pusheax

So when talking about a game in a review you're trying to be objective - you list valid points such that everyone can agree or disagree and point out where you were wrong. But then you give subjective score which just states that you as an individual liked/disliked a game. Any other person might like a given game and would give it 5 stars and would be completely correct because it's just a matter of taste. I think that most people look at review score of a game critic as objective thing, not subjective. Most people look at game score and think whether they would like it based on the score. I do it and I hate it, but I do it nonetheless. The score gives immediate information about the game quality. It's a fact that game industry pays attention to scores. And based on your score as objective thing nobody should play CoH2. subjective: "I hate it" objective: "You will hate it"

Hi, all. Enjoyed the podcast very much. Imagine if we lived in a world where all game critics judged games harshly but fairly. Or even if we had an organization which certifies reviewers for all game genres, i.e. expert in strategy games, expert in role playing games, etc. In this world company of heroes 2 would get 20% expert rating on metacritic. Would it be a failed game? In this world every other game would be judged harshly, so it depends. Or even more extreme: imagine if game reviewers had even more narrow specializations. Some reviewers would be UI experts, some of them would be historical experts, graphics experts, strategy design experts. Do you want to make a strategy game in this world? Read 1000 of pages on UI usability, history, strategy design for the last 20 years to make an interesting game for every harsh critic. In this world gamers would carefully deconstruct design decisions, take out history books to compare events, compare in-game models to real world military design and when they spot a difference or bad design decision they would be able to get a refund. In this world only selected few companies would make strategy games because it would cost so much money. These companies would be corporate giants like Microsoft or Oracle and it would be impossible to get into this market. A new strategy game would come out once every 5 years, and would cost $500. Although this world is different and interesting and I would like game critics and gamers to be more serious about games I find it very hard to imagine.

Hi, all. Few things I would like to point out after listening. 1. Maybe it happened on occasion but this episode was very dialectic. First approaching it from negative standpoint, then discussing all the good stuff early access provides you made this collision of interests apparent. Nonetheless your overall conclusion was very simple and shows your tendency to ascribe every thing either good or bad status which is very restrictive. As restrictive as giving scores to games though. 2. You did not mention that game development is becoming infinite(you can always add more features). Modern games cost not only too much money to make but also too much time. Kicking the product out of the door unfinished and nonetheless fun to wide audience became common since minecraft. You just have to make sure that the product has enough new features even in alpha state. So making alpha access to FPS would not make people happy because FPS is so common already. 3. (Most) People don't understand that games take too much time to develop. So when showed some screenshots people tend to fantasize about a game and don't understand that game may be buggy. They think that visual screenshots constitute good gameplay. So when buggy nature of unfinished games will become more apparent to people whole early access approach may be in danger. 4. Giving access to promo material(trailers, revealing screenshots) almost always spoils things for people. Tom is quite right about this. The very nature of marketing contradicts its purpose. You want to make things more popular without giving final product. You give people a taste of final product. But doing so you also ruin final product because taste is not bottomless and it only takes away from a product. The worst thing you can do from this standpoint is a lets play of a game before it's released. But marketing is also essential part of making a product popular.