Jim Sterling talks about the state of gaming reviews and games publishers controlling them

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34 minutes ago, dalekphalm said:

People pirate because they can get away with it, and because it's (relatively) easy. Pretty simple.

 

The fact that someone sells a game at, say $50, but you only value it at $25, but there's no option to pay $25, does not give you the right to simply pirate it. You should instead refrain from buying or playing it.

 

Tweet at the Publisher saying the game isn't worth the price, suggest a better price. Post on their Facebook page. Make a blog post. Post in the forums, etc.

 

But pirating it helps no one. It certainly won't help make them lower the price.

yes ofcourse people pirate because they can get away with it and its easy, that doesn't contradict anything i said.

 

now we are arrived at the real reason you went against my comment. your emotional objection. i simply disagree with that.

 

you can still do all that while also pirating it.

 

pirating was never a solution, not buying it is. if people don't find it worth the asking price and don't want to deal with the bullshit, pirate it. you oversimplify what i said.

[Doobeedoo]

Well fuck them, it's pathetic. Games being also expensive for what you get and chopped into DLCs too from very start, also delivered broken buggy and shitty performance. So yeah, it's like buying unfinished product, that along asks you for more money to play parts of it and also includes microtransactions and/or p2w garbage.

 

[Magnetorheological]

That's why you never,  ever pre-order.  Be patient and wait for the "wild cards".  Especially nowadays,  companies are becoming more and more untrustworthy with their bullshit releases. Those pre-order bonuses just aren't worth it, and it encourages publishers to continue taking advantage of pre-order culture by releasing buggy or unfinished or both software.  Street Fighter V comes to mind. . . 

[Bleedingyamato]

On October 27, 2016 at 8:52 AM, M.Yurizaki said:

Game publishers are starting to fear that if they give early reviews and copies to those who aren't humping their leg (or  the other way around since that's how you establish dominance), people will kill their preorders if the reviewer gives the potential customer a bad taste in their mouth.

 

Solution? People should stop preordering. If you want me to preorder publisher, give me an incentive that's worth as much as the game to me. e.g., I like to joke around when I got the Tales of Xilia collector's edition I bought a figure (it was a nice quality figure worthy of the CE price alone) and it happened to come with a game.

If a game gets bad early reviews then, crazy idea, the developer could just fix the game.  It's like developers would prefer to release a buggy mess, and hope not too many players care enough to return the game, instead of getting honest assessments well ahead of release and let legitimate pressure to release a quality game drive them to fix things that are wrong with it.  ? 

 

 

I've avoided preordering games I was on the fence about when I couldn't get a good enough idea of what the game was like before it released.  Preventing early reviews can cause the very problem publishers are worried about: causing people to avoid or cancel preorders.  

[Mira Yurizaki]

6 minutes ago, Bleedingyamato said:

If a game gets bad early reviews then, crazy idea, the developer could just fix the game.  It's like developers would prefer to release a buggy mess, and hope not too many players care enough to return the game, instead of getting honest assessments well ahead of release and let legitimate pressure to release a quality game drive them to fix things that are wrong with it.  ? 

 

 

I've avoided preordering games I was on the fence about when I couldn't get a good enough idea of what the game was like before it released.  Preventing early reviews can cause the very problem publishers are worried about: causing people to avoid or cancel preorders.  

It's not whether or not the game is buggy, it's whether or not the game is worth playing content wise. Like No Man's Sky.

 

Besides Bethesda releases buggy games all the time and they still get showered with praise. I don't get it.

[Bleedingyamato]

18 hours ago, Magnetorheological said:

That's why you never,  ever pre-order.  Be patient and wait for the "wild cards".  Especially nowadays,  companies are becoming more and more untrustworthy with their bullshit releases. Those pre-order bonuses just aren't worth it, and it encourages publishers to continue taking advantage of pre-order culture by releasing buggy or unfinished or both software.  Street Fighter V comes to mind. . . 

I used to preorder all sorts of games because I was a kid and let the liars at GameStop trick me into thinking that was the only way to definitely get a copy.

 

For some games sure that might've been at least partly true but for most games there was zero chance of not getting a copy on or after release day.

 

 

Godoka I miss the days when you could buy a GameBoy advance or PS2 game and at least in my experience games were much better than today in that they ran good or close to it without needing day 1 patches or patches at all.    Then from PS3/Xbox 360 going forward we started seeing patches everywhere.  Now with PS4/Xbox One the patch epidemic is more severe than it's ever been.  

 

It's very frustrating in general but for gamers like myself with crap internet it takes hours to download patches/updates at only about 1MB/s.  I hate putting in a new game disc and then I can't use it immediately like I used to be able to do.  ?

[Bleedingyamato]

6 minutes ago, M.Yurizaki said:

It's not whether or not the game is buggy, it's whether or not the game is worth playing content wise. Like No Man's Sky.

 

Besides Bethesda releases buggy games all the time and they still get showered with praise. I don't get it.

Fair point I did forget to include that content quality/individual opinions of content also factor into game purchase decisions and reviews provide needed and helpful insight about game content.

 

 

I think it's because Bethesda games have pretty good content quality even if they are buggy so people tolerate it.  It's not that their games don't get patches to be fair.  

 

Not to imply that excuses the bugs of course.  But if you end up with something buggy at least it's better if the game is awesome and buggy.  ? 

[Ryujin2003]

16 hours ago, M.Yurizaki said:

It's not whether or not the game is buggy, it's whether or not the game is worth playing content wise. Like No Man's Sky.

 couldn't agree more. It's hard to play some games that have zero end game... COD used to be fun way before Black-Ops.... but then it just got repetitive, the game lost its focus on the single player story, and became this fictional mess.

 

The last game I preordered was Mass Effect 3, and the only other game I will preordered will be Mass Effect Andromeda. It seems to be one of the only franchises that's got legitimate content, aside from Civilization.

 

But even with a preorder, now we need season pass because the original $80 per copy isn't enough to get all of the content initially....

 

And that's when people wait for sites like Amazon or one of the bucks sites to offer the whole thing at discount. Like Assassin's Creed Syndicate Collectors for 30 bucks instead of 100.

 

Maybe the games aren't always broken, but the system sure is.