Polygon gives high scores to games despite their anti-consumer aspects / DRM strategy

JustAConspiracy said:
Look at Life of Pi. Reviews and awards say this is an excellent movie, but when you look at the controversy surrounding it you realize the company that made it is terrible for denying proper payment and credit for the VFX artists. Does that make Life of Pi worse? No. Does it make the company that MADE Life of Pi worse? Yes.
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Except people can't even play simcity because of the server issues. They can watch the Life of Pi as they wait for the servers to come back though.
 
JustAConspiracy said:
I think a question that needs to be asked is:


Personally I don't think so. Day 1 DLC and always on DRM are things which are removed from the core game experience, so I don't think they should be factored into the score. Don't get me wrong though, I do feel like these things should be mentioned as the first job of a review is to inform the consumer, but where does one draw the line?

Polygon changed Sim City's score based on constant server issues which rendered the game unplayable, but which issues are large enough or malevolent enough to warrant a change to the review?

EDIT:

Look at Life of Pi. Reviews and awards say this is an excellent movie, but when you look at the controversy surrounding it you realize the company that made it is terrible for denying proper payment and credit for the VFX artists. Does that make Life of Pi worse? No. Does it make the company that MADE Life of Pi worse? Yes.
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Sim City doesn't allow you to play the game due to server issues and silly online DRM, which does affect the core. You can't even play the damn game. Where as the the denying proper payment won't alter my movie while I watch it with Pi.

Bad example.
 
JustAConspiracy said:
I think a question that needs to be asked is:


Personally I don't think so. Day 1 DLC and always on DRM are things which are removed from the core game experience, so I don't think they should be factored into the score. Don't get me wrong though, I do feel like these things should be mentioned as the first job of a review is to inform the consumer, but where does one draw the line?

Polygon changed Sim City's score based on constant server issues which rendered the game unplayable, but which issues are large enough or malevolent enough to warrant a change to the review?

EDIT:

Look at Life of Pi. Reviews and awards say this is an excellent movie, but when you look at the controversy surrounding it you realize the company that made it is terrible for denying proper payment and credit for the VFX artists. Does that make Life of Pi worse? No. Does it make the company that MADE Life of Pi worse? Yes.
Click to expand...


Film reviews are usually approached like they are actually dissecting a piece of art. Nearly ever major gaming site reviews games in the same way you would talk about a car. How much content is there? Does it work mechanically? What are the control options? As long as they are taking that approach it is bullshit not to include aspects like DRM and DLC.
 
CaptainAhab said:
Film reviews are usually approached like they are actually dissecting a piece of art. Nearly ever major gaming site reviews games in the same way you would talk about a car. How much content is there? Does it work mechanically? What are the control options? As long as they are taking that approach it is bullshit not to include aspects like DRM and DLC.
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How can they honestly talk about it when it doesn't really affect them?

Having difficulty? Just call the PR team for advice
System crashing? Just try another rig in the office
Always online? Don't worry the office has on call tech support
DLC? Don't worry we've got a dozen codes for you
If all else fails, check the handy reviewer's guide

The publisher does their best to hide every negative aspect of the game to the critic.

It's no surprise that Rock Paper Shotgun is one of the most down to earth outlets out there, they basically work out of their house.
 
Vire said:
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lol yes.
 
Just in a really funny and entertaining guy. Love the Besties as well as MBMBaM.

My lord does he seem incompetent.
 
Visualante2 said:
It's no surprise that Rock Paper Shotgun is one of the most down to earth outlets out there, they basically work out of their house.
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So do most of the Polygon guys and the vast majority of freelancers out there, many of whom do reviews. Lot of assumin' going on in that post.
 
Brashnir said:
That first tweet could only be possible if it was coming from a person who considered themselves professionally responsible for promoting EA as a good company.

At least he just flat-out tweets, "I'm a shill," for the entire internet to see.
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When he tweets that, does he realize what he's saying? That sort of miscommunication is a failure for a writer.
 
Alex N said:
.... the game feels more like a really thoughtfully designed multiplayer mode for a larger, single-player capable game that, sadly, doesn't exist.
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That's a really good description for it. What they're doing in Simcity sounds neat in a lot of ways (not the DRM of course), but I don't want it at the cost of my big sprawling independent metropolis. Too bad it worked out like it did.
 
EA has the high metacritic score and all the sales that are crippling their servers. Bet they'll do this exact same thing for their next game too since no one holds them accountable.
 
This is pretty insulting to everyone who even casually browses their site. All this pretentious nonsense about redefining "games journalism" and yet, like always, arbitrary numbers that get shifted along with shitty review writing require explanations.

Twitter seriously is probably the worst thing that has happened to some of these "writers." Their explanations/damage control are appalling at best- insulting "entitled" gamers, trying to reassess site practices, etc. Why release the review so early?
 
This whole changing review scores experiment on Polygon seems to be the most ridiculous thing I've seen on any gaming website in recent history.

The fact that they're picking and choosing which games they take a second look at and which they don't seems horrible. If you're implementing a system like this then you cannot just do it for certain games – if that's the thing your website does then you have to put some work into it and cannot dismiss the updates one game had but point out changes about another one. The Minecraft example was absolutely perfect.

It seems to me like a desperate attempt at saying “We get it, we're the only ones who are going with the times” instead of doing something that would actually benefit the person reading your website. Instead of posting a news message telling everyone that the game currently does not work, that you're sure the server issues will be resolved but that everyone should stay away from the product right now (because it's not working), they do those review-edit shenanigans. They serve absolutely no purpose and if you deem a game worth being reviewed then don't play favorites afterward. Go back to any and every game every time a patch comes out and see if that resolves any of the issues you had with it.

Love some of Polygons features, though, but the review-thing seems like a bad, bad move.
 
Rapstah said:
I'm not sure why it looks like he's getting a child's handprint tattoos on himself there, unless that's the secret logo of Polygon somehow.
The invisible hand of the market driving all his reviews.
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That's actually so the Microsoft guys know where to put their hands when he bends over to "shine their shoes".
 
whatsinaname said:
Might have already been posted but the current Polygon score is not reflected on their front page?
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I think review scores are kinda dumb but this is the worst application of it. What is the purpose of having that score there? What does it convey? Are they expecting readers to see that and just buy a game based on it? Are they expecting them to click to find out more? What could a number like that possibly convey there?
 
I thought the whole uproar over their "documentary" was a funny joke but this revisiting review scores thing is sad. I don't really know or care about the history of these guys but the site (being a sister site of the verge) always seemed like it had potential. I would've had more respect for them if they kept the 9.5 even if the review seemed way hyperbolic.
 
polygon's desperate attempt to demonstrate their credibility and progressive nature has only further highlighted their severe lack of knowledge in regards to how criticism actually works

dear god
 
so is the experiment in new gaming journalism a complete failure now?

can polygon staffers be strung up, drawn and quartered yet?
 
Reading this whole thread and watching them dig further down the rabbit hole has been quite a fun ride. Sad, triflin' excuse of a credible site.
 
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Polygon said:
As expected, the question of whether or not EA would be able to support a large, enthusiastic audience for SimCity with a robust server system has been answered with a resounding "no," at least for the time being.

Since the official release of SimCity I have repeatedly tried to replicate the experiences I had reviewing the game with pre-release code on EA's development servers, and repeatedly I have not been able to — not entirely.

The server issues have been more troublesome, and have prevented me (and many players, we learned anecdotally) from connecting to the game at all. On launch day, during a period of roughly five hours, I experienced the same number of server-related game failures as in my entire 50 hours of review the game pre-release. That the experience of connecting to the game was, effectively, 10 times worse contributed to Polygon's decision to lower the score for SimCity (from 9.5 to 8).

In all other respects, however, when I have been able to access the servers to play SimCity, the experience I have had with it post-launch has been the same as it was pre-launch.

Until today.

EA's decision to remove certain features of the game in order to attempt to stabilize server performance has resulted in a dramatic change to the way SimCity is played and, in my experience, has not stabilized the server situation.

In attempting to play SimCity today, it took me over half an hour to load a game, during which time my connection to the servers dropped repeatedly, multiple attempts to load the city were aborted, and I finally had to "trick" the game into showing me (and then, finally, loading) my city by accessing the list of games present in the drop-down Origin profile menu. The main "Resume Game" button and the list of games in progress both would not show or load a city.

Even then, immediately after finally managing to load my city (New Pittssex), I received a notice that connection to the servers had dropped, suggesting my ability to actually load a game had been blind luck. Had the process taken a second or two longer, it would most likely not have loaded at all, as happened in approximately ten tries previously.

That said, the experience of connecting to a game and loading a city can not be said to be measurably worse (or better) than it has been since launch. Merely bad in a slightly different way. These same issues (and more) have been present since the game was released. What has changed is the experience of playing.

One of EA's major changes to the game has been the removal of "Cheetah" mode. SimCity allows you to alter the sped at which time passes so that you can make changes to your city and then see the results more quickly, or slow things down to address problems in "slower than normal" time. There are three speed settings, and they are "Turtle," "Llama" and "Cheetah." Corresponding roughly to slow, normal and fast.

With the removal of Cheetah mode, SimCity is now stuck with merely slow and normal, which would at first not seem to be too great an imposition, but in reality has drastically changed the manner in which the game can be played. The short version of which is: It's less fun.

EA has also (temporarily, they say) disabled SimCity's leaderboards, which allow players to see how well they are doing against other players worldwide, and the achievements system. I was able to access the achievements I had unlocked previously, but I will not accrue any new ones with this feature turned off. That's not a huge issue for me overall, but as a feature that was once present, but now is not, it's a big deal.

More problematic are the leaderboards. For a game advertised to be connected and social experience, the loss of the ability to see how you rank against other players is devastating. And, more troubling, accessing neighboring cities and finding the cities of my friends, using the Origin Friends service, has taken a dramatic stability hit. Even attempting to load a neighboring city causes my game to crash.

Given this currently horrendous state of both accessibility and playability, and acknowledging the fact that even the drastic changes EA has made to the game in its attempts to address them haven't worked, it is hard to continue to recommend SimCity. The experience currently on offer is now significantly altered from what was reviewed, and there is simply no guarantee that the existing server issues will go away, nor what further changes may be made to the game in order to address them. - Russ Pitts, Polygon Features Editor and SimCity reviewer
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"SimCity seems engineered to deliver maximum fun as efficiently as possible"

To be honest, I don't know why they bother doing all this when they're just going to bump it back up to 9.5 later anyway.
 
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