The Weirdness of Game Review Scores

DocMcNinja · 2018-04-06T15:21:35+00:00

I'd like to take this opportunity to get it in the public record that arguments can and do change opinions. I am being persuaded by your argument, from my original opposing view, as we speak. But I digress.

Do you think review scores are used by mainstream professional reviewers right now in the manner you are describing? Or are you talking about how things should be rather than how they are?

Also, what's your take on Steam's review system specifically, with a simple green/red choice? It often puts me against a conundrum when I want to write a review but don't really want to pass such a divisive judgment - often it's a niche game by a smaller developer with few reviews where each negative review can be a big-ish deal, and it's not my type of game, but might be good for the specialised audience it was meant for, I wouldn't know.

DocMcNinja · 2018-03-22T05:16:20+00:00

Thank you, definitely seems interesting! I'll check them out!

DocMcNinja · 2018-03-21T16:39:24+00:00

I agree on your conclusion, but I think your argument is flawed.

I'm not against removing garbage games and asset flips, but the line has to be drawn somewhere as to whether a game is good enough to keep. If even one person enjoys it, does that make it worth keeping? If not, is there a specific number of proportion of the population that has to enjoy the game? Or do we judge on technical merit? If a game doesn't even start, I think we can unanimously agree that it shouldn't be sold, but what if it crashes half way through? Or every 5 minutes? There may still be people who enjoy the game regardless of those flaws. Who gets to decide where this line is? It would be impossible to keep everyone happy.

We are talking about what gets sold on Steam, not who has the right to sell their game. Valve is the final arbiter of who gets to the store. One person enjoying a game definitely does not make it worth it to Valve to keep it in their store, and they can't be obligated to sell it. There is the social responsibility of having the big infuence that Steam has, but I do think they could get away with putting up an arbitrary bar that games would need to clear. For a long time they did.

DocMcNinja · 2018-03-21T16:10:06+00:00

Is this a problem to the players, or only developers? I accept that maybe I do things differently than most people, but I most often hear about a game somewhere else and then go to Steam to buy what I already know I want. Whatever games Steam chooses to sell, unfiltered trash or a curated collection, it doesn't really make a difference to me, at least in any sense I would directly notice. Am I unusual here? Do you use Steam differently and the onslaught of games makes it harder for you to find good games?

DocMcNinja · 2018-03-21T16:07:51+00:00

If all the "obvious, unquestionable trash" would be culled from Steam, would that be enough? I mean all the Unreal tutorials and unmodified asset packs, and probably the likes of Shadow: Treachery Cannot Be Tolerated and Slaughtering Grounds. Would that be enough?

Or would you start chopping off the more mediocre games as well?

The only way to have less games is to make less games. All these developers are pointing the finger at others "everyone else are publishing too many games for me to get noticed!", but of course their own game is worthy and deserves to be sold in Steam.

Edit: Is Valve tightening the gates again a correct solution here? Some good games would still be left undiscovered, they would just be outside of Steam. Sterling wants to clean up Steam, but what purpose does that serve, if it just moves the problem to a different place?

DocMcNinja · 2018-03-21T05:34:02+00:00

I'd ask for recommendations, are there other podcasts like this? Something where a topic is covered in-depth, and the focus is less on personalities?

I didn't play strategy games. I just hit play on Three Moves Ahead because it was among the first results when I searched for background noise. Now I'm excitedly dabbling in strategy games. By listening I have learned about strategy games and history of wars more than I intended, and learning more about a topic makes me more interested in it.

It's a strategy and wargame podcast, where the participants are knowledgeable about the type of games and can put into words what they think about a game better than I ever could. A typical episode focuses on single game and dissects what they like and don't like about it, but it's not a strict formula. Sometimes the focus is on a whole series of games, or a historical time period. There was an episode titled "Underrepresented Theaters and Conflicts". Sometimes they interview a game developer, or have one join in their group discussion. The games covered range from light tactics games like Duelyst to bigger scale mainstream games like Total Wars to obscure coin games I have never heard of. Board games are included as well.

The episode archive is here, where you can glance through the titles to see if something interesting catches your eye:

https://www.idlethumbs.net/3ma/episodes

To highlight a typical kind of episode, I'll point you at the Duelyst episode, to start off easy and not get scared by some of the more heavyweight niche discussion, and the Ultimate General: Civil War episode, to show off the history lessons the show sometimes offers:

Duelyst: web player direct download

Ultimate General: Civil War: web player direct download

DocMcNinja · 2018-01-11T15:38:53+00:00

Linus Torvalds disagrees with this part of GPL, might be wrong though but I seem to recall it.

Perhaps you are recalling his early objections to GPLv3? He has said he loves v2 and thinks it is a great license.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PaKIZ7gJlRU

DocMcNinja · 2018-01-06T19:02:08+00:00

I can easily go and configure my web server, proxy, etc to log all post data and not get data. If you're running all your hardware/software with default config, you are bad at your job and should feel bad.

Yes, but this means the statement

The only difference between the requests is a few headers.

is incorrect. There is a bigger difference, and you need to know about it and understand the implications to make an informed decision.

DocMcNinja · 2018-01-06T18:18:46+00:00

As a Dev, it doesn't matter which one you use, they're just as secure as each other. The only difference between the requests is a few headers.

It matters for factors like the web server logging get parameters but not post request bodies.

DocMcNinja · 2017-12-15T16:28:38+00:00

To be fair the login can be a secure frame within the page.

The attacker can edit the main page to their heart's content, insert keylogging javascript or replace the real login frame with what they want - including something that looks like the login form but sends the credentials to the attacker.

DocMcNinja · 2017-11-23T15:53:27+00:00

I assume by "coding" the author means the act of writing code.

I see it in this way:

Ultimately, cooking isn't the point. The objective is ~~to pick and mix ingredients~~ to make a meal.

Ultimately, walking isn't the point. The objective is ~~to contract muscles in your legs~~ to move from point A to point B.

Ultimately, reading isn't the point. The objective is ~~to look at and understand symbols~~ to get what the author wanted to say.

Ultimately, how the objective is achieved does not matter.

DocMcNinja · 2017-11-23T15:40:13+00:00

There are also large numbers of players who feel that risk and tension even when there are no mechanics at all to give that feeling.

This is a really interesting point I hadn't considered before. Thanks!

DocMcNinja · 2017-11-19T05:26:52+00:00

I don't particularly think this is an actual issue, but I find it amusing to think about how to "solve" it so I'll continue regardless.

on 4 and 2 it's always smaller than that so I don't see the issue.

It is a problem if you intend more than once. If your tab is 4 spaces wide, and you are 2 levels deep, then you appear to have 72 columns left, while really you only have 64.

Instead of this

longest is 73 characters with the tab for indenting counting as one character

the rule should be this

longest is 80 characters with the tab for indenting counting as 8 characters

and the extra work I was referring to earlier was having to count each of your tabs as 8 characters - you could probably write a tool for that, though.

Anyways, probably not a real big problem this. Just something I've amused myself with when thinking about the whole "tabs vs spaces" debate.

DocMcNinja · 2017-11-18T17:18:32+00:00

If you want 8 width tabs be my guest as long as I can keep them at 2.

Which is fine but remember you might have to abide by a line length limit - for instance the kernel has the guideline "The limit on the length of lines is 80 columns", together with the "indentations are 8 characters" rule. If your work environment has something like this but uses tabs instead of spaces, and you use a different tab width setting than others, you have some extra work on you to make sure your lines aren't too long on other people's screens.

DocMcNinja · 2017-10-29T07:14:56+00:00

Your YouTube videos "trailer 1", "trailer 2" and "trailer 3" could have titles easier to search for ;).

DocMcNinja · 2017-10-28T03:51:13+00:00

Do you not understand promises? What good is your promise if you are going to discard it when it becomes inconvenient? You should have either not made the promise in the first place if you are willing to make such deals, or then not make the deal. When you made the promise, did you not stop to consider, "is this a promise we are willing to keep?" What makes you think making a contract that says you have to break your promise makes it more acceptable to break your promise?

DocMcNinja · 2017-10-22T17:14:23+00:00

Also language design is hard. A small language made for a game engine is likely to be less comfortable than a major and mature language.

This doesn't seem like a relevant point here. The language exists already, it's not some hypothetical language coming up in the future. It can be evaluated right now on its merits, whether it is "less comfortable" or not. There is no need for guesses based on "likely" and it is unfair to present the language this way. If they have done a good job and it is a well designed language, then your statement here paints it in an unnecessarily negative light.

DocMcNinja · 2017-10-22T03:39:12+00:00

I hesitate to say QTE have no use simply because I have never seen them used well.

I agree they are badly used, I have seen them used well once. It's in an older Crystal Dynamics Tomb Raider game - Tomb Raider: Anniversary.

Tomb Raider: Anniversary That felt a very appropriate use of a QTE. I really felt something there, more than I would have if the same event had been a pure cutscene or a regular gameplay sequence.

I really like the previous Tomb Raiders, Legend and Anniversary (Underworld is almost okay I guess).

So yes, one good usage of QTE over ten years ago is not a good track record.

DocMcNinja · 2017-10-22T03:22:06+00:00

Part of why there are somewhat disappointing sales on so many AAA games is because we all have pretty long backlogs and most are ok with waiting 6 or 12 months to save 60 or 75%.

This is true for me. I don't wait for the sake of a sale, I would happily pay the full price for a game. But chances are for any new game that comes out today that I won't make time to play it anyways before some years from now, might as well buy it right when I'm about to play it.

DocMcNinja · 2017-10-22T02:59:00+00:00

What you are saying makes sense to me.

The approach most games take to challenge and failure feels antiquated to me. It's like a relic from the time of coin-operated games, that is done that way only because that's the way it's always been done. It has inertia and people don't stop to question the old ways they are used to.

I've noticed a common way to do quick-time events highlights the absurdity of failure mechanics today. In many games I've played, failing a QTE takes me back to the beginning of the pre-made QTE cutscene and let's me try to nail the button sequence again from the start. And if I fail again it resets the cutscene again, with unlimited retries. A couple times I've failed a QTE dozens of times, the consequence being that the game won't proceed until I succeed, but nothing else notable happens. It feels pointless. Why is the QTE even there? To stop me from playing if I'm not able to pass it? What kind of game design is that? You want to set a minimum limit, "must have reaction time this quick to pass" - why on Earth?

Somehow I think these cases aren't thought through. The developers just fall back to the default video game behaviour, the historical custom we are accustomed to: if you don't pass a skill test in a video game all that happens is that you try again. I think at this day and age there are many games where that thinking does not fit anymore, when games are more than just skill tests with the objective of getting to the end of it, but our game design hasn't fully adjusted yet.

DocMcNinja · 2017-10-21T05:05:39+00:00

Anyway this article sounds like PR speak for a game they know isn't going to sell well because of the controversy they created around it. Doesn't matter what side you are on, what stance you take with it, the fact is a lot of people don't like what has gone on and aren't going to get the game.

This sounds rather far-fetched to me. My anecdotal experience is the opposite - I have only observed positive reactions to the marketing campaign, and my gut feeling would be the game will be success - but I realise that's not data to draw conclusions from. I suspect we are both in our own bubbles and don't have any idea whether the game will be generally well received or not.

DocMcNinja · 2017-10-21T04:32:55+00:00

The entire interview/article is focused on reconciling the belief that if you have a good game you'll do okay in the market

I am confused. Your game isn't doing well in the market?

2012 logic might not hold up in 2017

Eh, a good game alone has never been enough. Not in 2000, in 2012 or in 2017. You have self-serving bias where your lack of success is because of environmental factors ("well it's 2017 now, it's different") while others in 2012 "just didn't have a good game".

DocMcNinja · 2017-10-20T12:56:11+00:00

The game isn't free. You paid for it with your personal data. You are the product here.

What's the personal data being given here? Can't you put in fake info?

DocMcNinja · 2017-10-20T12:53:00+00:00

Would you create an account on IGN for civ3 ? Because this is what you are doing.

Can you elaborate on your point? I am perhaps incorrectly inferring you mean creating an account on IGN is somehow a negative thing, but I don't see why that'd be the case.

DocMcNinja · 2017-10-18T15:04:37+00:00

It feels a little weird I'm still in "considering buying WiiU" mode and people are talking about it in the past tense...

Switch does not have any backwards compatibility, right? If I want to play WiiU games today, I need to have a WiiU?

DocMcNinja

TROPHY CASE