Other than Metacritic, will studios ever start being terrified of Digital Foundry?

Liopleurodon

Liopleurodon

Member
One of top comments on recent MGS: Delta is some person thanking DF for saving money, or whatever.

Do you think studios will finally start to take notice of DF, and that they (studios) must do everything in their power for game to be optimized, run at 60fps, and look good - otherwise, DF will pixel count them into next Thursday, and we, end users won't buy those games which costed millions to make?
 
If you need DF style in depth video to tell you of the technical issues then I guess they're not that bad, the games with serious issues that actually affect their worth/playability, everyone can see and tell by any random gameplay video and general reviews/reports not focused on tech aspects alone.
 
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No, at least not as long as its content made for enthusiasts. The general population don't care about their criticism or praise.

Review aggregates are extremely easy to digest. Even my mom uses IMDb for movies, and she never reads any single review. The average score will be the only score she ever see.
 
They probably will if DFs influence and audience continues to grow.
Hard to say if this will be a positive or negative for the industry.
Personally, I only care for the opinions of people who actually enjoy playing games.
 
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Holding studios accountable for not releasing unoptimsed trash is a new phenomenon but its a welcome one. I think studios care now more than ever and I think that DF are actually partly responsible.
 
DF is only 'important' for a very niche market that already have bias and only need confirmation because of its own insecurities - 'see, they just confirmed game A was better on Hardware 1 instead of Hardware 2'.

The absolutely vast majority of the market does not have time nor care about lots of technical stuff that, imho, should have been fixed:

Case in point 1: a lot of Nintendo games are not as optimized as they should.
Case in point 2: From software engine

EDIT: and let's not forget about DF own bias (after the Series X vs PS5 presentation, i simply did not watch any video of them anymore, and feel i did not lose anything...)
 
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They shouldn't be "terrified" of DF or anyone else. Ultimately, their bosses are us, the buyers.

I'd appreciate a DF equivalent for Chinese and Japanese studios though. They need it the most.
 
I don't understand. They are saying that it's beautiful right in the vid's title. They have their tongues deep in the corpos' arses, what these developers should be terrified of? Being licked to death?
 
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Companies sell 30 million copies of technically broken games all the time. Only message board dorks (ie a small minority of the consumer base) cares about DF.
 
Less than one and a half million subscribers plus the same 50 mad men in GAF that care about graphics. They can't impact sales. I wish they would. But they aren't.
 
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Angry_Megalodon said:
Please, NO. It's already bad enough that studios care about Metacritic, which negatively impacts creative freedom. They should only be led by sales and their fanbase feedback.
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They DO only care about sales.

The only reason they care about Metacritic, DF, or fan's opinions is by how much those things correlate to sales.
 
No. Just t like they arent afraid of a bad review as long as there is a good score at the end.
 
Sooner said:
They DO only care about sales.

The only reason they care about Metacritic, DF, or fan's opinions is by how much those things correlate to sales.
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Days Gone says hi.

Sony and other big publishers have fallen into the trap of believing that media are more important than their fanbase.

Same as the Oscars, when creators know what scores them points and what not, they try to cater to that, which in the current climate turns out in something praised by critics but hated by fans. It's happening everyday.

A subjective MC score given by biased media should never impact their bonus.
 
What's there to be afraid of? DF runs interference for the corporations when they do stupid shit, like forcing raytracing on the 70% of players who don't have a card that can run it acceptably.
 
I watch almost every DF video (I actually really love the DF Retro videos with John. John is easily the best of the crew) but a focus on these sort of analyses is detrimental.

People focus too much on HAHA LOOK AT HOW MUCH CLEARER THESE PC TEXTURES ARE AT A 4X ZOOM WITH NO MOTION AT ALL when they should just be playing the goddamn game.

We all know that art direction and art style matter more anyways.
 
Liopleurodon said:
One of top comments on recent MGS: Delta is some person thanking DF for saving money, or whatever.

Do you think studios will finally start to take notice of DF, and that they (studios) must do everything in their power for game to be optimized, run at 60fps, and look good - otherwise, DF will pixel count them into next Thursday, and we, end users won't buy those games which costed millions to make?
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Metacritic represents an approximate average of the opinion of a huge portion of the the gaming media, seen by millions of people. It is somewhat representative the opinion of the players, so often it's representative if it will perform in sales better or worse.

DF instead isn't seen by a lot of people and what they report rarely supposes any threat to the game other than saying that there's some very minor differences between two versions that most players won't notice specially because won't have the two versions side to side and won't be zooming and so on. DF opinion isn't representative of the opinion of players and doesn't affect their sales, so don't care about it.
 
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Angry_Megalodon said:
Days Gone says hi.

Sony and other big publishers have fallen into the trap of believing that media are more important than their fanbase.
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Not true, the game directors of Days Gone said that Sony didn't have any issue with the reviews and were very supportive with them instead.

We also saw that later Sony greenlighted DLC for the game, the PC port, the remaster, a movie adaptation and the first pitch that their studio sent it, plus included it in the PS Plus Collection. Meaning, Sony was happy with the game and the team, that Sony also did trust to let them support some of their most important IPs (TLOU, Uncharted, HFW, Death Stranding) between projects until their next main Bend project was ready to put the whole studio working there.

The internal Bend Studio boss was the one who decided that after DG1 the studio was going to work in a new IP instead of DG2, not external Sony people from SIE or PS Studios. People outside Bend never received a DG2 pitch.
 
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Liopleurodon said:
One of top comments on recent MGS: Delta is some person thanking DF for saving money, or whatever.

Do you think studios will finally start to take notice of DF, and that they (studios) must do everything in their power for game to be optimized, run at 60fps, and look good - otherwise, DF will pixel count them into next Thursday, and we, end users won't buy those games which costed millions to make?
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I think these people need to find a new hobby.
 
Nah.
It's only a small fraction of the audience that cares about the DF stuff, and I'd argue half the people watching their content don't really care about performance and IQ either and are just there to find ammo for the console/platform war.
The sales they'll loose from a DF review are ultimately irrelevant in the overall success of the game..
 
When you consider the number of people who buy games and compare it to the number of subscribers that DF has - I think the answer is pretty clear.
 
All the ungrateful fuckers in here, playing down DF - even though they have singlehandedly almost eradicated bad frame pacing in console titles. GTA 6's god awful 30fps lock on Playstation won't be like a fuckin' life support display, because of DF. Yeah, you can thank them for forcing that improvement.
 
I think it's cool what they and others do to show all the details and things

But, by and large the overwhelming majority of gamers will just boot up their game and play it. If it is ABSOLUTELY TRASH performance, even they will notice and make a stink about it.
"game crashes every 5 minutes"
"game lags and stutters everywhere"
etc

But they wont care that on 4x DLSS at max res and high textures you can see slight clipping in dark areas of whatever game. This is for the true nerds of that space. Mostly people on forums like this lol
 
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Watching paint dry is more interesting than watching a Digital Foundary video. And at least the paint doesn't preach at you.
 
DirtInUrEye said:
All the ungrateful fuckers in here, playing down DF - even though they have singlehandedly almost eradicated bad frame pacing in console titles. GTA 6's god awful 30fps lock on Playstation won't be like a fuckin' life support display, because of DF. Yeah, you can thank them for forcing that improvement.
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Joke post? I think I need coffee.
 
DirtInUrEye said:
All the ungrateful fuckers in here, playing down DF - even though they have singlehandedly almost eradicated bad frame pacing in console titles. GTA 6's god awful 30fps lock on Playstation won't be like a fuckin' life support display, because of DF. Yeah, you can thank them for forcing that improvement.
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They didn't do jack shit. You are deluding yourself if you think a bunch of old white Brits with fuck faces making clickbait YT thumbnails has any pull in the industry. All the top execs probably didn't even hear about them. Nobody cares. Social media is not real life.
 
I really dislike Metacritic having some sway over studios, there are so many bad reviewers in some of those outlets. Some have agendas or axes to grind and their scores clearly expose that.
There are a handful of youtubers that I watch if I need an opinion on a game before purchase. Cause I know they aren't reviewing games based on "oh but this developer said this thing once in twitter" but only the actual game they are playing.

Maybe we need a new metacritic style website, one which doesn't only have mainstream outlets like eurogamer and ign, but smaller independent reviewers which players trust more.
 
Liopleurodon said:
One of top comments on recent MGS: Delta is some person thanking DF for saving money, or whatever.

Do you think studios will finally start to take notice of DF, and that they (studios) must do everything in their power for game to be optimized, run at 60fps, and look good - otherwise, DF will pixel count them into next Thursday, and we, end users won't buy those games which costed millions to make?
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They've changed their tune and became friendly with console peasants, but that's not how they used to be most of their journey since they started. I'd say no cause they became tolerable with others opinions more than ever cause it used to be that they convince their viewers to buy gaming PCs.
 
DF only covers Nintendo and high-end gaming. So, some studios aiming at AAA or AAAA games might want to pass the DF-check. But they can't cover every game, nor they are willing to cover games that don't have a certain level of graphics, so their impact in the industry is lower than Metacritic.
 
While I appreciate the individuals at Digital Foundry, I believe they are the antithesis of gaming. They have transformed gaming, which I grew up with, from being centered around the games themselves, their enjoyment, and the fantasy they evoke, into a focus on pixel counting, excessively zoomed-in shadows, and frame pacing documentaries.

In contrast, we never experienced this level of nitpicking on the PlayStation 1. We simply had good games and bad.

It's akin to those individuals who invest countless hours into analyzing baseball or football statistics to the point of detesting the game because their stats are not optimal at all times.

I understand the reason for their existence and appreciate their popularity, but I detest the state of gaming that has emerged.
 
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Pokémon Scarlett/Violet are the second most sold games of the series at 27m.

I guess this answers how much general public care about polish, performance and resolution in games.
 
I think they're so mild and even at worst takes not dangerous. They also are either scared to not get blacklisted or simply not competent enough. Threat Interactive guy seems much thorough but IDK if anyone cares about him/them.
 
Cyberpunkd said:
They didn't do jack shit. You are deluding yourself if you think a bunch of old white Brits with fuck faces making clickbait YT thumbnails has any pull in the industry. All the top execs probably didn't even hear about them. Nobody cares. Social media is not real life.
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Yeah you shoehorned absolutely pointless racism in there for reasons only known to yourself.
 
I doubt any developer is terrified, but plenty of them admire DFs work and have taken steps to combat issues that DF has highlighted in the past. Be it a patch to address technical issues or increased focus on resolving stutter.
 
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