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- Nov 4, 2007
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8chan is probably highfiving themselves until their arms fall off.
Gamer's Edition
You can read more about Gamer's Edition in our coverage of the announcement. In short, Gamer's Edition will produce physical special editions of games that wouldn't otherwise get them, using a preorder system based on a crowdfunding model with a minimum number of orders - ensuring that Gamer's Editions will only be manufactured if there's a big enough demand from the games' communities.
The first Gamer's Editions are of Hotline Miami and its sequel, and Papers, Please.
Bad, gud, gr8 is actually an improvement. What's the difference between a 7.8 and 8.2? Is that a meaningful distinction? When you're talking to a friend about a movie/book/game/whatever, you either say "this is amazing", "this was pretty good", "it was ok, but had problems", or "shit sucks". So revising a review scoring system to match this makes perfect sense.So instead of scrolling to the bottom of the review and looking at a review score people can scroll to the bottom and look for a recommended or better tag. Nice.
These reviewers are still going to have terrible taste and be self-important, but no review system can fix that.
I'm on thing right now where I actually hate comparing things and determining which one is better. I feel it is completely counter productive. If both things are good, they're both good. There might be a reason to play one over the other if you are looking at two specific things to play, but I think it's basically inconceivable that such difference could be quantified into a single score.Because what can't be determined absolutely can still be determined comparatively. I can't describe for you the difference between RGB 205,125,184 and RGY 195,145,165, nor discern them individually, yet the difference is plain as day as soon as you hold the two colors side by side. Similarly while people can be very poor at judging absolute value of something, they can very clearly feel and describe for you "x is better than y, and this is why". The difference between 7.8 and 8.2 is that the 8.2 is better than 7.8. That is all.
Well given this last statement, I think it's fair to say they're never actually useful.The only stumbling block is that a reviewer needs a deep knowledge of the genre and a history of scores to refer to. This is the real problem, that video game review sites are a bunch of generalists making random hops every week across genres that they barely understand rather than a core dedicated person for each genre. 7.8 and 8.2 is only meaningful when the score, and every other score in the series or genre, is coming from the same person.
We have seen how even good developers with well received games can still suffer at the hands of these scores. Most notably was Obsidian Entertainment with Fallout: New Vegas, where they were infamously one point short on the Metacritic score and failed to receive bonuses to keep many members of the studio employed, as reported by Escapist Magazine.
I did manage to reach out to Chris Avellone, legendary writer and game designer who works with Obsidian Entertainment, and I asked if the review scores have affected Obsidian to the point where they hire or fire based on a system that put many of them out of work, and if they put a lot of effort into the Metacritic culture that affects gaming. According to Avellone…
“We don’t, although we have paid attention to player review scores for mods some designers developed (along with other metrics for mods – downloads, number of patches, etc.). In one instance, the player review score, total downloads, patches, and then re-releases almost guaranteed the hire – the last step was just to see if the modder was a dick who didn’t play well with others. He wasn’t.
Usually, my issue with Metacritic is that the review scores across sites can be wildly inconsistent (50% being average for X publication, for example, which can certainly torpedo a score).
And even if sites do take on a hostile nature against the studio, similar to what we’ve seen with some developers aligning with #GamerGate and coming under ridicule from some gaming outlets, Avellone stated…
“Cutting off contact, [in my opinion], can prove to be a bad thing, regardless. We’ve found in the past that seemingly hostile sites, one in particular, was very negative on Torment before they played it, and as far as I’m concerned, their negativity actually helped us on release because the game seemed to defy expectations even more. To be fair, I actually thought that (considering he hadn’t played the game), the reviewer’s comment that it was just a Baldur’s Gate knock-off was probably an impression many people had, considering the engine the two games shared.“
Chris "Fraudster" Avellone talking about cheating? That's rich.
Oh yeah, Chris "Fraudster" Avellone talking about how honest his Kickstarters were. Remember to give him more money the next time goyim!
He cheated jcd of his sanity in a high stakes game of Ludo they played in Casablanca in '07.Wait, I'm curious, when did MCA cheat?
He didn't. Do you think jcd got that dumbfuck tag for no reason?Wait, I'm curious, when did MCA cheat?
He's probably referring to his Wasteland 2 novella that he didn't deliver, and the joke of an Arcanum playthrough that he abandoned.He didn't. Do you think jcd got that dumbfuck tag for no reason?Wait, I'm curious, when did MCA cheat?