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Trust in games journalism, compromised by corporates and activists? (DA Veilguard)

mitch1971

Member
jfW7FHi.jpeg
Why is everything about sex with these people?! Can't they go a day without thinking about cock, balls and fannies?

Checkpoint gaming.

 

StreetsofBeige

Gold Member
Why is everything about sex with these people?! Can't they go a day without thinking about cock, balls and fannies?
Because they are immature and emotional people who feel good when they air out their views to the world.

When people are always impulsively talking about sex and pushing that narrative it's really no different than wild animals on National Geographic one second being chill, and then the next second humping in plain view of every other animal in the pack.

You'll notice they never amp up talking about intellectual or complex topics like business, science or heck how to fix a car. It's always about sex, gender, hey look at my weird hair or social media account etc...

It's not much different than 15 year olds in high school trying to be popular being loud. But when it comes to media, it's actually grown adults who can be 25, 40, or 55 doing this at a job. Crazy.

Movies, gaming, media in general are an industry that has people who LOVE mixing their personal lives and work together. Traditionally, people dont like bringing work home, or bringing personal life to work. And companies want that too. Just focus on your job, and then do whatever you want when you get home. But media people (no doubt skewed heavy to the rise of trying to be popular on social media and being noticed) have a knack for intertwining their life and work into one entity.
 
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Stu_Hart

Banned
The gameplay looks fun from what I've seen. Go throw a tantrum like a man child about other people's opinions some more. "OMG fake reviews even though I have no proof".
Multiple sites that are not the typical major gaming sites are also giving this a positive review. If there is some consistency that the game is between a 7-9 out of 10, maybe the game might actually be...ahem...good?
 

Lunarorbit

Member
Games journalism would mean actually going out and doing research and interviews to write something new about the industry.

Not just constant social issue bullshit. Or just popping up to write a review and then spamming your own article to create a echo chamber. Like what espn does.

No, most sites now just hire whoever can write the most copy
 

SlimySnake

Flashless at the Golden Globes
lmao. at least wait to play the game yourself.

plenty of bad games have gone through stuff like this. starfield, cyberpunk both had restricted access to reviewers. this isnt new. its unethical but i think people should wait to actually play the game before trashing it.

everyone here wouldve been celebrating it if it got awful reviews like suicide squad and skull and bones. both were expensive games with corporations pouring millions into marketing. didnt amount to anything.

meanwhile anti woke games like stellar blade and black myth were supposed to get blasted by woke reviewers but they both got great reviews. maybe people just like this game?
 

SlimySnake

Flashless at the Golden Globes
Its a shady industry. Making it more interesting is how direct or indirect game companies and reviewers are. Is it advertising? Is it a pay out? Is it early copies and access? Is it free stuff?

My buddy ran a game site way back and he got a box full of GTA4 swag from Rockstar. Free game and collectible knick knacks. But that was the end of it. There was no NDA or contract or anything. All he did was email them if they got any promotional stuff and he was surprised when he got a free game out of it.

Did that sway his review? I dont know. I didn't keep up with his site. But his perk was as low level as you can get. He didnt get money or early beta copies or whatever.
Anthem landed at 56 metacritic. Andromeda settled at just 70. the lowest rated bioware game at the time. why didnt EA pay off anyone then? BF 2042 is 63 on ps5. 68 on pc. again, why not pay off devs then?

i dont buy this conspiracy theory stuff. this might have been a thing back in the mid 2000s but after the Jeff gerstmann debacle, things calmed down and reviewers were allowed to shit on big name IPs by major publishers.

I think the fact of the matter is that the industry is simply full of fanboys. Just like any hobbyist industry. Cars, sports, electronics, people like brands and products and they find enjoyment in them. Sadly, they do end up reviewing these things and thats where all the objectivity gets thrown out the window. But id rather a Destiny fan review a destiny expansion then some rando who has no idea how destiny works.

Bioware simply gave the review copies to people they knew had posted positive impressions in the previews. even then they missed out on quite a few reviewers like skillup. im sure the metacritic will drop some more and end up around 79-80. starfield went from 89-83 iirc.

But fans of bioware games will find enjoyment in this purple abomination. I found enjoyment in andromeda. no one else makes games like that. their combat team has THE best combat of any RPG ive played going back to mass effect 2. even anthem had great combat mechanics despite being an otherwise atrocious game. if this game has great combat mechanics with the same bioware storytelling and choice driven campaign then why wouldnt bioware fans like it?

now its entirely possible they pull a bethesda and put out a completely garbage game like starfield but hopefully thats not the case.
 
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Raven117

Member
lmao. at least wait to play the game yourself.

plenty of bad games have gone through stuff like this. starfield, cyberpunk both had restricted access to reviewers. this isnt new. its unethical but i think people should wait to actually play the game before trashing it.

everyone here wouldve been celebrating it if it got awful reviews like suicide squad and skull and bones. both were expensive games with corporations pouring millions into marketing. didnt amount to anything.

meanwhile anti woke games like stellar blade and black myth were supposed to get blasted by woke reviewers but they both got great reviews. maybe people just like this game?
Only way to find other than playing it yourself is to gather what reactions you can in the wild and from reviewers you trust.

I haven’t written the game off, but I’ll be waiting to see how it’s received.
 

Toons

Member
DCleGCc.png

IGN


Gamespot

+Another 3




+bonus (Checkpoint games who gave it 100)

jfW7FHi.jpeg



What say we GAF, is this a return to form for games journalism?


Its always "compromised" and "not trustworthy" until the review agrees with you.

Been this way for a long long time.

Problem is at this point I dont trust user reviews either. Most of the "users" have agendas too.

If I'm interested in the game I'll give it a try. If I don't like it I dont like it. I stopped caring what the majority thinks a while ago
 
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Cyberpunkd

Member
I'd bet good money most of them are using AI to 'write' their reviews.
Yup, that’s the answer. Even worse, they are either using a very simple prompt (hence the model gives more or less a templated review), or they are not making any changes later on.
 

midnightAI

Banned
Now I never go off game reviews (unless a game I was interested in is universally panned by everyone then I'll maybe be swayed not to get it). But (reading between the lines here) is this whole post and outrage in this thread due to some considering this game to be woke and full of DEI hires working on the game.... But the game is reviewing well so may actually be good?
 
More like a return of lot of copies.

I had some hope after enjoying one of the gameplay videos. But I hear from geniue reviews that the game is extremely linear, boring and buggy .
The dei shit as well I can ignore if the game is good
 

DGrayson

Mod Team and Bat Team
Staff Member
Too many to be a coincidence. They asked the same ai to write their text, they ripped off the same review or someone told them what to write.

Most likely they received a free review copy, a list of talking points to add to their review (if they want...) and the implied but not mentioned point that negative reviews may lead to be cut off from future review copies and previews etc.
 

PeteBull

Member
The gameplay looks fun from what I've seen. Go throw a tantrum like a man child about other people's opinions some more. "OMG fake reviews even though I have no proof".
Multiple sites that are not the typical major gaming sites are also giving this a positive review. If there is some consistency that the game is between a 7-9 out of 10, maybe the game might actually be...ahem...good?
Bro, concord got 62 meta, which means they collectively decided its above avg game.
Yup the same game that sold 25k copies worldwide and got closed servers in 2weeks after release/got refunded to all buyers :)

If game of such terrible quality gets 62 u can tell as long as its from big publisher and woke it cant go lower than that, so scale is 6/10=1, 7/10=2, 8/10=3 in 10/10 scale for such games.

Wait for independed reviews from ppl who didnt get free early review copies, then for user scores on both meta and steam, that gives u info on how ppl who actually bought game with their cash score the product, not biased prof journos who's living depends on giving games from big publishers biased high scores.

As an example how bad it got, eurogamer gave DA:V max so 5/5 while for example Hogwarts Legacy review there was canceled.

Here check eurogamer's all max scores, many games dont belong in that cathegory(u got overall metascore right next to it just so u can compare it)

https://www.metacritic.com/publication/eurogamer/ 101 fucking perfect scores, over 20+years, and one of the perf scored games is DA:V it didnt get 4,5/5 so 90 meta but perfect 5/5.

Even crazy DA series fanatic wouldnt score that game as perfect w/o tangible rl incentive to do so, and we talking here about professional journalist who should be capable of pointing out game's flaws and keeping clear mind about the game, not give into the hype like 3yo kid who sees candystore for the first time in its life :)
 

SJRB

Gold Member
It's pretty clear the trans and trans-adjacent give the game praise for obvious reasons while the regular gamers like Mr. Matty and ShillUp look at the broader picture and think it's dogshit.

The schism between gaslighting activists and regular games who just want to play videogames has never been more obvious and out in the open than it is with the reviews for this game. When the game actually comes out and the regular folks will take a swing it is going to be brutal. No amount of 9/10 from IGN can save this game.

It's fucked up for sure but remember to vote with your wallet.
 
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There's no way you can trust modern liberal American reviewers. We see this with movies and TV all the time - they will praise anything that bends the knee to woke nonsense no matter how bad it is. It's less egregious in video games, but don't think for a minute that it doesn't also happen there.
 

Psychostar

Member
It's pretty clear the trans and trans-adjacent give the game praise for obvious reasons while the regular gamers like Mr. Matty and ShillUp look at the broader picture and think it's dogshit.

The schism between gaslighting activists and regular games who just want to play videogames has never been more obvious and out in the open than it is with the reviews for this game. When the game actually comes out and the regular folks will take a swing it is going to be brutal. No amount of 9/10 from IGN can save this game.

It's fucked up for sure but remember to vote with your wallet.
How on earth did this game get a higher score than Black Myth Wukong? That's what I wanna know. BMW actually ticked all the boxes necessary to make a cool IP stand out and a memorable video game.
 
There's no way you can trust modern liberal American reviewers. We see this with movies and TV all the time - they will praise anything that bends the knee to woke nonsense no matter how bad it is. It's less egregious in video games, but don't think for a minute that it doesn't also happen there.


This has exploded in the last two years. Western media is mostly comprised of a bunch of self-proclaimed activists with deranged reviews against Chinese and Korean games while praising turds like this or Concord. They have zero credibility for games tokenized for ideological wars.
 

TheUsual

Gold Member

Man, that has got to feel like the ultimate betrayal by your (probably now former) editor.

Lesson learned and glad that LSM is standing by him. How his access to game companies will be effected in the short and long term is another thing we will find out as well.

There's probably a lot more nitty gritty details that we may never hear about (i.e., did the editor have an NDA as well, blah, blah, blah) and what actions could be taken there.
 
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royox

Member
How on earth did this game get a higher score than Black Myth Wukong? That's what I wanna know. BMW actually ticked all the boxes necessary to make a cool IP stand out and a memorable video game.

BM Wukong trans and bi character count = 0
DAV trans and bi character count = over 9000.
 

Laptop1991

Member
I'm not sure that's true, their own articles and attitudes have done that, especially attacking and blaming gamers! for failed games, just them shifting the blame again more like.

Just seen their scores for the new Dragon Age lol, it's their own fault! :messenger_tears_of_joy:
 
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meh game reviewers and "journalists" have been hacks for decades. I do get a laugh whenever these fuckwits give a game a perfect 100 score or a perfect 10 score. No game is perfect, every game has some flaws or imperfections so the minute I see a "OMGZ 100%" or "Slap my dangly bits it's a 10 out of 10" I just immediately assume it is a bullshit paid ad which is what most mainstream media reviews are these days. Then when you couple that with the utter hostility that the gaming press seems to have against the gaming audience because we are not "buying in" to their bullshit messaging is it any wonder that prostitues have a higher rep than a games journalist.
 

Vlodril

Member
How on earth did this game get a higher score than Black Myth Wukong? That's what I wanna know. BMW actually ticked all the boxes necessary to make a cool IP stand out and a memorable video game.

They are just making it obvious how irrelevant the scores are. Wukon will have sold more than 10x the amount veilgard will do. Although we already saw that with Hogwarts. The more they try to push their agenda the more people seem to ignore them.
 

Krathoon

Member
Ah. I miss that days when the games media was more straight. You still kind of have it with Giant Bomb and Nextlander.
 

Northeastmonk

Gold Member
I remind myself of how critics have existed in the film and music industry. Who really cared about publicized film or music reviews in the last 15-20 years? No one. We had our time listening to Roger Ebert and other film journalists I can’t even name. I don’t think MTV’s VJ’s gave us their opinion when a new song was played on the air. When was the last time you cited a journalist before you bought that album on iTunes or went to see a film because someone gave it two thumbs up?

Game journalists are working for corporations that are afraid of being cancelled. They’re also hiring a selected group of people to critique the games.
Game Developers are hiring the same crowd to make their games, so they’re agreeing that their perspective should be explored in this medium. Even if their ideas suck or aren’t interesting at all.

These aren’t the people who cried when they saw Skyrim either. They’re in love with being the consumer who gets seen by the corporation. From the sound of things, they’re also getting rewarded for it.

I agree with the journalist when they praise something I enjoy, but it’s hard to ignore how fast they’ll bend the knee to this god of sexual identity that exists in today’s media. It’s not even talent. It’s being made out to be good just because it addresses sexual identities.

They’re trying to take over what the “-“incel, boys club”-“ created and then blame everyone for being an incel if their stuff fails to deliver. That Patcher guy is about as knowledgeable as the corporate CEO running the game company. He’s blaming a group of people because the “-“woke crowd”-“ didn’t sell as much as they wanted. It’s not better. It’s just pushing another narrative that isn’t what it was.
 

BbMajor7th

Member
I'm still scratching my head over the FFVII Rebirth reviews. I do think the cultural Overton Window for what counts as good writing and design has shifted though - or rather the intended function is being rewritten for the postmodern era.

I've always regarded storytelling as a sort of thought experiment that allows you to explore real-life situations in the abstract, explore a premise or a set of ideas through analogy and metaphor, conjure wild hypotheticals and follow them to their natural endpoint. That doesn't seem to be the function of modern writing though: writers appear more interested in expounding their favourite philosophies or retreading their own prejudices - demonstrating the virtue of their own ideas via a sort of falsified evidence. As a result, they attempt to reduce human behaviour down to an individual script, that accounts for every thought and action as a rational succession of concerns and events (unlike real humans, who are a messy, irrational fit of intentions and desires that only occasionally manage to marshall that chaos into something resembling sensible conduct).

But then, this is the essence of postmodernism: to manifest reality through language, to make intention more important than action or outcome, and appearance more valuable than substance. It is the era of presenteeism in which what we're seen to say, which shibboleths we can most confidently recite, are more important than what we actually do with our time, or what we truly believe about ourselves or others. Personally, I fucking hate it, but I think all of this stuff makes a lot more sense when you accept the unmistakable shift that has taken place across the most influential sectors of the modern West.
 
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Alebrije

Member
Those are not reviews , it's marketing. Buy the product because I Say it's good.

Lame for the people that lisents those places, if You can't create your own criteria about a videogame just imagine serious stuff.
 

PeteBull

Member
How on earth did this game get a higher score than Black Myth Wukong? That's what I wanna know. BMW actually ticked all the boxes necessary to make a cool IP stand out and a memorable video game.
Simple: DA:V ticks all boxes needed for high review score- published by EA and big western AAA game, infested by woke virus to the brink it basically blows itself up, compared to small asian dev studio who refused to work with sweet baby and implement DEI policies.

True test will be sales numbers tho, coz we gotta remember no matter how highly those woke journos praise the game, they spend 0 money on it.
Game is still dependend on sales numbers, as a singleplayer game w/o mtx even more so :)

If we not getting 2-3m copies sold announcement first few weeks after launch we can be sure game bombed hard just like SW:O :D
 

MMaRsu

Member
Ah. I miss that days when the games media was more straight. You still kind of have it with Giant Bomb and Nextlander.
Giant Bomb and Nextlander refuse to cover Kingdom Come Deliverance.

Because it didn't have black people in it, in 1600 Bohemia.

They are fucking jokes just like the rest of them.

Vinny and Alex were making a lot of 'authentic' jokes during the Kingdom Come 2 trailers at various showings.

Fuck em. Won't elaborate on any of it, nor will they cover any of it.
 
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