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.
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