The Problem With Egoraptor

Even though 99% of the people making these claims have never even touched the games in question, and likely never will? Plus, it's usually the "objectively good" part I take issue with, like I can't insult....uh....Singularity....because Big Rigs has bugs in it.

I see two games there I haven't touched yet. I see a challenge. (Also, I think I have argued why these games could be good in my respective blogs for the two that I have played. Of course, those were brief instances in the bounds of "but this game sucks.") Or does my Hotel Mario blog count?

And to @xyzygy: I've actually seen people legitimately defend some of the games you call objectively bad. I know there's an ET site hanging around somewhere that tries to understand the game in historical context, and this guy over here's defending the Zelda CD-i games on a respected website.

Or maybe it's unquestioned groupthink disguised as common knowledge. Nobody would think anything of Big Rigs were it not for Alex Navarro, Drake of the 99 Dragons if not for XPlay, Zero Wing if not for slightly misleading internet meme, Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde if not for AVGN, etc.

I could say the same of ET. Wand of Gamelon, too, arguably.

(I could say more, but I feel I've reached a limit.)

This is now, what, the third thread someone has posted his video? If you all dislike or disagree with him so much, why give him free ads and views?

Regardless, I used to watch Grumps a lot, the early Dan episodes are pretty great (LoZ, SMB2) but I fell off of them a few months ago when I just got sick of the bumbling around and fart jokes (Arin basically ruins the ending of Shadow of the Colossus).

I still think Dan's a pretty cool guy, though.

...Shin Megami Tensei: Devil Survivor for VGK? For the record I thought what I played of that game was okay. A seemingly competent tactics game that sort of misses the point of being a tactics game by putting almost zero emphasis on positioning, but it wasn't exceptional enough for me to pick it back up after I got distracted by something else (I'm betting Bayonetta for some reason).

I feel like unilateral dislike is a more telling indication of a game's quality than universal praise. On a theoretical level everything is subjective and thus there is no need for opinions about things besides your own, but for the man without infinite time and infinite patience, using the opinions of people you respect is a perfectly acceptable subsitute for actually playing through all 3 Zelda CDi games.

I'm just speculating here, but I bet there's a strong correlation between the people who haven't liked some of the last few Zelda games and people who don't like anime. I feel like the Zelda series has gotten increasingly anime-ized in the 3D era.

I was going to say that I won't argue against that, but I think I will, given how carelessly people adopt this approach. As I said before, the vast majority of the people criticizing these games have absolutely no experience with it beyond a review that was long forgotten under the pile of word of mouth.

Imagine that logic applied to any other medium. "I'm thinking about reading this book, but everybody I know says that it isn't good. I mean, they haven't read it, either; in fact, I don't think I know a single person who has. But there are so many people saying it's bad; it just has to be true, right?" What about games is so different that this logic no longer applies?

But as I wanted to say before I sidetracked myself, I'm arguing more against the pretense of objectivity that's being bandied about.

I don't agree with some of the things that are said in the video, but I still liked it. I think he's funny, and if he doesn't think highly of a game I love (Ocarina, not SS. Haven't played that one) that's okay.

@video_game_king: I think anyone who cares enough about the opinions of others in regards to infamously bad games (Wand of Gamelon and friends) are probably informed enough to know a thing or two about them. Can you name a game widely considered "infamously bad" where there aren't a bunch of youtube videos of random people detailing how bad those games actually are?

EDIT: Obviously this gets a little more shaky once you get to games with more mixed or polarized receptions, but I'm mostly referring to "that tier" of games quality.

How informed can you be with pre-formed conclusions and no personal experience?

Zelda's Adventure, for one. Rapelay, for another.

Even though I found the video entertaining and with some merit, I have given up on taking seriously what Egoraptor thinks about game design after being into Game Grumps for a while. Now I'm not, mainly because every episode starting coming off very samey.

Thanks to the power of the internet, I'd say someone can be decently informed about how those kinds of games play without actually needing to play them, pre-formed or no. Why did you record yourself playing Faces of Evil if not to inform people as an accompaniment to your blog?

I wouldn't call Zelda's Adventure infamously bad, but that's maybe because it doesn't have a bunch of footage on the interwebs, so that was probably a bad question.

Funny story: I actually intended that as a Quick Look, originally, but I could never keep the rhythm going. I have too high a standard of quality. Besides, the technical problems I'd outlined in that video meant I had to cover it up with music of some kind. And thus, an idea was born.

Anyway, I wouldn't trust those videos as much as you. They're more than likely people recognizing an opportunity for an entertaining video than they are a fair, detailed analysis of the game's merits. It's the same thing with scare cam videos today: people will exaggerate how scary a game is because, hey, that's what gets the views.

(And while I'm on topic, I'm not sure AVGN gave Hotel Mario a fair chance. For example, did you notice that his entire review takes place in the same level? The first one? Trust me: the game gets a lot harder than that.)

Yea I used to think egoraptor was funny back when I was like 14. As far as his opnions on game design, his disdain for modern games that have a focus on story rather than mechanics (because he basically thinks watching a movie would be more worth his time) annoys me just as much as the people who hate on gone home because its "not a real game"

@video_game_king:

Hey man/person/lunar being, I don't have to jump ass first onto a rusty railroad spike to know that it's not gonna be a fun and rewarding experience. Some things you just sorta know.

That remains to be proven.

That happens all the time in every medium. Groupthink on the scale of 'commonly-accepted notion' is not some phenomenon unique to video games. Countless more people make fun of Fifty Shades of Grey than have read it, as one example. That certainly doesn't make it 'okay' or 'right' but it is a pretty common phenomenon cross-media nonetheless. It's part of the reason why people often take the opposing critical position of popular or well-known media, so that debate can take more interesting directions.

It is scary, though, thinking about how a relatively small segment of a population can so radically shift discourse in what must seem like an instant.

Yeah. This. I don't need personal experience with a bad game to dismiss it. I'm fine taking Alex word (and others) that Big Rigs is terrible. It's not remotely worth my time to investigate for myself.

On topic, I don't fully agree with Arin but the dude backs up his opinions. I don't think it has anything to do with trying to get attention. He's already pretty well known and I don't see "piss off Zelda fans" as something that sounds like a good time.

Well since the only way to prove it is to do all sorts of generally despised things and see how many of them ain't as horrible as they're cracked up to be I think it may stay that way. Because while I do loathe myself enough to perhaps give that a shot, I can barely muster the motivation to do things I actually want to do so it's probably not gonna happen.

You do if it scores highly on Metacritic. Or if your community praises it just as much.

And I've played those games and seen with my own eyes just how shitty some of them are. I shudder to think how bad a game must be if everybody actually agrees it's bad...

Wat? We were talking about terrible games were we not?

So you're willing to trust the words of others even when they give you immediate, tangible reason not to do so?

Then you've never been recommended a game on high praises, only to find out it doesn't nearly live up to the hype? This seems a very common experience among the gaming community.

Yeah I have, but that's a different thing. Group consensus that a thing is awesome is worth investigating because if the thing really is awesome it's worth the time. If everyone says something is horrible, there's no incentive for me to find out if it's true or not. It's not worth my time to confirm that yes, Big Rigs is an awful game.

Yep. I mean, there's a difference between "oh this game doesn't have guns in it it sucks," and "so... this is like, actually bad. Like really. You know that idea you had about jumping ass first onto a rusty railroad spike? I'd rather do that then play this game." At some point, a thing can get to the level to which it is so bad where it actually gets harmful to your well being and it becomes ingrained in dna for future generations that "this is bad and you should avoid it." That's' the sort of bad I'm talking about. It exists.

But does it exist where people say it exists? And indeed, if there is an objective badness, then surely there must be an objective goodness, too. But people are far less willing to argue for its existence. It's either too "objective" to be informative (as in "this game has no bugs and technically works") or is already praised and thus open to contention.

Why? Is group consensus right more often than it is wrong? Again, this remains to be proven.

The only explanations I can come up with for why people are willing to go along with this are risk aversion and cynicism. I'm also noticing that both of these are conservative psychological strategies (IE they resist change).

It's got nothing to with how often it's right or wrong. It's got to do with what it's worth to me. Like I said, finding out if a game is real good is worth my time. Finding out if a game is real bad is not. It has nothing to do with risk aversion or cynicism or anything else. Finding out if Big Rigs is really as bad as it is is so low on my list of priorities it doesn't register. If it's something you need to find out for yourself, godspeed sir.

@video_game_king:

I think objective badness is just easier to find than objective goodness. Objective goodness is so hard to find we ain't found it yet in anything in human existence, let alone in a video game. Whereas objective badness is all around. I'm willing to wager that true objective goodness won't be found till well after we're all dead.

@thesoutherndandy:

It seems, then, that bad games have greater power over you than good games. You say that it is worth your effort to "find out", as though you go into the experience immediately doubting whether or not a game is good. However, you're perfectly willing to gloss over an experience you have heard as bad, in spite of the credibility of the source telling you that it's bad. You'll stop as soon as you've found the bad. (Would you be willing to play through a game that starts off bad for quite a while, only for it to pick up magnificently at some later point?) You risk missing out on some potentially good stuff with that kind of mindset.

Perhaps accusatory language, but blame the language and not me. (Itself a cop-out, but whatever.)

@pyromagnestir:

Or maybe the model by which we're searching is utterly busted. Otherwise, we'd still be searching for phlogiston.

@video_game_king@pyromagnestir I think this just comes down to the human phenomena wherein there is broader cultural agreement on what is bad than what is good, and that applies to everything at every level of human society. It is easier for us as creatures to see and agree upon mutual things to fear and dislike than for us to agree on what is safe and positive.

Likely it's because when we are wrong about something being bad, we usually just miss out on the benefits of something good, but when we are wrong about something being good, we often unintentionally bring greater harm and hardship to ourselves and others.

As far as games go, many people would rather err on the side of caution and consider people's warnings than jump in enthusiastically and embrace every praise.

@video_game_king: Dude, I don't even have time to play the games I already know are good. By all means psychoanalyze my reasoning if that's how you get your jollies...but no. Bad games do not have power over me. Between work and other hobbies that are not games that I enjoy I'm selective with what I play. That's it that's all.

@video_game_king: In defense of @thesoutherndandy, we all take risks on what to spend time on. It's just a fact of life. So, with a new anime show, we might watch trailers and then hear word of mouth to get an idea of what to check out in the 40 new shows. You give some a shot and then perhaps dwindle it down to just the shows you actually want to watch. The same goes with games; though, the cost of entry is even higher. While you can leave after one episode with anime, you have to buy the whole thing to get a real glimpse at many games. So, you weigh the trailers, demos, and public word of mouth to decide what seems worth your time.

Now, different word of mouth post-release can change how I feel about giving a game a chance. For example, if you did a silly blog on a new, odd game, I might give it more of a shot, because you might inspire me to think there's more to enjoy from it than just what initial trailers offered. If you instead came and said the new, odd game was bad and I was on the fence about it, that might be enough to push me over into avoiding it. There was no telling whether I was going to get it either way, but a little word of mouth could go a long way. Unless a game looks really compelling, I'd rather take words of caution to heart than buy into just any hype I come across.

I only have so much time and money; so, I have to be responsible with both and discern what to invest in.

@chrissedoff: I can see the trolling bait you've placed and I'm glad that no one has snapped at it.

I subscribe to the Henry Ford view of opinions: everyone is entitled to one, so long as it's in line with mine.

tbh, i never played a zelda game because they looked like shit to me.

I think the biggest thing that everyone tends to forget is they are trying to both play the game And hold a conversation the entire time, don't get me wrong I know they could all do it better but it is still tough to be entertaining to listen to and play a game simultaneously.

Metal Gear Awesome is pretty great.

I don't go around and hate on it but I found Gone Home to be pretty bad but it was absolutely a real game, its a first person adventure game with a misleading presentation (House is haunted) that quickly falls down a hole of being nothing more than a dozen or so audio logs that you have to activate to finish the game. There were no real puzzles and while the high resolution stuff looked good the parts that weren't looked real bad juxtaposed next to all this high quality stuff.

Also I felt the story was soap opera level basic and the ending was not exactly "happy" imo An underage girl tired of her parents fighting/keeping her down runs away from home with some girl she met over the summer and they are gonna live together happily ever after? Yea real life always works out like that.. So yea I feel like the game only got the recognition it did due to the main character being a Lesbian which is not enough to carry an otherwise pretty weak setup. But it is absolutely a game.

I've never been shot, but I'm pretty sure it would hurt a lot. You can't prop up "personal experience" as the be all, end all of judging something, because we don't live in a vacuum. We have the intelligence and contextual situations to know what something is like without actually experiencing it ourselves. It's not wrong for people to not be interested/like something that reminds them of something they already don't like.

Take Enemy Front, for example. I, and I'm sure many others, don't really want to play that game, because it looks bad.

Have I played it? No. Will I? Nope. But I've been around video games long enough to know what looks bad to me and what isn't. Just because I don't have "personal experience" does not invalidate my conclusion.

Didn't I watch this guy in middle school?

But that's not the reason why people are refusing to play "objectively bad" games. It's because of word of mouth from an endless source of people who know nothing of the game beyond what they've been told. Hell, how many games can you name that are similar to ET? Or Steel Battalion?

I thought that Majora's Mask did the right thing, in the sequel department. Even though it re-used a lot of the same assets and gameplay mechanics, it introduced one important wrinkle that affected both puzzling and exploration (the transformative masks), and concentrated on themes and messages instead of out-and-out changing the core of the game. Take the familiar and make it new again.

With that being said, I hope the new Zelda game makes some pretty serious changes to the mechanics of the game.

I haven't watched it, primarily because I don't have a half hour to give to a fucking Youtube video, but I do agree that A Link to the Past is a better game than Ocarina of Time. I mean, I played both really late, so maybe I didn't have the whole 'in the moment influence' but that kind of seems for the better.

But Gone Home isn't a real game

Yea I mean its not a perfect game, but its still a game nonetheless. I kind of agree with you, without the context that Gone Home was a game and games do not normally have stories that handle issues like that so it was refreshing to see something different in a game, it wouldn't be this revolutionary thing that people are raving about. I still salute the game though for trying though as gone home and other games have been helping to set the stage for more mature stories in games which is something I really like to see.

You say he was being silly for bringing up the fact that nerds would rage but this is what? The third thread about this video? Your proving him right.

Also I'm pretty sure the joke at the start wasn't to be taken that seriously. He was just pointing out his opinion isn't the majority.

Also skyward sword isn't good. Twilight princess isn't good. Domt fool yourself.

He provides his opinion and provides logical reasons for it. Silly thread

Why aren't they? I think that Twilight Princess is one of the better 3D Zeldas and Skyward Sword, while I haven't played it, has a story I enjoy.

I think part of the key points in this discussion that's sprouted here is that dismissive comments like "X isn't good. Don't fool yourself," are entirely vacuous.

I think we can dispel every argument on the Internet with, "Some people's opinions are different than yours! That's how opinions work!"