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- I wonder what you think of this: Do critics enjoy negative criticism?
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I wonder what you think of this: Do critics enjoy negative criticism?
ubarose wrote: Over nearly a dozen years of managing the publishing schedule for well over a dozen different reviewers, the thing I hear the most often is "I know I promised a review for game X, but it is so bad I just can't bring myself to play it again." Since nearly all of our reviewers don't write a review after a single play, if a they hate a game so much that they can't play it more than once, you often just won't get a full review of the game. If they feel obligated to review it because it was a review copy, they may throw it into an article where they give a mini review of several games.
However, it is the large number of "meh" games that they have to churn through that usually breaks a reviewer, rather than the occasional bad game.
Wait, are you saying I didn't have to play the new version of Grifters as much as I did before submitting my writeup? Dammit dammit dammit.
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Vysetron wrote:
ubarose wrote: Over nearly a dozen years of managing the publishing schedule for well over a dozen different reviewers, the thing I hear the most often is "I know I promised a review for game X, but it is so bad I just can't bring myself to play it again." Since nearly all of our reviewers don't write a review after a single play, if a they hate a game so much that they can't play it more than once, you often just won't get a full review of the game. If they feel obligated to review it because it was a review copy, they may throw it into an article where they give a mini review of several games.
However, it is the large number of "meh" games that they have to churn through that usually breaks a reviewer, rather than the occasional bad game.
Wait, are you saying I didn't have to play the new version of Grifters as much as I did before submitting my writeup? Dammit dammit dammit.
Maybe I was unclear. If they can't bear to play it more than once, they won't do a full stand alone review of the game. So when you read a negative stand alone review here, it means the reviewer has truly suffered.
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To write such a review, I need to be able to play the game repeatedly in order to gauge its dysfunction. If it's terrible enough to make a single play the gauntlet that turns me away from it for good... I'm highly unlikely to do anything but shitpost something to my comment section and call it a day.
It's the cynical ones or, as Pete said, the designs that were either the result or cause of misallocated resources that will prompt me to seek out criticism or write my own if I feel the problems haven't really been addressed or discussed enough. I don't like to see problematic games hide themselves away in the echo chamber of product enthusiasm. It does a disservice to both sides of the consumer equation.
I used to dread the reaction to these reviews but I've come to realize I actually appreciate some of the smarmy or personally defensive responses from fans... not because I enjoy bothering these people but because their rebuttals often carry more information than the entirety of the product's self-justifying oeuvre: the KS hype videos, unboxing videos, Man Vs Meeple infomercials, the adulation of the first session reports, etc, etc. Angry fans will eventually produce *some* amount of information. For instance, the defenses of "you played with the wrong expectations" force those unstated "correct" expectations into the light; sometimes these are in direct conflict with the marketing or presentation of the game, or with the population it was marketed towards, or with it's own rules & structure. While superfans may provide this information in a shitty, passive aggressive way, at least there's *something* other than product worship hemorrhaging out of the indignation.
I think negative criticism also pushes readers to think about what they enjoy in their game beyond its newness or their participation in the product enthusiasm bubble of the moment. Even if they come away staunchly defending their darling and accusing you of every game critic crime in the book, they've thought about their consumption a bit more. I can only hope that *some* mindfulness comes out of the transaction.
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So while I might be okay with a mediocre game in a genre that I pull out every six months, to a critic everything mediocre is bad.
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- san il defanso
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Reviewing mediocrity is the most punishing part of this gig. I started seriously resenting all the time spent playing Quest for Whatever and not the stuff I really cared about, especially as table time got more rare. It's a much more difficult to get a mediocre game played than to watch a mediocre film, just in terms of opportunity cost. It begins to feel like wasted life.
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- Jackwraith
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- Legomancer
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"All happy families are alike; each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way," said Kurt Vonnegut, Marilyn Monroe, and Albert Einstein. And there's truth. The games I like I usually like because of a similar experience they provide: fun to play, some kind of arcing narrative, a clear feeling for who I am and why I'm doing what I'm doing, and so forth. When games fail for me they usually are just uninteresting but a lot of the times they fail in interesting ways. I still think the game is junk, but how it gets there is something I can talk about. Still, part of why I tend to not write reviews is my inability to articulate what I like about what I like.
As others have said, negative reviews often give far more information. I know I'm not the only one who's bought a game because of a negative review. (Not, "this sounds so bad I gotta try it," though I've done that, but "these things this person dislikes sound really cool to me.) I am tired, however, of all these Seanbaby-in-1998 "hilarious" edgy reviews ("this game stabbed me in the taint with a rusty spork made out of Justin Biebers!!! Cunt!!!!") But a good quality dissection, even if I don't agree with it, is almost always more interesting to read (and write) than another paean to an "innovative mechanic".
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- SuperflyPete
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- Legomancer
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Also Seanbaby, man, that's a callback. Dude used to send my sides into space. He was always the best of the "angry at bad video games" set, not that that's a high bar.
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