With recent big game releases, it’s become obvious that a game is either a resounding success, or complete shit. There doesn’t seem to be any middle ground.
Kingdom Come Deliverance II is a ambitious masterpiece, and Avowed is lazy slop. 93% of Steam users recommend KCD2, vs 77% for Avowed.
And maybe this has been an issue for a long time, fed by the need to get viewer numbers on articles and videos, leading to more polarized opinions that give people a reason to pick a side, even if they’re never going to play the game.
But as regular people, gamers, Lemmy posters, why are we doing the same? How is it serving us? Are we all influencers in waiting, hoping to up our updoot count and build a following of… dozens?
More than 2/3rds of players of Dragon Age Veilguard recommend the game on Steam. And yet reading the comments here and other places, you’d think that 90% of people who tried the game found it to be, not just bad, but absolute trash, with a small number of people chiming in that they actually enjoyed it.
And game studios are reacting much the same way, and are quick to start layoffs, or shut down all together.
But hey, we don’t owe those corporations anything. But, as a community, do we owe it to each other to foster more honest correspondence?
We do have a problem of polarisation. But on the other hand we also have a problem of too many games, so we simply can’t play them all. This leads us to a need to choose which one to pick. And a bad choice is very bad, because games are expensive and time consuming.
Now the real problem is when a community mistaken a new game for another. Like avowed was considered a terrible game because the leader scroll fanboys thought it would be their next game, and it wasn’t. Anyone who know what old school bioware games were will certainly love avowed.
Now while veilgard is not a bad game, is it actually good? I’m not informed enough yet about it, but bioware has been terrible in the last decade, so I am clearly very wary of what they’re doing.
I will wait for a discount for both those games, and I’ll play avowed first because I’m informed and careful, and I have other games to play already.
On the side there’s also the problem of fascist propaganda that will brand a game woke a try to destroy it.
But as regular people, gamers, Lemmy posters, why are we doing the same? How is it serving us? Are we all influencers in waiting, hoping to up our updoot count and build a following of… dozens?
Many people are rationalizing their purchase decisions. Not everybody can afford to buy (and play!) two games so if you have two highly anticipated games or consoles coming out in the same time, most people can only get one. And then they have to choose. Afterward, they don’t want to hear that the other game is better, that it’s also great and they are missing out on a lot of fun and that the one they didn’t get is totally awesome.
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It’s just the natural result of the sensationalizing of the news. Far more likely to get clicks or views saying something is fantastic or horrible. The grey areas don’t make $$$.
People generally don’t talk too much about things that don’t particularly stand out. If a game is bad, people will complain. If a game is good, people will praise it. If a game is middling, most people will just move on. Nobody’s going to start a discussion about a game that was vaguely enjoyable but not noteworthy, unless expectations were unreasonably high to begin with.
I don’t think this is a gaming problem.
It is a discourse problem.
People engage in absolutes. They either love a thing or hate a thing. There’s no nuance.
And it must be made to cater for them, there’s no expectation that it will contain choices they don’t approve of.
And this stance, this modern relationship with the world permeates everything, especially forms of media.
You see it in films and books… Fans and stans and folk trying to take it down. There is no nuance or middle ground.
People don’t accept that, perhaps, something isn’t just “not for them”. That’s why you get grown men complaining about the direction of children’s shows they used to watch.
And this is compounded with social media where polarisation, blunt takes and contradiction are the primary drivers of engagement.
Audience error.
Don’t forget the vocal minority problem. The subset of people who comment on things is much smaller than the set of people who consume them. And while the threshold of effort for making comment is low, it isn’t zero, so people who hold more extreme views are going to be more prevalent in the selection because the people with moderate views aren’t going to have the motivation to spend 20 minutes explaining the nuanced position they have, while the ‘love’ and ‘hate’ camps will gladly spend 10 seconds on posting their simplistic view.
Add on the way modern systems work, focusing on likes, upvotes, etc. and you get short form responses getting greater engagement purely because they don’t take as long to read. It’s always easier to get traction with a short, maybe amusing, rehash of a common opinion than with a long dissertation on niche, complex views.
That cycles back in at the top to create a visibility bias so the people making the next round of commentary/content see the wave of love/hate and try to ride it. The result is a feedback loop with a terrible signal to noise ratio.
It’s absolutely not just a gaming problem. Movie reviews are getting more and more bandwagon-y. Only a few reviewers post in the first day or two, and everyone else says “okay, they hated it, now I have to hate it too or I’m going to lose credibility”. I think it’s the inevitable outcome of having less famous reviewers, a NYT columnist can post what they feel, but a small blog can fall into obscurity if they have one contrarian review.
The only part that’s unique to gaming is that gamers are the most toxic community in the internet.
The only part that’s unique to gaming is that gamers are the most toxic community in the internet.
I wish this wasn’t as true as it is.
Of course there’s middle ground. You just don’t see it much with AAA games because, as you mentioned, it’s all or nothing with those.
But don’t forget about indies. They comfortably fit in this middle ground because they’re not afraid to take risks.
Yep. Most AAA gaming is too afraid to appeal to a specific segment of the market. They make games that everyone is supposed to like, which often ends up being uninteresting at best.
Smaller games can target a smaller audience and still be successful. They take risks and do new things, and it’ll push some people away but many will enjoy it a lot more for it.
i don’t think they are polarising. imo, 77% is mid. nothing bad with a “just okay” game. sometimes you just want to play the experience of a new familiar world and this is it.
with tiktokers though, a mid game has less to talk about and so their narratives make what little or so difference sound like a big deal. sensationalism is where the money is for them.
i guess a good list of fair and reliable sources would help out here.
A game is also more than the aggregate of its review scores. An average of 81 on Open Critic is derived from those who rated it a 6 and those who loved it enough to give it a 9 or a 10.
I’ll be honest, I downloaded Avowed through gamepass and couldn’t stand it for more than 4 hours.
It’s about as dull as a game can be and doesn’t excel at anything, even when compared to games that released 15 years ago.
Do I think it’s garbage? No, but I also would not recommend it to anyone, it’s not worth their time nor money.
What if I from time to time really love some basic gameplay done well? I’ll think avowed is straight up my alley. Not every game I play needs to innovate. There is also a lot of comfort in the preexisting.
That’s fine, have fun then.
93% vs 77% doesn’t strike me as polarized. 16% difference?
77% doesn’t even seem that bad if it’s a style of game I like. From about 2001 I used to see sci fi movies that looked interesting as long as they had at least a 25% Rotten Tomatoes score because my tastes were different.
Is there something I’m missing? I haven’t played either game and I haven’t looked at reviews. Won’t buy KCD (no character creation) and probably will eventually buy Avowed.
The thing is, those reviews must be left by someone who purchased it. It’s got a self-selection bias. People purchased it presumably expecting to like it. They thought it would be a style of game they enjoyed. Most people who think it isn’t something they’ll like will just pass over it and not buy it, and obviously not effect the score.
I think there is a strong difference since the steam rating usually ranges between 70% and 97%. This makes the gap way wider then the numbers suggest
I’ve learned a long time ago that if you just wait a few years these games will go on sale for $20 and will have enough informed reviews to help make a solid purchasing decision. Gamers need to get off this new release hype train and be patient. I personally won’t play KCD 2, I disliked the first one. I will probably try Avowed in a few years after I get through my existing backlog of ~100 unplayed games in Steam. We are spoiled for choice and the market is filled with good indie games.
Sure but the cheap market would not exist if a majority of people would not buy the game at full price. Sure there are a lot of smart people who don’t fall for the FOMO and hype but if a AAA game would only sell for 30€ it would not offset its development cost and no new game would be made.
People are more likely to go online and complain than to compliment. But why take internet comments so seriously. I have a handful of trusted sources that I use to get my opinions on games. DLC Podcast for example is a favorite of mine. I’ve gotten to know their tastes and where they overlap with mine so when they get excited about a specific thing I’ll know if I’m likely to enjoy it based on our shared interests.
When you get a handful of voices that have a strong overlap with your own taste then you can get outside of the tribalistic bitching of the hive. Comments don’t even concern me anymore.
Good ole Jeff Cannata!
Yup! Also the other host Christian appeals to the Sega kid in me. He’ll uncover gems that evoke the Dreamcast era.
With recent big game releases, it’s become obvious that a game is either a resounding success, or complete shit. There doesn’t seem to be any middle ground.
You’re saying this from a player opinion perspective which is accurate, but it’s also interesting that companies act the same way. If a big game doesn’t make 10 zillion dollars now there’s a good chance the entire company gets shut down.
People are complaining about Avowed? What the fuck is wrong with them?
I’ve been too busy loving it to be online reading anything, honestly cannot fathom what their complaints are tho. Avowed has repeatedly impressed me by being more clever and nuanced than I was expecting a game to be, in writing, level design, and combat.
Is this more dumb gamer anti-woke hysteria?
From what I’ve heard, its mostly people expecting the game to be more dynamic - more akin to Skyrim’s varied gameplay systems or Fallout: NV’s story and quests. They’re going in expecting something with heavy RPG focus and getting something more action focused.
Skyrim’s varied gameplay systems?
It has stealth, it has magic, it has melee combat, it has ranged combat, it has dialogue options for talking your way through stuff, it has multiple ways of solving quest lines…
It’s basically Skyrim, if it was smaller and more focused, with better combat, voice acting, level design, and heads and tails better writing.
Obsidian getting dinged in reviews for making more focused games that don’t waste your time and don’t bet their company’s entire future on its budget and scope has been very frustrating to see.
Because as it turns out, most people don’t want games like that, only a very small, very loud minority wants 20min ‘focused’ games.
You’re upset that a viewpoint you hold is not actually the universal common viewpoint you thought it was.
They still average out to be very positive scores, so I don’t think we can say most people don’t want what they’re making, and no viewpoint is universal, so don’t put words in my mouth.
But you’ll see the same people asking for a more sustainable game industry complain about what they find when they see it.
Only heard a couple people talk about it online (that I trust to be reasonable) and they basically said it was fine but didn’t blow them away. And that’s fine but it makes for boring “cOnTeNt”.
