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Rob Zacny

Episode 224: Stopped at the Gates of Moscow

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 Also, can I have those five minutes of my life back.  

 

   -Tom

Sorry, Tom, time is a river, and you can never go upstream.

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The positive is that they could have trashed what is a good game and deprive Eugen of sales because they are utterly hopeless at it. Instead they aknowledged they were crap, didn't really understand the game and gave it an ok score for what they didn't get but was there.

 

I did like that part of the review was on how in their online games they were told to die of disease. Were they reviewing the game or the insults? If so I'd only give the insults one star. It lacked originality and takes trolling nowhere.

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How did I miss this scintillating review methods and theory discussion...

 

In any case, I am all for more people playing and writing about strategy games since it means that Rob can rest his pen. And people need to start somewhere - no beginning reviewer today can be expected to have played Dune 2000, Sacrifice, even Rise of Nations or Battle for Middle Earth 2. The number of active people with encyclopedic histories in the RTS genre and that can recognize instantly where things go sour in a series or know innovation, etc. is pretty tiny.

 

And, frankly, most people just don't have the time to study. Playing all of Age of Empires is not the same as watching Flash Gordon serials to learn about scifi tropes, though certainly more fun. If you can get them to work, there is a lot of time involved.

 

One thing that readers should do - and that I did early, both when trying to find trustworthy reviews and learning how to become a better critic - is recognize that not every reviewer can or should speak to every experience. I needed reviewers with a deep knowledge of history and mechanics to trust, and I found a bunch at CGM and Games Domain.

 

Now with some types of strategy games, editors understand this. Many sites will just refuse to review a Paradox game or Matrix wargame because they know they have no one on staff that can begin to speak to a meaningful experience. But RTSes are different; they are the "action strategy game" - you drag select units and point them in the right direction and everyone loves Starcraft, etc.

 

I also know that, for as much as I love him and value his opinion and experience, Tom and I are never going to see eye to eye on Civ V. Rob and I are never going to see eye to eye on League of Legends. Bruce and I are never going to see eye to eye on Thurn und Taxis. I could get lost in Julian's eyes for days.

 

Knowing a reviewer's history and what they are bringing to the table was certainly a lot easier when there were only a few major magazines and a couple of websites to pay attention to.

 

Honestly, this one reason Twitter has become so important to me. With so many of my most trusted writers freelancing all over the place, I just have to follow them to see what they have recently posted. You can have a conversation with these writers and, importantly, push that review or criticism to an audience that might appreciate it. It's like Usenet with a filter; so I guess not like Usenet at all, but it does help build some of that community of readers and writers that can direct people like you to things you find interesting.

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As for your point about divorcing expectations from criticism, there's no way you can do that if you also want context.  Part of the context of Company of Heroes 2 is that it was made by Relic, a company who has consistently created kick-ass Video games that I really like.  That's one type of expectation and it's entirely reasonable in a critical discussion. 

That doesn't make sense to me. I don't think it really matters who creates a game (or a movie, or a book) when it comes to the critic's consumption of the game. Would you have enjoyed Company of Heroes 2 more or less if it had been made by (for example) EA instead of Relic? Or does the game stand on its own as the object of criticism, regardless of its author and context?

 

I think critics are better off by looking at the game itself, rather than bringing in what they believe to be the game's background context. This is not unlike the whole "Pierre Menard" thing.

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That doesn't make sense to me. I don't think it really matters who creates a game (or a movie, or a book) when it comes to the critic's consumption of the game. Would you have enjoyed Company of Heroes 2 more or less if it had been made by (for example) EA instead of Relic? Or does the game stand on its own as the object of criticism, regardless of its author and context?

 

I think critics are better off by looking at the game itself, rather than bringing in what they believe to be the game's background context. This is not unlike the whole "Pierre Menard" thing.

 

Expectations change depending on who the creator is. If your favorite band produces an album that turns out to be a dud, why shouldn't that be disappointing to you? I think there's room for criticism that limits its focus to the object itself, but I don't see why it's a bad thing for critics to consider context.

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Here is what I think the problem is. Studio A and Studio B both put out the exact same game. The game is identical in every way: art, gameplay, and so on. However, Studio A is much-beloved, with a long history of great releases. Studio B is a total unknown. If a studio's history informs the review, then the game will review differently depending on whether it was released by Studio A or Studio B, even though objectively it's exactly the same game. 

 

Borges illustrated this issue in the story "Pierre Menard, Author of the Quixote". In that story, Pierre Menard is an author writing in the 20th century. He "recreates" Don Quixote word-for-word, in its entirety. The narrator "reviews" PIerre Menard's Quixote, and argues that Menard's Quixote is in fact better than the original Quixote, because Menard's Quixote benefits from all the historical context of the years between Cervantes's writing of the original Quixote and the writing of Menard's Quixote. So despite the fact that they are literally the same exact book, the narrator argues that Menard's version is superior. 

 

So I guess this is a long winded way of saying that while I think a reviewer's background does matter because it necessarily informs their interpretation of the work, I don't think that the author of a work (whether it be a book or a game) is important, or that we should generally judge a work based on who created it. Look at the work itself, and not at the author of the work. 

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Knowing a reviewer's history and what they are bringing to the table was certainly a lot easier when there were only a few major magazines and a couple of websites to pay attention to.

 

This is very true when it comes to movie reviews, I suspect that gamers expect it to be different for games reviews.

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I am one of the worst oxymorons known to man: a casual player of hard core strategy games.

I have only a few hours a month to devote to my passion, and I listened to this podcast specifically because I thought it would be a good way to play CoH2 vicariously. I bought CoH, played it a little and loved it, and will probably buy CoH2 and probably play it a little.

So that's where I come from when I say that Tom Chick seems like the worst game reviewer on the planet FOR PEOPLE LIKE ME. When I decide I need a new game, I'll scan a handful of reviews, see the scores, and make a purchase. Based on this, CoH2 by definition must be less fun than every 2-star game reviewed by Tom, and more fun than every 0-star game. I expect that will not be the case, which makes no sense to me.

Don't give me blather about decades of context that professional game reviewers have. Scores are used to comparitively rate a game's quality - not just compared to the other games in that series, but in all games competing for my attention and money. Don't use your review to make a historical statement about the halcyon days of our youth. CoH2 doesn't deserve 1 star because it's the second best CoH game Relic made.

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The positive is that they could have trashed what is a good game and deprive Eugen of sales because they are utterly hopeless at it. Instead they aknowledged they were crap, didn't really understand the game and gave it an ok score for what they didn't get but was there.

 

I did like that part of the review was on how in their online games they were told to die of disease. Were they reviewing the game or the insults? If so I'd only give the insults one star. It lacked originality and takes trolling nowhere.

 

Snooze, I didn't mean to sound like I was calling you out.  Sorry about that.  But their review didn't really tell me anything other than that they were out of their depth and they were passing along marketing copy.  They basically described a game, and they had no meaningful insight into that game.  So annoying.  But I do appreciate you passing along the link and I also appreciate that they didn't just slag it.

 

I was once told to die in a gasoline fire.  I like that the guy specified what kind of fire, but he should have given it more thought.  For instance, a grease fire would have been a more ignoble fate.

 

   -Tom

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So that's where I come from when I say that Tom Chick seems like the worst game reviewer on the planet FOR PEOPLE LIKE ME. When I decide I need a new game, I'll scan a handful of reviews, see the scores, and make a purchase. Based on this, CoH2 by definition must be less fun than every 2-star game reviewed by Tom, and more fun than every 0-star game. I expect that will not be the case, which makes no sense to me.

 

I'm perfectly fine with you deciding that my reviews are useless to you, and I'll take that comment any day of the week over the usual nonsense about how my reviews are wrong.  Hopefully, I at least provide a different perspective, and whether you can use that perspective is entirely up to you.  

 

However, if you're reading my reviews to determine whether a game is fun, I can't help you.  No one can.  You won't find me using the word "fun" in my reviews, because it's a uselessly subjective concept that will mean five different things to four different people.  The word "fun" is a crutch for inarticulate writers.  Circle it with a red pen every time you see it!

 

   -Tom, who hates fun

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Snooze, I didn't mean to sound like I was calling you out.  Sorry about that.  But their review didn't really tell me anything other than that they were out of their depth and they were passing along marketing copy.  They basically described a game, and they had no meaningful insight into that game.  So annoying.  But I do appreciate you passing along the link and I also appreciate that they didn't just slag it.

 

I was once told to die in a gasoline fire.  I like that the guy specified what kind of fire, but he should have given it more thought.  For instance, a grease fire would have been a more ignoble fate.

 

   -Tom

 

Hey, I thought it was a terrible review too :)

 

I sometimes watch the show less for their review scores but more just because I'm interested in gaming and in many ways its entertaining. Their review of W:AB for anyone interested in strategy was very poor. I did like to their credit they tried to be positive about it because it is a game that warrents it.

 

I think you review honestly but in doing so you make yourself an internet villian. To some you are a Robin Hood but to the most vocal it seems a villian. You also don't fit neatly into the percentage way of scoring and this also makes you a target when people try to relate your score in the percentage way. If you were a movie critic all this would be fine, its because your a game critic I believe for many people its not.

 

Good luck with trying to change the internet....

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The word "fun" is a crutch for inarticulate writers.  Circle it with a red pen every time you see it!

Yeah, you make a good point, although I think you zeroed in on that word because if you replace "fun" with "high quality" or another, more objective adjective, the point itself it cogent.

Points for defending your review with aplomb.

-Tyr2180, who thinks the second-best CoH game is better than 80+% of the games that get released.

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It was a bit frustrating listening to you discuss the game balance when you admit to not having played many online matches.  I've been playing a lot of online matches and watching the tournaments and good players on twitch.tv. Based on what I have seen and experienced most of your points about the game balance for online are just wrong.

 

I really felt this too.  Would have loved it if someone like TychoCelchuuu - CoH 1 expert who has been critical of CoH 2 - was on the podcast to add an accurate analysis of what's majorly wrong concerning balance stuff, both on the meta-strategy level and micro level.

 

Enjoyed listening to the podcast overall though.  I was a little surprised to hear Rob's review's score was 3.5.  I fall on Team Tom's side in regards to game reviews.

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It was a bit frustrating listening to you discuss the game balance when you admit to not having played many online matches.  I've been playing a lot of online matches and watching the tournaments and good players on twitch.tv. Based on what I have seen and experienced most of your points about the game balance for online are just wrong.

 

 

Sadly, this seems to be a bit of a theme with 3MA over the past year. Although, I shouldn't be too critical as the podcast is, to my knowledge, the best when it comes to decent knowledge of strategy games. but I do feel that they have a tendency to put out a show on a new game before giving it a proper play through. Sure, reviewing strategy games is difficulty as they usually take a lot longer to learn and play compared to most other genres. But, I'd rather have a patient show which treats games properly and in-depth, than an up-to-date review show.

 

I'm not trying to use the whole "reviewers must of completed the game before they review it" thing, as I think that's daft. I just think that 3MA is more than a review show. :) I don't really bother with reviews these days - I much prefer the more in-depth critical analysis that the best episodes offer. 

 

 

I g

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Did you podcast guys ever play CoH:Online? It was extremely fun and definitely not balanced. Some of the criticisms you're leveling towards persistence and the unbalanced nature of RTS unlocks is writing on the wall from the Online game. For one, you personally had a Commander level similar to WoW which let you have access to more skill points (what's that? My blitzkrieg infantry now have bazookas, carry an lmg per squad, come standard with mg44s, and run faster than standard infantry WHILE STEALTHED? Yes, thanks.) while also having cards that translated to units that were random/purchase able drops unlocked with points after your commander reached a certain level. I had people I gamed with who won games on the strength of an Epic Allied scout jeep that, if I recall correctly, could call in artillery strikes. It builds out of your barracks and only costs manpower which means it can be your very first unit. My Rare grenadiers and heavy rifle squad helped secure fuel points in team games no problem.

Fun? Absolutely. Broken? Beyond repair, very sadly.

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Sadly, this seems to be a bit of a theme with 3MA over the past year. Although, I shouldn't be too critical as the podcast is, to my knowledge, the best when it comes to decent knowledge of strategy games. but I do feel that they have a tendency to put out a show on a new game before giving it a proper play through. Sure, reviewing strategy games is difficulty as they usually take a lot longer to learn and play compared to most other genres. But, I'd rather have a patient show which treats games properly and in-depth, than an up-to-date review show.

 

I'm not trying to use the whole "reviewers must of completed the game before they review it" thing, as I think that's daft. I just think that 3MA is more than a review show. :) I don't really bother with reviews these days - I much prefer the more in-depth critical analysis that the best episodes offer. 

 

 

I g

 

I totally agree, riadsala.  It's really frustrating to me when I hear someone on a podcast or I read something by a writer who has only a superficial familiarity with the game they're talking about, particularly when it's supposedly indepth.  The usual "what we're playing" schtick is another matter entirely, but it's really disappointing to hear conversations when some of the participants clearly haven't wrapped their head around a game yet.  Which is why the balance issue I mentioned -- the Russians run away with the game until the German get tanks on the field -- was a complaint I'd seen made by others.  I'm pretty sure I clearly stated that wasn't my experience, because I hadn't played online enough to suss out those kinds of balance issues.  I doubt even the people complaining have played enough to suss out those issues.  

 

Furthermore, I can't speak indepth about competitive online play in real-time strategy games, much less any other genre.  That's not something you're going to get from most reviewers, particularly those of us who play and write about several different genres.  Any time you read a reviewer complaining about balance, you should probably ignore what he's saying.  Or at least give it as much credence as someone complaining on a forum.   : ) 

 

By the way, if you want to know how a podcast would sound with people familiar with indepth competitive online play, Three Moves Ahead did a League of Legends podcast about competitive play with Julian and some guest(s) from League of Legends' e-sports community.  I couldn't understand a word of it, but I'm sure the hardcore League of Legends audience loved it.   : )

 

   -Tom

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Did you podcast guys ever play CoH:Online? It was extremely fun and definitely not balanced. Some of the criticisms you're leveling towards persistence and the unbalanced nature of RTS unlocks is writing on the wall from the Online game. For one, you personally had a Commander level similar to WoW which let you have access to more skill points (what's that? My blitzkrieg infantry now have bazookas, carry an lmg per squad, come standard with mg44s, and run faster than standard infantry WHILE STEALTHED? Yes, thanks.) while also having cards that translated to units that were random/purchase able drops unlocked with points after your commander reached a certain level. I had people I gamed with who won games on the strength of an Epic Allied scout jeep that, if I recall correctly, could call in artillery strikes. It builds out of your barracks and only costs manpower which means it can be your very first unit. My Rare grenadiers and heavy rifle squad helped secure fuel points in team games no problem.

Fun? Absolutely. Broken? Beyond repair, very sadly.

 

I'm glad you brought this up, Mr. Finger.  I know about Company of Heroes Online, but I didn't play it.  And I think you're absolutely right about Company of Heroes 2 trying to apply some of the Company of Heroes Online model.  Ugh.

 

   -Tom

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I totally agree, riadsala.  

 

I like it when people say that :)

 

By the way, if you want to know how a podcast would sound with people familiar with indepth competitive online play, Three Moves Ahead did a League of Legends podcast about competitive play with Julian and some guest(s) from League of Legends' e-sports community.  I couldn't understand a word of it, but I'm sure the hardcore League of Legends audience loved it.   : )

 

   -Tom

 

And that's a great example of how its possible to go too far the other way! As, I couldn't understand any of it either.

 

I guess the sweet spot is Troy talking about Civ. Or your discussion of Wargame [i'd love to watch the Tom v Rob stream of Airland Battle... you did challenge him... are you going to follow through?]

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I reached the portion of the podcast where you discuss the reviews and how reviews work. I disagree with you to some degree Tom, in that you can only review your experience. If the reviewer in question does not have that depth of background, if he doesn't have dozens of hours in CoH, Opposing Fronts and Men of Valor, and the online game, he can only give you the opinion of the game he played. I at least appreciate the honesty in which that is given. If that's not useful to you, I know you're well aware that your reviews are not always useful to others. There has to be some sort of spectrum upon which you view the opinions of game players compared to your own. Not everyone has ~20 years gameplaying AND writing experience. One's first review has to happen at some point or one does not become a reviewer.

 

However, if the reviewer is new to the genre I think that needs to be made clear. A neophyte's opinion isn't wrong, and it's not their fault. Where I would lay the criticism is at the feet of the review outlet. If they're dressing up a newbie's review and presenting it as someone who is genre-savvy, that's THEIR fault and they should do a better job of assigning reviewers.

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One thing that is weird about the whole "barbarism of the Soviets" thing is that the Nazis are treated pretty neutrally in the CoH games, as I remember. Like when you play as a Nazi you don't have to round up civilians and ship them off as slave labour or something. You aren't really confronted with the basic inhumanity of the Nazi regime, or the atrocities that the Wehrmacht helped inflict on the countries it invades.

 

I guess I think it's weird and gross that historical war games don't seem to really address the atrocities that have accompanied most major wars. It would probably be weird and gross if those atrocities were made into game mechanics, but the absence is also disturbing in a different way. Has TMA ever done an "ethics of wargaming" podcast? I remember reading or hearing something from Troy about him not liking to play as the Germans, but I don't remember anything else. There are a LOT of episodes though, and I haven't listened to them all.

 

A ha! there is an episode. I should have known.

 

http://flashofsteel.com/index.php/2010/10/27/three-moves-ahead-episode-88-ethics-morality-and-motivation/

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I guess I think it's weird and gross that historical war games don't seem to really address the atrocities that have accompanied most major wars. It would probably be weird and gross if those atrocities were made into game mechanics, but the absence is also disturbing in a different way.

 

It is, but would you want to deal with that?  I suspect it would put reasonable people off, and the people who enjoyed it would not be the sort of people I'd want to cater to.  A one-off built for shock value (like that game where you're loading trains and they only tell you at the end that you're loading people to send them to death camps) can work, but I think that game is instructive; I doubt most people play it many times.

 

You could make the same argument about ahistorical games.  Given the way (for example) the humans operate in StarCraft, there are probably all sorts of atrocities going on; the fiction certainly sets up personalities and political structures that imply it.  Don't they have a moral obligation to put those in camera?  But can you imagine the outcry and the damage to sales if they did?

 

The episode you mention covers a lot of ground on the subject and does so quite well, as usual.

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One of the things I really like about tabletop war games is that the rule books typically have pretty extensive lists of works cited at the end so there is a lot of good historical research you can dive into to learn about the atrocities and barbarism of war.

 

I'm not convinced that game mechanics have any natural way of stimulating the part of our brain that engages in moral reasoning. One of the important aspects of a moral or ethical quandry is once you have made a decision you have to live with it. A game, on the other hand, allows for constant iteration. The iteration of an event drains it of its weight.

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I'm not convinced that game mechanics have any natural way of stimulating the part of our brain that engages in moral reasoning. One of the important aspects of a moral or ethical quandry is once you have made a decision you have to live with it. A game, on the other hand, allows for constant iteration. The iteration of an event drains it of its weight.

 

I think the 3MA episode about it got to the heart of the matter when they were talking about the problems games have simulating irrational action.  If you put a player in charge of Nazi Germany, they almost certainly aren't going to start death camps and begin murdering their own citizens because it simply doesn't make any rational sense to do so.  Morality aside, it's a massive, pointless waste of resources and personnel.  If you try to force it on the player, (1) it's going to chase people away from your game, and (2) it raises the whole question of why you can control every policy decision in your country except the one involving pogroms.

 

The only way to make people do it would be to provide some bonus to the player for taking that irrational action, but the resulting game would be reprehensible and ahistoric.

 

I think a game can provide moral choice to the player.  The problem in the case of strategy games, however, is that the moral quandaries are often totally orthogonal to the strategic choices.  There are some exceptions, like the classic "Purge the army?" question that often comes up for the Russian player in strategic WW2 games or the question of how prisoners of war are treated, but for the most part the moral decisions you'd like to reach back into history and undo were bad ideas both morally and strategically.

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Part of the problem with the portrayal of morality in a lot of RPGs that I think extends to strategy games is that the choice is tied to other game play systems that the player is trying to min/max. So the player doesn't make a choice because it's the more morally courageous action, but because that action improves your reputation by 5 points, which confers other kinds of bonuses (or whatever), or maybe behaving poorly nets you a new weapon or tool. What I found so effective in the Walking Dead is when a player faced a moral problem you simply had to make a timed decision, and live with the consequences. The impact of that choice existed entirely in the narrative, it wasn't tied to some other system of reward or punishment. That is a more illuminating exploration of moral behavior than the sort of Pavlovian exercises we see in a lot of games, especially strategy games.

 

That lack of moral reasoning is also what I find compelling about strategy games too though. I don't ever want to disregard the horror of violence that happens in a war, but that doesn't mean there aren't interesting issues when you look at a game like Unity of Command where the war becomes this abstract intellectual exercise where you are simply trying to understand how to control your force's supply lines. In a way, it helps provide additional context for the barbarity that happens at a more zoomed in level. A show like the Wire is brilliant at showing the viewer these personal tragedies that occurs due to larger impersonal, macroeconomic and social forces. I haven't seen anything like that in a game, and it would be cool to see, but I tend to view these different scopes as complementary to understanding the world at large rather than as one being the right way to portray events, and the other as the wrong way.

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