Idle Weekend April 1, 2016: Now We're Let's Playing with Power

[Chris]

Idle Weekend April 1, 2016:

Now We're Let's Playing with Power

The question used to be whether or not to play a game. Now, it's whether or not to Let's Play a game, and man, we wish we had a better term for it. Controversy over whether or not Let's Play video cut into indie sales has us pondering the ways and means of the form. Elsewhere, we tackle the evergreen subject of "objective" game reviews.

Discussed: That Dragon, Cancer; Life is Strange; RUSE; Murdered: Soul Suspect; X-Wing: Alliance; The People vs. O.J. Simpson; Daredevil

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[Wilds]

I finally signed up to comment on the Idle Forums (have been meaning to for a while) because of this episode, because the actions of the people behind That Dragon, Cancer got me upset. They seem to think that they deserve to have anyone interested in their game buy it, which is crazy. Not all art is commercially viable, and obviously lots of people are going to shy away from a game about a real child dying for real from cancer. There are lots of topics people tend to be gunshy about, because they're intense. There are people making games about them: They tend to release them for "pay what you want" on itch.io and run a Patreon.

 

Also I definitely would prefer experiencing That Dragon, Cancer via a video than a game, because I can pause a video and walk away and come back later. It's a vastly preferable experience because it's got that distance to protect my emotional state. Most of the people in the audience they are targeting with this game need that emotional protection! But they're punishing people, giving them copyright strikes on their account, because they think they deserve direct purchases, sight unseen, from people who would feel harmed by the experience of playing their game first-hand. It grosses me out, to be honest. 

[complexmath]

Bringing up car reviews as an example of objective reviews is interesting, because as far as technical reviews go, car reviews are about as nonobjective as they come. By design. A huge part of car appeal is based on factors that have nothing to do with utility--comfort, aesthestics, even engine sound (which has been a big deal for the past 5 years, because makers of sportscars have been doing things like installing speakers and sound channels designed to replicate or amplify signature engine sounds that are no longer produced by the modern, more efficient engines). That isn't to say that information on whether a car drives and handles well is unimportant. But it can be sorted out in either a focused review, like Consumer Reports as Rob mentioned, or summarized as a part of a review with a more subjective focus.

 

Even bare data reviews aren't necessarily useful, because such reviews don't account for differences in how a thing might be used. For example, I've burned out a heck of a lot of paper shredders because consumer-grade paper shredders aren't rated for continual use. With this in mind, I might be interested in how far a particular shredder can be pushed before falling over, which wouldn't come up in an interview that simply evaluates how it performs within manufacturer-specified guidelines. But it would come up in a subjective review written by someone who uses paper shredders the same way I do. That perspective is of value to me because it's more personalized.

 

Finally, I'm honestly baffled why there's a continual cry for objectivity in reviews for products that are specifically intended to be fun. Or interesting, assuming you subscribe to the idea that some games might be designed to make you think, or feel. How does one objectively describe whether a game was fun? As for whether a game functions, if it doesn't function I'm sure the reviewer will tell me that. And the specifics of gameplay can be found from screenshots or video footage.

 

And for reviewers that are going for a pulitzer with their writing... more power to them. They'll find their audience, or they won't, and people who aren't interested can look elsewhere. Diversity is an amazing thing. It means everyone can get the kind of experience they want without imposing their desires on others. Amazing, huh.

[Gormongous]

I'm honestly baffled why there's a continual cry for objectivity in reviews for products that are specifically intended to be fun. Or interesting, assuming you subscribe to the idea that some games might be designed to make you think, or feel. How does one objectively describe whether a game was fun? As for whether a game functions, if it doesn't function I'm sure the reviewer will tell me that. And the specifics of gameplay can be found from screenshots or video footage.

 

Well, we've seen time and again that these "objective" review hounds aren't actually satisfied by drier, barer, less passionate, and more technical reviews. "Objective" is just a dog whistle for what they really want: reviews that validate their instinctually-felt expectations and opinions about a given game, but with well-written prose—but not too well-written, lest they be made to feel stupid for not thinking of it themselves. That's why they can never decide who the most "objective" reviewers are, except to hold up the few who seemingly tailor their reviews to whatever the prevailing winds of hype are, and even then...

 

Maybe, in our dystopian future, this will be a solved problem, because data metrics will be used to guide those in search of "objective" reviews to sites that match their preconceived notions perfectly. Until then, I doubt we'll ever see the end of people carping about a lack of "objective" reviews.

[SignorSuperdouche]

I finally signed up to comment on the Idle Forums (have been meaning to for a while) because of this episode, because the actions of the people behind That Dragon, Cancer got me upset. They seem to think that they deserve to have anyone interested in their game buy it, which is crazy. Not all art is commercially viable, and obviously lots of people are going to shy away from a game about a real child dying for real from cancer. There are lots of topics people tend to be gunshy about, because they're intense. There are people making games about them: They tend to release them for "pay what you want" on itch.io and run a Patreon.

 

Also I definitely would prefer experiencing That Dragon, Cancer via a video than a game, because I can pause a video and walk away and come back later. It's a vastly preferable experience because it's got that distance to protect my emotional state. Most of the people in the audience they are targeting with this game need that emotional protection! But they're punishing people, giving them copyright strikes on their account, because they think they deserve direct purchases, sight unseen, from people who would feel harmed by the experience of playing their game first-hand. It grosses me out, to be honest. 

 

I don't know any of the background here, only what was mentioned on the 'cast, but I really don't think it's that cut and dry. A Let's Play is, necessarily, a derivative work (and arguably a public performance) and a Let's Play with no commentary or other transformative qualities really doesn't have a leg to stand on in a legal copyright sense, or even in an "that's an OK thing to do" sense (In my opinion, YMMV).

 

If That Dragon, Cancer had been a film I think we'd all agree that sticking a recording of it up on YouTube is a pretty not cool thing to do, so I'm not sure why it's different for what seems to be a linear, narrative driven game. We go and see movies at the theatre "sight unseen" all the time, or we choose to wait until it's available for steaming or on DVD or whatever because we'd prefer to experience it that way, or maybe we decide not to watch the movie at all because it might upset us.

 

If I understand you're arguments correctly, you seem to be implying that because somebody would prefer to experience the game in this format then they have the right to, and that anybody has the right to cater for this audience. That doesn't make sense to me at all. If I write a book and somebody wants to adapt it into a movie because most people prefer watching a movie to reading a book I think we can all agree that I have the right to say if it can go ahead or not. Actually, a better example would be if somebody scanned each page of my book and made a video showing each page in sequence for people who don't like turning the page. That would be a pretty shitty thing to do, right? And what if this style of video became really popular? It would be hard to quantify, but it wouldn't be unreasonable to assume that at least some people who would have bought my book didn't because of the video, right? Then if I don't make very much money from the book I think I'd be pretty upset about the videos and the fact that people felt they had the right to read my book in this way just because they could. I don't think that's an unreasonable response, and doing what I can to prevent this seems pretty reasonable to me too.

 

I guess what I'm trying to say is it's complicated and I think it all comes down to context. In this case it sounds like the videos don't add to the game or recontextualise it, they replace it. This isn't the case for all games, or all videos of games, and the lines can get a bit blurred, but I think it's a far cry from the developers just being arseholes.

 

Oh, and welcome to the forums!

[Arathain]

Since Ruse is to all intents and purposes no more, I'll remember it here. Ruse was the first online multiplayer RTS I ever got into, having been a fan of the genre for years. The game was one of the first to do an open multiplayer beta, and I was sufficiently curious about the game to overcome my trepidation. I was expecting to lose every game, but to my delight I found myself winning from the get-go. I found a game whose units behaved in intuitively understandable ways, and whose pace was not so fast as to require high APM while remaining exciting. Thoughtful play and prediction was rewarded with success.

 

I didn't actually buy Ruse, getting drawn instead into Company of Heroes Online, and eventually finding my way to Dawn of War 2, a delightful RTS that I played happily for some time. I did buy a couple of entries in the Wargame series, though. Airland Battle is a remarkable work, although I never found the courage to play that online. Sometimes trying something you're wary of pays off in a big way. Thanks, Ruse.

 

I didn't realise X-Wing: Alliance didn't sell. That's a shame. It was a fine game. The sequences where you fly your family weren't always the best, since the Falcon-lite you flew wasn't as fun as a Rebel fighter, but the variety was solid. I loved starting off in the bay of a cruiser seeing the battle raging outside, and launching out to take part. Did X-WIng vs TIE Fighter do that well? That one had a multiplayer focus in a time where most of us used 56k modems. Rather before it's time, I always though.

[SuperBiasedMan]

There's a weird thing that poisons the water when debating someone's right to lets play. Youtube disproportionately sides with the 'original content owners' (for lack of a better term). This isn't specific to games, but they make it very easy for the media owners to have serious effects on a streamers channel (which may be their livelihood). The streamers' primary recourse is a reportedly slow unfair and arcane process, while the original owner will at worst get told that their copyright claim was rejected.

 

Ultimately I fall slightly more on the side of developers because the internet has bred a culture where media is up for the taking. Even aside from piracy, it's seen commonly where people will take a picture some artist has drawn, remove any identifying marks (or sometimes wont bother with that) and repost it as their own. There's absolutely an argument to be made for not locking down media from discussion and criticism that can be more valuable when showing direct footage of the game, but there also seems to be an entitlement in a lot of people that refuse to allow the game creators to decide what people do with their game.

[complexmath]

Copyright law in general is really tricky in this area, and I'm not sure any of it really covers let's plays. For example, there are provisions that attempt to reimburse producers for having their songs played at DJ performances. That's probably as close as you can get to a let's play from a technical perspective. However, that doesn't really cover the entirety of let's plays. I can see video-based game reviews considered to be closer to academic work, for example, where things like fair use comes into play.

 

Returning to the DJ comparison, while provisions exist to reimburse producers, they don't really work, and many artists consider DJ performances to basically be free advertisement. And that's the big unquantifiable here as well. Do game producers benefit more from the increased visibility than they lose in sales? Actual sales, mind you, not simply people who like watching let's plays who never would have actually played the game on their own. I don't know that anyone has a clear answer to that. As Danielle mentioned based on that GDC talk I think game designers have to be cognizant of the let's play phenomenon, but whether there's any positive or negative effect on sales seems very much tied to the type of game they intend to make, if any connection is to be made at all.

 

By the way, Murdered: Soul Suspect was an excellent game, and also counts as one of the few games that year which I played to completion (possibly in part because it's so short). It had issues, but the theme was really cool. Weirdly, it ended up feeling kind of like a history lesson at times. I didn't at all expect that going in. So here's at least one more vote in favor of M:SS.

[Wilds]

I don't know any of the background here, only what was mentioned on the 'cast, but I really don't think it's that cut and dry. A Let's Play is, necessarily, a derivative work (and arguably a public performance) and a Let's Play with no commentary or other transformative qualities really doesn't have a leg to stand on in a legal copyright sense, or even in an "that's an OK thing to do" sense (In my opinion, YMMV).

 

If That Dragon, Cancer had been a film I think we'd all agree that sticking a recording of it up on YouTube is a pretty not cool thing to do, so I'm not sure why it's different for what seems to be a linear, narrative driven game. We go and see movies at the theatre "sight unseen" all the time, or we choose to wait until it's available for steaming or on DVD or whatever because we'd prefer to experience it that way, or maybe we decide not to watch the movie at all because it might upset us.

 

If I understand you're arguments correctly, you seem to be implying that because somebody would prefer to experience the game in this format then they have the right to, and that anybody has the right to cater for this audience. That doesn't make sense to me at all. If I write a book and somebody wants to adapt it into a movie because most people prefer watching a movie to reading a book I think we can all agree that I have the right to say if it can go ahead or not. Actually, a better example would be if somebody scanned each page of my book and made a video showing each page in sequence for people who don't like turning the page. That would be a pretty shitty thing to do, right? And what if this style of video became really popular? It would be hard to quantify, but it wouldn't be unreasonable to assume that at least some people who would have bought my book didn't because of the video, right? Then if I don't make very much money from the book I think I'd be pretty upset about the videos and the fact that people felt they had the right to read my book in this way just because they could. I don't think that's an unreasonable response, and doing what I can to prevent this seems pretty reasonable to me too.

 

I guess what I'm trying to say is it's complicated and I think it all comes down to context. In this case it sounds like the videos don't add to the game or recontextualise it, they replace it. This isn't the case for all games, or all videos of games, and the lines can get a bit blurred, but I think it's a far cry from the developers just being arseholes.

 

Oh, and welcome to the forums!

Thanks for the welcome!

 

My perspective isn't really based on any kind of "legal" argument, and really has nothing to do with the Youtubers at all. I think that, as a creator of emotionally charged work, you have a moral imperative to be careful with it, for lack of better phrasing. You should consider how people consume things, and how different ways of experiencing something can change how you experience it, and how strongly it may hit someone sensitive to that content. I just want the couple behind That Dragon, Cancer to think about that, I guess. 

 

For an example of the emotional content of things being effective on different levels: 

(and spoilers for a character sidequest in Dragon Age: Inquisition)

If you're romancing Dorian, there's a quest early on where Mother Gisele says she got a letter from his family. They want to meet with him, and she wants you to trick him into meeting with his estranged parents, because he'd surely refuse to see them willingly. 

This is a life situation I have been in, for real. I've been in Dorian's shoes, forced to interact with family I had cut out of my life through trickery. And it fucking sucked, as you might guess. 

The game let me refuse, and not just refuse the quest, but completely work against their wishes, tell Dorian the truth, and confront his shitty magical gay conversion therapy family and tell them off. That was awesome, and cathartic, and it made me appreciate the game so much.

If the game had forced me to go through with it, to trick Dorian to see his family? It would've wrecked me. I would've put it down and not picked it up again.

If I had been watching an LP of the game and the person making the video made that choice, I would've been unhappy, but okay, because of the extra layer of removal from the content and choices.

That kind of saccharine "Family is super important, no matter what even if they hate you for who you are" crap is all over fiction and pop culture, and that sucks and I hate it, but having to be forced to take part in it personally would've been so, so much worse.

[complexmath]

So I had reason to reference Old Man Murray's original objective review system today, and it occurred to me that it would be useful here as well. The reason I went looking for it is because I was mulling over the game industry's obsession with butts, and I started to wonder if perhaps we need a "start to butt" evaluation vector, with Murray's crate vector as a template. Thoughts?

[Problem Machine]

Hm. It felt like the initial summary of the TD,C dev's statement on LPs was kind of inflammatory and reductive. First, by making it sound like they were harping on LPs as the reason the game wasn't doing well, and second making it sound like they were doing content ID claims in retribution or to try to make a profit (I believe they had been automatically enabled by the game's composer's music distribution and they announced at the end of the article that they were disabling it). I still disagree with the article in some ways, since it seems to presume that people who were watching a LP in the first place were potential customers, which isn't necessarily the case, but it was a very mild and nuanced take on the subject which I think has been portrayed as far more aggressive and finger-pointy in a lot of the following discourse. To be fair you guys did end up digging into that some as the cast progressed, but my initial reaction to the summary of the situation was "whoa, what? That's not what they said!"

 

Regarding objective reviews, the use of the word 'good' itself signifies that something can't be objective. To be good or bad implies a context within which it is good or bad: Stated absent the context, it usually just means the person liked or didn't like it, which is the case with most reviews. Where this gets a bit muddy is when you compare it to product reviews, because these reviews imply the context within which the product is good: A vacuum cleaner is good (at cleaning floors) because we tested it and it cleaned our floors well, this graphics card is good (at pushing polys) because we tried it on some games that push a lot of polys and it performed well.

 

To evaluate a game like a product, one must first establish a context in which the game should be evaluated. Something isn't just good or bad, it's good at and bad at: These are the measures of its suitability towards its purpose. But what is the purpose of a game? Even within the relatively narrow boundary of "military first person shooter", there's a lot of personal context to the purpose that is being achieved. Is it about movement, presenting a nice physical sense of motion? About sniping? About information flow? About fast reactions? Different military first person shooters emphasize these elements differently, and thus the same game could be considered very good or very bad within the context of any one of these. If you play military FPSes to snipe dudes, you're not going to be happy with a game with no sniper rifle.

 

Personally, particularly when I'm writing something critical of a game, I tend to write in terms of what I think the game is trying to achieve vs the final effect of its efforts. This establishes the context of my criticism, and is sort of kind of objective. Of course, choosing which elements I believe are important is highly subjective, and ultimately these criticisms have no bearing on whether the game itself is enjoyable to anyone else. It may be that objective criticism can only exist within a narrowly defined subjective context -- that some people want to see this context remain implicit, rather than presented explicitly to the reader, and want to call that 'objectivity' is troubling to me.

[MisterG]

I think objectivity is important when reviewing, but that doesn't have to mean it's exclusive to having an oppinion, or even being subjective during the review. If you take anything to it's logical conclusion it becomes useless.

 

Journalism is a trade and as such comes with the same responsibility that all other jobs come with - the Spiderman clause - with great power comes great responsibility.

 

When Reviewing a game and scoring it, rather than critique or commenting, you are putting a line in the sand and giving it a place in the world. As a professional journalist, you will often be asked to review things that you wouldn't normally play, and while a lay person will give oppinion, I would expect a trained journalist to review and score a game on it's merits irrespective of their personal preference. They really should know the difference.

 

I wouldn't want it to be souless and without oppinion, but I would want it to be fair when it comes to scoring.

 

If you hate StarWars would it be fair to mark the graphics on the new battlefield down because you are sick of X-wings?

Similarly if you are obsessed with starwars is it fair to score Battlefield High on Value when it feels like its the absolute minimum they could get away with putting out and is totally lacking in that area.

 

I think IF you are scoring a game, as a journalist, it should be based on your knowledge of the medium and you should know what is "your feelings" and what is "the game".

 

If you can't give a fair score on what the game is, then you stick to commentary and critisism without score.

 

I've noticed both Rob and Danielle manage to do this even when they are just talking about a game, they both recognise when they love something because it appeals to them personally vs what is a good game in general. This is the sort of thing I think we need to see more of.

[aoanla]

I don't know any of the background here, only what was mentioned on the 'cast, but I really don't think it's that cut and dry. A Let's Play is, necessarily, a derivative work (and arguably a public performance) and a Let's Play with no commentary or other transformative qualities really doesn't have a leg to stand on in a legal copyright sense, or even in an "that's an OK thing to do" sense (In my opinion, YMMV).

 

If That Dragon, Cancer had been a film I think we'd all agree that sticking a recording of it up on YouTube is a pretty not cool thing to do, so I'm not sure why it's different for what seems to be a linear, narrative driven game. We go and see movies at the theatre "sight unseen" all the time, or we choose to wait until it's available for steaming or on DVD or whatever because we'd prefer to experience it that way, or maybe we decide not to watch the movie at all because it might upset us.

 

I think there's a distinction here, on the basis that a film is already a "recording", so a "recording of a recording" essentially loses nothing in the translation, but I shall elucidate more in the next quote reply.

 

If I understand you're arguments correctly, you seem to be implying that because somebody would prefer to experience the game in this format then they have the right to, and that anybody has the right to cater for this audience. That doesn't make sense to me at all. If I write a book and somebody wants to adapt it into a movie because most people prefer watching a movie to reading a book I think we can all agree that I have the right to say if it can go ahead or not. Actually, a better example would be if somebody scanned each page of my book and made a video showing each page in sequence for people who don't like turning the page. That would be a pretty shitty thing to do, right? And what if this style of video became really popular? It would be hard to quantify, but it wouldn't be unreasonable to assume that at least some people who would have bought my book didn't because of the video, right? Then if I don't make very much money from the book I think I'd be pretty upset about the videos and the fact that people felt they had the right to read my book in this way just because they could. I don't think that's an unreasonable response, and doing what I can to prevent this seems pretty reasonable to me too.

 

I guess what I'm trying to say is it's complicated and I think it all comes down to context. In this case it sounds like the videos don't add to the game or recontextualise it, they replace it. This isn't the case for all games, or all videos of games, and the lines can get a bit blurred, but I think it's a far cry from the developers just being arseholes.

 

Oh, and welcome to the forums!

 

So, your example is interesting, as what you're talking about here is essentially audiobooks, right? A conversion of a written work into a form for people who "can't be bothered to turn the pages (or read the words)". And, certainly, Audiobooks are generally not considered enough of a transformation to count as a re-interpretation - they're still the same story, told via descriptive prose, just spoken rather than written.

 

But movies do something different, right, because they transform the narrative content of the novel into a new form, which involves a certain amount of reinterpretation, and produces a work which is inevitably different (even slavish recreations of a written work into film form are a very different experience to the original written work).

 

Now, the question with "That Dragon, Cancer" is: if we can argue that the act of making a recording of someone "playing" it is not sufficiently transformative to make it a different form - if you lose nothing essential in the process which makes buying "That Dragon, Cancer" and experiencing it yourself - then what does that say about the value that "That Dragon, Cancer" provides in what was lost?

 

(As an avid consumer of Let's Plays myself, I would say that I do agree that there's not much point to a Let's Play of something like That Dragon, Cancer to me. I tend to watch specific Let's Players, who are particularly good at a particular kind of game (and particularly entertaining as people) - ChristopherOdd, for example, with regard to strategy/tactical games, or Sleepcycles with more arcadey things - watching a Let's Play of skill-based games is entertaining in a different way to playing those games yourself. I'll never be as good at XCOM2 as Chris Odd is, for example, so there's definite value in seeing him achieve things that I never could - and similarly, for skill-gated games, I'd never know what happens late in, for example, Nuclear Throne, if not for being able to watch Sleepcycles play. 

 

There's certainly games that I've not bought that I've seen people Let's Play - but those are games which, for the most part, I wouldn't have bought anyway, because I know that I wouldn't enjoy playing them (or at least, not until they were discounted enough to justify the amount of the game I can actually get through / have the time to get through). In fact, the games I did buy on the basis of Let's Plays - Shovel Knight, for example - are actually games that I never really got very far in because of their challenge, and I regretted my purchase in some instances. )

[MisterG]

For TDC i think the problem is saying Let's Play is loosing them money and is ultimately bad for business and cheating the developers out of something that is theirs.

 

THis always reminds me of the piracy argument. Now I am in no way advocating piracy, but I would always get sick of companies saying either "their game would have sold better if it wasn't for those pesky pirates" or worse still a recent game where the devs complained of selling 660,000 copies, but 1.3mil people pirated it.

 

THeir figures, like the ones that will inevitably come out of let's plays soon enough will be equally as flawed. For piracy it's 1.3mil torrent downloads=1.3 million missed sales and "lost revenue". I'm still waiting for the "6mil people watched my game being played but only 2mil bought it".

 

The fact is that in the most part the figures are hugely distorted. When you look into piracy figures, a huge percentage comes from countries where games cost more than a months food, these people will never buy the game.

 

Similarly for Let's play watchers it's more about the person playing the game, or watching something that you just don't want to play, but are interested in seeing. My kids used to love watching 5 nights videos, but never once played the games themselves. This isn't a lost sale, and if anything it's a great advert - I doubt 5 nights would have anywhere near the following if no one played it on youtube etc

 

Good games sell, and as long as the marketing is "good enough" will usually make the money they deserve. Like has been said TDC is a very very emotive subject, I've had my father and father-in-law both die from cancer, and as a father myself I have no desire to ever put myself through that game. You *may* loose some sales from Let's play, but I would imagine you gain far more from the increased popularity.

 

Blaming poor sales on Let's play, piracy or "journalists not giving it enough press" is always a poor excuse and sadly one that has damaging consequesnces to gaming as a whole, with things like blocking Let's plays, scary DRM (just cause 3 etc) and copy right claims for bad reviews (as one developer did to someone who reviewed his game badly).

[aoanla]

Eeeh, I think it also betrays a certain lack of confidence in the product, though: if you're saying that a recording of someone interacting with your product is capable of replacing the actual experience of interacting with your product, then you don't have much confidence in how much draw the interactive experience actually has.

 

I think Danielle and Rob made a strong point about how Let's Plays tend not to harm sales (and producers of those games don't claim otherwise) of games with a big possibility space - strategy games, FPSes and the like - because you can only ever capture one possibility out of all of the configurations available. 

[Wilds]

I think objectivity is important when reviewing, but that doesn't have to mean it's exclusive to having an oppinion, or even being subjective during the review. If you take anything to it's logical conclusion it becomes useless.

 

Journalism is a trade and as such comes with the same responsibility that all other jobs come with - the Spiderman clause - with great power comes great responsibility.

 

When Reviewing a game and scoring it, rather than critique or commenting, you are putting a line in the sand and giving it a place in the world. As a professional journalist, you will often be asked to review things that you wouldn't normally play, and while a lay person will give oppinion, I would expect a trained journalist to review and score a game on it's merits irrespective of their personal preference. They really should know the difference.

 

I wouldn't want it to be souless and without oppinion, but I would want it to be fair when it comes to scoring.

 

If you hate StarWars would it be fair to mark the graphics on the new battlefield down because you are sick of X-wings?

Similarly if you are obsessed with starwars is it fair to score Battlefield High on Value when it feels like its the absolute minimum they could get away with putting out and is totally lacking in that area.

 

I think IF you are scoring a game, as a journalist, it should be based on your knowledge of the medium and you should know what is "your feelings" and what is "the game".

 

If you can't give a fair score on what the game is, then you stick to commentary and critisism without score.

 

I've noticed both Rob and Danielle manage to do this even when they are just talking about a game, they both recognise when they love something because it appeals to them personally vs what is a good game in general. This is the sort of thing I think we need to see more of.

You don't have to be objective to be fair. For example, I don't think it's "unfair" to judge Dragon's Crown on its creepy art, it's subjectively really gross, but these "Objectivity in vidgamz!" people decried that daring to talk about an art form's artistic content was being unobjective and thus unethical as a reviewer.

 

There's definitely ways to fairly or unfairly review a game, but I don't think objectivity comes into it as a factor. Like, the Stardew Valley experience in Idle Thumbs a couple weeks ago, where he played it like a depression sim and refused to leave the house, that was hilarious but I don't think if he wrote that up as an official review it would be a fair one.

[MisterG]

You don't have to be objective to be fair. For example, I don't think it's "unfair" to judge Dragon's Crown on its creepy art, it's subjectively really gross, but these "Objectivity in vidgamz!" people decried that daring to talk about an art form's artistic content was being unobjective and thus unethical as a reviewer.

 

There's definitely ways to fairly or unfairly review a game, but I don't think objectivity comes into it as a factor. Like, the Stardew Valley experience in Idle Thumbs a couple weeks ago, where he played it like a depression sim and refused to leave the house, that was hilarious but I don't think if he wrote that up as an official review it would be a fair one.

Maybe I'm misunderstanding objectivity, but I would say when scoring a game it should be fact based. You can talk about artistic merit, ethics etc in a review, but what I'm talking about is being aware of what is your "feelings" about the game, and what is actually there.

 

Reviews these days seem to be far more about how much the reviewer "likes" the game, and not about "how the game lives up to what it says it is". If they don't like a particular genre they should either avoid reviewing, or be objective and review it for what it is (putting there personal preference aside).

 

If you review with no score, no problem - it becomes a conversational piece - but when you put a score at the end you are saying this how good the game is with a level of authority - especially from places like PC Gamer, IGN etc.

 

You see Rainbow6 and Battlefront getting good scores, but missing the fact that they are killing multiplayer games, with the lack of server browsers, private servers with either ranks or the ability to unlock everything. They also have little or no content and it's difficult to even get to it (And I love R6 as a game, but don't play it because you can't just crack on and play it how you want).

[osmosisch]

I agree that scores have no place in reviews.

[Wilds]

Maybe I'm misunderstanding objectivity, but I would say when scoring a game it should be fact based. You can talk about artistic merit, ethics etc in a review, but what I'm talking about is being aware of what is your "feelings" about the game, and what is actually there.

 

Reviews these days seem to be far more about how much the reviewer "likes" the game, and not about "how the game lives up to what it says it is". If they don't like a particular genre they should either avoid reviewing, or be objective and review it for what it is (putting there personal preference aside).

 

If you review with no score, no problem - it becomes a conversational piece - but when you put a score at the end you are saying this how good the game is with a level of authority - especially from places like PC Gamer, IGN etc.

 

You see Rainbow6 and Battlefront getting good scores, but missing the fact that they are killing multiplayer games, with the lack of server browsers, private servers with either ranks or the ability to unlock everything. They also have little or no content and it's difficult to even get to it (And I love R6 as a game, but don't play it because you can't just crack on and play it how you want).

So what you're saying is that Paint Drying game is a 10/10, because it perfectly does exactly what it means to? 

[MisterG]

So what you're saying is that Paint Drying game is a 10/10, because it perfectly does exactly what it means to? 

 

What I'm saying is if a game is the best example of a first person shooter it should be regardless of what the theme is.

 

If a paint drying game was some amazing puzzle game then yes.

 

Conversely Starwars Battlefront should be judged as a game (rather than a StarWars OMG). The Graphics would still be marked high, because they are stunning, but as a game, should the fact that it's Star Wars matter much in how you score it.

 

Again,it's not about passing comment, you could say "If you're a star wars fan, add an extra 20 points", but the review score should be about how good is it compared with shooters of the time (ie against games like Battlefield4 should it really get the 80% IGN gave it?).

 

Most importantly it's not about any one game, its about what a review score should be. Personally I think it should be consistent, with a professional level of objectivity where the reviewer knows their subject matter and really looks at the game regardless of their personal preferences (positive or negative). A review can and should include their thoughts and feelings, biases and preferences but the score shouldn't in my opinion.

[juv3nal]

Reviews these days seem to be far more about how much the reviewer "likes" the game, and not about "how the game lives up to what it says it is".

 

What I'm saying is if a game is the best example of a first person shooter it should be regardless of what the theme is.

 

You talk as if there is some underlying objective truth to this, but what a game "says it is" or what makes something the "best example" of a type of game is a fundamentally subjective call.

 

Lock a bunch of games journalists in a room and I'd bet you can't even get them to agree on the two best first person shooters (purely from a mechanical standpoint, leaving aside issues of theme) much less on one.

 

And as for the former (what a game "says it is") we had reviewers treating The Beginner's Guide as if it were non-fiction ferchrissakes.

[MisterG]

You talk as if there is some underlying objective truth to this, but what a game "says it is" or what makes something the "best example" of a type of game is a fundamentally subjective call.

 

Lock a bunch of games journalists in a room and I'd bet you can't even get them to agree on the two best first person shooters (purely from a mechanical standpoint, leaving aside issues of theme) much less on one.

 

And as for the former (what a game "says it is") we had reviewers treating The Beginner's Guide as if it were non-fiction ferchrissakes.

 

You are taking my point out of context, so maybe I'm not being clear.

 

Using the Division as an example: When reviewing, you shouldn't be marking the game down because it's an RPG set in the mostly present day because you don't think it's right. Especially commenting things like If it was orcs the game would score better.

 

This is the sort of subjectivity that needs to be avoided. If a game is sound, but it would score higher if it was a theme you prefer then you are not being objective enough.

 

There is an underlying truth of how a game works, and what it is. How does the mechanics work, is it playable. Is the game fair, consistent. Does the art all match or are some textures bad in comparison to others.

 

This is where a review score needs to focus on when reviewing a game, so when I say "a game is what it says it is "I'm not talking about marketing BS, I'm saying if CoD is set in the future, saying it's not realistic isn't fair IF it looses score for it. Though Saying you prefer modern day or WW2 is fine.

 

Listen to how Danielle and Rob talk about games, it's full of "This may not be a great game but it speaks to me" or "This game works well but I'm not interested in that setting".

 

This is what I think we need more of, Professionals who know what is personal preference and what is a fault in the game - this is the objectivity I'm talking about.

[TychoCelchuuu]

The Division was clearly trying to be a game about orcs, but it fails miserably at it. 3/10.

[sclpls]

Objectively speaking, no one complemented the fancy new chinos I scored in the Division, the loot system clearly is not working as intended. I agree, 3/10.

[osmosisch]

The Division's mechanics and the way they combine with the setting and several artistic choices are dehumanising and cruel. This is the type of criticism that I want because it means I don't want to buy or play the game. A so-called "objective" review would be useless to me because that sort of thing would be left out.