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Post by Deleted on Aug 27, 2014 5:10:30 GMT -5
From our childhoods we should all be familiar with how bullshit the vast majority of reviewers are, as Rab Florence (that Glaswegian icon) said repeatedly there's no success without sucking it up and taking rewards for dishonest opinions/scores. Hell, how many games get high scores these days, and how many people consider 7/10 average...that should speak volumes. With that being said there's no unbiased form of reviewing, which may be pedantic, but if you enjoy a certain type of game over another genre then you're inherently biased from the off, and NO ONE who has played games as long as most vidja game journos is going to be capable of being unbiased. Same as the vast majority of good AND bad film & music critics, the bias/willingness to accept payment for positive opinion still exists. It'd be easier to research this if most of the sites creating the storm around it weren't taking 4chan and Reddit as unbiased sources, which is kind of an automatic disqualification when it comes to being useful. Yeah, the logic of 'hey chaps, mind jumping on someone due to these possibly altered sources/facts, and if anything can be proven by those, mind putting up threats and attacking people they care about?' is just... No. If it was done in the non-digital realm it'd be criminal.
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Post by Ryback on a Pole! on Aug 27, 2014 5:12:46 GMT -5
Yes
Because I blew £40 on FFXIII on account of the great reviews it got prior to release only to find that the game sucked. I didn't read one single negative review. Yet when I got the game I found it consisted of me walking in a straight line fighting forgettable monster, the worst cast of characters ever and a needlessly confusing, ridiculous story.
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AFN: Judge Shred
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Post by AFN: Judge Shred on Aug 27, 2014 5:24:15 GMT -5
Yes Because I blew £40 on FFXIII on account of the great reviews it got prior to release only to find that the game sucked. I didn't read one single negative review. Yet when I got the game I found it consisted of me walking in a straight line fighting forgettable monster, the worst cast of characters ever and a needlessly confusing, ridiculous story. See, part of that is, people don't like it, but FFXIII isn't a bad game. Everything works, gameplay is good, graphics are great. Decent voice acting. So yeah, I am disappointed by it, but I can see it is high quality, just not what I want.
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Post by mysterydriver on Aug 27, 2014 5:45:06 GMT -5
I don't know. I just watch and read stuff on Giantbomb which is personality driven where you understand the enjoyments of those involved so you're able to take certain things with a grain of salt (spoiler: Jeff Gerstmann will most likely give the new Mortal Kombat 5 out of 5 stars. Dude loves him some fighting games). Besides, I like Patrick Klepek's writing style.
I kind of ignore other video game stuff due to not being so much involved/obsessed in coverage.
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Mozenrath
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Post by Mozenrath on Aug 27, 2014 6:02:28 GMT -5
It'd be easier to research this if most of the sites creating the storm around it weren't taking 4chan and Reddit as unbiased sources, which is kind of an automatic disqualification when it comes to being useful. That and dropping dox like it's going out of style, repeatedly. Which, by the way, anyone tries that shit here, this is getting locked and the one doing it may very well get banned on the spot. We will not tolerate the kind of shit Reddit lets run rampant sometimes, especially given possible legal liability. For those who don't know what "dropping dox" is, it's when people's addresses and other personal information are leaked in an attempt to illicit harassment towards the party involved. Reddit and some other sites try to police that, but are woefully understaffed and the staff they do have possess very limited power, having to wait on higher staff members to handle that. There will not be any tolerance for any attempts to round up a bunch of doofus crusaders here.
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Post by El Cokehead del Knife Fight on Aug 27, 2014 6:18:22 GMT -5
I've heard of a bunch of 4channers and redditors shitting all over Zoe Quinn just for being emotionally distant from her boyfriend and allegedly cheating on him.
GEE, IT'S ALMOST LIKE SHE SUFFERS FROM DEPRESSION OR SOMETHING!
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Post by EvenBaldobombHasAJob on Aug 27, 2014 6:19:37 GMT -5
they're journalists so yes.
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Post by El Cokehead del Knife Fight on Aug 27, 2014 6:23:16 GMT -5
Also the wider online gaming community is pretty much morally repugnant. Case in point. They sprout shit like this all the time and expect to be taken seriously or treated like adults.
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Post by BorneAgain on Aug 27, 2014 6:41:47 GMT -5
Recent events encapsulate the exact problem with game journalism, namely that there is no real organized ethical body to challenge them or hold them to a real standard; whether that's fans, other mainstream media, or the blogosphere. There are serious questions to have coming from the Zoe Quinn controversy, but that gets lost in the wave of people attacking her personal life, s***-stirrers, and those simply with an ax to grind over past grievances. Moreover the instant reaction nature of commentary whether its Twitter, tumblr, reddit and so forth stifles attempts at a real nuanced discussion of the gaming press. Its not too dissimilar to the drama over Anita Sarkeesian, where any possibility at debate at what she was talking about was crippled by sexist responses, back and forth finger pointing, and meaningless talk about whether or not she's a real gamer.
Gaming coverage is young and sadly far too many people are demonstrative of how far it still has to go.
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Post by EvenBaldobombHasAJob on Aug 27, 2014 6:50:07 GMT -5
so... at risk of potentially opening a can of worms, whose this Zoe Quinn and what did she do?
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Post by BorneAgain on Aug 27, 2014 6:58:00 GMT -5
so... at risk of potentially opening a can of worms, whose this Zoe Quinn and what did she do? Zoe Quinn is an indie game developer who co-created the game Depression Quest. As for what's been going on recently I'd gladly link you to an objective article stating what's specifically known about what went down with her... if I knew where one was, that is.
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Post by Square on Aug 27, 2014 7:06:09 GMT -5
so... at risk of potentially opening a can of worms, whose this Zoe Quinn and what did she do? CLOSE THAT DAMN CAN NOW. DO NOT OPEN IT. GET THE TIN OPENER AWAY. IN FACT BURN IT. BURN IT TO HELL.
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Post by Crimson on Aug 27, 2014 7:18:54 GMT -5
so... at risk of potentially opening a can of worms, whose this Zoe Quinn and what did she do? She allegedly "traded favors" with critics for more favorable reviews of her game. That's the nitty gritty of it.
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Post by "Gentleman" AJ Powell on Aug 27, 2014 7:21:17 GMT -5
Should they have ethics and view everything from an objective standpoint? Absolutely. Will they? Absolutely not. It's just something we have to accept really.
Oh, and on the whole Zoe Quinn thing, I'll just say both sides are as bad as each other from what I've seen.
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Post by Red Impact on Aug 27, 2014 7:24:40 GMT -5
They should, but the combination of developers having ALL the power when it comes to accessing games and the general juvenile nature of the industry in general means that it won't.
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Post by Clash, Never a Meter Maid on Aug 27, 2014 7:45:51 GMT -5
All I know is that I think Sarkeesian makes great points and that JonTron is hilarious.
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Post by Rumble McSkirmish on Aug 27, 2014 8:01:18 GMT -5
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Mozenrath
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Post by Mozenrath on Aug 27, 2014 8:02:21 GMT -5
On the topic of reviewers, reviewing video games is incredibly challenging. There is an enormous amount of pressure to do it swiftly, thoroughly, and and some games do not review well. Ground Zeroes, for instance, got a lot of flack for being like an hour long. However, when you "beat" it and it tells you you've completed less than 20% of the game, saying it's an hour long is misleading as all hell. Metacritic f***s things up further due to their scoring system being deeply flawed. 4 out of 5, for instance, goes into their system as an 80, when the reality is that anything from 75-95 could be implied by that score, and it throws the system out of wack by artificially lowering scores. It makes me hesitant to trust Metacritic scores for most anything, though scores interest me less than an actual review of WHY it grades like it does. The problem being, how the f*** do you give a good review of a 40+ hour RPG? You can't, because you won't likely find any mainstream reviewer who can put that kind of time in. What about stuff like Pokemon games, where critics often charge that "they don't change anything", looking at it like it is a standard RPG, when it in reality functions more like a sports game or fighting game, being a competitive game where balance changes have DRASTIC effects. How many reviewers would ever know what Stealth Rock, Bullet Punch Scizor, or giving a pokemon Shadow Tag means for the metagame? People in that crowd have no use for these shallow reviews by people with low familiarity with the series. Reviewing systems in general are having a lot of problems, though video game ones are of course at issue. In some instances, reviewers have been caught pulling any level of shit when the fix is in to give a bad review. www.teslamotors.com/blog/most-peculiar-test-drive This being an egregious example of piss-poor journalism. It feels like damn near the only kind of review you can trust is a movie review, and even that has its share of imbeciles. It's a shit-show all around, and it makes it very difficult to tell when you're getting screwed, or when the reviewer's screwing themselves, with deadlines and bottom lines to make, and that's not even talking explicit conflicts of interests, like the infamous Kane and Lynch bullshit.
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Post by "Gentleman" AJ Powell on Aug 27, 2014 8:07:05 GMT -5
Jontron's great, but he's been the target of "SJW"'s it seems. I even saw someone deriding Egoraptor for being a homophobe because he wouldn't admit he was gay when they called him out as such on Twitter, despite the fact he's married. To a woman. It's stupid, but everything these days seems to root back to racism, homo,trans and various other phobias and other crap. Folks just look for stuff to complain about.
And whilst Sarkeesian makes a few good points, I've found she manages to f*** it up usually and make me wonder why she bothers.
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Post by Deleted on Aug 27, 2014 8:58:31 GMT -5
so... at risk of potentially opening a can of worms, whose this Zoe Quinn and what did she do? Language Warning That should give you a good idea on what going on. i.imgur.com/gioYQB3.jpgSorry, I think it's best we just link to that- it's pretty harsh and it's also got some slurs.
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