Corruption in Gaming Journalism Discussion V2 - Back from the dead!
5,003 replies, posted
SteamDB just picked up this app being added to the Steam Store.
[url]http://store.steampowered.com/app/348270/[/url]
:suicide:
[quote]Social Justice Warriors expresses frustration with how people use divisive labels – like “SJW” and “troll” – to discredit and silence each other.[/quote]
[quote]Take down a multitude of trolls to attain a new high score[/quote]
What
It's satire and makes fun of both sides, read the [url=http://indiejuice.tv/2014/09/sjwrpg/]Indie Juice[/url] article. I think it's pretty funny.
i thought it was pretty obvious satire of both sides...i mean come on, both you and the trolls use the same sprite.
[QUOTE=Swilly;47208737]Okay, I'm late but I need to point something out.
[B]It takes at least a month of analysis, history, research and understanding to fully consider the political, cultural and moral ramifications of a game, the actions it supports and the message it is trying to send.[/B]
You cannot, ever, EVER EVER EVER NEVER EVER pull all of these very complex, very deep and very important messages out of a videogame in a single half assed playthrough as most reviewers have to. They don't get to spend a mountain of time on a game and most never actually complete the game.
That is not a platform for critique, that was never a platform for critique and it never will be.[/QUOTE]
Can I ask you a question?
What kind of videogames are you playing that have such a complex and deep message?
For me a game should be rated by its gameplay, how much fun it is to play, atmosphere, immersion, graphics. The story of most games are just a backdrop, most of them ripped off of books or movies that already have done that shit for the millionth time.
[Quote] Social Justice Mages conjure powerful constructs of fact and opinion to alter minds and [b]reality[/B][/quote]
Seems accurate
[QUOTE=Pernoccuous;47210938]i thought it was pretty obvious satire of both sides...i mean come on, both you and the trolls use the same sprite.[/QUOTE]
I'm starting to think I've spent too much time looking at hateful people's thoughts. It's making it hard to tell when anything's satire anymore.
[QUOTE=Impact1986;47210963]Can I ask you a question?
What kind of videogames are you playing that have such a complex and deep message?
For me a game should be rated by its gameplay, how much fun it is to play, atmosphere, immersion, graphics. The story of most games are just a backdrop, most of them ripped off of books or movies that already have done that shit for the millionth time.[/QUOTE]
For certain genres, this is entirely true. There's very little story to be had in a Mario game, for instance. However, that's not to say that a game can't excel at telling an interactive story. An interesting story can get people interested in a game's universe and lore despite it typically taking a backseat to gameplay. Most RPGs do this, it gives context to the actions that the player is doing throughout their adventure. If you remove that context, then you ask yourself why you're doing the things you're doing -- people have different answers to that question and even the age old "it's fun" can mean different things to different people due to differing tastes.
I'll use Risk of Rain as an example here for a writeup:
[i]RoR is a platform-based rougelite where you are marooned on a hostile alien world. Collecting items to mutate your body and enhance your abilities are key to surviving the never-ending horde of incoming alien hostiles. Time is of the essence, as the horde becomes more and more aggressive as time passes.
Immediately the context is given for the game: you are alone, your goal is to survive. Depending on how you play you can be aggressive or passive in how to address the game's starting stages, but more often than not you will have to resort to running away and picking off targets before you acquire the experience and upgrades you need. Before too long you'll be strong enough to decimate colossal threats with ease -- at the aptly-named difficulty "HAHAHAHAHAHA."
Now to me, this was where there was a divergence. The startup always felt sluggish to me; kiting enemies for 20-ish minutes before becoming powerful enough to take them head on didn't feel like it was worth my time invested into it. Some may find this fun, I didn't personally. Once I'd get over that hump, the game's pacing and goal changed from survival into a killing spree. This is something that the game is self-aware of with the higher difficulty levels being "I SEE YOU", "I'M COMING FOR YOU", and "HAHAHAHAHAHA" as well as the endings for each character making mention on how they have lost their humanity/sanity during their spree.
Overall it's a challenging game to get into due to its slow and downright-disadvantaged start. However that nuance is exactly what was intended to give the player that feeling of being overwhelmed, and it exaggerates just how powerful you become when you reach lategame when you contrast it to how weak you started out.[/i]
It's entirely possible to look on a game's story and pick apart exactly [i]why[/i] game mechanics or ambiance are introduced. Sometimes it perfectly compliments the game's narrative being presented and the experience ultimately benefits from the conglomeration.
[QUOTE=Marlamin;47210739]SteamDB just picked up this app being added to the Steam Store.
[url]http://store.steampowered.com/app/348270/[/url]
:suicide:[/QUOTE]
i actually been following this game, its a neutral game that makes fun of their attack tactics and the people who fuck with them
[QUOTE]The warriors and their opponents fight and fall by the measure of their Sanity and Reputation meters. Trolls confound your sanity with logical fallacies and ad hominem attacks while actively working to destroy your reputation with wild accusations and photoshopped evidence of your misdeeds.
How you choose to respond to these attacks is up to you. Relying solely on logical arguments to change minds doesn’t work very well online, but resorting to personal attacks and mudslinging will erode your moral high ground. [/QUOTE]
[QUOTE=Impact1986;47210963]Can I ask you a question?
What kind of videogames are you playing that have such a complex and deep message?
For me a game should be rated by its gameplay, how much fun it is to play, atmosphere, immersion, graphics. The story of most games are just a backdrop, most of them ripped off of books or movies that already have done that shit for the millionth time.[/QUOTE]
Thank you for the missing the point sir and trying to be the 'EEW Gameplay most important becaus /v/ said so.'
Meanwhile, most people recongize we live in a post-modern world. While I hate to agree with McIntosh, that video we jump around with that sounds stupid is actually what most modern culture is.
Its take a story that's already been told, changing things within it, changing the context, characters but still retaining the original themes or core message. Originality is not a thing we have, at least not in Western Cultures.
Also, videogames combine all of the facets of written mediums, audio mediums, visual mediums(TV/Movies) and places them in a single piece of media. Of course you'll see rehashes but that's just part of the game.
[B]Also, for fuck's sake most effective story telling devices in videogames are clues, atmosphere, graphics and the gameplay itself.[/B]
Get off the damn high horse and notice I stated that a game half played should only have how good it looks and how it plays as the most important things and not the fucking story.
[QUOTE=FlakAttack;47210375]I hope you're not talking about the ending, because I've played through several times and the ending is still dogshit. One of the worst I've ever seen.
This is exactly how I've felt about the Kotaku/Polygon style "reviews" that kept coming out. Are you trying to talk to academics or gamers? Sure there is some overlap (hell I was a psych student before I did programming) but that doesn't mean I want to see a feminist critique in a functional review. If it's seriously bad enough to warrant attention, warn people there might be some shady stuff and link to a discussion about it or something. No need to insert your beliefs into everything.
As for christ centered gamer, the reason I have no issue with these people is they never pretended to be neutral. You know precisely what you're getting yourself into reading their stuff. And the fact they blatantly separate the morals and the gameplay? That's just a bonus.[/QUOTE]
Virtually every major site did not get to the end of the game before posting their "perfect" reviews.
IMO I think what we are getting from this is that everything needs to work together, but no one thing should be considered more important then other factors, effecting a review in a massive way for a relatively minor drawback. If a reviewer is focusing on just political side and saying the game is terrible, then they should stop claiming that they review games in a neutral format with a wide variety of opinions - they are misleading people to get a larger audience while still being able to spout their ideology. It's plain lying.
Eitherway, I am kind of on the rocks about the issue - people can say what they want but if they want to be taken seriously they need to review things in a neutral fashion - However I also believe they need to stop injecting politics into games where issues are fabricated when nobody had a problem in the first place. (No black people in XXX game? - White guy on twitter.)
That, and basically saying "If you don't do what we say then we will make sure nobody plays your game by giving you a terrible score, and tell all the other companies to do the same thing." - That is some shit.
[QUOTE=Wii60;47211373]i actually been following this game, its a neutral game that makes fun of their attack tactics and the people who fuck with them[/QUOTE]
I guess that's cool, then. Was too quick to judge it.
the thread will be rip soon
Yeah RIP somebody start writing a better OP then I can.
[editline]25th February 2015[/editline]
I kind of feel this whole thing is going to create a culture of developers who develop half assed games for the sake of pushing more ideas then actual game - when your just telling a story, giving the player no control, nothing to solve, nothing to figure out but what is laid in front of their faces- is it a game at all?
[QUOTE=Thlis;47208536]I'd say Tropico 5 is the biggest example of this kind of thing. Polygon gave it a 6.5 just for the fact that it makes it fun to be a dictator.[/QUOTE]
The most recent I can think of is [url=https://archive.today/dZcOA]Gamespot's review of Raven's Cry[/url] ([url=http://www.gamespot.com/reviews/raven-s-cry-review/1900-6416027/]Unarchived[/url]) having a negative, this-influences-the-overall-score of "Rampant racism, sexism, and homophobia."
Y'know, in the 1700s.
I think the post cap is 5000, so you don't have to worry about a new thread for a bit longer.
[QUOTE=Te Great Skeeve;47211991]Yeah RIP somebody start writing a better OP then I can.
[editline]25th February 2015[/editline]
I kind of feel this whole thing is going to create a culture of developers who develop half assed games for the sake of pushing more ideas then actual game - when your just telling a story, giving the player no control, nothing to solve, nothing to figure out but what is laid in front of their faces- is it a game at all?[/QUOTE]
see, this is why i think that interactive fiction needs to encompass more than just text based things
[QUOTE=HumanAbyss;47207782]The issue you're glazing over is that what art is is subjective.[/QUOTE]
While art is subjective there are certain things most people can agree on, take sculptures for an example; if I showed you the statue of David and then a G.I. Joe and told you that you needed to write a review on each of them, one as a toy and one as an art, it wouldn't be very hard for you to decide which one was which would you?
In video games the gap between art and a children's toy isn't nearly as wide, there's a lot more overlap than any other type of media I can think of. GG laughs at journalists who review mechanics games as art games, like their trying to study the statue of David but they're looking at a G.I. Joe, but the difference between the two in our medium isn't nearly as obvious and clearly defined.
[QUOTE=SonicXV;47207841]I would agree that there are "bad eggs" in the context of "gaming journalism is suffering", but there are quite a few of them, and they are very prominent and make a lot of money. There are lists of websites known to push specific ideologies through all of their writing and probably lists of journalists who write nothing but biased garbage for the sake of cashing in.
As an aside, I don't agree that the situation with Bayonetta was caused by a technical misinterpretation. As of writing this, I only found one review with a critcally low score and that's Polygon's review, which supposedly docked points due to sexualization but still highlighted that it was fun to play. That problem is two-fold, and I believe TB has covered this before, in that firstly the reduction in points was for a reason of the reviewer's personal bias and not actually a flaw in the game. Unfortunately he didn't clarify what would have regained Bayonetta's marks. Secondly, the points system contributes to some big metacritic shitfest that negatively affects developers which has been written about more eloquently elsewhere than I can write in one sentence.
(I think Drasnus explained this perfectly below)
[B]I don't think art vs. toy is applicable to video game reviews either. If you want to criticize the art of a video game, a critique is more apt, but I believe video games are first and foremost mechanical with the application of art as a bonus. Sure there is some design ability required, but a fun game isn't always the most attractive, provocative, or meaningful. In this regard, too, there's a whole other debate about what qualifies to be a video game or just interactive art.[/B][/QUOTE]
I'm not even going to bother with the first part because I would be so ass destroyed with so many sources I'd have to call the police on you guys for deadly assault. :v:
I don't know if the rest of GG is so thorough in their research, but while lurking in this thread I've seen enough evidence of shitty journalism (backed up by sources of course) that I'll just have to surrender when it comes to this point of my argument. You are correct sir, it is more than just a few bad eggs.
The bolded part though, I'll gladly argue with you about.
You have a point about using a critique instead of a review to explore the deeper messages and meanings in a game, but I would argue that knowing about the undertones of a game are important to a certain group of consumers, so that subjects inclusion in the review is justified. This isn't to say that a game like Bayonetta should get a "female objectification" sticker on the front and a 0/10, a more responsible way to get the same message across would be to just mention it somewhere in the review.
A reviewer plays Bayonetta and finds the sexualization of the character to be unsettling, he reviews the game mechanics and such on their own and then mentions how he didn't like the sexualization of Bayonetta, then explaining his reasons why.
There are only two types of people that are going to read that, people who care and people who don't. People who care might think, "Welp this game is a no go, I hate games that have strippers and shit in them" or "I love titties, must buy"; people who don't care just simply won't care and a lot of GG seems to fit into this category. So a review, as a buyer's guide, has a justifiable reason to include those elements into a review.
A lot of people seem to be saying similar things, which I'm surprised about. Of course we aren't talking about journalists with conflicts of interest or anything like that, that's just plain wrong.
[QUOTE=27X;47211772]Virtually every major site did not get to the end of the game before posting their "perfect" reviews.[/QUOTE]
Ok that puts your post in context. I didn't understand it at first but if I'm reading it right you're saying "5 million people bought the game due to good reviews"? If so then I completely agree, those reviewers clearly didn't finish the game before saying wonderful things about it. Hell they must have barely touched it, it's missing so much content in the base game compared to the first two. You NEED the DLC to get a full (if quite shitty) experience.
But one persons Mona Lisa is another persons trash. It's more subjective than you give it credit for.
Also, bayonetta was designed by a woman, if another woman dislikes that, does that say anything about bayonetta? No, I don't think it does.
This restaurant has delicious food, but the size of the dishes made me feel uncomfortable, knowing there are poor little children starving in third world countries. When I confronted the head chef about this, he said and I quote "[i]What the heck does Africa have to do with my restaurant[/i]".
I do not feel I can recommend a restaurant ran by such a blatant racist to the readers of this restaurant review site, which is why I rate it a 4 out of 10.
[QUOTE=V12US;47212933]This restaurant has delicious food, but the size of the dishes made me feel uncomfortable, knowing there are poor little children starving in third world countries. When I confronted the head chef about this, he said and I quote "[I]What the heck does Africa have to do with my restaurant[/I]".
I do not feel I can recommend a restaurant ran by such a blatant racist to the readers of this restaurant review site, which is why I rate it a 4 out of 10.[/QUOTE]
.. Basically this, disguising themselves as the place for one-stop reviews. And if that SVU episode was anything - sites like Kotaku are actually read by people who have no idea what's going on or what the site is [I]really [/I]​for.
Any game that incorporates fun mechanics and a good story while also being able to engage me without profusely throwing a distinct message in my face is true art. See Spec Ops: The Line, Bioshock: Infinite, The Last of Us, etc etc.
I don't want to be preached to while playing games, but if I become emotionally involved in the story and can read my own message into the game experience then kudos to the game devs. For example, a poster said above that Spec Ops was an interesting examination into the US' foreign policy but I would assert that it was more to do with soldier's mental health and the brutality of war (dat gas mane). That is the beauty of a truly great game, as it is with a truly great book; it leaves everything open to interpretation and although it tells a story it doesn't force ideals down your throat if you don't pick up on them/ignore them.
My main gripe isn't even that SJW reviewers judge games based on their subjective interpretation of their morals, it's that they act as if it had an actual impact on people's ethics in real life. Once they try to prove that a developer is racist or sexist because one of their characters is a bigot or because the society they depict is misogynistic or old-fashioned, they lose all credibility as a critic. You might as well accuse Georges Orwell of being totalitarian while you're at it.
[QUOTE=Ruski v2.0;47213119]Any game that incorporates fun mechanics and a good story while also being able to engage me without profusely throwing a distinct message in my face is true art. See Spec Ops: The Line, [u]Bioshock: Infinite[/u], The Last of Us, etc etc.
[/QUOTE]
I liked B:I, but what was it's message exactly...? I'm a bit confused
Has anyone mentioned #letmarkspeak? VG247 doesn't want to let Mark put up a piece addressing the shit levied at him, essentially denying him his [URL="http://www.article19.org/pages/en/right-of-reply.html"]right of reply[/URL]. The tag is trending right now calling out VG247 and the other journos on their shit. Mark is currently in talks with staff at Tech Raptor, so we'll see what comes up in the next couple days.
[QUOTE=WhyNott;47213230]I liked B:I, but what was it's message exactly...? I'm a bit confused[/QUOTE]
The same as the others, "a man willful enough to make a 'perfect' society is very likely insane" and "you can go home again, but you probably won't like what you see with adult eyes" (also Irrational does not understand combat theory other than IT MAKES SPARKLES)
[QUOTE=Psychopath12;47211310]For certain genres, this is entirely true. There's very little story to be had in a Mario game, for instance. However, that's not to say that a game can't excel at telling an interactive story. An interesting story can get people interested in a game's universe and lore despite it typically taking a backseat to gameplay. Most RPGs do this, it gives context to the actions that the player is doing throughout their adventure. If you remove that context, then you ask yourself why you're doing the things you're doing -- people have different answers to that question and even the age old "it's fun" can mean different things to different people due to differing tastes.
I'll use Risk of Rain as an example here for a writeup:
[I]RoR is a platform-based rougelite where you are marooned on a hostile alien world. Collecting items to mutate your body and enhance your abilities are key to surviving the never-ending horde of incoming alien hostiles. Time is of the essence, as the horde becomes more and more aggressive as time passes.
Immediately the context is given for the game: you are alone, your goal is to survive. Depending on how you play you can be aggressive or passive in how to address the game's starting stages, but more often than not you will have to resort to running away and picking off targets before you acquire the experience and upgrades you need. Before too long you'll be strong enough to decimate colossal threats with ease -- at the aptly-named difficulty "HAHAHAHAHAHA."
Now to me, this was where there was a divergence. The startup always felt sluggish to me; kiting enemies for 20-ish minutes before becoming powerful enough to take them head on didn't feel like it was worth my time invested into it. Some may find this fun, I didn't personally. Once I'd get over that hump, the game's pacing and goal changed from survival into a killing spree. This is something that the game is self-aware of with the higher difficulty levels being "I SEE YOU", "I'M COMING FOR YOU", and "HAHAHAHAHAHA" as well as the endings for each character making mention on how they have lost their humanity/sanity during their spree.
Overall it's a challenging game to get into due to its slow and downright-disadvantaged start. However that nuance is exactly what was intended to give the player that feeling of being overwhelmed, and it exaggerates just how powerful you become when you reach lategame when you contrast it to how weak you started out.[/I]
It's entirely possible to look on a game's story and pick apart exactly [I]why[/I] game mechanics or ambiance are introduced. Sometimes it perfectly compliments the game's narrative being presented and the experience ultimately benefits from the conglomeration.[/QUOTE]
RoR is a really retarded example for this though. The game's focus is on gameplay first and analyzing it from a story/ambience/universe/lore perspective is going at it from the wrong angle. It's the same with lore for DoTA or LoL, for instance. It's there for the people who really wanna care about it but 99% of people don't. If you're analyzing a game and that analysis is going to be read by most people, catering your analysis to the 1% makes absolutely no sense. Any analysis of RoR should be focused on what RoR is focused on primarily: gameplay. Your write up has none of that and would therefore be useless to most people. Also, the tying of game mechanics with story/ambience is largely overvalued and hyped up. A game having ~ludonarrative dissonance~ or whatever other one of those similar concepts that are "wrong" shouldn't matter, because most people really don't care about this at all and most people don't notice it. It's the same problem that Polygon's Shadow of Mordor kissing article was talking about, but it makes no sense to talk that much about that when there are other more interesting things going on, like the Nemesis system which was actually something new and engaging.
To me the type of write up you presented now comes from a lack of focus on what games actually are and the need to make games as important or as recognizable as ~art~ like other media are. Instead of trying to genuinely improve gaming by dissecting what actually makes a game a game (surprise, most of the time it's the gameplay, not if there's ludonarrative dissonance or not) and criticizing the important parts, you people focus on irrelevant shit like pretty much everything you wrote. It's absolutely disgusting and does no one any good.
[QUOTE=WhyNott;47213230]I liked B:I, but what was it's message exactly...? I'm a bit confused[/QUOTE]
Exactly my point; it was a great game with a great story that didn't try to shoehorn social justice or other themes into it for those who weren't looking.
[editline]25th February 2015[/editline]
there were also some interesting comparisons between the fine line of passive religion and cultism.
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