On Games, Reviews, And Criticism -- Part 3

I remember that review of Other M infuriating me. So many people throw (not just in gaming of course) terms like "sexism" and "racism" around where it doesn't apply, just to further victimize themselves, for what end I have no idea.

Samus shouldn't have been taking orders from anyone, but you can't call it sexist just because it was a man giving her orders.

I had an ex-girlfriend that would call "sexism" any time she saw a guy being a jerk to a woman, and I, sadly, had to inform her that said guy was just a jerk, and it happened to be a woman he was being a dick to. Nothing sexist about it. As douchey as it sounds, that's the typical female attention grab we see far too often. If a situation would be just as offensive and insulting between two people of the same gender, then you can't call it sexist just because the situation is happening between people of differing genders.

It could just have easily been a female commanding officer, and that would still have been offensive to fans of Samus as a lone wolf / badass who takes direction from no one, but since it happened to be a man, this reviewer knew she could get away with the "sexist" criticism. Also, if that were sexism, then in past jobs where I had a female boss, I should have run to HR anytime she told me to do something, because it's sexist to boss around the opposite gender, right, Ms. Heppe? -_-

Now, if she had said that the philosophy of the team behind the story creators was sexist because they DID choose to place a man in that role, then perhaps I might side with her.

@chaosnovaxz said:

I remember that review of Other M infuriating me. So many people throw (not just in gaming of course) terms like "sexism" and "racism" around where it doesn't apply, just to further victimize themselves, for what end I have no idea.

Samus shouldn't have been taking orders from anyone, but you can't call it sexist just because it was a man giving her orders.

I had an ex-girlfriend that would call "sexism" any time she saw a guy being a jerk to a woman, and I, sadly, had to inform her that said guy was just a jerk, and it happened to be a woman he was being a dick to. Nothing sexist about it. As douchey as it sounds, that's the typical female attention grab we see far too often. If a situation would be just as offensive and insulting between two people of the same gender, then you can't call it sexist just because the situation is happening between people of differing genders.

It could just have easily been a female commanding officer, and that would still have been offensive to fans of Samus as a lone wolf / badass who takes direction from no one, but since it happened to be a man, this reviewer knew she could get away with the "sexist" criticism. Also, if that were sexism, then in past jobs where I had a female boss, I should have run to HR anytime she told me to do something, because it's sexist to boss around the opposite gender, right, Ms. Heppe? -_-

Now, if she had said that the philosophy of the team behind the story creators was sexist because they DID choose to place a man in that role, then perhaps I might side with her.

Did you actually play the game? Because the reason people freak out isn't because "OMG Man is being mean to Samus" its "Jesus Christ Samus's whole character arc is her crying and being completely unmotivated to protect herself for no real good reason other then we wanted to make a more 'feminine' character."

Case in point with Samus refusing to activate her Varia suit to not burn to death in lava until Adam says its okay. This stuff gets aggravated because this game was made by Team Ninja, aka the makers of Ninja Gaiden and Dead or Alive. Two things not really known for their positive portrayal of the female gender. Unless being covered in goo or getting kidnapped some become in vogue or something.

Someone should inform Manveer that their games have less quality now. Biowares best work was in Baldurs Gate 2 and Kotor and it has been downhill since, Dragon Age 2 being rock-bottom. Mass Effect 2... while a better game overall than ME1, had a more generic plot with a structure I personally didn't think improved the game. And they really really should do something about their crappy bossfights. As for Reviews and Criticism I cant really say anything about that topic, I dont read many reviews, I watch videos of actual gameplay and form my opinion on that. A quicklook at giantbomb tells me more about a game than a review ever will.

@Alkaiser:

That's what I meant by saying I'd agree with her if she called the game's character design choices "sexist", and not the events in the game itself. She says in her review that one of the reasons it's offensive is because Samus is taking orders from a man, and that's absurd. She shouldn't be taking orders at all, from anyone, like I said. The simple act of a male character giving instructions to a female character is not sexist.

Video game writers should have organized themselves in a association a long time ago. The association should organize a yearly or bi-yearly conference where people can meet, exchange ideas and take decisions that shape the future of that guild. You are useless to the world serving as henchmen of the corporates.

@chaosnovaxz: Yeah, those crazy feminists with their "typical female attention grabs". What are they trying to pull?

It's still a ridiculous shame that Heppe had to fall on the sword like she did for saying something that's fairly obvious. There was a lot of interest in the subsequent debate about where Samus' original draw as a "cipher"/"blank slate" came from but trying to spin that into a rationalization for whatever Other M was is just ridiculous. There's the title, the "Bottle Ship", the "Baby's Cry" and enemies that are shaped like the letter 'M'. Even if you somehow blind to the regression the story serves as far as reasonable portrayal of women (or any sex/gender combination), anyone willing posit that game's writing and stylistic choices as 'good' needs some serious quality time alone thinking about where they went off the deep end.

I enjoyed Metroid: Other M, but I'm apparently in the minority. It wasn't as good as Prime or Corruption, but I still enjoyed it. I didn't have an issue with Samus crying, but maybe it was because those two games are my only prior experience with the Metriod franchise and Samus as a character (which is to say she had no character). I felt the scene humanized Samus because there was a vulnerability there that would be expected of human characters and not some, "I'm going to fuck everything up HELL YEAH!" killing machine that we see so often in other games. Samus is a bounty hunter and she's fought Ridley several times before so the idea was that nothing should faze her. I propose the possibility that maybe shit did phase her and she's having an appropriate reaction. Maybe Ridley is a pretty scary dude and left some deep psychological trauma in their previous fights.

I believe Isaac's persona in Dead Space 2 is a great example of the "Space Warrior" deconstruction. He kicked a lot of necromorph ass in Dead Space so it should follow that he'd be revved up to kick even more ass in Dead Space 2 right? Wrong. We find out that he was deeply disturbed by everything that happened on the Ishimura and that plays out in the events of Dead Space 2. Did anyone get the sense that Isaac was anything more than a killing machine in the first game? I don't and I didn't have an issue with his revealed frailty. Gears of War 3 had a similar arc and it was applauded for the change in tone.

So why is Samus different from Isaac or Dom/Cole/Marcus?

Some people have asked why review scores and not sales matter to developers. It's because reviews are instant. When I started I was making games for PS2 at the end of it's life cycle, so we didn't get reviews. The sales were all we had and when all the developer has is vgchartz for the first few months, you tend to not really know what's going on.

Publishers know that higher metacritic maps to higher sales. When sales don't match, feelings adjust to match reality, but it doesn't change the dependance on estimation using the scores. That's why publishers have bonus' in the contract based on reviews. It's an incentive to push the team cooked up by people that don't know how real motivation works.

@patrickklepek This is THE best opinion piece I have read in a long time. Developers and journalists have their own inner circle discussions about this stuff that tend to accomplish nothing. Everyone wants a solution to this and by opening up the dialogue you make progress more possible.

There's so much vitriol among developers about poor reviews of their games because nobody likes criticism and it's a hard pill for us to swallow. Internal studio culture leads us to believe we're more critical than anyone about our game and the mentality that the game is amazing can't help but permeate. We're blinded by that mindset that the changes we make improve the game because they've been argued and discussed to death.

Manveer says Mass Effect 3 is better than 2 in every way because in his mind they changed everything for the better, but we're all too close to our games to know which changes aren't.

The way that most publications review games rather than criticize them is one of the problems that games "journalism" has with becoming real journalism. Discussions like this are doubly important: if the industry wants to be taken more seriously as an artform, there have to be respectable critics of that artform. Some sort of standardized way of discussing games would be a great idea, but it doesn't seem like a very easy thing to put together or enforce (for lack of a softer word).

At any rate, great series Patrick. Please keep putting words on my screen.

Kleptok/manveer 2012

Ok, I've read all three now.

I'll start by saying that you are both well off the mark if you believe that everybody adopting a 5 star scale would lead to review score deflation. Why? Because when viewed through the prism of metacritic -as you both seem to accept is usually the case, and is especially the case if we're going to talk about inflation/deflaton- it has a +10% conversion bias. It is actually the worst offender in terms of driving review score inflation (at least in terms of the only way we have of measuring it: ie. metacritic) for exactly that reason. Even though I can't tell you the difference between a 72 and a 73 review, that 1% is still a complete non-issue compared to every 5 Star review being incorrectly converted up to 100% (incorrect because mathematically the 5th star covers a 20% range, the center of which is 90%, not 100%). You can see this demonstrated again by the way Manveer (I think) just says off-hand that with a universal 5 Star scale, 3 Stars / 60% would become the average and implies that would be ok - hang on, why should we accept 60% as the average? There is no Zero Star, meaning 3 Stars is slap bang in the middle of the scale, which = 50%, not 60%.

That's not to say a 5 star scale is at fault here, but given that the conversion being used for Metacritic is demonstrably wrong and given you (the press) acknowledge the influence Metacritic has on the industry (like it or not), then I do agree that you have a duty of care to either make sure your reviews are more accurately converted, or put your money where your mouth is and pull your reviews from Metacritic. Not doing either just makes you complicit in the whole problem you're railing against.

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Oh, and if Mass Effect 3 really is better in every way than ME2 yet still averages lower, it won't be because reviewers have become tougher in the last two years, it'll be because Mass Effect 2 exists now whereas it didn't before. You are now being held to a higher standard because ME2 raised the bar. In order to achieve similar scores to ME2 you need to surpass it (and the rest of the current market) to the extent that ME2 surpassed the market when it came out. Review scores are only accurate on day of release and the standard to which games are held is rising all the time, which is how it should be. Reviewers haven't gotten tougher, the market has.

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As for whether criticism such as 'too linear' has a place in reviews, I guess it depends. 'Too linear' alone is not enough, but if the reviewer feels that this linearity has contributed to a complete lack of artistic merit then they are absolutely right to mark it down on that basis. A game shouldn't get a free pass for being mindless / blockbuster trash, just because that's all it was trying to be. Try to be more.

This is an area where perhaps we could learn from other media. You don't see movie reviewers scared of calling Transformers (for example) shitty, just because it was very expensive to make, very popular and the cameraman didn't fall over. If the reviewer still feels that all of that doesn't amount to anything worthwhile then they just say so. It's ok for movie reviews to be all over the place, with little correlation between budget and review scores, yet for gaming it's the complete opposite. It's like that of course because the game industry simply has far too much influence over the press, but that's a whole other issue.

@golguin: I think a comparison with Gordon Freeman is more appropriate. Imagine him doing sappy monologue in HL3 and not using his HEV suit because some guy tells him not to.

I'll admit, though, I never gave Other M a fair chance. From the very first trailer I was already worried (Remember me?), and the more they revealed the less interested I became. I still haven't played Other M, and I don't think I want to. It's worth noting that Prime's one of my favorite games, probably #1, so that obviously affects my feelings on Other M. It comforts me that Retro is working on "a project everyone wants us to do".

On topic, I really hope they can get some more devs for this series, all three parts have been great so far.

When can I see an article regarding the corruption and the underhanded practices in the videogame world written by an insider? Or a serious discussion about it, at least?

Because I, for one, think that's way more interesting than an snob, pseudo-intellectual and pointless workshop circle jerk discussion about reviews that addresses every party involved but the most important one: me, THE CONSUMER!

I'm sick and tired about all these beat-around-the-bush discussions about reviews, game philosophies, criticism and all that crap, when they're all clearly about the same thing: how to squeeze more money out of the consumer and how to turn Metacritic's already relative scores into something completely subjective, with the sole purpose of keeping every lazy, incompetent developer/producer fed.

By all means, let's blur the lines even further between quality and garbage, let's bring the videogame equivalents of Kubrick's "2001: A Space Odyssey" or Cimino's "The Deer Hunter" to the same level of "Norbit" or "I Know What You Did Last Summer", because the consumer is a complete jackass and needs to be taken advantage of and heavens forbid a game designer to lose his job, even though his best work is some pornographic Flash game.

Yeah, I have an opinion about today's reviews: they're all ultra positive like every piece of software of this generation is a masterpiece. Every single RPG or shooter today is a "must buy". Even games that have serious problems, freezes or even scripting bugs manage to get a "good" rating.

Back in the Nintendo 64 and PS2 days you'd only see a handful of games barely receiving an 8 ( the 9s were really rare, and were given to really good and original, genre-defining games that were considered milestones of gaming).

Nowadays, every run-of-the-mill shooter gets an 8/good rating: if it has the thinnest layer of RPG elements on top, then it's way more interesting; if it has some childish comic book or anime style to it - GOTY material for sure.

The same goes to "fantasy" RPGs, meaning either a) same ol' Norse mythology/Tolkien' Lord of the Rings bleek medieval style junk, with orcs, elves, knights, wizards and all that crap, like there are no other known cultures/mythologies in this world; b) same J-RPG crap, same Final Fantasy anime style characters with weird hair, talking creatures and all that garbage. Is it me or the term "fantasy" has become really boring and limited in scope?

Every review nowadays has to be "positive", because, if not, then it would be considered "harsh" or "unfair" by all the low self esteem jerk-off kiddies on the message boards.

Until now, it was expected that the reviewer to be familiar or even a fan of the style/genre of the game he/she was reviewing, which seemed logical to a certain extent. Now, the reviewer has to like the game itself in order to review it- meaning that you have to give it a good score/rating, because, otherwise, you'll be contradicting yourself. If you don't like it, then it's not "your cup of tea", therefore you opinion is invalid and you're not qualified to give it a score.

So, in other words, you only have 2 options: a) you can only say it's good, marvelous, outstanding or b) shut up. If you choose to criticize it, the you're considered "harsh" and "unfair". How do you like this type of censorship?

There, now I feel better...

Does anyone else think Patrick's infrequent spelling errors are on purpose? Is he spelling out a coded message to sleeper agents?

@ZmillA said:

I'm loving this. More games criticism please!!

More like games criticism criticism.

The 100/10 scale should cease to exist. It's so outdated, I still have a hard time understanding why so-called major outlets still use it. For all the arguing over games being art it's pathetic many still break games down to the sum of its parts. Like, Graphics, Sound, Story, ect. If there has to be a score, the 5-Star scale has to be the choice. The review should be based on how the person playing the game feels. It's clear to me that many game critics envy developers and their creative talents. They appear to take that envy and turn it into unnecessary overly harsh criticism. Unfortunately, those are the reviews that generate the traffic. People only go there to bitch and moan, but in the end they are pay the bills.

@HaVoK308: But isn't breaking down the game to its core components exactly that: Telling people exactly what you feel about the game and its parts? For me, I see nothing wrong with that. Yes, the game ultimately hits or misses with its gameplay mechanics, but other factors like a good story and presentation can make up for subpar gameplay. Mirror's Edge, for instance, doesn't have the best concept and execution of its parkour, but the reason why the response has been relatively OK to positive is because of its sleek design and soundtrack. Nier's graphics and gameplay are underwhelming, but the reason why it is mediocre instead of awful is because of its amazing soundtrack and a great story with a blended-well cast. If the developers made a game whose qualities besides gameplay is through the roof, they should get credit for that, and the breaking down the game in its components system gives credit to those facets where credit is due.

I agree that IGN has made some bad calls, but what I think people don't really understand about the ratings system is that it isn't just a formulaic bore; the reviewer gets to make a judgement call, so he or she can give more 8s than 9s but then have the overall score to be greater not less than 8.5. They will tell you that the final score is not an average. Same goes for Gametrailers. For me, I get to make some calls here or there too; should I give a 65% game 3 or 3 and a half stars? But as long as I give a plausible reason as to the decision, I don't think I am doing a wrong thing by breaking the game down to its components. I am doing what the people of the 5 star system are doing: Making a gut decision based on the holistic experience in the game.

In short, as long as people are convincing in their reviews, saying what went wrong and what didn't,and are able to back up their arguments through specific examples in the game, it really doesn't matter what sort of system what reviewers are using to base an opinion in the game. But then again, I am some jealous reviewer who envies the talents of developers blah blah blah.

@chaosnovaxz: I couldn't agree with that review at all, but I guess I can kinda see where the reviewer is coming from. I don't view Other M as sexist, but it definitely doesn't uphold the view we have of Samus. To me, it is just like if First Blood was not your first experience of Rambo. With almost any other Rambo movie, you see him as a strong lone wolf and a bit of a leader when the time comes. In First Blood however, you see his frailty and weakness post-traumatic stress disorder in coping with the real world. It may not be the exact same as Other M, but they both give another side of the Lone Wolf character that people don't expect to see.

Also this wasn't the first time in the series she has taken orders. She has done so at least in Metroid Prime III and in Metroid Fusion. In Fusion she talked about how she actually missed the dynamic of having a superior to be commanded by (whether or not he was a dick).

Wonderful piece Patrick. I've only just finished the second and third part of this exchange and I am glad I did.

On Metacritic: I wish people would heed the wisdom of The Wire, which says that organizations use numbers (crime stats, grades, polling) to hide from reality. It's bad for the art form when you treat metacritic like it's an objective resource instead of an intermediary with its own agenda and critical views.

I know people won't stop going there for a variety of reasons. I know the industry likes how predictable Metacritic is. But you've got educated people running these companies -- shouldn't they *know* whether they've put out a quality creative product without having some aggregation site spitting out what is essentially a fake number?

Numbers lie. Good writing tells the truth. Don't reduce good writing (or worse yet, lots and lots of mediocre writing) to a number and then expect to learn anything.

It's wall of texts like these I'm proud I've got the patience, and ability to read. Giantbomb delivers, yet again! I'm looking forward to the next discussion.

@patrickklepek said:

@DFSVegas said:

Game journalists love to navel gaze. As an avid game site visitor and podcast listener for years, I can say I am WAY over this topic.

Just write, if it's interesting, I'll read it. It's not that fucking complicated. How many times are we going to have to rehash this, frankly boring and meaningless, story?

I'm with you on that, which is why I'd hoped to avoid that somewhat by involving a developer directly.

It's still boring, and masturbatory.

I'm in the same exact boat as @DFSVegas. The only reason I can see for this article existing, is that if Mass Effect 3 ends up getting less than expected scores, this is the article that everyone will link to when discussing the internet hiccup that that will create. That situation of course being completely trite and totally uninteresting, as well.

I like a lot of what you do Patrick, but these invented news articles are total garbage. You might as well run all the rumor articles that the the other sites do, it's just as wrote.

@chaosnovaxz said:

I remember that review of Other M infuriating me. So many people throw (not just in gaming of course) terms like "sexism" and "racism" around where it doesn't apply, just to further victimize themselves, for what end I have no idea.

Samus shouldn't have been taking orders from anyone, but you can't call it sexist just because it was a man giving her orders.

I had an ex-girlfriend that would call "sexism" any time she saw a guy being a jerk to a woman, and I, sadly, had to inform her that said guy was just a jerk, and it happened to be a woman he was being a dick to. Nothing sexist about it. As douchey as it sounds, that's the typical female attention grab we see far too often. If a situation would be just as offensive and insulting between two people of the same gender, then you can't call it sexist just because the situation is happening between people of differing genders.

It could just have easily been a female commanding officer, and that would still have been offensive to fans of Samus as a lone wolf / badass who takes direction from no one, but since it happened to be a man, this reviewer knew she could get away with the "sexist" criticism. Also, if that were sexism, then in past jobs where I had a female boss, I should have run to HR anytime she told me to do something, because it's sexist to boss around the opposite gender, right, Ms. Heppe? -_-

Now, if she had said that the philosophy of the team behind the story creators was sexist because they DID choose to place a man in that role, then perhaps I might side with her.

What the shit is this? You literally believe that the reviewer "wanted to be victimized"? Read that phrase over and over to yourself until you see what the problem is, there.

@Gaspar:

Woah, you read too much into my post there buddy. I never generalized and said any feminists (or anything about feminism at all) were just grabbing for attention. This reviewer of Other M however, sure as hell seemed to be.

@jwoozy: Perhaps I phrased that poorly, but if that's not the case, then you tell me for what reason someone would make a bullshit call of "sexism" when it doesn't apply. (In this case, to the scenarios in the game, not the story choices of the actual writing team, as I previously stated.)

@chaosnovaxz said:

@jwoozy: Perhaps I phrased that poorly, but if that's not the case, then you tell me for what reason someone would make a bullshit call of "sexism" when it doesn't apply. (In this case, to the scenarios in the game, not the story choices of the actual writing team, as I previously stated.)

Because they're looking for it they see it everywhere. It's the old "if you've only got a hammer everything looks like a nail" refrain.

What message was Patrick conveying by posting the "Other M" review? Was it just an example of a review gone wrong because of criticism?

Patrick managed to get "The 'Check Yourself Before You Wriggety-Wreck Yourself' Award for Things That Need to 'Take a Break' Before They Become the 'Worst Trend'" into the reply without seeming completely crazy.

Oh, I think Giant Bomb and Penny Arcade should team up to have the first annual Game Critics Correspondents' Dinner in 2013. You could hold it in mid-January after the holiday has calmed down. Invitations would be sent out and a dinner of rubber chicken' or 'funky smelling fish' could be served. There could be a keynote speech by Adam Sessler, two or three a panel discussions with a mix of writers and developers, and then a wrap up speech by Jeff Gerstmann.

That would be awesome and would be useful as well! At the very least, it could bring all the game reviewers either at publications or freelance together in one room to mingle, commiserate and to network. In addition, some real thoughtful discussion might occur that might never happen without a forum like this being made. In fact, with a careful use of keynote speakers and then discussion panels you could even surprises some writers about how useful such a meeting could be for them.

interesting (thanks for doing this!)

I was just haggling over SOPA with someone, regarding the antiquated ideas of protecting publishers copy rights, and this point came up : if hollywood or thevideogamesIndustry falls apart, then we won't get huge spectacle any more. no one will be able to afford a Dragon Age 3, or a Transformers 4.

I argued that we can do without the spectacle. If budgets go away : the talented people behind those projects will still make interesting things.

Now, within your interview, I see Manveer say "...[low scores] makes it seem like our games have less quality, and that is painful to those of us who spend our lives crafting experiences for players to enjoy." And all I can think is : maybe you should embrace that pain, dude. Maybe spending a lot of money doesn't mean a company deserves a high score. Maybe the fact that Mass Effect 3 can't top Mass Effect 2's high scores : says something very important about the inherent value of sequels.

I for one would love to see even an informal games press conference (ala GDC) form. Something like that could really push the industry in the right direction. Perhaps GB can spearhead an awesome movement in games journalism.

Also, as a fan of inside baseball game industry talk, I am ravenous for more articles in vein of this series. File under D for Dowant.

I like this series and hope to see more like it in the future. It is refreshing to get real emotion and real communication without it being run through a PR filter. I cannot speak for everyone that reads game reviews, but I enjoy reading the "shit sandwich" reviews. Tell me what it does right, tell me what it does wrong, and tell me what makes it fun. Very few games (excluding shovelware) are worthless and I like to read reviews that tell me what a game has to offer; good, bad, or indifferent.

Manveer is sticking a fat middle finger in reviewers' faces instead of his boss', where it really belongs. The obsession with reviews and bonus paychecks are the part of the publishers', in his case EA's, and it's not on the gaming press to either drop critical thinking or numeric scores in order to keep developer's jobs. That's not Giant Bomb's prerogative.

It just sounds like he's the angry child lashing out at his best friend for something his parents did. And it also really, really makes folks scared for Mass Effect 3.

For the people saying this is irrelevant or masturbatory, the fact that a borked system like Metacritic can influence whether or not people retain their jobs is reason enough to explore how we might begin to replace product reviews with actual criticism.

if you change it to a yes or no for your "score" as in Patrick likes this game, Jeff doesn't like this game, e.t.c then it will basically force metacritic to not exist.

Youtube changed from stars to like/dislike for a reason.

I request all reviews to feature the opinions and reactions of a young gamer, so every official review has 2 contrasting opinions, informed and instinctive, and brings lots of perspective.

I'd love to see some podcasts featuring developers where you just totally rip on them for what they did wrong and they defend themselves then everyone learns more about how games are made. E32011 Podcasts made me believe it was possible. Makes me wonder what the DICE conference must be like.

Does anyone know of some goods sources for game criticism / scholarship (I'm thinking something like Cineaste, but about games)? It seems that, critical analysis, cultural theory, deconstruction and analysis is extremey hard to find in any consistent way. Given the varied and intelligent discussion already underway, GB would be a great place encourage this kind of discussion

I honestly very rarely read reviews, I'll see the score, the byline, maybe read the last couple paragraphs but that's generally it. I feel fully capable of forming my own hands-off review based on my previous experiences with games as related to genres(to know what I'm looking for and more importantly what I'm not looking for). Content like Quick Looks and discussions which take place on podcasts are where I mostly get my outside opinion.

I find that since games are so locked into being what they are fundamentally by genres(happens to all types of media) that the criticisms of them are much more informative. Since I know how a game may be constrained by its genre I'd rather hear what it either did really, different, or not so well within those constraints.

At the end of the day the text in a review is opinion, and the numerical score itself is the least informative component.

@patrickklepek This series of articles was a really great read, and a thanks goes out to Manveer for his part in the discussion as well.

Great series of articles. Love to see opinions thoughtfully expressed. More Patrick, More!!!!

Probably a stretch, but maybe you could have a developer submit a critique on their own games? Like having Manveer submit one for ME3 a few months after it's been released?

I'll be up front.. I hate ME games, I don't really like Patrick, and I don't read text reviews. I get my reviews from podcasts and video reviews, that's why I'm here. The context and natural speaking about a game I find valuable and I don't get that in a carefully written review.

That said, I read every word of this 'feature', story, piece, whatever you want to call it. I found it very interesting and engaging and I thought both people made great points.

Back to me not liking Patrick - it's mainly because I don't think we have similar taste in games so he irritates me when reviewing games, but I do love his journalism so I'm not mad at you!

@DarthB: That sounds like an unbelievable PR disaster waiting to happen. Besides how can you have an ounce of credibility or journalistic integrity if you review a project you were producer on? If anyone is going to do this I would love a modern john romero review of daikatana :)

@warrenEBB said:

interesting (thanks for doing this!)

I was just haggling over SOPA with someone, regarding the antiquated ideas of protecting publishers copy rights, and this point came up : if hollywood or thevideogamesIndustry falls apart, then we won't get huge spectacle any more. no one will be able to afford a Dragon Age 3, or a Transformers 4.

I argued that we can do without the spectacle. If budgets go away : the talented people behind those projects will still make interesting things.

Now, within your interview, I see Manveer say "...[low scores] makes it seem like our games have less quality, and that is painful to those of us who spend our lives crafting experiences for players to enjoy." And all I can think is : maybe you should embrace that pain, dude. Maybe spending a lot of money doesn't mean a company deserves a high score. Maybe the fact that Mass Effect 3 can't top Mass Effect 2's high scores : says something very important about the inherent value of sequels.

What it really says is that there is a fundamental disconnect between the values of reviewers and the values of the purchasing public. Uncharted 3 reviewed worse than Uncharted 2 but sold better. Modern Warfare continues to sell millions and millions of copies despite reviewers considering it to have possibly overstayed its welcome. Critical darlings like ICO and Psychonauts get no traction at retail. The buying public likes sequels to things they previously liked. Sequel fatigue is a ridiculous concept in the face of what the purchasing public actually want. To your average person more of a good thing is, in fact, a good thing.

I spent this whole series trying to decide if the conversation was worth having (it is) and who I agreed with more (Patrick, I think). Manveer, despite his start writing about games, is a developer through and through, and comes to the conversation with that bias. He brings up the idea of fairness, in terms of reviews being fine, but not really fair when criticism "leaks into" the review. I agree that Metacritic's collated number can be very arbitrary and I think developers, in a constant search for market information, take reviews more seriously than the people who buy the games.

That said, I would like to say to Manveer, "Welcome to Planet Earth, where your technical ability to do your job may not be the primary metric you are judged by. Where virtual strangers' vague, undefined feelings of like or dislike toward you actually matter and affect your ability to earn a living." I am a pretty good cost accountant. Better yet, I am able to get along with my co-workers and my bosses like me. You would think my ability would be the thing I am primarily judged by, but ability and likeability go hand-in-hand.

Manveer and all developers, confronted by a poor game, Duke Nukem Forever, say, will not publicly say, "This game is a piece of shit" because they may know someone who's worked on the game and they don't want to endanger someone's job with an honest opinion. In private, though, comparisons to feces abound. Savaging a game that richly deserves it falls to game journalists, reviewing a game and saying "Don't buy it," and then maybe critiquing it, saying, "games like this are crap and here's why." Manveer and other devs, for all their joviality and general goodness are The Man, or they're working for The Man. Therefore, they're going to take The Man's side. And frankly, they need to get called out. I don't buy Manveer's claims that he wants criticism. I think he wants it for games he's not working on.

I think people who make games need to develop a thicker skin. Their medium is not going away, based on the money involved and the sheer numbers of people who play games. The people trying to justify their existence (still) are the game journalists, and I think what game journalism needs is a Woodward and Bernstein. Some writer has to execute a takedown on some dev or publisher so they know game journalists are not just unpaid members of the Public Relations Department. Maybe then "We're not talking about that right now," will not be the end of the conversation, because the writer could then say, "So I should just ignore you for six more months until you're ready to talk, then?" or "Then what am I doing at this event?" Or better yet, that writer should find someone who IS talking about that right now.

At the end of the day, if the review is not informing a purchaser's decision, there should be some criticism, too. Like Patrick alluded, a 4 can mean two different things. My guess is he meant the Fruit Ninja Kinect 4 meant, "This is better than I thought it would be!" And the 4 for the other game meant, "This game could have been better than it was." And the reasons for both are critical reasons, and putting them in a review makes the writing better and makes for more well-informed readers. And if that review is mishandled by Metacritic or misinterpreted by decision-makers, that's too damn bad. Everyone working has to deal with something like that.

Good series, Patrick. Thanks.

I'd like this whole thing a lot more if it was done with a different person in the industry, Reviews and Criticism go hand and hand, not just with Video games, but all media. And you will hear about it if a movie, or a book, or an album is just more of the same. 

ok GiantBomb, you win. I had to create an account just to post for this.

It's nonsense to say that Parkin's criticism of uncharted 3 was because it was linear. It was because it was so SCRIPTED. There is a difference. Gears 3 was linear too, but it wasn't full of scripted sequences that lessened the player's influence over his character. Outside of the few cutscenes, you always had control of your character. In uncharted games, and modern warfare, there are a lot of moments where you're sucked into a scripted sequence, and it was these moments that made the reviewer feel like he wasn't in a virtual world, so much as a virtual movie set, which had to reset each time his missed his cue because he didn't know the script.

Kids rule the world. It's always what they want until the end.

Great article guys...

Thank you for these, Patrick. Appreciated.

Great work Patrick, keep it up. In my opinion, critique belongs in reviews. If you tell me this or that game is good/bad, I want you to tell me why, I want to know your opinion, but I want you to explain yourself. I want to know the details, because it is in these details where I can find any idea of whether this review is useful to me or not. If you didn't like the game because you felt it was too linear, then I want you to tell me just that, and please be specific, tell me what was it that made you feel that way. Then I can decide if this is an important factor for me, or not, and make my own decision.

Patrick, keep these pieces coming. I've been following you since you were at MTV, and very much like your work :-)

@RedRavN

I was more thinking a critique rather than a review. Just like how the article talks about having them exist as separate things. Seeing a developer critique his own work could be a nice way to see how they judge themselves and hopefully provide some good stories behind the development. And I think it'd be best if it was at least a few months after the games release to mitigate potential impact on sales.

@irtiqaevox said:

@dvorak said:

@patrickklepek said:

@DFSVegas said:

Game journalists love to navel gaze. As an avid game site visitor and podcast listener for years, I can say I am WAY over this topic.

Just write, if it's interesting, I'll read it. It's not that fucking complicated. How many times are we going to have to rehash this, frankly boring and meaningless, story?

I'm with you on that, which is why I'd hoped to avoid that somewhat by involving a developer directly.

It's still boring, and masturbatory.

I'm in the same exact boat as @DFSVegas. The only reason I can see for this article existing, is that if Mass Effect 3 ends up getting less than expected scores, this is the article that everyone will link to when discussing the internet hiccup that that will create. That situation of course being completely trite and totally uninteresting, as well.

I like a lot of what you do Patrick, but these invented news articles are total garbage. You might as well run all the rumor articles that the the other sites do, it's just as wrote.

True as true can be. Patrick really seems to love riding the popular online opinion bandwagon. I guess its one of the quickest ways to get people to love you though.

But at least it provides sycophants and suck-ups the opportunity to try and gain the attention of a staffer by bestowing comically exaggerated praise (this is how social hierarchies are formed...)