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Post by Weasel on Sept 26, 2014 18:10:08 GMT -5
EDIT: btw, OF COURSE this is a stealth gamergate thread. What else is it? People are still hung up about garbage conspiracy theories 2 weeks after it purportedly happened. Welp, this thread just reached Yellow Alert status. Hoping we can continue the discussion with less collateral damage than the last thread that went this direction.
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Post by Joseph Joestar on Sept 26, 2014 18:16:22 GMT -5
I just wish Gamergate actually was about stamping out abuses of station by journalists (or in the case I have in mind, wannabe journalists).
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Post by nightdreamer on Sept 26, 2014 18:38:38 GMT -5
EDIT: btw, OF COURSE this is a stealth gamergate thread. What else is it? People are still hung up about garbage conspiracy theories 2 weeks after it purportedly happened. Welp, this thread just reached Yellow Alert status. Hoping we can continue the discussion with less collateral damage than the last thread that went this direction. I think you should probably just lock the thread. This is like how many times vetus tried to dredge up Gamergate now?
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Post by Joseph Joestar on Sept 26, 2014 19:05:19 GMT -5
Welp, this thread just reached Yellow Alert status. Hoping we can continue the discussion with less collateral damage than the last thread that went this direction. I think you should probably just lock the thread. This is like how many times vetus tried to dredge up Gamergate now? We should wait until the alert level reaches "The Cover of Rush's Moving Pictures Album" before thread lock. Anyway, games journalism is just like real journalism - although it might not be as extreme as payola, it's naive to think that money isn't involved or a major influence on what gets written or published. You're basically at the whim of your sponsors, and will need to say things in a way that keeps them happy. You're not going to give anything below an 8 to something in a major franchise for fear of losing your company that sponsor or being blackballed next go-around. What bothers me more is how about 99 percent of games journalists have to bring their political views and opinions into the forefront these days. And that is why I pruned my Twitter follow list by about 70 people in the past couple weeks, because I'm sick of hearing their moral superiority complex-related bleeding heart liberal bullshit when I just want to read about games or look at pictures of baby sloths or penguins acting cute.
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TonicBH
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8-bit Alex Trebek is judging you.
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Post by TonicBH on Sept 26, 2014 19:32:16 GMT -5
What bothers me more is how about 99 percent of games journalists have to bring their political views and opinions into the forefront these days. And that is why I pruned my Twitter follow list by about 70 people in the past couple weeks, because I'm sick of hearing their moral superiority complex-related bleeding heart liberal bullshit when I just want to read about games or look at pictures of baby sloths or penguins acting cute. Unfortunately you're gonna have to get used to it. Games criticism is finally going what book, movie and TV criticism has done for decades, almost centuries: Personal experience. Video games should not be put under this Consumer Reports style of criticism, it's a piece of creative work, not a fucking car or TV set.
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Deleted
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Post by Deleted on Sept 26, 2014 19:36:12 GMT -5
Some critics review a game based on things most players don't pay attention to. Like level design, artistic choices, originality, etc. While some gamers say a game sucks if it's not 1080p at 60fps. I haven't played Watch Dogs, but I have not heard anyone say the game is bad because it's boring, or because the controls suck. But I have heard people saying the game sucks because the graphics don't look like when it was originally shown, or because the glass doors don't reflect accurately, and so on. I'm sure I posted about just that very thing whenever the game came out. One of the absolute dumbest games I've ever played.
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Post by Joseph Joestar on Sept 26, 2014 19:48:19 GMT -5
What bothers me more is how about 99 percent of games journalists have to bring their political views and opinions into the forefront these days. And that is why I pruned my Twitter follow list by about 70 people in the past couple weeks, because I'm sick of hearing their moral superiority complex-related bleeding heart liberal bullshit when I just want to read about games or look at pictures of baby sloths or penguins acting cute. Unfortunately you're gonna have to get used to it. Games criticism is finally going what book, movie and TV criticism has done for decades, almost centuries: Personal experience. Video games should not be put under this Consumer Reports style of criticism, it's a piece of creative work, not a fucking car or TV set. So they're getting full of shit, then?
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Deleted
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Post by Deleted on Sept 26, 2014 19:49:24 GMT -5
Unfortunately you're gonna have to get used to it. Games criticism is finally going what book, movie and TV criticism has done for decades, almost centuries: Personal experience. Video games should not be put under this Consumer Reports style of criticism, it's a piece of creative work, not a fucking car or TV set. So they're getting full of shit, then? Getting?
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Post by Allie on Sept 26, 2014 19:55:22 GMT -5
What bothers me more is how about 99 percent of games journalists have to bring their political views and opinions into the forefront these days. And that is why I pruned my Twitter follow list by about 70 people in the past couple weeks, because I'm sick of hearing their moral superiority complex-related bleeding heart liberal bullshit when I just want to read about games or look at pictures of baby sloths or penguins acting cute. Unfortunately you're gonna have to get used to it. Games criticism is finally going what book, movie and TV criticism has done for decades, almost centuries: Personal experience. Video games should not be put under this Consumer Reports style of criticism, it's a piece of creative work, not a fucking car or TV set. The Personal is The Political. Games are Politics now, and that's a big reason I'm losing interest.
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Post by Joseph Joestar on Sept 26, 2014 19:55:34 GMT -5
So they're getting full of shit, then? Getting? You're right, it's too late. The assholes won. Unfortunately you're gonna have to get used to it. Games criticism is finally going what book, movie and TV criticism has done for decades, almost centuries: Personal experience. Video games should not be put under this Consumer Reports style of criticism, it's a piece of creative work, not a fucking car or TV set. The Personal is The Political. Games are Politics now, and that's a big reason I'm losing interest. That's what bothers me about all the stuff on Twitter; it's basically become a hornet's nest of topics I'd rather just not have to deal with or pay attention to, but there's no way to avoid it.
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Deleted
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Post by Deleted on Sept 26, 2014 20:02:15 GMT -5
I think payola definitely exists, but not in the way most people would imagine. It's more likely a tit for tat arrangement. You give us a good review and we give you the information and advertising dollars that you need. So actually, it's really more like extortion. I seriously doubt the average reviewer wants to give an inaccurate picture of whatever they've been assigned. It's just the nature of the game.
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TonicBH
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Post by TonicBH on Sept 26, 2014 20:06:44 GMT -5
I think payola definitely exists, but not in the way most people would imagine. It's more likely a tit for tat arrangement. You give us a good review and we give you the information and advertising dollars that you need. So actually, it's really more like extortion. I seriously doubt the average reviewer wants to give an inaccurate picture of whatever they've been assigned. It's just the nature of the game. Most publications, even the bigger ones, have separate advertising and editorial departments. Advertisements plaster the ads, Editorial writes the shit. The twain shall never meet, and if it has, then I certainly haven't heard of it. (Besides the Gerstmann fiasco, but that was the result of new executives panicking over reviews and never having worked in games press before.) Hell, there's been times where critics lambasted a game and the result was a temporary blackball from the publisher. If anything, people should be giving publishers shit for holding critics by a vice grip, not the critics.
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Deleted
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Post by Deleted on Sept 26, 2014 21:46:32 GMT -5
That's essentially what I was saying, really. Advertising and editorial might be separate, but the people who run the ship have a say over it all. They're the ones who get scared about giving something like Watch Dogs a mediocre score, even if that's exactly what it deserves.
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Post by Feynman on Sept 26, 2014 22:20:00 GMT -5
I think payola definitely exists, but not in the way most people would imagine. It's more likely a tit for tat arrangement. You give us a good review and we give you the information and advertising dollars that you need. So actually, it's really more like extortion. I seriously doubt the average reviewer wants to give an inaccurate picture of whatever they've been assigned. It's just the nature of the game. This right here. Companies like EA aren't running around telling games critics "yo give us a 9 and we'll give you a sack of cash." That doesn't really happen. However, if you run a game website or magazine, you need access to review copies and preview builds and such if you want to stay competitive, make money, and pay your employees. So game critics have to play the game of being as honest as they can without angering a publisher to the point that they get blacklisted. That's a big reason why the 7-10 scale of review scores for AAA games exists. The best example of this is the Jeff Gerstmann Kane & Lynch fiasco. The Kane & Lynch publishers paid a massive amount of money for advertising on Gamespot, and when Gerstmann hammered the game and gave it a shit score Gamespot fired him... not because the Kane & Lynch publishers paid for a good score, or because they demanded he be fired, but because the owners of Gamespot were terrified that his behavior would make publishers less likely to pay for advertising space on their website in the future. The problem is that the publishers have all the power in the publisher/critic relationship. There's no real way to fix it, either. You can't force publishers to give critics preview builds and review copies, after all.
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Deleted
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Post by Deleted on Sept 26, 2014 22:26:48 GMT -5
The joke of the whole thing is that nobody uses review scores to buy games! All of the Joe Sixpack guys I've met over the years just buy whatever they see an ad for on tv, or what they see that's new at Gamestop or Walmart. They don't read reviews or give a shit what Metacritic says. The hardcore usually don't use reviews either, as we prefer to trust word of mouth.
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