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Giant Bomb |OT29| Uhhhhh I have a child

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Jintor

Member
Where do Nintendo games fall? Is BotW a B-game? It's certainly too good for the moniker, but the marketing blitz was about on par with Command & Conquer if my number-crunching is correct.

And we all know marketing makes-or-breaks the B in a game.

It starts with b so it's a b game. Qed
 

Zornack

Member
I thought the bombcast e-mail set up a broader discussion about reviews but the answers were kinda narrow, about what bases are covered for release date.

The interesting question to me is whether reviews should be consumer guides at all - and I don't think that should be their primary function anymore.

We need like one or two reviews going through the content of a game to see if the type of game is for us - if any at all -- nowadays that kind of reporting is done on forums anyway. Reviews should be a contribution to a debate about the game and games as a whole, and attract readers for the particular voice of the reviewer. It should be a well written text entertaining in itself if there's to be any value to it. I feel the bombcast discussion was stuck in the past.

I doubt a sizable number of people have any interest in that type of review.
 

oti

Banned
I doubt a sizable number of people have any interest in that type of review.

Let me correct you by saying:

"Almost nobody has any interest in that type of review".

Video games aren't movies. If you want to go full Roger Ebert more power to you. But that's not what the vaaaaaaaaaaaaast majority of people want. Video games are expensive, people want to know what game is worth their money.
 

Meguro

Banned
I thought the bombcast e-mail set up a broader discussion about reviews but the answers were kinda narrow, about what bases are covered for release date.

The interesting question to me is whether reviews should be consumer guides at all - and I don't think that should be their primary function anymore.

We need like one or two reviews going through the content of a game to see if the type of game is for us - if any at all -- nowadays that kind of reporting is done on forums anyway. Reviews should be a contribution to a debate about the game and games as a whole, and attract readers for the particular voice of the reviewer. It should be a well written text entertaining in itself if there's to be any value to it. I feel the bombcast discussion was stuck in the past.

I'd argue that reporting is just done on twitch streams and youtube vidoes nowadays but the rest I absolutely agree with.
I don't need someone to tell me the levels are good in a 2D platformer, I can just see that in videos.
Reviews for me need to do something differently and look at games way more critically than they do at the moment.
 

Fantastapotamus

Wrong about commas, wrong about everything
So I finished Soma...and I'm not sure how I feel about it right now. Especially how things ended up after everything. I might need to stew on it a bit more on my thoughts on the game.

I really disliked that the ending was a repeat of something that happened earlier in the game but the MC just forgot about that?

Didn't think I could like Ben less and then he had that edgy opinion about Gun's and Roses on the bombcast.

Not thinking G'n'R is great is not that edgy
 

erawsd

Member
Didn't think I could like Ben less and then he had that edgy opinion about Gun's and Roses on the bombcast.

giphy.gif
 

Peru

Member
I doubt a sizable number of people have any interest in that type of review.

Let me correct you by saying:

"Almost nobody has any interest in that type of review".

Video games aren't movies. If you want to go full Roger Ebert more power to you. But that's not what the vaaaaaaaaaaaaast majority of people want. Video games are expensive, people want to know what game is worth their money.

People want to know what game is worth their money, sure, but there's a million ways for them to do that. Check forums. Check social media. Check user reviews. Read the hundreds of sites already writing that sort of thing.

If you write a review as a consumer guide at this point you're contributing nothing. It's another one on top of the mountain of impressions potential consumers can read.

Of course a sizable number would have an interest in well-written review. It doesn't have to be an academic dissertation. It can be a quick easy read. It can be jokey and silly for that matter. But the review, of games, movies, music, any medium, as a a consumer guide, a "buy it or not" recommendation is an out of date concept and useless in the age of the internet. Just another game review is useless if it has no intrinsic value.

Of course a lot of people would be interested -- because these reviews already exist and are read by many. There are reviewers out there who look at the larger context when writing reviews or who manage to come at the game from an interesting perspective beyond base description of value. Sometimes even on GB, but rarely -- they're better at that (and often pretty great) when talking. Their one dimensional answers to a question about reviews reveals why they're by far the least interesting aspect of the site, however.
 

oti

Banned
People want to know what game is worth their money, sure, but there's a million ways for them to do that. Check forums. Check social media. Check user reviews. Read the hundreds of sites already writing that sort of thing.

If you write a review as a consumer guide at this point you're contributing nothing. It's another one on top of the mountain of impressions potential consumers can read.

Of course a sizable number would have an interest in well-written review. It doesn't have to be an academic dissertation. It can be a quick easy read. It can be jokey and silly for that matter. But the review, of games, movies, music, any medium, as a a consumer guide, a "buy it or not" recommendation is an out of date concept and useless in the age of the internet. Just another game review is useless if it has no intrinsic value.

Of course a lot of people would be interested -- because these reviews already exist and are read by many. There are reviewers out there who look at the larger context when writing reviews or who manage to come at the game from an interesting perspective beyond base description of value. Sometimes even on GB, but rarely -- they're better at that (and often pretty great) when talking. Their one dimensional answers to a question about reviews reveals why they're by far the least interesting aspect of the site, however.

I think we're overestimating the size of our bubble constantly. Most people want a score, they want to know what they're buying with their money. Granted, those people have moved on from text to video. To them the IGN YouTube channel is video game journalism.

I like interesting reviews more than boring ones too. But people who think scores are outdated and should cease to exist have no idea what the larger public wants out of reviews and video game journalism in general.
 

mnz

Unconfirmed Member
You might have to listen to white noise if not liking Guns N' Roses is too edgy for you.

People want to know what game is worth their money, sure, but there's a million ways for them to do that. Check forums. Check social media. Check user reviews. Read the hundreds of sites already writing that sort of thing.

If you write a review as a consumer guide at this point you're contributing nothing. It's another one on top of the mountain of impressions potential consumers can read.

Of course a sizable number would have an interest in well-written review. It doesn't have to be an academic dissertation. It can be a quick easy read. It can be jokey and silly for that matter. But the review, of games, movies, music, any medium, as a a consumer guide, a "buy it or not" recommendation is an out of date concept and useless in the age of the internet. Just another game review is useless if it has no intrinsic value.

Of course a lot of people would be interested -- because these reviews already exist and are read by many. There are reviewers out there who look at the larger context when writing reviews or who manage to come at the game from an interesting perspective beyond base description of value. Sometimes even on GB, but rarely -- they're better at that (and often pretty great) when talking. Their one dimensional answers to a question about reviews reveals why they're by far the least interesting aspect of the site, however.
I feel like what you're describing would count as a think piece and not a review. And they do exist en masse.

And I would like to point out that they have moved away from literal written reviews maybe for the reasons you mentioned. They give opinions on new releases in different forms to you. In a context that probably makes more sense.
 
This is exactly how you get people to not use voice chat lmao.

k4LMP9P.png

How else would you protect Switch users from child predators and griefers in the Switch's vast multiplayer library with titles like Mario Kart 8 or Ultra Street Fighter 2?

Ninty is doing this for your own protection. You should be thanking them.
 

Jintor

Member
i'll be honest, i don't know what i find more irritating, nintendo's baffling infrastructure decisions or people going 'hur dur nintendo defenders would eat shit if nintendo told them to' in every thread (not this one... yet)
 
I'm not old. It just sounded like he was trying to be edgy and everyone awkwardly paused about it too. Also both of the young #millenial new hires have had edgy music opinions on podcasts already.

Nah it was only brad. I'm pretty sure Jeff only ironically likes guns n roses .

We have enough defenders of old ass rock music on the gb roster. Give me more millennial hot takes.
 

Xater

Member
Nintendo continues to be shit related to anything online. Maybe they'll reach current competency in another ten years.
 

oti

Banned
Nintendo continues to be shit related to anything online. Maybe they'll reach current competency in another ten years.

As shitty as their solution is, as long as they make games that don't really need voice chat I'm fine. I'll just use Discord on my phone or tablet anyway.
 

Jintor

Member
if the twitter somehow subsidises the 35,000 word articles on halo dev history i'll deal because that shit is baller
 
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