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General discussion (archive)The reasons why you cannot trust "Gaming journalism"(69 posts)(69 posts)
(69 posts)
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This is my favourite topic
Posted April 16, 2012
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jsjrodman: I think this thread is a fairly good sampling of why game reviews are hard to get right.

A lot of people mention the number scores, which are a part of the review which is extremely frequently focused on, but extremely low value. What does a 9/10 game mean? What does a 5/10 game mean? What if I would love one 9/10 game but hate another 9/10 game? I've played 5/10 games and had a ball with them. So what is this number for? It certainly doesn't tell me if I personally am going to be moved, challenged, entertained, or tickled by the game. Heck, it rarely even does a good job of capturing all those things for the general audience. The number conflates production values, pacing, mechanics, mood, and many other things. But yet, it's the most popular part of review
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CaptainGyro: I hate this argument and I have no idea why people always say this. The number is not supposed to indicate why or what they like about the game, it's just to indicate how highly they thought of the game as a whole.. If somebody in a "real life" conversation wants to be concise and briefly say they thought a movie/game whatever was excellent, do you go off on a rant on how silly that is, and how it doesn't tell you why they thought the movie was excellent?
This is true for simpler rating scales like -/5 or simply "like or dislike." But when you start getting into the sort of stuff that Gametrailers, Gamespot, Game Informer, PC Gamer, etc do (-/10 to one or two decimal places), then that's when it starts to get really silly. This game is a 9/10... but THIS one is a 9.2 out of 10. And this one is a 9.7 out of 10. It's when numbers are being used in a silly attempt to do some sort of mathematical ranking of games that scores cease to be a representation of "how highly they thought of the game as a whole." And that's where I start rolling my eyes.

Then, of course, you have forum trolls using the numbers to try and "objectively" argue that game X is better than game Y (as was the case on Gametrailers when Uncharted 2 received a 9.3 and Modern Warfare 2 received a 9.5. Not only did the forums erupt in a orgy of flame wars, but countless PS3 owners accused Gametrailers of "losing their credibility" for giving MW2 a score that was .2 better than that of U2 :P). And frankly, the less ammunition we can give to forum trolls, the better :P.

Even setting all that aside, numerical scores can serve as a crutch for poor or unclear writing. The reviewer doesn't have to make their opinion clear in the review, because an arbitrary number they give at the end will do the talking for them. I don't think it's a coincidence that many of the best-written and most clear reviews I've come across did not give numerical scores. Because without them, the reviewer has to rely on writing skills to communicate their opinion. You know... the thing they were hired to do in the first place.
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rampancy: AFAIK that's pretty much standard operating procedure in the game "journalism" industry, since getting early review code is one of those things that's almost guaranteed to bring in more page hits/ad revenue. It's been standard operating procedure for games reviewers for a long time, actually.
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Tychoxi: Yeah, and the OTHER setback of this practice is that you've people + editors rushing through games and editorial quality assurance, which is the OTHER part of the explanation on why reviews are of dubious quality both as an accurate game review and as a more or less well written piece of prose.
Some of the writing on game sites is simply embarrassing (not that I'm a novel-quality writer :P). That's one of the reasons I like RPS. Even when you don't agree with them, you have to admit that their writing is pretty darn good.
Post edited April 16, 2012 by jefequeso
Posted April 16, 2012
I'm glad to see that this thread has become altogether more reasonable and well thought out. Thanks for the reasonable and good discussion points, even if you disagree. I knew there was a reason I liked the GOG community the most.
Posted April 16, 2012
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jsjrodman: I think this thread is a fairly good sampling of why game reviews are hard to get right.

A lot of people mention the number scores, which are a part of the review which is extremely frequently focused on, but extremely low value. What does a 9/10 game mean? What does a 5/10 game mean? What if I would love one 9/10 game but hate another 9/10 game? I've played 5/10 games and had a ball with them. So what is this number for? It certainly doesn't tell me if I personally am going to be moved, challenged, entertained, or tickled by the game. Heck, it rarely even does a good job of capturing all those things for the general audience. The number conflates production values, pacing, mechanics, mood, and many other things. But yet, it's the most popular part of review
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CaptainGyro: I hate this argument and I have no idea why people always say this. The number is not supposed to indicate why or what they like about the game, it's just to indicate how highly they thought of the game as a whole.. If somebody in a "real life" conversation wants to be concise and briefly say they thought a movie/game whatever was excellent, do you go off on a rant on how silly that is, and how it doesn't tell you why they thought the movie was excellent?
This would be accurate if people viewed game scores as a *personal take* by the reviewer. But they don't. They want it to be some kind of objective quality rating. Just look at the arguments in this thread about games being given the *wrong numbers*.
Posted April 16, 2012
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CaptainGyro: I hate this argument and I have no idea why people always say this. The number is not supposed to indicate why or what they like about the game, it's just to indicate how highly they thought of the game as a whole.. If somebody in a "real life" conversation wants to be concise and briefly say they thought a movie/game whatever was excellent, do you go off on a rant on how silly that is, and how it doesn't tell you why they thought the movie was excellent?
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jsjrodman: This would be accurate if people viewed game scores as a *personal take* by the reviewer. But they don't. They want it to be some kind of objective quality rating. Just look at the arguments in this thread about games being given the *wrong numbers*.
So in other words, you're using poor generalizations.
Posted April 16, 2012
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jsjrodman: This would be accurate if people viewed game scores as a *personal take* by the reviewer. But they don't. They want it to be some kind of objective quality rating. Just look at the arguments in this thread about games being given the *wrong numbers*.
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CaptainGyro: So in other words, you're using poor generalizations.
How does that relate at all to what he just said?

EDIT: nevermind, I see it. I'm just not thinking straight tonight.
Post edited April 16, 2012 by jefequeso
Posted April 17, 2012
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CaptainGyro: So in other words, you're using poor generalizations.
Not sure what you meant by this broken sentence, but I'm stating things that are evident in the outside world, and also evident in this thread. But feel free to make content-free accusations!
Posted April 17, 2012
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CaptainGyro: So in other words, you're using poor generalizations.
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jsjrodman: , but I'm stating things that are evident in the outside world, and also evident in this thread.
You aren't stating things evident in the outside world or this thread though, you just think you are... because of hasty generalization . I'm sorry if this is hard to grasp for you. Not my problem really.
Post edited April 17, 2012 by CaptainGyro
Posted April 17, 2012
Oh really?

http://www.bit-tech.net/gaming/2012/02/17/review-scores/1

http://www.noobfeed.com/blog_infos/view/3616

http://www.atomicmpc.com.au/Feature/293994,the-dangerous-power-of-review-scores.aspx

I guess this isn't the real world though.
Post edited April 17, 2012 by jsjrodman
Posted April 17, 2012
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SpikedCereal: You don't need a degree in fucking anything,
You mean I've wasted the last 3 years of my life at uni bedding women and reading up on fertility deities, ancient sex manuals and the progressive evolution of pornographical materials from inception to present day?

I knew I should have gone for Chaos Mathematics or Quantum Physics >_<
Posted April 17, 2012
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jsjrodman: Oh really?

http://www.bit-tech.net/gaming/2012/02/17/review-scores/1

http://www.noobfeed.com/blog_infos/view/3616

http://www.atomicmpc.com.au/Feature/293994,the-dangerous-power-of-review-scores.aspx

I guess this isn't the real world though.
Good god you just don't get it. You said my original comment would only be accurate if there were people who thought of reviews as "personal takes" , and then you said that doesn't happen ( by saying" but they don't") and using this board as an argument as to show how you're right, which is where the generalizing comes in

Those links don't have anything that shows there aren't also people out there in the real world that read reviews as "personal takes" as you put it. In your supposed "real world", everybody wants reviews to be "some kind of objective quality rating " . That is not the real world, that is a narrow minded view of the world. There are many people who look at reviews as "personal takes". I'm one of them talking about it in this thread, so how it is "evident in this thread" that people DON'T see them as "personal takes" is beyond me.

You're not making any sense
Post edited April 17, 2012 by CaptainGyro
Posted April 17, 2012
Technically you cannot "review" games. I think its only what the player themselves think of the game, and no one needs to tell them how good something such as gameplay is to them. It can be a totally different experience from what the reviewer reviewed on from the player who buys the game. Its totally pointless to review the games in the first place.

Say for instance Duke Nukem Forever, a lot of people say it was a horrible, horrible game. But there are still plenty of people out there saying its a great game, and its worth trying.

Reviews just really don't matter in the first place.
Posted April 17, 2012
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jsjrodman: Oh really?

http://www.bit-tech.net/gaming/2012/02/17/review-scores/1

http://www.noobfeed.com/blog_infos/view/3616

http://www.atomicmpc.com.au/Feature/293994,the-dangerous-power-of-review-scores.aspx

I guess this isn't the real world though.
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CaptainGyro: Good god you just don't get it. You said my original comment would only be accurate if there were people who thought of reviews as "personal takes" , and then you said that doesn't happen ( by saying" but they don't") and using this board as an argument as to show how you're right, which is where the generalizing comes in

Those links don't have anything that shows there aren't also people out there in the real world that read reviews as "personal takes" as you put it. In your supposed "real world", everybody wants reviews to be "some kind of objective quality rating " . That is not the real world, that is a narrow minded view of the world. There are many people who look at reviews as "personal takes". I'm one of them talking about it in this thread, so how it is "evident in this thread" that people DON'T see them as "personal takes" is beyond me.

You're not making any sense
To be fair, you're making generalizations too:

"The number is not supposed to indicate why or what they like about the game, it's just to indicate how highly they thought of the game as a whole"

There are a huge number of gamers who DO look to review scores as "some kind of objective quality rating." I would say a majority rather than a minorty. As I already mentioned, there was an infamous blowup on GT over a .2 difference between Uncharted 2 and Modern Warfare 2. They weren't mad because that was GT's "opinion..." they were mad because to them, GT was saying that one game was objectively better than the other. And I've run into far more people who think this way than people who don't.

Likewise, there are some publications (PC Gamer being one of them) that do their best to make their scores an objective measurement, and a way to rank games (which is why they never give out 100% or 0%). So claiming that review scores are always merely a numerical representation of "excellent" or "crappy" isn't right either.

And for the record, yeah... any time someone just says a movie or game was "excellent," I always ask them to elaborate.
Posted April 17, 2012
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HorribleHarry: Technically you cannot "review" games. (...)
Guess what - people do. Lots of them. Apparently - you can, otherwise we'd have to conclude that their existence serves no purpose and is based on a fallacious world-view.
Food for thought: games are a type of art, game reviews are a kind of art criticism. One may argue that it is impossible to review art, yet, intuitively, we know that certain people write things, others understand them and as such - an art review manages to convey inter-subjective information.
Don't be like Zeno of Elea, who made entirely convincing arguments that lead to obviously false conclusions.
Posted April 17, 2012
Uh, I said: the expectation for game review scores is that they're expected to be objective truth.

If you want a more nuanced statement, it's that they are *frequently* taken that way. But you didn't ask for a more nuanced statement, you just asserted I was wrong, without any clear position of your own, or argument or... really anything of value.

So if you're going to backpedal to "you claimed it was always that way", then I can simply tell you that I did not, and you read it into the language. I only claimed that it was the typical reaction to game scores, not a universal one.

And that's plenty sufficient to guide what game reviews are.

-------------

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HorribleHarry: Technically you cannot "review" games. (...)
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Vestin: Guess what - people do. Lots of them. Apparently - you can, otherwise we'd have to conclude that their existence serves no purpose and is based on a fallacious world-view.
Food for thought: games are a type of art, game reviews are a kind of art criticism. One may argue that it is impossible to review art, yet, intuitively, we know that certain people write things, others understand them and as such - an art review manages to convey inter-subjective information.
Don't be like Zeno of Elea, who made entirely convincing arguments that lead to obviously false conclusions.
You're right of course, but I think the point HorribleHarry was making is valid.

I think he''s saying "If you love a game for a variety of reasons, then that's the true measure of its worth."

And on an individual basis of course that's true.

The common mix-up is that game reviews should not be intended to tell you what to think about a game, but to describe it effectively, and convey intelligently some insights about it. Which is pretty obviously possible and useful.
Post edited April 17, 2012 by jsjrodman
Posted April 17, 2012
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Vestin: I think game reviewers should (as they do) stay positive. Almost every game has it's "thing" that is enjoyable, unique or fascinating about it. A good review should bring this to light, explain what approach you have to take or what kind of person should you be to appreciate it. Of course - shortcomings need to be mentioned but unless they are truly unforgivable, they are more "keep-in-mind" sort of things than flat-out "warnings".
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jefequeso: I completely agree... and I thought I was the only one who thought this :P. I've only ever written one negative review, and I don't think that I exercised good journalism (I didn't finish the game, yet was presumptuous enough to write a review that implied that I had a clear, full picture of it). Almost every game I've ever come across had good elements, if you dug deep enough. And I believe that it's a reviewer's responsibility to dig that deep.

DWTerminator's review of STALKER Shadow of Chernobyl is a perfect example of how NOT to do a negative videogame review. It's aggressively judgmental, and seems to actively look for reasons to hate the game. To the point where it seems like he went into the game desiring to hate it. In a later video about STALKER Clear Sky (which was not a review, admittedly), he only played 20 minutes, and claims that there was nothing at all in the first 20 minutes that interested him. Not only that, he seems to think that his lack of enjoyment insulates him from any possible criticism (i.e, people pointing out that it's ridiculous to think that you've gotten a good picture of a game as massive as STALKER CS in a mere 20 minutes). Would this be fine for a regular gamer? Of course. Everyone is entitled to play what they like, and not play what they don't enjoy. But if you're going to put yourself out there as a reviewer and expect that people are going to want to hear your opinion about things, then it's your responsibility to make sure you take extra care in forming well-informed, fair judgements. If you don't do that, you're no different from any other meathead out there with an opinion and a registered version of Fraps. There's nothing wrong with that, per se... but it also doesn't deserve much respect. Not when there are genuinely insightful and unbiased critics (Waltorious being a prime example) out there.

DWT's extreme dislike of STALKER made me lose respect for him as a gamer, but it was his surprisingly bull-headed panning of it and refusal to acknowledge any good qualities that made me lose respect for him as a reviewer. Which is a shame, because he seems like a good guy, and I like that he covers a lot of old games as well as newer titles.
I was subscribed to DWT for almost 3 years on YT but I am no longer pretty much for the reasons you state here. It's fine for a person to hate a game but if you call yourself a "reviewer" then you need to show some objectivity and sadly DWT doesn't. Too bad because like you said, he seems like a nice guy but when you completely lack objectivity and call all who disagree with you for "fanboys" then I loose all respect for him. Oh well at least professional reviewers usually don't fall into this trap.
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General discussion (archive)The reasons why you cannot trust "Gaming journalism"(69 posts)(69 posts)
(69 posts)