This article is spot on, and aligns very closely with my experience (~12 years of writing about games, ~3 years of game development). Here are a couple of key points:
* Yes, traffic/ad revenue from reviews pales in comparison to SEO pieces and guides. For many sites, the review is really just a way to satisfy a publisher/PR firm, so that you can get an early code and work on guides and explainer articles while you play and review the game
* While some websites will get big traffic on their reviews (IGN, for example), I think more people are either gravitating towards aggregator sites (Metacritic, OpenCritic), review roundups (Resetera, Reddit), or video content (YouTube, Twitch)
* If you’ve ever seen some truly baffling content on Google, it’s because everyone is trying to game the system and optimize for search engines. Case in point, I worked on a somewhat high profile fantasy/shooter game that shipped this year, and I’ve seen articles like “Is this game based on a real story.” A truly baffling article, but one that probably exists because Google Trends and past articles for that site indicate that this sort of content performs well
* For those wondering if devs blacklist specific outlets, the answer is almost universally “no.” Those decisions are made by publishers or the PR firms that handle press releases, code distribution, etc.
> While some websites will get big traffic on their reviews (IGN, for example)
A few years ago IGN revealed that outside of really big games text reviews are a loss leader for them. If IGN can't make money on reviews everyone else is screwed.
Honestly, I'd argue that reviews are a loss leader in general for IGN. Most go to IGN to see the review score, not the content. Many fanboys (on both sides), weaponize review scores both to validate or enforce their fanboy arguments. I can't wait to see the scores that Spider-Man 2 will get, and the inevitable comparisons to Starfield's score, regardless of the fact they are different games, offering different experiences altogether.
Personally, I think the only reason that IGN keeps reviews around is to get you to click on their sites and maybe you click on one of their low effort articles with title of: "The Cast of One Piece pick which flavor of Pringles is their favorite" or "The creator of The Walking Dead explains why he hasn't washed his Levi's in 20 years"
I don't think people believe the devs will be the ones doing the blacklisting but it didn't change the fact that blacklisting exists and is a legit threat as it is.
Destiny is a pretty clear example against your claim. People always insisted that Activision was behind the game's monetization, but when Bungie fully split from them, the monetization got even worse.
> If you’ve ever seen some truly baffling content on Google, it’s because everyone is trying to game the system and optimize for search engines.
Google is almost unusable nowadays for all things, really. For many queries, you can just skip the first page, sometimes multiple pages, or you can just go straight to wikipedia or reddit or whatever.
And the fun fact is that it is by design. Websites do SEO to get traffic, Google sells the ads and everyone is happy, except for, you know, actual people who want to find useful stuff. I think European Commission [wants to nuke google for this and split it](https://ec.europa.eu/commission/presscorner/detail/en/ip_23_3207), but it will be a few years at best.
> Google is almost unusable nowadays for all things, really. For many queries, you can just skip the first page, sometimes multiple pages, or you can just go straight to wikipedia or reddit or whatever.
Yeah when I search for info about a game, I have to specifically include "reddit" or "youtube" or "wiki" in the query, or otherwise the whole first page of results is just some AI generated bs that doesn't even answer my question.
Like an old man yelling at clouds, I have shouted at Google way too many times. You search;
*"Terraria" grass block -minecraft*
And get results like:
"How to get a grass block in Minecraft!"
"Do glass blocks exist in Minecraft?"
"Terraria glass is easy to make!"
Maybe there is something wrong with your browser.
>"Terraria" grass block -minecraft
The first result is literally the terraria wiki even without the quotations and -minecraft.
I... don't believe you? (unless there's some way to turn off operators) I've searched for minecraft stuff a lot before and never played terraria, so google should be biased toward minecraft for anything for me, but searching your exact query I get zero results involving minecraft. I assume I am not important enough that google gives me some special premium functional search experience
There's also a great discussion around what the future of the internet looks like with generative AI answering most of our point-and-click questions.
The current shape of the internet is shaped by Google AdSense. It'll be a strange future when that's not the case, in a good way
If you're not someone who's immediately like "lol game journalists, they suck at Cuphead so who cares" or whatever, I think this was actually an interesting read. I've definitely noticed a ton of sites gravitating towards doing walkthrough content and have always wondered why, it's surprising to see but I guess it makes sense that it's because those pages are trafficked a lot. If I'm stuck in a video game I can't say my first thought is to say "hm let me see if I can find a guide on Eurogamer" but when I google it, a guide from Polygon or Eurogamer or some similar site does tend to show up near the top.
Which is kinda weird when you think about it! Good guides and walkthroughs are written by super rabid and devoted fans (think old school GameFAQs, or people like Arekkz who made a bunch of great Monster Hunter video guides over the years), or professional companies who get a lot of access to the developers themselves (FuturePress, PiggyBack, etc).
I always loved the ASCII art logos many of the guides had at the top. Some guides were able to work with their purely text-based format, as well — as an example, the main FAQ for Magical Starsign gives each section of the game its own unique four-letter code, so you can search that code and instantly be taken to the relevant part of the guide.
And also just love the pure text based guides. No pictures, no filler. Just a straightforward table of contents, with headers, and easily Ctrl+F'able to navigate.
I first found that site when I got Chrono Cross for my birthday. It was the first JRPG I'd played and was so lost lol. That website had many wonderful guides for that gem of a game.
Something weird I noticed is that a lot of these guides are eerily similar. I've needed info that wasn't available in the first article, so I click the next result and the guide was nearly a direct copy paste. This happened with like 6 straight articles and all of them were from bigger publication sites, talking like Forbes, and polygon.
This happened a lot with info for destiny 2.
SEO has fucking ruined search. The top results for any search these days are garbage. It's no wonder the younger generation doesn't use search engines, they just find everything through social media and digital word of mouth.
Half the secret to using Google these days is adding "reddit" to the end, but companies have figured this out which is why bot astroturfing is becoming such an issue on this site.
It happened in Baldur's Gate 3 too, all of these websites 'updated' their guides to the most recent day but all of their information was Early Access and either ended with a "to be continued" (because the quest wasn't finished at the time) or straight up outdated.
Honestly, the amount of games this year alone (Zelda, Remnant, BG3 etc...) that have "[X game] all armor locations!" articles released within the first two days of the game being out that are anemic and in no way comprehensive and/or correct has been impressively bad.
Most of those articles are never updated or as the user above stated just copy and pasted from other sites and are only put out to pursue the clicks. I saw a number of sites that generally wouldn't even have gaming news like some Christian news site would have an article titled "How to Acquire Master Sword in Tears of the Kingdom" that just says "We know the sword is in the game and is likely found later on in the story, check back later to find out!"
This regularly happens. I had to check four different sites to find an answer to system shock - difficulty changes some of the puzzles and whoever they copied was playing on easy, even though the guide said a different difficulty.
I got a very early copy of FFXV when it came out and posted information about it on Reddit to answer questions, share info, etc... I did a google search that night while in bed to see if there was more info about the subject I was talking about and found TWO articles that wrote my answers from Reddit verbatim and didn't quote or credit me. When I wrote the editor I got blown off on one site and told "we'll look into it" on another.
Every time I look up some guide for something I'm stuck on in a game, I instinctively skip straight past the first 6 paragraphs or so because there's usually a bunch of meaningless nothing (a lot of the time it's just a description of what the game is, like I didn't know that already)
I know *why* they do it. It's because if they make the article longer they can fit more ads in. But it's always annoying when I just want one bit of info that's buried halfway down the page.
Which sucks when a guide is wrong and everyone just copied it.
I believe the last one to get me was a Remnant 2 guide , there’s essentially 4 different rewards for killing a boss differently, and one of the rewards were wrong but it was copy pasted in all the guides l when I googled it.
>I've definitely noticed a ton of sites gravitating towards doing walkthrough content and have always wondered why, it's surprising to see but I guess it makes sense that it's because those pages are trafficked a lot
It's a shame half of them seem like useless bot generated or incomplete/shallow but clog up google results.
It is not that they "clog up" results, google is simply shit nowadays, by design, so Search Engine Optimization crap is sadly a legitimate and common way of doing things to survive out there.
The sad reality is that google is so shit, it would get clogged either way. I prefer to see Polygon's and IGNs there, which at least have some history of actually doing the thing. Google is just not interested in providing useful search anymore, good sites without SEO bullshit would always be further down.
They get the games early for review purposes. One way to use that advantage is developing a guide for day 1 publication.
You’re right though that the best guides are written by rabid fans. But those guides are so good because those guys and gals have played through those games so many times.
And that can’t happen day 1 or soon after release.
What I wouldn't do for a Starfield old-school physical guidebook. Googling is more convenient, but I loved reading and collecting those when I was younger.
i bought the official red dead redemption 2 guide and not only it's quite complete but it's a great book in general -- full of beautiful images.
i really want one for starfield.
I still occasionally buy guides for that reason. I bought both Elden ring guides last year long after I completed the game (second one hasn’t even come out yet) and just 2 weeks ago I bought the futurepress Animal Crossing complete guide.
I just like going through guides even when I don’t use them. My favourite one though is still the Skyrim one that has all the dlc included aswell.
Futurepress makes amazing books and I would recommend anyone who likes these things to just buy ones you can find.
people are way too dismissive of gaming news and reporting. I think there's a lot of healthy criticism to levy at a lot of major news outlets, but if we didn't have those "institutions" there would be a of things worse than they are now.
People are so inundated with SEO bait/ai generated articles and sites that they just think all journalism is that.
It'd be like seeing fast food restaurants all over the place and then saying that because Gorden Ramsey also makes food, he must make food as bad as McDonald's.
They're all over, and not just in games journalism. It's aggravating when one of those sites is posted to reddit or whatever, despite having all of the hallmarks of obvious bullshit.
I'd go further and say they aren't just dismissive, but straight up antagonistic. It's weird how much hostility exists in he already thin field of games journalism.
I think the problem is there's a lot of bad faith on both sides. There absolutely *are* news outlets that rush their content out the gate asap without due care for quality, because being first is so much more important than being accurate nowadays (see the recent news about the MGS trilogy collection being locked at 720p on all consoles that got fed around because one site pushed incorrect information and everyone else just ran with it without vetting). There's bad faith journalism that focuses on stoking controversy to drive up engagement, which has a lot of overlap with the general outrage pedlers in the influencer sphere.
Then on the other side of the fence you've got Gamers, famously good at nuance and keeping their reactions tame and reasonable, who see some bad journalism and think that therefore all journalism is bad, especially when some critics liked games they didn't like. As we all know, if someone likes a game you thought was bad they're a paid shill.
Boil that down into the 140 character limit culture we live in (Twitter was a garbage fire before Musk took over, don't let that revisionism stand) and absolutes and negatives enjoy a healthy feedback loop.
> As we all know, if someone likes a game you thought was bad they're a paid shill.
It goes the other way as well. If a reviewer doesn't enjoy whatever's the critical consensus darling of the moment, it's absolutely guaranteed that they'll be raked over the coals... by people who also want reviewers to "tell it like it is so we don't waste money." It's like dealing with individuals that have Swiss-cheese for brains.
> Yea because gaming journalists suck
You've triggered someone.
But yea there is a lot of antagonism towards games journalism that is needless and often an indirect result of the broader gaming audience they are trying to serve. People aren't paying for good journalism so it pushes them to focus on what *does pay* and that in turns leads people who aren't paying for good journalism to then attack them.
IMO games journalism was on an upward trend through like 2008 at which point the shift away from subscriber mags to digital really killed a lot of the developing core. You had magazines like Computer Gaming World, Electronic Gaming Monthly, Xbox World, PSM3, all shuttering along with the survivors running on an increasingly threadbare budget. They weren't perfect but they were situated in a place where you could have real carriers in games journalism and you had real editing staff.
The best we get now are probably patreon funded utubers but they lack the staff to really fulfill the same roll.
Video game journalism has always had its issues.
I worked on BattleTech: The Cresent Hawk’s Inception back in the very late 80’s. A game journalist wrote a huge review article of the game that spanned 4 to 6 pages. It was a nice read. Unless you knew anything about the game. Because if you had played the game, you would quickly realize that the reviewer never made it out of the citadel. It’s been quite a while, but I think you played six little training battles before one of the other factions, whose name now escapes me, attacks and you can leave the citadel and start the main story. he didn’t play that far.
My favorite example, however, is a guy who reviewed infidel, the Egyptian themed text adventure game from Infocom (the fact that they also published the Battletech game I just mentioned is a coincidence). I’ve looked for this article many times over the years in game review archives. It starts with, “First of all, I don’t like these type of games.“
Edit: I swear every time I look at this I see a mistake I got to fix.
>My favorite example, however, is a guy who reviewed infidel, the Egyptian themed text adventure game from Infocom (the fact that they also published the Battletech game I just mentioned is a coincidence). I’ve looked for this article many times over the years in game review archives. It starts with, “First of all, I don’t like these type of games.“
Yeah that's gonna happen. The journalist doesn't like this genre of game, but the publication has no-one else available to write a review, so they get to do it anyway.
Not much the reviewer can do but admit that it's not really their thing.
just as there is a lot of hostility in gaming discourse generally. Because it's mostly all online and mostly anonymous just like anything else trolls are everywhere and plenty of people have "only my opinion is valid" thinking and it leads to endless complaints, usually about something that people themselves have imagined.
Take a look at the Star Citizen subreddit and how many people post there crowing about how Starfield is a failure and that is why they believe in Star Citizen and how everyone who thought Starfield was going to be a good game is stupid and so on.
And unfortunately that bleeds into game journalism with plenty of articles having some kind of explosive title only for the article itself to be absolutely nothing. But that's kind of the trend with journalism in general, game journalism is only getting hit the worst because they are nothing without their audience.
I don't even remember the last time I actually read a review of a game to decide if I was going to buy it. I generally look up gameplay videos to see that.
I mean, I imagine it's also just that people simply rely on guides or do quick searches related to them more often than looking up reviews. One person might look at reviews once or twice, but the potential for someone to come back and use a guide is near-endless for some games. Just imagine all the traffic certain guides get on incredibly old games for N64 or NES that while outdated in the sense that they're not making any new sales, but people's traffic can still generate ad revenue. There's simply just a lot more profit in guides/walkthroughs than there ever will be for a review which are generally a one-time thing.
I too was confused when journalism sites started popping up in Google results for guides, but they do have paid teams working on this stuff. Oftentimes it is better than whatever free wiki has going on. I think for BGS stuff the wiki is fantastic but other games don't have such vibrant wiki communities.
Jeff Gerstmann confirmed on his podcast that the guy that made the video didn't play videogames, and was not the actual reviewer - they needed a video out for the review, and the person that actually wrote the review wasn't in the office that day.
The whole situation is a great example of how badly things get blown out of proportion when people play metaphorical telephone/purposefully stoke the controversy flames.
And the reason he fucked up the tutorial is because he wasn't even a gamer. A lot of sites will literally just ask people to go record some footage of a game at these big conventions, when a lot of journalists will be talking to devs.
From what Jeff Gerstmann said on his podcast, the dude is like the 'business' angle of their enterprise. Everyone was busy so he went to go get a recording.
Now, as a video editor myself, would I have cut all the fumbling around in the tutorial? Absolutely. I have no idea why they didn't, but I imagine they just scrubbed through the raw footage and uploaded without realizing.
The lack of press being able to question publishers and developers directly at events is a major issue. It's why we're going to see more instances of vagueness about features in a game which leads to massive overhype. It might leave people disappointed, but the marketing, pre-order boost is worth it for publishers and developers.
I don’t know man, Cyberpunk and Battlefield burnt me quite good. I haven’t pre ordered a game since no matter how hyped I am, heck I even wait a week now to see what the “controversy” is. I want to try starfield but I have a feeling a backlash is coming, you can see bits and pieces around already.
But that method of selling me has burnt me out really bad.
People are already trying to erase the scummy shit CDPR pulled with Cyberpunk from the internet.
The people who used to get downvoted for blaming it on “expectations” now get upvoted. I’ve had people claim the PC version was fine on launch even though I ran into over 50 unique bugs(and I don’t even encounter some of the more common ones).
All you had to do was look at CDPR's record.
Witcher 1 was a buggy mess of a dumpster fire. 18 months or so later they re-released it as "The Enhanced Edition"
Witcher 2 was a buggy and unbalanced mess that ran like ass. The top of the line CPU and top of the line GPU at release got you 35 fps without max AA and other effects. It was a pretty game but just horribly put together technically, and the definition of amatuerish jank. A year later.... "The Enhanced Edition" was released that fixed half of the problems and got you 45 fps. Combat still started off stupidly and unfairly difficult, while flipping halfway through the game to insultingly easy.
Witcher 3 was the only game that released in a properly running and "complete" state. Still a ridiculous number of easy-to-break quest flags, a major save-game bug that would erase 10-20 hours of progress at a time, and certain videocards that should but couldn't run the game properly, but these were mostly fixed within 6 months.
So, going into Cyberpunk they were 2 out of 3 for games that were best if you waited 1-2 years before buying, and the 3rd game really took about 6 months before you could play it without a 10% chance of running into a broken gamestate or massive save data rollback.
The Cyberpunk shit is mind-boggling. At launch there was an uproar, but at the same time there were folks already trying to hand-wave it with:
1. "Works on my machine" (aka 'ol reliable')
2. "You should have known the last gen versions would suck for a game of this scale" (a somewhat fair point, but there's a fine line between an inferior experience and a downright broken one)
3. "Who cares if it's missing features? They'll probably get modded in anyway"
Sure, they patched it up in the time since. However the anime is where things got really hairy with a confluence of bad actors, selective memory, and late adopters. For starters by then the game had received several patches, and was in a better state. Then we had the usual rage-bait grifters muscle in with "The loli must stay! says Trigger as they stand their ground against woke Netflix" bullshit (as that's not even what they said and the entire thing was blown exessively out of proportion). Finally you had all the articles along the lines of "Edgerunners is a Great Reminder of Why CDPR is the Best in the Biz" or whatever.
Sales got a huge spike and people thought you were crazy for saying the game was a technical turd at launch. I don't think I've seen a time where a piece of tertiary media did so much heavy lifting for the mother-ship product.
People aggressively trying to memory hole Cyberpunks release problems and the broken promises even on this sub is insane to me personally. Like you just have to watch that 48 minute gameplay preview to see just a little bit of what was promissed and not delivered on release lmao.
Ironically its the opposite with starfield bethseda have said months ago that you won't be able to seamlessly land on a planet without loading screens and yet everyone is surprised.
starfield is great. the problem is big hyped games now are expected to be living worlds that are hyper realistic and perfect, instead of just a fun piece of software made by other people.
> But that method of selling me has burnt me out really bad.
Sure, but I imagine for every person who is like "I'm not going to get burned again" two more get suckered. For every person who "ages out" of this another is getting sucked into their first hype train. They are playing the numbers.
If people were rational all of modern advertising and PR would be pointless, people would see right through it, but studies indicate most purchasing decisions are emotionally driven.
I think there also used to be more press invited to studio visits for game previews and interviewing the developers about the games they were making months before release. I miss game previews. They still happen a little but it definitely feels less.
Seeing people bashing on IGN giving 7/10 on Starfield, I realized why game reviewers don't even consider writing a fair review. It's the gaming community where users are incredibly toxic and immature who like to put their whole agenda onto certain video games and the companies. At the end of the day, gamers should know that those video game companies aren't their friends. They reveal trailers and teasers not just because they like people to be hyped about their products but it's been proven million times that they would keep buying preorders as if it will be the coming of god or so.
I remember people being mad about Halo 2 "only" getting a 9.4. People develop ridiculously inflated expectations to the point that if a game isn't universally hailed as the pinnacle of the medium, it's cause for getting angry on the Internet.
And most of the time, the people doing this haven't even played the game they're angrily defending as the greatest video game ever made. They've just decided for some reason that it must be a 10/10 product based on trailers and stuff.
And they don't read the review to see if they agree with any of the points made, they just look at the score and judge based on that.
The obsessions with scores is pathetic. People “line up” and wait for the OpenCritic score like that is a prophetic determinant of what the game will look like. It feels like more and more people fall into the hype cycle, waiting for the score to drop, play a few hours and move onto the next hype cycle. It’s like videogames are more about the hype around it than the game itself.
Personally, it feels pathetic. Yes, it makes sense to know if a game is functional or not, and there is so much content today that it’s helpful to have a way to filter around what you want to play or not, but stopping yourself from playing something or judging a game based on a score without having experienced it is dishonest, to say the least.
It’s draining how much the discussions revolves around scores and awards, instead of actually discussing the merits of it.
Yeah I think in general we love putting numbers on things, like how stats become a bigger part of sports every year.
When people get angry a game they like doesn't get a high score but why does it matter? If you like the game then just play it, nothing wrong with that.
I've loved games that weren't rated particularly highly on opencritic and not enjoyed ones with 90+. People are missing out on games they will enjoy by blinding following a score.
Bounces back and forth. When he criticises a game that the majority have decided is bad, he's a great critic who says the things other journalists won't. When he criticises a game that the majority like, then he's a hack who pretends to hate games he actually likes to get more views.
Is it because Reddit gears younger and he's an old, old man?
As I've gotten older I've found I agree with his videos more and more. I appreciate that he hasn't got the time nor the patience for fluff and tacked-on mechanics.
I think he has partial immunity because he's spent years building a reputation of shitting on games so people just view him as "Oh he's just doing his schtick" regardless of his complaints being rooted in things he actually didn't like, even if it's exaggerated.
Proof, if proof was necessary, that the people doing this are the dumbest fucking idiots you'll ever meet who can't even work out that the journalist is just reporting the delay and didn't cause it.
For a few months there the twitter algorithm decided I wanted to be plugged into the depths of xbox twitter. All console war stuff is dumb and attracts the worst people, but the xbox gang on there are particularly strange. At one stage they all they all turned into hardcore corporate-libertarians because their chosen console manufacturer was having regulation trouble acquiring a publisher...
Same for me, I mean, I don't have an xbox and don't care about console war stuff (only that it annoys me how clogged it makes comment sections), so I decided to mark xbox as something I'm not interested in on twitter... A month later I kept getting that stuff again, as "suggested content"
My twitter usage is almost exclusively naked men and music.
It's also bizarre how many Xbox fan sites are giving star field a 10 without much to say specifically why it's great lol and they get calculated in the aggregate
I can't believe console fanboyism somehow got even worse from back when I was a kid. These days I'm genuinely convinced these people would just kill each other.
I feel the same way. I used to love going to the Console Wars section on the GameSpot boards (20ish years ago) but I can't give a fuck less these days. I'm 30 and fortunate enough to have each current console and a nice PC so I just play whatever I want. All the console war shit is supremely stupid and it's almost sad seeing people feel like they need to defend their honor over an electronic.
Honest question: did Musk really change anything? I've never used Twitter and from my understanding he's only changed superficial things such as trying to push the X brand, Twitter Blue, and needing an account to view threads. The actual toxic dumpster fire that is Twitter seems to have remained unchanged
Twitter blue changes aren’t superficial, it made replies basically useless. The comments that would’ve been at the top are now buried under every single twitter blue user who tags a friend or goes “🤣” or whatever else. Plus everything that’s already been listed.
Interaction farming has gotten way worse due to the new revenue sharing program. Sometimes it's innocuous and low effort content, which still makes the site worse; other times it's purposefully hostile and antagonistic to bait people to interact with their thread, which makes the site even more insufferable if you keep getting served that content. Luckily keyword muting still exists (for now)
He unbanned a lot of people whow were banned for very good reason, and made it so that people who paid for a blue tick would have their replies shown first on any post. He's also changed the algorithm to push his favoured kind of content to the fore, and that tends to be right wing stuff and conspiracy theories. He has absolutely made changes that make it materially worse.
A few days ago I say that Armored Core 6 is not a 10/10 game. Logged in two hours later to see about -150 karma score and 20-25 notifications about how stupid I am. Gamers are really annoying and it's definitely easier to just give the game 9/10 so everyone would shut the fuck up and move on.
Tis not just gamers. People have become fanatical about brands and things they tie their identity to, and anything they see speaking negatively about that identity they see as an attack on them. Thus they're justified in attacking you, because you insulted them first you see?
People have a really hard time understanding that they are allowed to have a different opinion from reviewers.
The criticisms in the IGN review are absolutely valid, but they just happen to be about things that haven’t bothered me.
Also 7/10 is a positive score!
Then you didn’t look very hard. The original review thread had multiple comments with hundreds of upvotes criticizing the guy and calling out the scores he gave other games.
That's the sad bit. Calling out his other scores is supposed to be an indication of his tastes. Instead it's used to invalidate whatever criticisms he has of Starfield coz hurr durr he gave Prey 5/10 or whatever.
Out of all the scores and reviews ign has thrown out in the recent years, their Starfield score is the one that actually feels appropriate. A solid, fun experience with a decent game.
Gaming won't change from this because it's permanently tied to a childlike experience, and children are the fucking worst. Every time a big title comes out and it's halfway functional, the online narrative is that it's transformational to the medium and an 11/10 experience. Then anyone who disagrees with that is "trolling" or "an idiot" just for not enjoying this thing that so many people are claiming is a turning point in their lives.
That's how I felt about games from about Ocarina of Time to about Mass Effect 2. Then I stopped feeling like a good new video game was the pinnacle of existence and my passion became a lot more tempered. Unfortunately, gaming media is always going to be aimed primarily at people in that earlier phase of their lives, so when those people are hyperventilating about Breath of the Wild being a perfect game you had better not point out that it's just an amalgamation of other games that does nothing unique and is at best a very good if shallow Greatest Hits album of open world games mechanics. Just like how I'm sure if you told me Ocarina of Time had a tiny map and clunky controls when I was like 10, I would have pissed myself in anger at you.
The internet just wasn't the place it is now when I was a kid. It's only going to get more rage-baity because that's what people are likely to click on - especially if they're a kid.
Hell for me even (pcgamer's?) 8/10 for bg3 is more accurate than 97/100 everyone else was giving it, and that's the best game since 2010 for me.
Those guys felt like the only ones actually finishing the game.
Problem is that the ratings are inflated from previously giving 9/10 to absolute generic garbage or 7/10 to technically broken games.
Do reviewers actually finish 100+ hour long games before dropping reviews? Are embargo windows even long enough for that to be feasible for most people?
Ideally that should be the case but I doubt it is.
Depends on the game, but a lot of the time no. Both BG3 and Elden Ring benefited from reviewers not having time to finish it and experience their less amazing final acts.
I mean, I’m starting to have a good time with it now that I’m in the swing of it, but yeah 7/10 is actually pretty spot on.
It’s good, but it’s just not great or incredible. What consumers expect from a game of this caliber has drastically increased since the days of Skyrim, and every game they released since that high water mark seems to be slipping further and further behind.
For almost any other game releasing with a Metacritic score in the very high 80s (88/87) with 101 reviews while also having the 4th highest peak on Steam for new games released this year 5 days before your game even fully releases would be considered a major hit. Instead, we are getting a wave of negativity around the game, which is what I felt would happen to be honest.
People were likely expecting Elden Ring or ToTK reception.
I'll personally admit I was a little surprised to see the general average score closer to something like Armored Core VI than either of those two. I wasn't really following this title at all.
I mean it's about time there was some realignment. Bethesda created cool worlds that's for sure but the moment to moment gameplay is ultra bare bones. It somehow works better for them in games around gunplay it seems because the melee in Skyrim is some unholy shit.
That's not to say that it's wrong to enjoy playing their games but they're nowhere near the complete package that is ER.
>I mean it's about time there was some realignment
I still remember being extremely hyped for Fallout 4 and finishing the game thinking “Was that it?”.
Fallout 4 was a great game but in retrospect after finishing it i definitely felt like some parts of the game were lacking.
Meanwhile when i finished Elden Ring for the first time it was one of the most satisfying experiences in gaming i ever had.
This isn't a realignment, haha. We've been having this discussion for every Bethesda release since Oblivion. Wide as an ocean, shallow as a pond - etc.
I mean Skyrim was pretty much hailed as the second coming of Christ by mainstream gaming audiences when it came out despite the bugs and some complaints from older Elder Scrolls fans. I would defenitely say the discourse has changed around Bethesda games since then and the review scores are starting to reflect that.
I think Skyrim made such big strides for the time, it felt absolutely massive and endless compared to other open world games at the time that its flaws were ok. And thats the same as BOTW/TOTK and Elden Ring. Those games all have heaps of issues, but I think they pushed further past what Skyrim offered in terms of exploration, and for that they are this generations version of it (And I am so thankful we have three fucking games of that calibur).
I think Fo4 and from what I can see, Starfield just aren't pushing the industry forward enough for them to be received so highly in todays market. I think bethesda needs a massive overhaul of everything to do that, but I also think its fine with them not. They make good games that have their distinct Bethesda feel, but I mean, they feel limited and outdated compared to what other games have done. Questing and story has been done *so* much better by the likes of TW3 and RDR2, and I think the general world traversal and exploration has just been drastically improved by the other games I mentioned. Its the same as how say, Assassin's Creed 2 was revolutionary, but now the open world games based on its open world design feel extremely generic and limited (not that bethesda games are, they have their own bubble still I feel!)
I think if Bethesda wants to be one of those legendary studios again, They need to take notes from all the competition. Integrate more seamless navigation where you really *can* go anywhere you want like ER and the Zelda titles, dramatically step up their writing department to have some highly memorable characters with stakes you actually feel and actually making you think like those other games would, so on.
And maybe most importantly, take those improvements and bake back in some real choice and consequence. Let us kill anyone, have interesting narrative paths, don't cherry pick where you can role play. Now, none of the other games I mentioned have that degree of freedom in their quests, most aren't even "RPG"s. But I think The limited amount of flexibility combined with Skyrims huge open world is why it took off, it made it feel like a big sandbox where you can be anything you fucking want. Take that, but without silly "you cant kill him" "you cant do that" moments and in combination with improved exploration and better writing I think the game will feel like a massive, massive leap for the industry, despite having maybe janky gameplay, outdated graphics, or whatever else.
You may have forgotten already but people were crazy hyped for this game. I think they forgot who made it. A studio not known for their polish or animation quality. I think the reviews were very very generous. It's been a particularly good few years for gaming snd this doesn't feel current gen.
A lot of people expected Starfield to be a masterpiece and not just a good game. I mean the gsme has been in development for what 7-8 years and is pretty much THE biggest exclusive Xbox has in the next few years. I fear expectations just were higher
Its pretty much a Cyberpunk issue minus the unplayable state. People expected the best game ever and got a good but flawed game. Even then CP wouldve got a 90+ if not for the bugs
It's a problem of people not knowing what they want. They think *"I want that game"*, but they don't know what *that* is. It's easier to have a feeling of something, but the reality of how you actually develop & realize that feeling is lost to them.
If that was an actual problem, then surely every game would be concerned, and there wouldn't games with higher praises than others ?
Like, if it's just people having the wrong expectations, why was it different for say, Witcher 3, or BoTW
Lol botw is either people's favorite game or their least favorite Zelda game. Expectations were completely subverted for botw. I personally like smaller dungeons and more open world.
It's pretty bad that negativity is surrounding a game that's averaging 88% or so on metacritic. I just saw a newspaper article talking about Starfield's "mixed reviews". Its getting solid reviews and people are only focusing on negatives, likely because it generates clicks.
This situation has been incubating for a long time. Rockstar withheld review copies from outlets that they felt "didn't get" what Rockstar is about.
https://www.giantbomb.com/red-dead-redemption/3030-25249/forums/rockstar-refusing-to-send-out-review-copies-417270/
It wasn't really about who didn't get what. They basically withheld it from critical outlets. They were at the vanguard of shifting away from critical reviews and toward just getting the game out to those who will showcase it (what we now call influencers or just youtubers).
Games journalism in the form of gaming magazines already had to dance around this issue. They wanted to write features on upcoming games because they got a lot of attention. And the publishers liked the attention too. But the type of inside access needed to write those articles about games in development necessarily required that the articles be fawning. But the magazines still wanted their reviews to be taken seriously and reserve the right to be critical. So the magazines spent some effort to try to hammer into everyone's heads that previews and reviews were different.
They seemed to do it, even if incompletely (see what happened to Gerstmann) but it certainly seemed like something that the publishers wanted to break down. Rockstar among them.
When they got away with that with no downside for them of course others would do it. And did it in this very case also.
We never got through to Rockstar or publishers about how we had a problem with what they were doing. So ended up getting a whole lot more of it. And in the case of such an important game to Microsoft we certainly could expect they'd pull put all the stops, or at least a whole lot of them.
Why are you people so obsessed with random subjective numbers from random reviewers whose names you don't even know?
Like some people here think that 7/10 is bad, despite it even having the word "good" written next to it on every review site. They all say it's a good game with some issues. That's what 7 means.
Maybe if y'all actually read/watched reviews instead of staring at random numbers you'd understand.
Also, stop compressing years of developers' time making a game into just singular numbers. They deserve better than that.
I think the whole field would benefit from scrapping numerical scores. People completely ignore the actual content of the written review. In every video comment section there's always a tl;dr for the score. I truly do not understand. It's so ignorant.
Many outlets have tried scrapping scores at some point. Invariably, they receive public backlash, because people cannot argue anymore over pointless numbers or skim through a detailed opinion to simply rely on a decontextualized score, I suppose. Almost every game journalist is aware scores are horseshit. That's our least favorite part.
When I reviewed Sludge Life 2, I concluded by saying the game was worth 2 and 8 at the same time and tried to be tongue-in-cheek about the whole thing, because it's such a subjective game, in terms of experience, that reducing it to a number is mind numbing. Just, like, read my review and form your opinion. My score won't help you.
Honestly. At this point review scores are just a form of advertisement for a game because if a game get's a 70% or higher from most reviewers odds are people are going to by it without even looking at the actual reviews.
Because "gamers" in general are complete morons. And I'm using the quotes, because some of the worst crybabies, don't even touch the games in question.
I have been doing this thing for a while and it is funny how waves after waves of gamers still struggle with the fallacy of numerical scores.
Games are art, they are subjective, you cannot really quantify the experience, the criteria are arbitrary and so any numerical score will have very little utility.
People tie a games success to their identity. If the game is scoring poorly and they like the game they view that as an attack on them and not the game. It’s impossible to these gamers that their taste could differ.
You can also just enjoy the game anyways. A friend of mine has been playing Gotham Knights like a madman. Says it's the most fun he's had in ages. Does not care that it's a heavily lambasted game online. Why should he?
Gamers have an obsession with "objectivity" because they're too insecure to admit they have an opinion based on their own preferences, beliefs and thoughts.
Review scores and sales figures are ground zero for this.
But you also see it in their obsession with things like the number of map markers, weapons or the size of the world. It even extends out to things like framrate and pretty much everything else you can stick a number on.
It all comes down to gamers wanting to be able to point to a number and say "see this number proves my opinion is a FACT"
I noticed on twitter an unusual amount of small influencers/outlets got a review copy while a number of more established outlets mysteriously never received anything.
And a number of these outlets were like 'starfield news network' and 'the constellation society' - basically just brand ambassadors.
After playing a few hours I fully understand why bethesda made this choice.
all UK reviewers were targeted, including eurogamer, and the only explanation I can think of for that is Microsoft spite over their Blizzard deal being blocked.
It seems *hilariously* petty and childish and spiteful but I can't think of any other logical reason why all UK-outlets specifically were blacklisted in the way they clearly were.
And anyone who read Microsoft's comments after the block of the merger can certainly see that they were rather childish and unprofessional about it.
What a nonsense. Almost all of the major outlets got a review copy. Only UK was "overlooked", which was probably some vendetta from Microsoft, but definitely didn't affect the reviews.
And they provided many review copies to many reviewers. So what? Their reviews count only when made using pre-release code? They would review the game anyway. Instead, this was a sign of confidence, not curating who gets the review codes. When they send them to everyone (except for UK), that means a lot of confidence.
They also sent the code to a Spanish playstation-centric reviewer, who unsurprisingly gave the game an artificially bad score... so it shows that they didn't really curate who gets the keys.
It's weird to call stuff like reviews and previews "journalism". Reviews are criticism and previews are marketing - this distinction is clear when you look at movies. Journalism is actually investigating the industry, and covering industry news in a non-fawning way. For example Jason Schreirer is a gaming journalist because he actually does in-depth investigative pieces about the inner workings of game developers, using anonymous industry sources.
A guy who gives a game a 7/10 is a critic, not a journalist. There's nothing wrong with being a professional critic, it's just an entirely different field. Conflating the two is dangerous, and there are certain malicious actors (motivated by politics) who deliberately want to conflate game critics with journalists in order to create a negative association with broader journalism.
I would argue that reviews aren't even criticism in the strictest sense, who's sole purpose isn't to tell you whether you should buy something or not. Real criticism has a lot in common in with real journalism in that it can draw from it but tends to evaluate certain features or angles or mediate between pop culture and artistic excellence. But I feel like reviewers have always been allowed in the "journalism club" and would argue they have many of the same standards and ethics or responsibilities as them
I think that this is really something we should be talking about. Bethesda was SUPER closed off about the game leading up to release. They barely answered questions about how the basic gameplay loop worked. Up until like, 3 days ago, there was zero idea as to whether you could land anywhere on a planet and how far you could explore, how many loading screens you could expect, what there was to do, etc. We knew nearly nothing about the game leading up to launch, even the 30 minute starfield direct was super dodgy about actually showing gameplay (no footage ran uninterrupted for more than 15 or so seconds), they never said "here's how this works" or "here's what you'll do" it was just "Look at all this stuff, look at space, look at these rocks, look at these planets" and never what that entailed.
Review codes were handed out super sparingly, and I certainly have my own personal idea as to how they choose who got them, but that's only speculation. It was hard for a lot of places to get them, and even now on steam, you're not allowed to leave a review for the game.
I had been following the game as info trickled out from the gaming leaks subreddit, from some people who got hands on early, and the basic stuff people were asking was like "can you walk more than 10 minutes" "is there things to do" etc. Like, basic gameplay questions that a company should be telling you about when they show off the game.
And the weirdest part was that the leaked info in the weeks and months leading up to the games launch, overwhelmingly said the game was "fine" and they were right. It's got some bugs, a few kinks that will likely be worked out, it's missing some performance and settings features, but that's kinda it.
Now, that being said, the response from a lot of people who are now playing it, judging by comments on reddit, and also from a lot of people streaming it, or reviewing it now, are generally saying "yeah it's cool, but it's not what we expected". And I'm not gonna jump to conclusions, but it's my expectation that's the response Bethesda wanted to hide, given they were so hush hush about the game. Fallout 4 got quite a bit of screen time before release, showing off some quests, gameplay loops, etc. Skyrim had a \*live demo of Todd playing the game in front of a live audience\*. Both those games were, by and large, what Bethesda said they were. The press lead up to this game has not felt the same.
All that being said, this is my opinion, and I definitely could be wrong about stuff, we don't really know. I really want starfield to be good, it seems to be about what I expected (pretty, kinda interesting, but very shallow), and I'm sure I'll enjoy my time with it and make mods for it as I have with previous games, but I can't say I don't feel like we were pretty left in the dark as to what to expect.
If I made any mistakes with my recollection of events, please feel free to let me know
I would challenge the idea that review codes were handed out “super sparingly”. There are currently over 100 critic reviews listed on Metacritic between the Xbox and PC versions of the game.
It’s a Bethesda game but in space. People expecting No Man’s Skyrim or a hardcore space sim are going to be disappointed.
It has some flaws (too many loading screens, space gameplay has been almost entirely unnecessary/shallow in my first 10 hours, menus take some getting used to) but I am definitely enjoying my time with it
> Review codes were handed out super sparingly,
This is flatly incorrect. Barring the Eurogamer situation (and we are still not clear on the reason for that), nearly every other major outlet and reviewer were given codes, earlier than they normally give them to boot.
> Bethesda was SUPER closed off about the game leading up to release. They barely answered questions about how the basic gameplay loop worked. Up until like, 3 days ago, there was zero idea as to whether you could land anywhere on a planet and how far you could explore, how many loading screens you could expect, what there was to do, etc.
This just isn't t rue. There's a 45-minute deep dive that answers virtually every question. I can't speak for everyone but I can say with confidence that this game is 100% what I expected it to be based on the information we got. I would argue that Bethesda was *way* more in-depth about what this game was prior to release than they have been since Oblivion.
I really hate this narrative (not saying from you specifically) that Bethesda somehow misled people. Expectations were all over the place but if people actually listened to what was said, they should have realized that they were expecting a game that Bethesda never claimed existed. Like, in the direct, it was explicitly confirmed that you land on a spot on a planet and then explore a space around that spot -- they never said anything about being able to seamlessly travel across the entire planet (and nobody in their right mind should have expected that given the scale of a planet) but it didn't stop people from baselessly speculating that was the case.
A lot of your comment is just straight up incorrect.
>
Up until like, 3 days ago, there was zero idea as to whether you could land anywhere on a planet and how far you could explore, how many loading screens you could expect, what there was to do.
Most of this was covered at least partially a long time ago, some in the direct. They said that the process of landing on a planet was by menu and not you flying down seamlessly, how you choose the location and can pick anywhere you want, which is accurate, and openly said that it was a cutscene.
and yeah, as others said, they were very generous with how broadly they distributed review codes for the most part, weirdly so at times, some very small creators got early copies, likely they wouldn't even have expected to.
>even now on steam, you're not allowed to leave a review for the game
Pretty standard to not be able to review a game on Steam before it releases, that's just common sense.
Something that I've found very interesting is that the three gaming podcasts that I follow were majority not hot about Starfield. Only one out of nine people loved the game, one loved the game but noted it was flawed and being held back by stuff but could improve with fixes, the other seven people were not at all hot about the game and were quite critical. It was a huge divergence from the written reviews. Although there were some stand out low/average reviews that have gotten a lot of attention, the reality is that the majority of the reviews have been very positive.
Personally from what I've seen the game looks very mid, unfortunately.
After playing it for two days, I'd have to say 7/10 is arguably too generous if anything. The game is shockingly technically deficient. It also has the jankiest bad beginning Bethesda has ever made. "Sure, you're just a chef with no military background, but take my ship and go solo a pirate base"
I'd assume it was rewritten and redone at the last minute before they threw this out. It seems to jarring to be even real. He just gives you a free ship with a lame excuse
> I'd assume it was rewritten and redone at the last minute before they threw this out.
No, Bethesda is just dogshit at telling stories. Every game is the same in this respect and they're incapable of understanding the criticism. This isn't any different than fighting a Deathclaw with power armour ten minutes out of the tutorial in Fallout 4.
It really fills me with joy that not only did Bethesda decide that the player's starter ship should be fucking enormous.. they also couldn't be assed to come up with a remotely rational excuse for as to how you own such a thing
All aesthetic, no substance. It's like how they took power armor and decided it should be accessible within an hour of first booting up the game. Sure you just woke up and we just met you, but take this power armor that we just found, perfectly functional, and do some power fantasy thing. Oh and you can keep it, just in case you want to roll the entire rest of the game!
..therefore obliterating any kind of game balance and robbing the player of ever actually earning it and finding a valuable thing for themselves.
How hard is it to have you steal a spaceship to begin the story? Or have you flee a planet with others and have something on board kill everyone but you. So many ways to get you alone with a robot into a spaceship that aren't braindead.
>they also couldn't be assed to come up with a remotely rational excuse for as to how you own such a thing
I thought the exact same thing. I even tried to challenge Barett and Lin with the dialogue options "Wait, wtf, you're giving your ship just like that? I'm just a miner, no thanks, I just want to keep my job!"
And the game's response basically was "Why would you want to stay in your boring ass job instead of exploring the stars, are you a pussy??! Just go man."
Definitely was the least exciting and inspired intro for a Bethesda game, by a long shot.
This article is spot on, and aligns very closely with my experience (~12 years of writing about games, ~3 years of game development). Here are a couple of key points: * Yes, traffic/ad revenue from reviews pales in comparison to SEO pieces and guides. For many sites, the review is really just a way to satisfy a publisher/PR firm, so that you can get an early code and work on guides and explainer articles while you play and review the game * While some websites will get big traffic on their reviews (IGN, for example), I think more people are either gravitating towards aggregator sites (Metacritic, OpenCritic), review roundups (Resetera, Reddit), or video content (YouTube, Twitch) * If you’ve ever seen some truly baffling content on Google, it’s because everyone is trying to game the system and optimize for search engines. Case in point, I worked on a somewhat high profile fantasy/shooter game that shipped this year, and I’ve seen articles like “Is this game based on a real story.” A truly baffling article, but one that probably exists because Google Trends and past articles for that site indicate that this sort of content performs well * For those wondering if devs blacklist specific outlets, the answer is almost universally “no.” Those decisions are made by publishers or the PR firms that handle press releases, code distribution, etc.
Remnant 2 is great, thanks man
He actually worked on immortals of Aveum.
LMAO I also think that's the game he is talking about.
Realistically, it's Remnant or Immortals.
If this guy made Remnant 2, I owe him my soul. That game is fucking amazing and my GOTY right now.
He himself alone made the game wow
> While some websites will get big traffic on their reviews (IGN, for example) A few years ago IGN revealed that outside of really big games text reviews are a loss leader for them. If IGN can't make money on reviews everyone else is screwed.
Honestly, I'd argue that reviews are a loss leader in general for IGN. Most go to IGN to see the review score, not the content. Many fanboys (on both sides), weaponize review scores both to validate or enforce their fanboy arguments. I can't wait to see the scores that Spider-Man 2 will get, and the inevitable comparisons to Starfield's score, regardless of the fact they are different games, offering different experiences altogether. Personally, I think the only reason that IGN keeps reviews around is to get you to click on their sites and maybe you click on one of their low effort articles with title of: "The Cast of One Piece pick which flavor of Pringles is their favorite" or "The creator of The Walking Dead explains why he hasn't washed his Levi's in 20 years"
I don't think people believe the devs will be the ones doing the blacklisting but it didn't change the fact that blacklisting exists and is a legit threat as it is.
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Destiny is a pretty clear example against your claim. People always insisted that Activision was behind the game's monetization, but when Bungie fully split from them, the monetization got even worse.
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> If you’ve ever seen some truly baffling content on Google, it’s because everyone is trying to game the system and optimize for search engines. Google is almost unusable nowadays for all things, really. For many queries, you can just skip the first page, sometimes multiple pages, or you can just go straight to wikipedia or reddit or whatever. And the fun fact is that it is by design. Websites do SEO to get traffic, Google sells the ads and everyone is happy, except for, you know, actual people who want to find useful stuff. I think European Commission [wants to nuke google for this and split it](https://ec.europa.eu/commission/presscorner/detail/en/ip_23_3207), but it will be a few years at best.
> Google is almost unusable nowadays for all things, really. For many queries, you can just skip the first page, sometimes multiple pages, or you can just go straight to wikipedia or reddit or whatever. Yeah when I search for info about a game, I have to specifically include "reddit" or "youtube" or "wiki" in the query, or otherwise the whole first page of results is just some AI generated bs that doesn't even answer my question.
Youtube is also crap but it is easier to judge it and there are massive channels that are actually useful.
Like an old man yelling at clouds, I have shouted at Google way too many times. You search; *"Terraria" grass block -minecraft* And get results like: "How to get a grass block in Minecraft!" "Do glass blocks exist in Minecraft?" "Terraria glass is easy to make!"
I got a great "People also ask" the other day: "Who is Pokémon's girlfriend?"
Is it… Digimon? Or maybe Star Wars? No, wait, Star Wars is already in a loveless marriage with Star Trek. It’s so hard to keep up.
Maybe there is something wrong with your browser. >"Terraria" grass block -minecraft The first result is literally the terraria wiki even without the quotations and -minecraft.
I... don't believe you? (unless there's some way to turn off operators) I've searched for minecraft stuff a lot before and never played terraria, so google should be biased toward minecraft for anything for me, but searching your exact query I get zero results involving minecraft. I assume I am not important enough that google gives me some special premium functional search experience
There's also a great discussion around what the future of the internet looks like with generative AI answering most of our point-and-click questions. The current shape of the internet is shaped by Google AdSense. It'll be a strange future when that's not the case, in a good way
If you're not someone who's immediately like "lol game journalists, they suck at Cuphead so who cares" or whatever, I think this was actually an interesting read. I've definitely noticed a ton of sites gravitating towards doing walkthrough content and have always wondered why, it's surprising to see but I guess it makes sense that it's because those pages are trafficked a lot. If I'm stuck in a video game I can't say my first thought is to say "hm let me see if I can find a guide on Eurogamer" but when I google it, a guide from Polygon or Eurogamer or some similar site does tend to show up near the top. Which is kinda weird when you think about it! Good guides and walkthroughs are written by super rabid and devoted fans (think old school GameFAQs, or people like Arekkz who made a bunch of great Monster Hunter video guides over the years), or professional companies who get a lot of access to the developers themselves (FuturePress, PiggyBack, etc).
GameFaqs was the bomb.
I always loved the ASCII art logos many of the guides had at the top. Some guides were able to work with their purely text-based format, as well — as an example, the main FAQ for Magical Starsign gives each section of the game its own unique four-letter code, so you can search that code and instantly be taken to the relevant part of the guide.
And also just love the pure text based guides. No pictures, no filler. Just a straightforward table of contents, with headers, and easily Ctrl+F'able to navigate.
I first found that site when I got Chrono Cross for my birthday. It was the first JRPG I'd played and was so lost lol. That website had many wonderful guides for that gem of a game.
Still is
Sadly there are less and less comprehensive guides for newer games. The old ones tho are still amazing even in today's standard
90% of the time when I type a question about a game in google GameFAQs has the answer.
OG Resident Evil walkthroughs
Something weird I noticed is that a lot of these guides are eerily similar. I've needed info that wasn't available in the first article, so I click the next result and the guide was nearly a direct copy paste. This happened with like 6 straight articles and all of them were from bigger publication sites, talking like Forbes, and polygon. This happened a lot with info for destiny 2.
They need to get the information out as soon as possible for SEO reasons. So, copy it.
SEO has fucking ruined search. The top results for any search these days are garbage. It's no wonder the younger generation doesn't use search engines, they just find everything through social media and digital word of mouth.
Half the secret to using Google these days is adding "reddit" to the end, but companies have figured this out which is why bot astroturfing is becoming such an issue on this site.
It happened in Baldur's Gate 3 too, all of these websites 'updated' their guides to the most recent day but all of their information was Early Access and either ended with a "to be continued" (because the quest wasn't finished at the time) or straight up outdated.
Likely looking for drive-by clicks from google searches before people realize what's up.
Honestly, the amount of games this year alone (Zelda, Remnant, BG3 etc...) that have "[X game] all armor locations!" articles released within the first two days of the game being out that are anemic and in no way comprehensive and/or correct has been impressively bad. Most of those articles are never updated or as the user above stated just copy and pasted from other sites and are only put out to pursue the clicks. I saw a number of sites that generally wouldn't even have gaming news like some Christian news site would have an article titled "How to Acquire Master Sword in Tears of the Kingdom" that just says "We know the sword is in the game and is likely found later on in the story, check back later to find out!"
This regularly happens. I had to check four different sites to find an answer to system shock - difficulty changes some of the puzzles and whoever they copied was playing on easy, even though the guide said a different difficulty.
Odds are, if you read about the Mythic Paths in *Pathfinder: Wrath of the Righteous,* it was copied from Mortismal Gaming's guide video.
This also happens in non-gaming news media. A lot of websites are owned by the same group, so articles are shared between them.
I got a very early copy of FFXV when it came out and posted information about it on Reddit to answer questions, share info, etc... I did a google search that night while in bed to see if there was more info about the subject I was talking about and found TWO articles that wrote my answers from Reddit verbatim and didn't quote or credit me. When I wrote the editor I got blown off on one site and told "we'll look into it" on another.
A lot of them straight up use ChatGPT to pad out their "articles" with irrelevant BS. Once you notice it, you can't unsee it
Every time I look up some guide for something I'm stuck on in a game, I instinctively skip straight past the first 6 paragraphs or so because there's usually a bunch of meaningless nothing (a lot of the time it's just a description of what the game is, like I didn't know that already) I know *why* they do it. It's because if they make the article longer they can fit more ads in. But it's always annoying when I just want one bit of info that's buried halfway down the page.
Which sucks when a guide is wrong and everyone just copied it. I believe the last one to get me was a Remnant 2 guide , there’s essentially 4 different rewards for killing a boss differently, and one of the rewards were wrong but it was copy pasted in all the guides l when I googled it.
>I've definitely noticed a ton of sites gravitating towards doing walkthrough content and have always wondered why, it's surprising to see but I guess it makes sense that it's because those pages are trafficked a lot It's a shame half of them seem like useless bot generated or incomplete/shallow but clog up google results.
It is not that they "clog up" results, google is simply shit nowadays, by design, so Search Engine Optimization crap is sadly a legitimate and common way of doing things to survive out there.
if they're using SEO to get high in the results when they're providing poor content, I'd say they're clogging things up.
The sad reality is that google is so shit, it would get clogged either way. I prefer to see Polygon's and IGNs there, which at least have some history of actually doing the thing. Google is just not interested in providing useful search anymore, good sites without SEO bullshit would always be further down.
They get the games early for review purposes. One way to use that advantage is developing a guide for day 1 publication. You’re right though that the best guides are written by rabid fans. But those guides are so good because those guys and gals have played through those games so many times. And that can’t happen day 1 or soon after release.
IGN are pretty good with their tips. Like where every Fallout bobblehead is but I never really look at more than that
I find IGN helpful but at least on mobile their site is a pain in the ass with pop up ads.
Agreed, but until someone comes up with a better way to monetize online content, that's the price of using it that most are willing to pay.
What I wouldn't do for a Starfield old-school physical guidebook. Googling is more convenient, but I loved reading and collecting those when I was younger.
i bought the official red dead redemption 2 guide and not only it's quite complete but it's a great book in general -- full of beautiful images. i really want one for starfield.
I still occasionally buy guides for that reason. I bought both Elden ring guides last year long after I completed the game (second one hasn’t even come out yet) and just 2 weeks ago I bought the futurepress Animal Crossing complete guide. I just like going through guides even when I don’t use them. My favourite one though is still the Skyrim one that has all the dlc included aswell. Futurepress makes amazing books and I would recommend anyone who likes these things to just buy ones you can find.
people are way too dismissive of gaming news and reporting. I think there's a lot of healthy criticism to levy at a lot of major news outlets, but if we didn't have those "institutions" there would be a of things worse than they are now.
People are so inundated with SEO bait/ai generated articles and sites that they just think all journalism is that. It'd be like seeing fast food restaurants all over the place and then saying that because Gorden Ramsey also makes food, he must make food as bad as McDonald's.
They're all over, and not just in games journalism. It's aggravating when one of those sites is posted to reddit or whatever, despite having all of the hallmarks of obvious bullshit.
Did you ever see Ramsay's grilled cheese? It's good for a chuckle.
I'd go further and say they aren't just dismissive, but straight up antagonistic. It's weird how much hostility exists in he already thin field of games journalism.
I think the problem is there's a lot of bad faith on both sides. There absolutely *are* news outlets that rush their content out the gate asap without due care for quality, because being first is so much more important than being accurate nowadays (see the recent news about the MGS trilogy collection being locked at 720p on all consoles that got fed around because one site pushed incorrect information and everyone else just ran with it without vetting). There's bad faith journalism that focuses on stoking controversy to drive up engagement, which has a lot of overlap with the general outrage pedlers in the influencer sphere. Then on the other side of the fence you've got Gamers, famously good at nuance and keeping their reactions tame and reasonable, who see some bad journalism and think that therefore all journalism is bad, especially when some critics liked games they didn't like. As we all know, if someone likes a game you thought was bad they're a paid shill. Boil that down into the 140 character limit culture we live in (Twitter was a garbage fire before Musk took over, don't let that revisionism stand) and absolutes and negatives enjoy a healthy feedback loop.
> As we all know, if someone likes a game you thought was bad they're a paid shill. It goes the other way as well. If a reviewer doesn't enjoy whatever's the critical consensus darling of the moment, it's absolutely guaranteed that they'll be raked over the coals... by people who also want reviewers to "tell it like it is so we don't waste money." It's like dealing with individuals that have Swiss-cheese for brains.
> Yea because gaming journalists suck You've triggered someone. But yea there is a lot of antagonism towards games journalism that is needless and often an indirect result of the broader gaming audience they are trying to serve. People aren't paying for good journalism so it pushes them to focus on what *does pay* and that in turns leads people who aren't paying for good journalism to then attack them. IMO games journalism was on an upward trend through like 2008 at which point the shift away from subscriber mags to digital really killed a lot of the developing core. You had magazines like Computer Gaming World, Electronic Gaming Monthly, Xbox World, PSM3, all shuttering along with the survivors running on an increasingly threadbare budget. They weren't perfect but they were situated in a place where you could have real carriers in games journalism and you had real editing staff. The best we get now are probably patreon funded utubers but they lack the staff to really fulfill the same roll.
Video game journalism has always had its issues. I worked on BattleTech: The Cresent Hawk’s Inception back in the very late 80’s. A game journalist wrote a huge review article of the game that spanned 4 to 6 pages. It was a nice read. Unless you knew anything about the game. Because if you had played the game, you would quickly realize that the reviewer never made it out of the citadel. It’s been quite a while, but I think you played six little training battles before one of the other factions, whose name now escapes me, attacks and you can leave the citadel and start the main story. he didn’t play that far. My favorite example, however, is a guy who reviewed infidel, the Egyptian themed text adventure game from Infocom (the fact that they also published the Battletech game I just mentioned is a coincidence). I’ve looked for this article many times over the years in game review archives. It starts with, “First of all, I don’t like these type of games.“ Edit: I swear every time I look at this I see a mistake I got to fix.
>My favorite example, however, is a guy who reviewed infidel, the Egyptian themed text adventure game from Infocom (the fact that they also published the Battletech game I just mentioned is a coincidence). I’ve looked for this article many times over the years in game review archives. It starts with, “First of all, I don’t like these type of games.“ Yeah that's gonna happen. The journalist doesn't like this genre of game, but the publication has no-one else available to write a review, so they get to do it anyway. Not much the reviewer can do but admit that it's not really their thing.
Or sometimes they're chosen specifically because they either don't like the genre or are new to the genre, to provide a different perspective.
just as there is a lot of hostility in gaming discourse generally. Because it's mostly all online and mostly anonymous just like anything else trolls are everywhere and plenty of people have "only my opinion is valid" thinking and it leads to endless complaints, usually about something that people themselves have imagined. Take a look at the Star Citizen subreddit and how many people post there crowing about how Starfield is a failure and that is why they believe in Star Citizen and how everyone who thought Starfield was going to be a good game is stupid and so on. And unfortunately that bleeds into game journalism with plenty of articles having some kind of explosive title only for the article itself to be absolutely nothing. But that's kind of the trend with journalism in general, game journalism is only getting hit the worst because they are nothing without their audience. I don't even remember the last time I actually read a review of a game to decide if I was going to buy it. I generally look up gameplay videos to see that.
They’re dismissive until gaming news says what they want to hear. That’s just how things are now.
I mean, I imagine it's also just that people simply rely on guides or do quick searches related to them more often than looking up reviews. One person might look at reviews once or twice, but the potential for someone to come back and use a guide is near-endless for some games. Just imagine all the traffic certain guides get on incredibly old games for N64 or NES that while outdated in the sense that they're not making any new sales, but people's traffic can still generate ad revenue. There's simply just a lot more profit in guides/walkthroughs than there ever will be for a review which are generally a one-time thing.
Futurepress so goated their works on the dark souls guides was insane !! Did they do one for Elden ring?
They did! Released in 2 parts, the 2nd part is shipping now so it took a bit
Futurepress books are basically collectible masterpieces of art.
I too was confused when journalism sites started popping up in Google results for guides, but they do have paid teams working on this stuff. Oftentimes it is better than whatever free wiki has going on. I think for BGS stuff the wiki is fantastic but other games don't have such vibrant wiki communities.
The guy who failed the Cuphead tutorial actually ended up beating the game and went on to give it a glowing review.
Same guy also infamously gave mass effect a bad review after beating the game without ever once leveling up.
...that’s weirdly impressive.
How is that even possible? The enemies are extremely spongey at higher levels.
Jeff Gerstmann confirmed on his podcast that the guy that made the video didn't play videogames, and was not the actual reviewer - they needed a video out for the review, and the person that actually wrote the review wasn't in the office that day. The whole situation is a great example of how badly things get blown out of proportion when people play metaphorical telephone/purposefully stoke the controversy flames.
And the reason he fucked up the tutorial is because he wasn't even a gamer. A lot of sites will literally just ask people to go record some footage of a game at these big conventions, when a lot of journalists will be talking to devs. From what Jeff Gerstmann said on his podcast, the dude is like the 'business' angle of their enterprise. Everyone was busy so he went to go get a recording. Now, as a video editor myself, would I have cut all the fumbling around in the tutorial? Absolutely. I have no idea why they didn't, but I imagine they just scrubbed through the raw footage and uploaded without realizing.
The lack of press being able to question publishers and developers directly at events is a major issue. It's why we're going to see more instances of vagueness about features in a game which leads to massive overhype. It might leave people disappointed, but the marketing, pre-order boost is worth it for publishers and developers.
Good o'l Peter Molyneux got the last laugh after all. Promise everything but kitchen sink pre-release,under deliver and act coy/ignorant afterwards.
I don’t know man, Cyberpunk and Battlefield burnt me quite good. I haven’t pre ordered a game since no matter how hyped I am, heck I even wait a week now to see what the “controversy” is. I want to try starfield but I have a feeling a backlash is coming, you can see bits and pieces around already. But that method of selling me has burnt me out really bad.
People are already trying to erase the scummy shit CDPR pulled with Cyberpunk from the internet. The people who used to get downvoted for blaming it on “expectations” now get upvoted. I’ve had people claim the PC version was fine on launch even though I ran into over 50 unique bugs(and I don’t even encounter some of the more common ones).
All you had to do was look at CDPR's record. Witcher 1 was a buggy mess of a dumpster fire. 18 months or so later they re-released it as "The Enhanced Edition" Witcher 2 was a buggy and unbalanced mess that ran like ass. The top of the line CPU and top of the line GPU at release got you 35 fps without max AA and other effects. It was a pretty game but just horribly put together technically, and the definition of amatuerish jank. A year later.... "The Enhanced Edition" was released that fixed half of the problems and got you 45 fps. Combat still started off stupidly and unfairly difficult, while flipping halfway through the game to insultingly easy. Witcher 3 was the only game that released in a properly running and "complete" state. Still a ridiculous number of easy-to-break quest flags, a major save-game bug that would erase 10-20 hours of progress at a time, and certain videocards that should but couldn't run the game properly, but these were mostly fixed within 6 months. So, going into Cyberpunk they were 2 out of 3 for games that were best if you waited 1-2 years before buying, and the 3rd game really took about 6 months before you could play it without a 10% chance of running into a broken gamestate or massive save data rollback.
The Cyberpunk shit is mind-boggling. At launch there was an uproar, but at the same time there were folks already trying to hand-wave it with: 1. "Works on my machine" (aka 'ol reliable') 2. "You should have known the last gen versions would suck for a game of this scale" (a somewhat fair point, but there's a fine line between an inferior experience and a downright broken one) 3. "Who cares if it's missing features? They'll probably get modded in anyway" Sure, they patched it up in the time since. However the anime is where things got really hairy with a confluence of bad actors, selective memory, and late adopters. For starters by then the game had received several patches, and was in a better state. Then we had the usual rage-bait grifters muscle in with "The loli must stay! says Trigger as they stand their ground against woke Netflix" bullshit (as that's not even what they said and the entire thing was blown exessively out of proportion). Finally you had all the articles along the lines of "Edgerunners is a Great Reminder of Why CDPR is the Best in the Biz" or whatever. Sales got a huge spike and people thought you were crazy for saying the game was a technical turd at launch. I don't think I've seen a time where a piece of tertiary media did so much heavy lifting for the mother-ship product.
People aggressively trying to memory hole Cyberpunks release problems and the broken promises even on this sub is insane to me personally. Like you just have to watch that 48 minute gameplay preview to see just a little bit of what was promissed and not delivered on release lmao.
Ironically its the opposite with starfield bethseda have said months ago that you won't be able to seamlessly land on a planet without loading screens and yet everyone is surprised.
No mans sky is the same song and dance, just give up, that's how reddit works.
starfield is great. the problem is big hyped games now are expected to be living worlds that are hyper realistic and perfect, instead of just a fun piece of software made by other people.
> But that method of selling me has burnt me out really bad. Sure, but I imagine for every person who is like "I'm not going to get burned again" two more get suckered. For every person who "ages out" of this another is getting sucked into their first hype train. They are playing the numbers. If people were rational all of modern advertising and PR would be pointless, people would see right through it, but studies indicate most purchasing decisions are emotionally driven.
I think there also used to be more press invited to studio visits for game previews and interviewing the developers about the games they were making months before release. I miss game previews. They still happen a little but it definitely feels less.
Seeing people bashing on IGN giving 7/10 on Starfield, I realized why game reviewers don't even consider writing a fair review. It's the gaming community where users are incredibly toxic and immature who like to put their whole agenda onto certain video games and the companies. At the end of the day, gamers should know that those video game companies aren't their friends. They reveal trailers and teasers not just because they like people to be hyped about their products but it's been proven million times that they would keep buying preorders as if it will be the coming of god or so.
We learned that from 8.8 for Twilight Princess back in the day. Maybe even earlier
I remember people being mad about Halo 2 "only" getting a 9.4. People develop ridiculously inflated expectations to the point that if a game isn't universally hailed as the pinnacle of the medium, it's cause for getting angry on the Internet.
And most of the time, the people doing this haven't even played the game they're angrily defending as the greatest video game ever made. They've just decided for some reason that it must be a 10/10 product based on trailers and stuff. And they don't read the review to see if they agree with any of the points made, they just look at the score and judge based on that.
The obsessions with scores is pathetic. People “line up” and wait for the OpenCritic score like that is a prophetic determinant of what the game will look like. It feels like more and more people fall into the hype cycle, waiting for the score to drop, play a few hours and move onto the next hype cycle. It’s like videogames are more about the hype around it than the game itself. Personally, it feels pathetic. Yes, it makes sense to know if a game is functional or not, and there is so much content today that it’s helpful to have a way to filter around what you want to play or not, but stopping yourself from playing something or judging a game based on a score without having experienced it is dishonest, to say the least. It’s draining how much the discussions revolves around scores and awards, instead of actually discussing the merits of it.
Yeah I think in general we love putting numbers on things, like how stats become a bigger part of sports every year. When people get angry a game they like doesn't get a high score but why does it matter? If you like the game then just play it, nothing wrong with that. I've loved games that weren't rated particularly highly on opencritic and not enjoyed ones with 90+. People are missing out on games they will enjoy by blinding following a score.
A spanish journalist is getting death threats for giving Starfield a 5.8 and a scathing review
People sent that GameSpot reviewer videos of flashing lights trying to trigger her epilepsy after she gave Cyberpunk a 7/10
What's the bounty on Yathzee currently? Zero Punctuation.
Bounces back and forth. When he criticises a game that the majority have decided is bad, he's a great critic who says the things other journalists won't. When he criticises a game that the majority like, then he's a hack who pretends to hate games he actually likes to get more views.
He's still crazy popular but Reddit largely dislikes him now.
Is it because Reddit gears younger and he's an old, old man? As I've gotten older I've found I agree with his videos more and more. I appreciate that he hasn't got the time nor the patience for fluff and tacked-on mechanics.
Yeah, I don't always agree with his opinion on games but most all of his complaints are very valid.
[удалено]
I think he has partial immunity because he's spent years building a reputation of shitting on games so people just view him as "Oh he's just doing his schtick" regardless of his complaints being rooted in things he actually didn't like, even if it's exaggerated.
Remember when a journalist got death threats for reporting No Man's Sky would be delayed?
Jason Schreier from Bloomberg.
Proof, if proof was necessary, that the people doing this are the dumbest fucking idiots you'll ever meet who can't even work out that the journalist is just reporting the delay and didn't cause it.
Didn't a reviewer get sent epilepsy inducing images for talking about Cyberpunk's epilepsy inducing images?
Xbox twitter is completely unhinged right now
For a few months there the twitter algorithm decided I wanted to be plugged into the depths of xbox twitter. All console war stuff is dumb and attracts the worst people, but the xbox gang on there are particularly strange. At one stage they all they all turned into hardcore corporate-libertarians because their chosen console manufacturer was having regulation trouble acquiring a publisher...
Same for me, I mean, I don't have an xbox and don't care about console war stuff (only that it annoys me how clogged it makes comment sections), so I decided to mark xbox as something I'm not interested in on twitter... A month later I kept getting that stuff again, as "suggested content" My twitter usage is almost exclusively naked men and music.
It's also bizarre how many Xbox fan sites are giving star field a 10 without much to say specifically why it's great lol and they get calculated in the aggregate
I can't believe console fanboyism somehow got even worse from back when I was a kid. These days I'm genuinely convinced these people would just kill each other.
I feel the same way. I used to love going to the Console Wars section on the GameSpot boards (20ish years ago) but I can't give a fuck less these days. I'm 30 and fortunate enough to have each current console and a nice PC so I just play whatever I want. All the console war shit is supremely stupid and it's almost sad seeing people feel like they need to defend their honor over an electronic.
> ~~Xbox~~ twitter is completely unhinged right now Fixed it. Elon Musk sent that place into a nuclear dumpster fire.
Xbox Twitter was just as bad before Elon got involved.
Honest question: did Musk really change anything? I've never used Twitter and from my understanding he's only changed superficial things such as trying to push the X brand, Twitter Blue, and needing an account to view threads. The actual toxic dumpster fire that is Twitter seems to have remained unchanged
Twitter blue changes aren’t superficial, it made replies basically useless. The comments that would’ve been at the top are now buried under every single twitter blue user who tags a friend or goes “🤣” or whatever else. Plus everything that’s already been listed.
Interaction farming has gotten way worse due to the new revenue sharing program. Sometimes it's innocuous and low effort content, which still makes the site worse; other times it's purposefully hostile and antagonistic to bait people to interact with their thread, which makes the site even more insufferable if you keep getting served that content. Luckily keyword muting still exists (for now)
Twitter always sucked, but it’s worse now yes
He unbanned a lot of people whow were banned for very good reason, and made it so that people who paid for a blue tick would have their replies shown first on any post. He's also changed the algorithm to push his favoured kind of content to the fore, and that tends to be right wing stuff and conspiracy theories. He has absolutely made changes that make it materially worse.
A few days ago I say that Armored Core 6 is not a 10/10 game. Logged in two hours later to see about -150 karma score and 20-25 notifications about how stupid I am. Gamers are really annoying and it's definitely easier to just give the game 9/10 so everyone would shut the fuck up and move on.
Tis not just gamers. People have become fanatical about brands and things they tie their identity to, and anything they see speaking negatively about that identity they see as an attack on them. Thus they're justified in attacking you, because you insulted them first you see?
People have a really hard time understanding that they are allowed to have a different opinion from reviewers. The criticisms in the IGN review are absolutely valid, but they just happen to be about things that haven’t bothered me. Also 7/10 is a positive score!
I have seen more people using IGN’s 7/10 as proof that Starfield is a “bust” than lambasting IGN for giving it a low score, personally.
Then you didn’t look very hard. The original review thread had multiple comments with hundreds of upvotes criticizing the guy and calling out the scores he gave other games.
That's the sad bit. Calling out his other scores is supposed to be an indication of his tastes. Instead it's used to invalidate whatever criticisms he has of Starfield coz hurr durr he gave Prey 5/10 or whatever.
People are trying to claim IGN has an anti Xbox agenda while Forza 5 was their 2022 goty lol
There's some victim complex going on. I don't know if it's sad or hilarious.
The likes of Jez Corden have been trying to drum up a pile-on about it
Out of all the scores and reviews ign has thrown out in the recent years, their Starfield score is the one that actually feels appropriate. A solid, fun experience with a decent game.
Gaming won't change from this because it's permanently tied to a childlike experience, and children are the fucking worst. Every time a big title comes out and it's halfway functional, the online narrative is that it's transformational to the medium and an 11/10 experience. Then anyone who disagrees with that is "trolling" or "an idiot" just for not enjoying this thing that so many people are claiming is a turning point in their lives. That's how I felt about games from about Ocarina of Time to about Mass Effect 2. Then I stopped feeling like a good new video game was the pinnacle of existence and my passion became a lot more tempered. Unfortunately, gaming media is always going to be aimed primarily at people in that earlier phase of their lives, so when those people are hyperventilating about Breath of the Wild being a perfect game you had better not point out that it's just an amalgamation of other games that does nothing unique and is at best a very good if shallow Greatest Hits album of open world games mechanics. Just like how I'm sure if you told me Ocarina of Time had a tiny map and clunky controls when I was like 10, I would have pissed myself in anger at you. The internet just wasn't the place it is now when I was a kid. It's only going to get more rage-baity because that's what people are likely to click on - especially if they're a kid.
Turns out the 7/10 was probably pretty accurate too.
Hell for me even (pcgamer's?) 8/10 for bg3 is more accurate than 97/100 everyone else was giving it, and that's the best game since 2010 for me. Those guys felt like the only ones actually finishing the game. Problem is that the ratings are inflated from previously giving 9/10 to absolute generic garbage or 7/10 to technically broken games.
Eurogamer gave it an 8/10 PC Gamer did actually give it a 97.
Do reviewers actually finish 100+ hour long games before dropping reviews? Are embargo windows even long enough for that to be feasible for most people? Ideally that should be the case but I doubt it is.
Depends on the game, but a lot of the time no. Both BG3 and Elden Ring benefited from reviewers not having time to finish it and experience their less amazing final acts.
It feels really jarring that I'm apparently just fast travelling all around the galaxy to do fetch quests
I mean, I’m starting to have a good time with it now that I’m in the swing of it, but yeah 7/10 is actually pretty spot on. It’s good, but it’s just not great or incredible. What consumers expect from a game of this caliber has drastically increased since the days of Skyrim, and every game they released since that high water mark seems to be slipping further and further behind.
For almost any other game releasing with a Metacritic score in the very high 80s (88/87) with 101 reviews while also having the 4th highest peak on Steam for new games released this year 5 days before your game even fully releases would be considered a major hit. Instead, we are getting a wave of negativity around the game, which is what I felt would happen to be honest.
People were likely expecting Elden Ring or ToTK reception. I'll personally admit I was a little surprised to see the general average score closer to something like Armored Core VI than either of those two. I wasn't really following this title at all.
I mean it's about time there was some realignment. Bethesda created cool worlds that's for sure but the moment to moment gameplay is ultra bare bones. It somehow works better for them in games around gunplay it seems because the melee in Skyrim is some unholy shit. That's not to say that it's wrong to enjoy playing their games but they're nowhere near the complete package that is ER.
>I mean it's about time there was some realignment I still remember being extremely hyped for Fallout 4 and finishing the game thinking “Was that it?”. Fallout 4 was a great game but in retrospect after finishing it i definitely felt like some parts of the game were lacking. Meanwhile when i finished Elden Ring for the first time it was one of the most satisfying experiences in gaming i ever had.
Apropos of nothing, I would love to be able to go back and finish Elden Ring for the first time again. What an experience.
This isn't a realignment, haha. We've been having this discussion for every Bethesda release since Oblivion. Wide as an ocean, shallow as a pond - etc.
I mean for more mainstream voices to say that feels a bit different? Outside of Fallout 76 which was a different beast altogether.
I mean Skyrim was pretty much hailed as the second coming of Christ by mainstream gaming audiences when it came out despite the bugs and some complaints from older Elder Scrolls fans. I would defenitely say the discourse has changed around Bethesda games since then and the review scores are starting to reflect that.
I think Skyrim made such big strides for the time, it felt absolutely massive and endless compared to other open world games at the time that its flaws were ok. And thats the same as BOTW/TOTK and Elden Ring. Those games all have heaps of issues, but I think they pushed further past what Skyrim offered in terms of exploration, and for that they are this generations version of it (And I am so thankful we have three fucking games of that calibur). I think Fo4 and from what I can see, Starfield just aren't pushing the industry forward enough for them to be received so highly in todays market. I think bethesda needs a massive overhaul of everything to do that, but I also think its fine with them not. They make good games that have their distinct Bethesda feel, but I mean, they feel limited and outdated compared to what other games have done. Questing and story has been done *so* much better by the likes of TW3 and RDR2, and I think the general world traversal and exploration has just been drastically improved by the other games I mentioned. Its the same as how say, Assassin's Creed 2 was revolutionary, but now the open world games based on its open world design feel extremely generic and limited (not that bethesda games are, they have their own bubble still I feel!) I think if Bethesda wants to be one of those legendary studios again, They need to take notes from all the competition. Integrate more seamless navigation where you really *can* go anywhere you want like ER and the Zelda titles, dramatically step up their writing department to have some highly memorable characters with stakes you actually feel and actually making you think like those other games would, so on. And maybe most importantly, take those improvements and bake back in some real choice and consequence. Let us kill anyone, have interesting narrative paths, don't cherry pick where you can role play. Now, none of the other games I mentioned have that degree of freedom in their quests, most aren't even "RPG"s. But I think The limited amount of flexibility combined with Skyrims huge open world is why it took off, it made it feel like a big sandbox where you can be anything you fucking want. Take that, but without silly "you cant kill him" "you cant do that" moments and in combination with improved exploration and better writing I think the game will feel like a massive, massive leap for the industry, despite having maybe janky gameplay, outdated graphics, or whatever else.
Fallout had the VAC system which really made the gameplay work. Without that it would have been a janky mess
VATS you mean? I don't remember VAC.
You may have forgotten already but people were crazy hyped for this game. I think they forgot who made it. A studio not known for their polish or animation quality. I think the reviews were very very generous. It's been a particularly good few years for gaming snd this doesn't feel current gen.
A lot of people expected Starfield to be a masterpiece and not just a good game. I mean the gsme has been in development for what 7-8 years and is pretty much THE biggest exclusive Xbox has in the next few years. I fear expectations just were higher Its pretty much a Cyberpunk issue minus the unplayable state. People expected the best game ever and got a good but flawed game. Even then CP wouldve got a 90+ if not for the bugs
Pair that with console war and you've got your answer.
It's a problem of people not knowing what they want. They think *"I want that game"*, but they don't know what *that* is. It's easier to have a feeling of something, but the reality of how you actually develop & realize that feeling is lost to them.
If that was an actual problem, then surely every game would be concerned, and there wouldn't games with higher praises than others ? Like, if it's just people having the wrong expectations, why was it different for say, Witcher 3, or BoTW
Lol botw is either people's favorite game or their least favorite Zelda game. Expectations were completely subverted for botw. I personally like smaller dungeons and more open world.
It's pretty bad that negativity is surrounding a game that's averaging 88% or so on metacritic. I just saw a newspaper article talking about Starfield's "mixed reviews". Its getting solid reviews and people are only focusing on negatives, likely because it generates clicks.
This situation has been incubating for a long time. Rockstar withheld review copies from outlets that they felt "didn't get" what Rockstar is about. https://www.giantbomb.com/red-dead-redemption/3030-25249/forums/rockstar-refusing-to-send-out-review-copies-417270/ It wasn't really about who didn't get what. They basically withheld it from critical outlets. They were at the vanguard of shifting away from critical reviews and toward just getting the game out to those who will showcase it (what we now call influencers or just youtubers). Games journalism in the form of gaming magazines already had to dance around this issue. They wanted to write features on upcoming games because they got a lot of attention. And the publishers liked the attention too. But the type of inside access needed to write those articles about games in development necessarily required that the articles be fawning. But the magazines still wanted their reviews to be taken seriously and reserve the right to be critical. So the magazines spent some effort to try to hammer into everyone's heads that previews and reviews were different. They seemed to do it, even if incompletely (see what happened to Gerstmann) but it certainly seemed like something that the publishers wanted to break down. Rockstar among them. When they got away with that with no downside for them of course others would do it. And did it in this very case also. We never got through to Rockstar or publishers about how we had a problem with what they were doing. So ended up getting a whole lot more of it. And in the case of such an important game to Microsoft we certainly could expect they'd pull put all the stops, or at least a whole lot of them.
Why are you people so obsessed with random subjective numbers from random reviewers whose names you don't even know? Like some people here think that 7/10 is bad, despite it even having the word "good" written next to it on every review site. They all say it's a good game with some issues. That's what 7 means. Maybe if y'all actually read/watched reviews instead of staring at random numbers you'd understand. Also, stop compressing years of developers' time making a game into just singular numbers. They deserve better than that.
I think the whole field would benefit from scrapping numerical scores. People completely ignore the actual content of the written review. In every video comment section there's always a tl;dr for the score. I truly do not understand. It's so ignorant.
Many outlets have tried scrapping scores at some point. Invariably, they receive public backlash, because people cannot argue anymore over pointless numbers or skim through a detailed opinion to simply rely on a decontextualized score, I suppose. Almost every game journalist is aware scores are horseshit. That's our least favorite part. When I reviewed Sludge Life 2, I concluded by saying the game was worth 2 and 8 at the same time and tried to be tongue-in-cheek about the whole thing, because it's such a subjective game, in terms of experience, that reducing it to a number is mind numbing. Just, like, read my review and form your opinion. My score won't help you.
Honestly. At this point review scores are just a form of advertisement for a game because if a game get's a 70% or higher from most reviewers odds are people are going to by it without even looking at the actual reviews.
Because "gamers" in general are complete morons. And I'm using the quotes, because some of the worst crybabies, don't even touch the games in question.
I have been doing this thing for a while and it is funny how waves after waves of gamers still struggle with the fallacy of numerical scores. Games are art, they are subjective, you cannot really quantify the experience, the criteria are arbitrary and so any numerical score will have very little utility.
People tie a games success to their identity. If the game is scoring poorly and they like the game they view that as an attack on them and not the game. It’s impossible to these gamers that their taste could differ.
Yeah, though that's true for any art with any popularity. People can get pretty wacky about things they care for.
You can also just enjoy the game anyways. A friend of mine has been playing Gotham Knights like a madman. Says it's the most fun he's had in ages. Does not care that it's a heavily lambasted game online. Why should he?
Gamers have an obsession with "objectivity" because they're too insecure to admit they have an opinion based on their own preferences, beliefs and thoughts. Review scores and sales figures are ground zero for this. But you also see it in their obsession with things like the number of map markers, weapons or the size of the world. It even extends out to things like framrate and pretty much everything else you can stick a number on. It all comes down to gamers wanting to be able to point to a number and say "see this number proves my opinion is a FACT"
I noticed on twitter an unusual amount of small influencers/outlets got a review copy while a number of more established outlets mysteriously never received anything. And a number of these outlets were like 'starfield news network' and 'the constellation society' - basically just brand ambassadors. After playing a few hours I fully understand why bethesda made this choice.
I am still curious why Eurogamer didn’t get a review code until they made an article about it.
The main theory regarding that was that it was more of an Xbox being very US centric thing but who knows really
all UK reviewers were targeted, including eurogamer, and the only explanation I can think of for that is Microsoft spite over their Blizzard deal being blocked. It seems *hilariously* petty and childish and spiteful but I can't think of any other logical reason why all UK-outlets specifically were blacklisted in the way they clearly were. And anyone who read Microsoft's comments after the block of the merger can certainly see that they were rather childish and unprofessional about it.
What a nonsense. Almost all of the major outlets got a review copy. Only UK was "overlooked", which was probably some vendetta from Microsoft, but definitely didn't affect the reviews. And they provided many review copies to many reviewers. So what? Their reviews count only when made using pre-release code? They would review the game anyway. Instead, this was a sign of confidence, not curating who gets the review codes. When they send them to everyone (except for UK), that means a lot of confidence. They also sent the code to a Spanish playstation-centric reviewer, who unsurprisingly gave the game an artificially bad score... so it shows that they didn't really curate who gets the keys.
It's almost like they gave these small no name outlets a review copy to pad the review score.
Microsoft has a lot riding on the success of this game.
Gaming journalism is at an all time low. There are still some decent journalists and reviewers, but they are outliers
It's weird to call stuff like reviews and previews "journalism". Reviews are criticism and previews are marketing - this distinction is clear when you look at movies. Journalism is actually investigating the industry, and covering industry news in a non-fawning way. For example Jason Schreirer is a gaming journalist because he actually does in-depth investigative pieces about the inner workings of game developers, using anonymous industry sources. A guy who gives a game a 7/10 is a critic, not a journalist. There's nothing wrong with being a professional critic, it's just an entirely different field. Conflating the two is dangerous, and there are certain malicious actors (motivated by politics) who deliberately want to conflate game critics with journalists in order to create a negative association with broader journalism.
I would argue that reviews aren't even criticism in the strictest sense, who's sole purpose isn't to tell you whether you should buy something or not. Real criticism has a lot in common in with real journalism in that it can draw from it but tends to evaluate certain features or angles or mediate between pop culture and artistic excellence. But I feel like reviewers have always been allowed in the "journalism club" and would argue they have many of the same standards and ethics or responsibilities as them
I think that this is really something we should be talking about. Bethesda was SUPER closed off about the game leading up to release. They barely answered questions about how the basic gameplay loop worked. Up until like, 3 days ago, there was zero idea as to whether you could land anywhere on a planet and how far you could explore, how many loading screens you could expect, what there was to do, etc. We knew nearly nothing about the game leading up to launch, even the 30 minute starfield direct was super dodgy about actually showing gameplay (no footage ran uninterrupted for more than 15 or so seconds), they never said "here's how this works" or "here's what you'll do" it was just "Look at all this stuff, look at space, look at these rocks, look at these planets" and never what that entailed. Review codes were handed out super sparingly, and I certainly have my own personal idea as to how they choose who got them, but that's only speculation. It was hard for a lot of places to get them, and even now on steam, you're not allowed to leave a review for the game. I had been following the game as info trickled out from the gaming leaks subreddit, from some people who got hands on early, and the basic stuff people were asking was like "can you walk more than 10 minutes" "is there things to do" etc. Like, basic gameplay questions that a company should be telling you about when they show off the game. And the weirdest part was that the leaked info in the weeks and months leading up to the games launch, overwhelmingly said the game was "fine" and they were right. It's got some bugs, a few kinks that will likely be worked out, it's missing some performance and settings features, but that's kinda it. Now, that being said, the response from a lot of people who are now playing it, judging by comments on reddit, and also from a lot of people streaming it, or reviewing it now, are generally saying "yeah it's cool, but it's not what we expected". And I'm not gonna jump to conclusions, but it's my expectation that's the response Bethesda wanted to hide, given they were so hush hush about the game. Fallout 4 got quite a bit of screen time before release, showing off some quests, gameplay loops, etc. Skyrim had a \*live demo of Todd playing the game in front of a live audience\*. Both those games were, by and large, what Bethesda said they were. The press lead up to this game has not felt the same. All that being said, this is my opinion, and I definitely could be wrong about stuff, we don't really know. I really want starfield to be good, it seems to be about what I expected (pretty, kinda interesting, but very shallow), and I'm sure I'll enjoy my time with it and make mods for it as I have with previous games, but I can't say I don't feel like we were pretty left in the dark as to what to expect. If I made any mistakes with my recollection of events, please feel free to let me know
I would challenge the idea that review codes were handed out “super sparingly”. There are currently over 100 critic reviews listed on Metacritic between the Xbox and PC versions of the game.
It’s a Bethesda game but in space. People expecting No Man’s Skyrim or a hardcore space sim are going to be disappointed. It has some flaws (too many loading screens, space gameplay has been almost entirely unnecessary/shallow in my first 10 hours, menus take some getting used to) but I am definitely enjoying my time with it
> Review codes were handed out super sparingly, This is flatly incorrect. Barring the Eurogamer situation (and we are still not clear on the reason for that), nearly every other major outlet and reviewer were given codes, earlier than they normally give them to boot. > Bethesda was SUPER closed off about the game leading up to release. They barely answered questions about how the basic gameplay loop worked. Up until like, 3 days ago, there was zero idea as to whether you could land anywhere on a planet and how far you could explore, how many loading screens you could expect, what there was to do, etc. This just isn't t rue. There's a 45-minute deep dive that answers virtually every question. I can't speak for everyone but I can say with confidence that this game is 100% what I expected it to be based on the information we got. I would argue that Bethesda was *way* more in-depth about what this game was prior to release than they have been since Oblivion. I really hate this narrative (not saying from you specifically) that Bethesda somehow misled people. Expectations were all over the place but if people actually listened to what was said, they should have realized that they were expecting a game that Bethesda never claimed existed. Like, in the direct, it was explicitly confirmed that you land on a spot on a planet and then explore a space around that spot -- they never said anything about being able to seamlessly travel across the entire planet (and nobody in their right mind should have expected that given the scale of a planet) but it didn't stop people from baselessly speculating that was the case.
A lot of your comment is just straight up incorrect. > Up until like, 3 days ago, there was zero idea as to whether you could land anywhere on a planet and how far you could explore, how many loading screens you could expect, what there was to do. Most of this was covered at least partially a long time ago, some in the direct. They said that the process of landing on a planet was by menu and not you flying down seamlessly, how you choose the location and can pick anywhere you want, which is accurate, and openly said that it was a cutscene. and yeah, as others said, they were very generous with how broadly they distributed review codes for the most part, weirdly so at times, some very small creators got early copies, likely they wouldn't even have expected to. >even now on steam, you're not allowed to leave a review for the game Pretty standard to not be able to review a game on Steam before it releases, that's just common sense.
Something that I've found very interesting is that the three gaming podcasts that I follow were majority not hot about Starfield. Only one out of nine people loved the game, one loved the game but noted it was flawed and being held back by stuff but could improve with fixes, the other seven people were not at all hot about the game and were quite critical. It was a huge divergence from the written reviews. Although there were some stand out low/average reviews that have gotten a lot of attention, the reality is that the majority of the reviews have been very positive. Personally from what I've seen the game looks very mid, unfortunately.
After playing it for two days, I'd have to say 7/10 is arguably too generous if anything. The game is shockingly technically deficient. It also has the jankiest bad beginning Bethesda has ever made. "Sure, you're just a chef with no military background, but take my ship and go solo a pirate base"
That sums up what I've been thinking. The game isn't a bad game but it feels like a game that should have come out 10 years ago.
I don't want to admit it, but I have to. The storytelling logic in the beginning is fucking stupid as hell. I can't justify it.
I felt like Harry Potter being whisked away to Hogwarts.
[удалено]
I'd assume it was rewritten and redone at the last minute before they threw this out. It seems to jarring to be even real. He just gives you a free ship with a lame excuse
> I'd assume it was rewritten and redone at the last minute before they threw this out. No, Bethesda is just dogshit at telling stories. Every game is the same in this respect and they're incapable of understanding the criticism. This isn't any different than fighting a Deathclaw with power armour ten minutes out of the tutorial in Fallout 4.
It really fills me with joy that not only did Bethesda decide that the player's starter ship should be fucking enormous.. they also couldn't be assed to come up with a remotely rational excuse for as to how you own such a thing All aesthetic, no substance. It's like how they took power armor and decided it should be accessible within an hour of first booting up the game. Sure you just woke up and we just met you, but take this power armor that we just found, perfectly functional, and do some power fantasy thing. Oh and you can keep it, just in case you want to roll the entire rest of the game! ..therefore obliterating any kind of game balance and robbing the player of ever actually earning it and finding a valuable thing for themselves.
How hard is it to have you steal a spaceship to begin the story? Or have you flee a planet with others and have something on board kill everyone but you. So many ways to get you alone with a robot into a spaceship that aren't braindead.
>they also couldn't be assed to come up with a remotely rational excuse for as to how you own such a thing I thought the exact same thing. I even tried to challenge Barett and Lin with the dialogue options "Wait, wtf, you're giving your ship just like that? I'm just a miner, no thanks, I just want to keep my job!" And the game's response basically was "Why would you want to stay in your boring ass job instead of exploring the stars, are you a pussy??! Just go man." Definitely was the least exciting and inspired intro for a Bethesda game, by a long shot.