary numbers to things for people to yell about, then THAT's the problem, not the "accuracy" of the goddamn numbers.
Im telling nick!
MGS4 was put together very competently. It looked amazing, played amazing, and was generally a fun game. You could definitely knock it for being batshit insane but not for being technically unsound.
I don't agree with reviews like Tom Chick's Uncharted 3 review. The game has through the roof production values and parts which he admitted were some of the best he'd ever played through, but the story, to him, was dull and derivative. The characters didn't act the way he wanted them to. 4/10. Ridiculous.
I will complain endlessly about nitpicky little details that keep a game from being perfect, but nit-picking is exactly what it is. In the big picture there's no way games like MGS4 or Uncharted 3 should be getting super low scores.
That's not even the issue, really. The issue is that game journalists have to suck developer and publisher dick in order to get free games and permission to publish their reviews before the game's release. Until that changes across the board it's definitely a joke.
But they really don't. Tiny sites, with shitty writing, and nothing to contribute might get dropped if they're overly negative, and deals might be brokered on first coverage for 2 or 3 major games a year, but neither of these are a major factor for 99% of game journalists writing reviews out there. It's just not that bad.Quote:
Originally Posted by Mzo
By the way, this issue is MUCH worse in movie criticism than in gaming. Studios hold screenings for very carefully selected members of the press who they believe will be receptive, and if they approve the review, it gets to go up before everyone else's. Then the release goes wide and you see the real reviews. For bad movies, they won't even have screenings sometimes.
I apologize in advance for I am but a layman, to me that doesn't sound that different than taking select people you think will be receptive behind closed doors at E3...Quote:
Originally Posted by Frogacuda
It's not. Frogacuda keeps saying "it's not that bad", but he doesn't explain why. The fact that they don't let you publish a review at the same date depending on the score means it really IS "that bad".
Personally I think the whole score/grade thing should just be dropped from every website. I'd prefer just having well written reviews. Something that really let me know what the writer thought of the game, instead of some arbitrary 8, or B- applied to it. I know I personally see far too many reviews that read one way, and then the review score is the opposite. Beyond that though, its just some random value, that has absolutely no reference point.
I'd also like to see more consistency, specially from magazines. I'm kind of tired of reading a review, and then 6 months later the same magazine is on the opposite side of the fence. Prime example was Enter the Matrix, literally every major review outlet gave that steaming pile of horse shit a 9 or a 10, and then laughed about how awful it was 6 months later. It's asinine, and to me, just makes the reviewers look like easily swayed dipshits who don't have opinions of their own.
Bring back the diversity of back in the day. By this I mean in the taste of the reviewers. I remember one of the things I loved about Gamefan back in the day, was how you had reviewers for different genres. You had the guys who LOVED fighting games review them, and the sports guys review sports games. It seems today that at most of the major publications/sites every reviewer is the same god damn dude bro gamer, who wants to play 2 maybe 3 genres and everything else just sucks. Why the fuck would you get the guy who hates fighting games to review a King of Fighters game? It's just plain retarded.
Get rid of the god damn fanboys. Let's not act like everyone doesn't have a bit of a bias, because we all do, it's human nature. I can understand and don't mind a bit of it. When you have shit like the dude from 1up who goes "The only thing bad about Gears of War 2 is that it's TOO good" is when it's reached a point of just being ridiculous and silly. It makes me not take any review from them seriously from that point on. It would also help to drop the whole causual/core argument bullshit. They're all video games, you people are paid to review video games, stop acting like its some refined french wine that the uninitiated just wouldn't appreciate because they're casual, and review the damn games.
To me though that's just in dealing with the reviews. That's not even touching on the greater iceberg of so called "journalists" who can't bother to do things like fact checking, or investigating and just spew what ever bullshit like it's fact. It'd be nice to read interviews that didn't just ask the same bullshit questions every other interview does.
As an aside, I just want to say Retro Gamer is probably the best magazine out there right now.
I really like GamesTM, a sister mag of Retro Gamer. Their reviews are well written without being overly grandoise like Edge. Although they do have a final grade attach to it like every other mag, at least they are fairly consistent with their opinions over time.Quote:
Originally Posted by Shin Johnpv
Even at it's most closed, TNL was always able to get into E3, and TNL is neither a big site, nor one that is known to be overly fanboyish or positive. They were largely weeding out useless people who really didn't belong because they had no readership and no credibility. I actually liked small E3, it was much easier to get shit done. Almaci was there those years too, by the way.Quote:
Originally Posted by Anal Kaboom
Once a game is out, it's out. These deals generally only affect maybe one or two of the hundreds of reviews for a game, and you know by the timing which ones are suspect. It's also debatable to what extent getting a review out a few days early is even worth selling out your publication to if you weren't going to be positive anyway.Quote:
Originally Posted by Morrigan
That's two mother references nick!
THANK YOU. This is a far more pressing concern to me as a writer. Not just from the writers, but the apparent lack of interest in these concerns from the management at these publications.Quote:
Originally Posted by Shin Johnpv
Real talk: I've never even played it.Quote:
Originally Posted by Frogacuda
But every generation there are a few (hundred) games which receive almost perfect scores across the board in spite of being kind of shitty games, objectively speaking. GTA IV is another one I can think of.
It's not just a few bad apples, it's literally almost every games site. And they are no better than a machine that assigns arbitrary numbers to things for people to yell about.
The fact that you would even use objective in the same sentence as a quality assessment proves you are just a complete and utter ass. It's literally psychotic to think that there even is such a thing as objectively good or bad.Quote:
Originally Posted by dave is ok
It's shocking to me how narcissistic we've become. To the point where you literally can't even accept that people sincerely enjoyed a game you didn't.
Let me be emphatic: You are the problem.
To me it feels like nobody does anything all they do is sit around and wait for the publishers to drop shit on their lap. Nobody investigates or use contacts everyone either runs the same story or just report on someone else's story...Quote:
Originally Posted by Frogacuda
Whatever. If I watch a particularly shitty episode of a television show and then go read what Sepinwall or Poniewozik wrote about it 90% of the time they'll also say it was shitty. It's not like they watched it and saw a completely different episode with none of the flaws. They might enlighten me by pointing out a small brilliant detail I missed and will make me appreciate it a bit more. Or point out some tiny contrivance in an otherwise amazing episode and make me feel a little less impressed by it. They are doing their jobs as reviewers by dissecting and pointing out the good along with the bad.
Videogame reviews are just "This game is SO impressive. It is SO awesome. Seriously, go buy it." because a.) videogame "reviewers" are hacks and shills for the big publishers, and b.) there is no set definition of what makes a good game. Does amazing gameplay make up for horrible writing? Does horrible voice acting ruin a great script? They have no fucking clue. They're just happy they got to play the game a couple weeks earlier than the unwashed masses.
There are exceptions, sure. But they are few and far between. Out of reviews for movies, television, books and games - game reviewers are the only ones afraid to bite the hand that feeds them.
There's a lot of that for sure. I wouldn't say no one, but I think to some extent the only people that are given time to do it are the freelancers that make their own schedule. The timing is too tight to really put the legwork in when you have to crank out four articles a day. The problem is the management.Quote:
Originally Posted by Anal Kaboom
And if you bothered to pay attention to who was writing the reviews instead of staring at a number, you might have game journalists like this that with whoim you have a similar established trust.Quote:
Originally Posted by dave is ok
But if I just pick a random fucking person and ask them if Paul Blart: Mall Cop was a good movie, there's a good chance they're going to tell me yes, and not because they were paid to do so.
No one was paid or pressured to give GTA4 a good review. That isn't one of those games in question here. The fact is people actually like that game. I like that game, and I played it a year after it came out and bought it with my own money.Quote:
Videogame reviews are just "This game is SO impressive. It is SO awesome. Seriously, go buy it." because a.) videogame "reviewers" are hacks and shills for the big publishers, and b.) there is no set definition of what makes a good game. Does amazing gameplay make up for horrible writing? Does horrible voice acting ruin a great script? They have no fucking clue. They're just happy they got to play the game a couple weeks earlier than the unwashed masses.
A review should be more than a quality assessment. I should be able to explain why I love a game, while simultaneously explaining why you might not. That doesn't mean I can't give it 5 stars at the end, but it does mean you have to actually read the review and decide if the things I'm emphasizing are what's important to you in a gaming experience. Rating a game a 10 doesn't mean that it's a perfect game, it means the reviewer found it to be one of the most enjoyable gaming experiences he's had that generation. It doesn't mean you will or even you should. you still have to think and form a conclusion.
Completely, utterly untrue.Quote:
Out of reviews for movies, television, books and games - game reviewers are the only ones afraid to bite the hand that feeds them.
I have to disagree - and I've seen it first hand - particularly with magazines/sites that rely on advertising from the same people that are floating them review copies of games they are publishing. It happened to us @ GameGo!. It's completely true (ECM - Stretch Panic).Quote:
Originally Posted by Frogacuda
I like GTA IV, and if I were a game reviewer, I would have given it a good grade.
Sometimes an aspect of a video game can be so good that it makes up for another aspect that might be shitty, like Bayonetta's gameplay compared to its story.
You need to bring up the good and the bad and then say if, in the end, it's worth your time. Assigning a numerical value to that worth down to the decimal is pretty stupid, but people want that quick reference point.
But do film reviews for a couple years and get back to me. Tell me how screenings are handled. I'm not saying it never happens, I'm saying it happens less than with film criticism, BY FAR. Studios will fly friendly reviewers out to LA for a premiere, put them up in a five star hotel, wine them and dine them, then show them the movie before anyone else. That shit is just a fact of reality with almost any movie, and it's why the initial reviews for movies are ALWAYS bullshit. Most games don't even get early reviews.Quote:
Originally Posted by haohmaru
Film criticism gets more credibility only because it's more established as a field, and it doesn't give off the impression of just being a bunch of kids. I think if game journalism did more to bolster their credibility as writers, analysts, and thinkers, we wouldn't be having the same discussion about their integrity.
WHAT? Even though it sucks?Quote:
Originally Posted by kingoffighters
GTA IV is an ok game. I just used it as an example because it got lots and lots of hyperbole and perfect scores.
If film reviews were videogame reviews - nothing Fincher, Scorsese, Nolan, Tarantino, Speilberg or Cameron ever released would score less than a 95 on metacritic. Big games get big scores, it's a sad but true fact.
But that's not insincere. People like those games. Audiences like those games.
No matter how hard diff chan rails against ass creed, there are millions of people who love the series.
It's a terrible series.
Adam Sandler's movies make money and they are horrible. People like that shit. They get raked over the coals in reviews (except for Armand White I guess). If they were games they would get 90 metacritic and fanboys would be calling every reviewer who didn't agree a troll.
I haven't played Assassins Creed since the first game but by god was that game awful. Like truly bad.
The second game is just as bad, just in different ways. And the few things they got right in the first game, they totally screwed up in the second.
The last 2, from what I understand, is just MOTS.
That guy is an ass. He also rates every movie that gets 99% negative. He's just a contrarian attention whore. He's actually a pretty smart, articulate dude, but I don't buy the shtick. I could buy it for any one individual movie, but the pattern is too strong.Quote:
Originally Posted by Diff-chan
You can blame the audience to a certain extent. People that fall in line with what the public wants are going to be more read and more successful. Even if there's not a deliberate pandering, that's what's going to rise to the top. There is a certain truth to that, although I think it's not as bad as the vocal minority makes it seem.Quote:
If they were games they would get 90 metacritic and fanboys would be calling every reviewer who didn't agree a troll.
Is that the guy who was on Ron and Fez a bit ago? Gave Jack and Jill a great review? He sounded pretty decent on the show if that was him.
Gamesradar is my favorite. Look at this shit
Yep, that guy. He talks a good game on the show, but I just don't believe him.Quote:
Originally Posted by Some Stupid Japanese Name
HEXIC HD 100
I like that game. I'd give it 100.
I do blame the audience. People join a prerelease game's white knight brigade early on and want confirmation they didn't waste their time. They don't want to see good writing about it. That dynamic is just not there for movie writing as far as I can tell. I don't think many people were outraged when, say, Thor got mediocre reviews or Hangover 2 very poor ones.Quote:
Originally Posted by Frogacuda
We're not talking about serious people so it doesn't surprise me that very unserious writing is what is out there. Look at Greg Miller's Dead Space 2 review. I would've been embarrassed to write that on my first Geocities website in high school.
I think a lot of what happened with GTAIV had to do with the community. That game had some insane hype behind it and a lot if the blogs and websites that rely on traffic get scared to talk shit about it so they don't lose their precious traffic.Quote:
Originally Posted by Frogacuda
I'll admit I was hyped as fuck to play it and my initial impression around launch was somewhere close to 10/10. That game is barely alright at best 7 or 8/10. Anyways lesson learned for me don't trust reviews for recently released super hyped games. It's too easy for hype to sway ones opinion. Especially someone loves the medium enough to dedicate their life to writing about it. But I guess MMV just my two cents.
Jeremy Dunham, back when he was EIC of IGN told me that all the audience looks for in a review is something that confirms their preexisting notions about a game.
There is a problem, and this is a problem with both the writers and the readers, that they think the opinion is the point. What makes criticism valuable is not its conclusion, but its framing. As a supposed expert on the subject matter, a journalist should have an ability to draw connections that will illuminate the game in an articulate way for a large audience.
To this effect, I think the audience is actually smarter than writers at big sites give them credit for. I've very seldom been given shit for anything I wrote on IGN. When I wrote something good, the responses were overwhelmingly positive (with a minority of objectors). When comments were negative, I think it reflected genuine mistakes on my part. I think people like well-written, well-researched content. They really do. Individually there are always comments that just don't get it, and you can't listen to every single one, but when there's an outpouring of negativity toward something you write, it's time for some self-examination as a writer.Quote:
Originally Posted by Diff-chan
Greg is a capable writer, but he got murdered over that Dead Space 2 review for good reason. And not because he was wrong and it wasn't a great game. The review began with the conclusion and just restated it over and over again with no analysis or insight whatsoever. That's not really a review, it's just an outpouring of feeling that doesn't inform the reader of anything. It just shows a fundamental misunderstanding of his his relationship with his readers.
Actually there was a lot of pressure with GTAIV.
The review event was in the most controlling enviroment that you can imagine and invited were only those writers who they knew were hyped for the game.
The amount of gameplay time they got was woefully short and the entire time there was a PR person with the review directing them around in the game so the experience the reviewers got was entirely different from someone who bought the game and enjoyed it at leisure.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Frogacuda
I did one of those events for TNL (or maybe Got-Next?) where they flew me out to San Diego and put me up in a hotel and got us drunk and I played the game early in front of them
The game got a 2.5 on our site. You don't have to do shit you don't want.
One of the things that skews game reviews toward the positive is that, unlike movies, where one guy can cover all the major releases, games take so long to beat that they have to divide things up among many editors, and generally people review the games they're excited about. Hence why you see most reviews skew more positive than negative. That's kind of inescapable, though, and I'm not convinced to what extent it's a real problem.
I'm not saying any of what Almaci is saying is inaccurate (it's not), I just think there are more pressing concerns.
I was at E3 in 2007 and 2008?
Thats news to me.
I COULD have gotten in yes trough personal contacts but no company invited me out of their own free will.
Didnt go to them out of principle.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Frogacuda
I have had many great investigative pieces shut down because outlets were affraid of running them or they might have altered big business deals(think IBM and Sony big) or and more oftenly so because investigative journalism is a process that takes a lot of time and money to get results from.Quote:
Originally Posted by Anal Kaboom
Also, I am in San Francisco right now so if any of you chaps are from around here, lets meet up.
I totally thought you were there.Quote:
Originally Posted by Almaci
Anyway, I was there, and you could have been.
Yeah, this... Game journalism is a factory product, no one wants to invest in something big. It's why there's so few books, documentaries, that kind of thing. No one is given the time or incentive.Quote:
Originally Posted by Almaci
I think that's really true. In almost 8 years I've been running my site, no one else has ever stepped up to do deep historials or investigative articles. I've done just about all of them, and while I really love doing them, it's amazing how most writers just want to state their opinion and nothing more.
Yeah, it's shocking. I told you about the project I'm working on and the producers were like "Why has no one done this, we don't understand?" I had to explain that publishers just want their writers to bang out content quick.Quote:
Originally Posted by Melf
Back to OP, it sounds like there are some solutions:
1) Accept ads for new games but don't review them.
2) Review games upon launch, having no special access.
3) Flag the big publishers' games in someway that tells readers to take it with a grain of salt. Maybe a separate review section for the "great publishers" where all games receive scores between 91-100. Previews already are often worded to hint at the truth.
4) Have two sites/mags, one that plays the game and the other that is honest. The first site secretly relays the inside info to the second.
Sounds like too much work...
This article is old, things have changed for the worse since then(continue is now a general otaku lifestyle magazine, invasion of our lives has become part of our lives so the gamermetric thing doesnt stand out when google and apple do even worse).
I said from the outset that the forum post is an old forum post translation.
Aw, you just missed a mini-TNL meetup in San Francisco during the previous weekend. We're planning another one when the weather warms up a bit.Quote:
Originally Posted by Almaci
I am still here for the weekend and next week.
Leaving saturday the 24th.
I was talking to somebody in our office the other day about video game websites (in terms of ones connected to major publications), and how this problem is so rampant. One idea I had was that you made your site where you only had one piece of content every day. Obviously, it'd be something longer, deeper, and not just throw away content, but the idea would be that readers would know that every day they could stop by and find one story of interest, and then once they read it they could move on to other things (instead of digging through a flood of posts of smaller quick-bit stuff).Quote:
Originally Posted by Frogacuda
Obviously there are some flaws to the idea, but I think it'd be nice if we had the flexibility to try more interesting things like that. Obviously you could with a fan site, but I'm talking about a major publication/media outlet being a bit more daring—versus just doing basically the same thing everybody else does.
The problem is that fansite writers generally don't have the access and connections that large sites do, nor the training and experience.Quote:
Originally Posted by shidoshi
Just got back home from the US, received a surprising amount of support from people in the industry.
Maybe I do have a future in it left.
I think I overlooked this. You are right Gamers Club had nothing to do with it, I am sorry if I came of implying it did.Quote:
Originally Posted by shidoshi
Well guess I need to go check out that WAHP.
Just had more fallout from this, looks like I re pissed off Ubisoft.
Hilarious.
When did you piss them off? 2007?
Yup, when I first posted this on a Belgian forum.
Now they are pissed again because I translated it to English and posted it again.
Took em a while to figure out that it was reposted in English 4 years later.
What are they mad about?
Since Ubisoft makes about 95% shovelware, I'm guessing they are a prime example of the crap Almaci was talking about.
Yup, and they be mad since I called shenanigans with regards to Assassins Creed
What did they say/do to express their anger, exactly? I'm pretty curious haha, should be funny to see their BS.
When I called them I was informed that as long as I continue to talk shit about them I will not be kept in the loop with regards to their future plans and I will not be invited to any of their events. Please stop being an asshole and causing us trouble.
That sorta stuff.
Maybe it's time to just give up?
Did you ask if they learned to be less transparent? Hard to call them out on shit if it isn't happening.
Huh what?
Ubisoft departments dont seem to comunicate very well.
While Ubisoft on mainland Europe is shunning me I do get invitations from the UK.
Went to london 4 times so far this year, two of those times was to see Ubisoft stuff(Farcry3 and AC3).
Meanwhile things have been going from bad to worse, a couple of weeks ago there was a drunk Future Publishing freelancer who talked about Future budging under game publisher pressure(with Ubisoft being one of the main culprits) and more recently we had the Eurogamer/MCV fallout.
I am happy to never have been a reviewer yet sad about the state of games reporting.
http://www.the-nextlevel.com/tnl/att...1&d=1351972051Quote:
Originally Posted by Frogacuda
Would be funny if it wasnt so sad.Quote:
Originally Posted by Yoshi
IGN is gonna teach game journalism at the university of Iowa, IGN.
I cry tears.
That explains bbobb.
Nothing explains bbobb
Revelation is always worth the wait.
I don't like where this is going.
Why did you bump this thread with this? Fucking idiotic.Quote:
Originally Posted by Almaci
You just answered your own question.Quote:
Originally Posted by Shin Johnpv
He just had to think about it for a while.
What god damn picture did I used to post every time Almaci posted?
This is in Gaming Discussion, so don't bump the thread with garbage posts.
Damn foreigner taking mah jahb!
True story: I regularly get secondary checks when I vist the US(like 8 out of 10 times) so this NSA officer asks me for samples of my work and I give him a few links to articles of mine including one I did for Gamasutra. He checks it and notices it is a US website and berates me for taking jobs away from Americans.
That didn't happen.
It happened: You sir take the job away from an American
Literal quote
This is my favorite:Quote:
Originally Posted by Josh
Attachment 73320
I believe it. US border guards tend to be the biggest pricks.Quote:
Originally Posted by Shin Johnpv
Please tell me you replied with hearty laughter and 'the American was fat and slow.'Quote:
Originally Posted by Almaci
Border guards in general tends to be dicks. They're supposed to be.Quote:
Originally Posted by NeoZeedeater
His story still didn't happen.
Except it did
Nope.
Happened
Definitely didn't.
Did
Nope.