So there’s a petition on Change.org demanding that Metacritic stop including scores from gaming megasite IGN.com in its meta-scores. Why?
Because IGN gave the new Doom reboot a score that was … lower than the scores other critics gave it! Thus proving that IGN.com is irredeemably corrupt!
As petition creator Ivan Kovalev explains this logic.
Doom recently got a 7.1 in IGN, severely altering the score that it deserves, All other reviewers give it sterling reviews and has 90% and above score on steam.
Translation: It’s about ethics in you not liking a game as much as I like it!
Advanced warfare received a 9.1 yet being a mediocre game, IGN is paid off by large devs and shouldn’t be use as a legit source of review.
Translation: Any time anyone disagrees with a consensus I also happen to agree with, someone must be paying them off!
How far does your head have to be up your own posterior that you’re unwilling to accept the possibility that someone has a different opinion on a game than you do?
I’m not sure, but given that there are more than 1200 signatures on the petition so far, we can conclude that there are at least that many gamers whose head-up-their-own-posterior score exceeds this threshold.
The comments from petition signers are of course also quite lovely.
The top comment, from a fellow calling himself “Mike Hunt” — get it, get it? — somehow manages to work Anita Sarkeesian into the mix.
IGN is an uninformed, idiotic source paid off by big companies. I rank them at the same level as Feminist Frequency, the aneurysm causing garbage that kills the braincells of any logical being unfortunate enough to stumble upon it’s lie-speckled articles.
Uh, that should be “its lie-speckled articles.”
“IGN is like marrying crackwhore,” explains commenter Lale Gator from Belgrade, Serbia.
You know she isnt the best but still doesnt matter cause she perform everytime you want it from her,but on the downside she always gives you new STD.
Er, that doesn’t even remotely make sense as an opinion about a game site. It doesn’t even make sense as an opinion about a crack addict.
“Ign in cancer to gaming,”declares memes mcghee from Berlin, Israel.
“The don’t rate games probably,” adds Dexter Dorks of Dohah, Qatar.
At this point you may have noticed that I have given up on correcting the grammar and everything else.
“IGNorance should be punished for consecutively selling out,” Paulo Santos of Hollywood, Florida demands.
“People should not be misleaded!” cries Portugal’s Francisco Novais.
“IGN is polluting the gaming community and should be stoped,” Oscar Gerkman of Vingåker, Sweden angrily mutters between bites of lutefisk.
I guess the people have speakened, huh?
I do fully accept that reviews are subjective, but I don’t actually think the problem here really is the reviewer’s subjectivity.
There is a problem with review scores. A good, professional reviewer probably isn’t so much talking about whether the game appeals to them personally, but even putting subjectivity aside, you’re still never quite sure whether the score reflects the reviewer’s opinion of the game’s appeal to the core target audience, or the game’s appeal to the general audience.
To put it another way, you never know whether a high review score means “people will like this a lot” or “a lot of people will like this”. In Doom’s case (although I haven’t played it) I rather suspect the high scores are on the latter criterion and the middling score is on the former, but who knows?
When you aggregate and compare review scores, you’re treating those two statements as the same thing, when they’re really not. Apples and oranges and all that.
The “gamers” treat reviews like the gospel, so the outrage isn’t surprising.
Frankly, if we were to judge games purely on gameplay and mechanics, then so called “fake games” like SimCity, the Sims, Cities Skylines, and Roller Coaster Tycoon would be stomping all over the competition because they play with artificial intelligence and often delve into concepts within human factors, statistics, and other kinds of legitimate scientific studies… But gamers go out of their way to disqualify these as legitimate games.
For me, the only truly innovative games that deserve perfect 10s (outside of the ones I mentioned earlier, although I criticize those pretty crazy and don’t give them perfect 10s) as of now are Undertale, Earthbound, and Pong. Games that are ranked in the upper bracket are World of Warcraft (for simply being the biggest MMORPG we’ve ever seen that still manages to survive to this day) and Pac-Man. That goes to show just how little innovation and going outside the box most AAA studios actually do.
I’m not sure if it’s a guy thing, a geek thing, or an adolescent thing. Heaven knows plenty of girls and women have gotten huffy over something they love (I’m thinking of hardcore Twilight fans as one example) and without thinking of a specific example I’m pretty sure I got downright bitchy when someone would dismiss something I was really fond of.
Wanna know what gets really funny? Here’s what the creator of DOOM (the originals, not the one just released) said about the petition: https://twitter.com/romero/status/733772549411196928
If you look at his retweets, it seems like he’s too busy playing Life is Strange to play Doom 4. Gators think that Life is Strange isn’t a real game.
Well, you know, he ate his humble pie early with Daikatana so I don’t think he would necessarily look down on some games, if that makes sense?
Please let’s not bring Romero into this. Gators are ridiculous enough on their own, thank you very much. As for Notch… meh. Scildfreja has a very, very, very valid point on that hero worship there. And it’s gotten to his head, assuming he wasn’t always the smug bastard he is now. That guy has had his head up his arse up to his throat for years now because of that, I lost track long ago of the stupid crap he regularly pulls out of said arse. And since we’re in video-games-land where there’s never a shortage of irony, I’m pretty sure the last thing he said that made any sort of sense was also the one and only that caused controversy. When he said people who can’t afford to buy the game should get it by other means until they can actually buy, because (something in the lines of) “I want people to play my game, not just buy it” or something. Stopped clock I guess, because as far as anything else goes, he went down the Peter Molyneux slope of thinking so highly of himself and being validated by a huge fanbase that he thinks he can say whatever crap comes to mind and get away with it.
Hey, on the bright side, I still haven’t seen THAT MANY sexist rants (besides the weird comparison between IGN and FemFreq) on the subject and it seems like a certain Zoe Quinn and others MIGHT JUST make it out of this without a scratch, for once. So there’s that. Small victories, I know. But they deserve a break and let’s hope they can actually sit this one out.
On the other hand, might be time to check out what Candace Owens has been up to since this whole thing came up. Be it only for the sake of schadenfreude.
A bit of a rant here. I remember playing Super Mario RPG for, getting a N64, a GBC, a GBA, and a bunch of other stuff afterwards. I pretty much only play “real” games on mainstream consoles, and I have an Xbox instead of a Playstation. Hell, I’m so much of a “real gamer” that I enjoy CoD multiplayer! (Especially BlOps2, I felt like that one got balance right, the guns felt nice, and honestly I liked a lot of the future stuff they included, like the stun rods.)
For some specific games: I have Valkyrie Profile. I got a 3DS just to play Shin Megami Tensei IV, and got both Devil Survivors not long afterwards. Never really been able to play on PC but if I could I would get S.T.A.L.K.E.R among other stuff. I had Melee, Soul Caliber II, Guilty Gear, Pokemon Colosseum, so many games for Gen 6. I just beat Fire Emblem 7 (on an emulator but still) yesterday. My first ever games that I actually owned were DK64 and Pokemon Gold/Blue/Yellow (I had all three!). If I had to guess, I’d have a ton of gamer cred. And that’s what I despise GG. People disparaging “casual” games piss me off because games aren’t a SOUPER SEECKRETT KLUB, and what’s to gain by them being so? I want to see games grow, and that means including people from all walks of life. I don’t want pander-y stuff like Battlefield or DoA Volleyball to go away, but not everything has to be your big macho fantasy.
Another thing I dislike is that there ARE legit criticisms to be made about games, especially as an industry. Square-Enix was SURPRISED to hear that Bravely Default sold well and was well received. After all, it was a traditional fantasy turn-based JRPG about kids saving the world, and that’s not what the focus groups liked! I was so excited for Star Wars Battlefront because I LOVE SWBF2. What happened when I got it? It has almost no content and is apparently going to be a yearly release. That’s what I get after waiting A FUCKING DECADE for the sequel, EA?! Way to show you care about your fans. We have awesome games and awful companies, and a lot of otherwise good games that get watered down because the white kids brought in for focus tests say they want interchangeable angry white guys as heroes. This also effects marketing, leading to interesting stuff like Nier getting overlooked because everyone thought it would be a budget God of War and not the smart JRPG it is (it DOES have a bit of an issue with Kaine’s portrayal, but I thought she was badass and was still humanized pretty well.)
TLDR Games rock, companies suck, and GG sucks for mistaking the defense of the art and entertainment for defense of the business.
I frequent a java programming forum that Notch was on before and during the development of Minecraft.
He hasn’t changed, the fame and money just made it a lot worse.
Debbie Downer here. I have to agree with those upthread who are uncomfortable with the mocking in this post.
Making fun of the mistakes of native speakers who claim to be professional writers or who attempt high-faluting prose is fine. Making fun of the mistakes of regular people is at best weaksauce and when there is evidence that English may not be their first language, it’s not really acceptable.
Those of us lucky enough to speak the dominant global language proficiently usually do so as an accident of birth. So making fun in this way is punching down at a weakness that people did not choose.
It doesn’t matter that their opinions are shitty – we don’t give a pass on ableist or sexist language when the target is a horrible person. I’m not saying making fun of poor English is as bad as these, but I see it as being on a continuum.
@Frickle
Also wanna add, so what if you did want pandery stuff to go away? Nobody cares, if I say I want certain types of movies, shows, books, manga, etc to die. The second it’s about vidya, people can’t handle it. So with that in mind, let’s expend some cred, huh?
I’ve been gaming since the Genesis, and I never wanna see another brown and gray, military wish fulfillment shooter again
I got 100% on Crash 2 AND 3, and any fighting game, without a single woman over 40 (who looks it) but with 8 badass dudes on Medicare shouldn’t exist. And no fighting in heels either
I used to spend nearly an hour, everyday, to unlock all the characters in the original Smash (we didn’t have a memory card), and anyone who grittily reboots a fun franchise should have to explain, in detail, why they couldn’t either keep the lighter tone or come up with a new IP. And no, ‘we wanted to go in a new direction’ ain’t good enough
I had Killer Instinct 1 on the Game Boy Pocket, and licensed games… nuff said honestly
I just hate the idea that, to some people in the gaming space, ‘I don’t like that, I wish it didn’t exist’ is somehow not an acceptable opinion to have
I got the scrounger perk, and I tend to find ammo of all kinds ERRYWHERE.
So much so that most of my companions are rocking personalized 5.56 combat rifles.
(I just upgraded Nick’s stuff so he’s wearing an armored trenchcoat and is using a boss-ass combat rifle because I upgraded ALL THE GUNSMITH PERKS, MUAHAHAHAHA. Besides, I need him in top form to take on Far Harbor. : P)
Oh, that whole debacle.
I legit saw people accusing Marvel/Disney of buying off all the critics like Huggbees did to say bad things about BvS after that shit broke.
Like, wow.
8.8 was funny the first time, but it loses something over time.
http://money.cnn.com/2015/08/31/technology/minecraft-creator-tweets/ Just so you know. He is a sad strange little man.
> Garen Truscott
Yeah. Writing
is a bit strange. Does he not considering himself as a normal person ?
@FrickleFrackle
Didn’t expect to find someone who followed The-entire-furry-fandom here, huh. She’s oddly famous on the internet despite not doing a huge amount, weird.
@Cthulhu’s Intern
Gators say Life is Strange isn’t a real game? Do they say the same thing about The Walking Dead and other Tell Tale games? Because LiS is basically the same as those (but better, IMO). If they don’t, then presumably their problem with it is just that the main characters are girls/young women. Ewwww! Girls!
These are the same people who flooded the new Baldur’s Gate game with negative reviews because it’s got a trans NPC in it, right?
Just been scouring the net for some material for some upcoming women’s krav seminars we’re doing and one of the hits was an article on Roosh’s video game site. Anyone remember that!
To keep things on topic, he was complaining about games with strong women characters.
Yes. They are annoying and we wish they would stop.
Exactly, @Gipsz Jakab!
And they say Candy Crush is also not a real game although they would never say the same about Tetris.
Tetris is manly like Putin!
As far as I’m concerned video game journalism is a waste of time. If I want a game I read the steam reviews from other players and watch let’s plays on You Tube. Reviews on organise sites are nearly always paid off by the big creator or are just one opinion. It’s pointless getting angry, especially when there are much better sources out there. No other media has that advantage.
Tetris is supposed to make you smarter.
They practice “blamocracy”, blaming any person who challenges their ideas as being funded by the West and treasonous. They blame sanctions even on their own failures. The word “sanctions” has now become a cliché or rather a scapegoat. You see, when the only tool that you have is a hammer, you try to solve every problem with a nail, they no longer have anything else to blame.