Well, I finished listening to the podcast last night, and frankly, I wish I had taken notes. It was after 4am by the time I was done and my memory isn't that good at the best of times. I feel like I should have maybe typed up a response then when it was fresh in my mind so I apologise if I have missed any points or have misinterpreted things. I should also point out that I haven't had a chance to read this thread, but given how large it is already, I imagine it can't be good.
I have to start by saying that I always enjoy listening to Denis he has a different take on things compared to many people in the industry, and whether I agree with what he is saying or not, it is always interesting to hear. I really don't understand why there is so much animosity towards him on these message boards.
I think he raises a lot of good points on the podcast, especially about message boards and internet culture in general. I also think it's great to hear about how Silicon Knights keeps everything in-house as they don't feel it is socially/ethically responsible to outsource, even if it does cost more to do so.
I agree with his thoughts on metacritic or even review scores in general. Now, I don't think that it means ratings should be abandoned altogether, but they are far too fine-grained as they are now. What makes Game A 0.1% better than Game B? What does Game A being 0.1% better than Game B even mean?
The scale itself seems to be constantly changing and getting smaller as it does. Far more games are getting 10/10 these days when it was once fairly rare. Many people now seem to think 80% or even 90% is what makes a game worth playing rather than the 70% it used to be, when an average game should really be 50%. It's absolutely ridiculous. From reading some of the comments that appear on forums such as this, you would get the impression that 90% is a bad score!
I'll maybe have a look at scores on a few sites to get a rough idea of what critics seem to think about a game (though I don't use an aggregator) but my decision to make a purchase is never linked to the score itself. The text is far more important than the number at the end, but even then I tend to make my own decision based on footage of the games such as GameTrailers' reviews, the 1up Show and clips from Gamersyde and from reading impressions on message boards. Or even better, I'll play the demo and make up my own mind if I can. (though I realise that some demos are not based on the final product)
Making the decision to purchase a game is a hard thing to do though, and I can sort-of understand why the score is important to many people. Over here, a new game is typically £3545, that's $7090 US. If you don't like it, you're going to lose at least £1015 ($2030) on trading it in or selling it on that alone is more than the cost of, say, buying a movie. Now gaming in general may be getting cheaper over the years, but it's still quite an investment compared to buying a movie or a CD where, if you don't like it, you won't lose much and it wasn't such an investment in the first place.
That's why I really feel that a demo is important even if it's supposed to be a triple-A release, it doesn't mean you're guaranteed to like it. And if there is a demo, developers should make it clear whether it is taken from the final game or not. That said, I really feel it is best for a developer to focus on making a demo available that is taken from the final game, as a poor demo can turn people away from something they may have enjoyed.
I've put quite a bit of thought into it, and while I understand why developers especially would rather that scores be abolished and have people make up their own minds based on the text in a review or by playing it themselves, I just can't see it happening. If we must have a scoring system, I think a four point scale works best. A two-point scalegood or badjust doesn't say enough about a game, and presumably there will still be aggregate sites which would take it as 100/0 and average all the scores out to give another totally meaningless number. Three points is an improvement: good, bad, great, but I don't think that leaves any room to highlight the truly outstanding titles. I think a four-star system with no half points of fractions would work best. 0: Avoid Reserved only for the truly terrible games. 1: Poor It's not completely unplayable, but it has a lot of issues. 2: Average It won't appeal to everyone and may not be your first choice but it's worth playing. 3: Great It may not be a AAA release but it should appeal to most people. 4: Exceptional I really feel that a scale should have room to point out something that raises the bar. This should be used sparingly.
Scoring games out of 100, or even 1000 in the case of some sites is absolutely meaningless. I do feel, however, that there is some merit to having a scoring system just not one that is so finely grained. Enough to give a recommendation at a glance, but not so much as to say this game is X.X% better/worse than that game that has no real value whatsoever.
Anyway, on to message boards. Now, going through my post history, there are quite a lot of things that I have said that I regret. In fact, there have been quite a few things where I've posted them and then almost immediately regretted it, or wondered why I've even said that. When you have been around somewhere like this, it's easy to just get caught up in it all after a while.
Initially when I joined (and before that) I was simply browsing for a long time, as the craziness was intimidating. At the beginning I believe that I wasn't posting much, and was being more sensible whenever I did, spending more time helping out in the HDTV topics etc. as it's an area where I have a bit of knowledge and experience. But after a while, you start to realise that due to the sheer volume of posts here, chances are that your voice isn't really getting heard, and even if it is, it's only by a few people before it gets to the next page of posts. With the kinds of username we get here, the avatars people have, and the .gifs that are posted all the time, it's hard to take the place seriously.
Recently, as a few people may have noticed, I've stopped taking things seriously at all. I posted in one of the Metal Gear Solid 4 topics shortly before it came out saying that I wouldn't bother buying the game because it's not 720p native and has framerate problems. Just think about that for a second. Does no-one realise how utterly absurd that is? Despite that, I got the impression that pretty much everyone in that topic thought that I meant it. That people could believe something like this was true says a lot about the place I think.
Not only that, but on NeoGAF, everything has to be black and white. You either love something or you hate it. You're not allowed to be critical and still like a game. As soon as you're critical of it you're labelled a hater and your opinion is no longer valid. I've been labelled a 360 troll, a PS3 troll and a Wii troll in the past because my opinion has not matched up to what the majority of people have been saying.
Now, given my posting history, you might not believe it, but what Denis was talking about is something I have been thinking about lately as well. I think it would be absolutely fantastic to see the kind of changes Denis mentioned such as having people post under their own names rather than using pseudonyms. Where posters are treated with respect like they are other people rather than just some random name on the internet. Where people actually think about what they are going to post and are held accountable for what it is that they say.
I'm not sure I agree with him when he calls GAF a non-profit organisation though. I don't know how things are here, but I run a much smaller forum and I do it to talk about games and other subjects in a small community where we most of us know each other. Even though we don't post under our own names, people are generally treated with respect. Or at least far more than you usually see here. But I don't consider it a business at all, it's just a place where we can get together and chat about things. While NeoGAF is much larger, I get the feeling that most online forums are started because talking about games is fun.
Now, as for the moderation at NeoGAF, whether you think they're doing a good job or not, I can say from experience that it is very hard. There are only about a hundred or so members on the boards I run and it's hard to know what to do and where to draw the line. You have to have someone come up with the rules in the first place. That in itself is a difficult thing to do, and it is hard to stick to as they may not always apply, or you may not have a rule for a situation you had not anticipated. For example, the recently added rule about not posting other users' personal information.
If you try to please everyone, you end up pleasing no-one. If you try to take a stand on something, then people will disagree, and you can end up driving them away. Unfortunately, not everyone's ideals are the same. What may be acceptable to some people is offensive to others. There have been some things that I have not liked, but have left as people have a right to express themselves, but if people complain, the rules are usually changed if I can see where they are coming from and agree with them on it, but then you have the offenders complaining and so on.
As it's such a small forum I run, I've always tried to keep things running as smoothly as possible and avoid banning people unless we absolutely have to. Doing so has had quite a few people leaving though, unfortunately, despite my best efforts.
As for moderators themselves, well again, I don't know how things are done here on GAF, but certainly on the boards I run, it's simply people that we thought were level-headed posters that had been there a while who we contacted and asked if they would like to help out. Some of these people are/were mods on other forums, so we felt that they would do a good job. They aren't paid for this, they simply do it to help out for the good of the forum. If the rules you have aren't explicit enough though, then their interpretation of what to do in some situations may be different from yours.
Here, it seems like the moderators have the leeway to set their own policy for things at times and don't necessarily have the same opinion on what to do in some situations as you pointed out, where some topics will result in an instant ban for voicing any kind of negative opinion and yet others are left because they find them entertaining.
For people like Garnett, and I assume that there will be many people of the same opinion in here, who say that well this is the internet, that's just how things are just ask yourselvesis this what you really want? Do you like how things are with insults flying everywhere and so on, or would you rather that this was a place open to more mature discussion where posters are treated with respect like they are real people? Where your opinion isn't invalidated because it doesn't agree with what someone else thinks?
I, for one, would like to see that kind of change, and it's up to us. No-one is going to make the change for usif it's something that you want, you'll have to work for. Certainly, rather than thinking it's only GAF, it doesn't matter or having a bit of fun with my posts, I'll be taking things a bit more seriously from now on.
What Denis says about message boards having more influence on the industry now does indeed seem to be true, so I think he's right about us having to change things.
I apologise for the length of this post, I didn't realise it was getting this big, but that's my thoughts on everything so far. I may have missed some things, and it could probably be better structured, but it was an hour or so of content to respond to and I can only spend so much time typing up a forum post that probably isn't going to be read by most people here due to its length.
