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GAME REVIEWS: HOW LONG DOES IT TAKE TO FORM AN OPINION? - by Mr Biffo

15/8/2016

36 Comments

 
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How long do you need to play a game for before you can formulate a valid opinion on it? This amount of time: no time at all. In fact, people can have opinions on anything, sight unseen. Take it from the writer of Pudsey The Dog: The Movie...

So... you might've read my review of No Man's Sky.

You might also have read the comment from Digitiser2000 reader Chris O'Regan, who had this to say: "From your review I can only assume you haven't played it for long enough. Everything you describe occurs at the foundation of the player's experience. It exists to act as a stark relief against which you compare the experiences you have yet to have."

Which is interesting. Because from my perspective, I've very much played it for long enough. However, Chris's comment got me thinking.

​The debate about whether journalists need to finish a game before they should be allowed to review it is one that has raged for aeons. I thought it might be worth taking a slightly closer look at it.
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THE CHANGING GAMES
Games have changed in the last decade haven't they?

I mean, by comparison to how they used to be when I first started out as a journalist, games are massive these days.

No Man's Sky, by all accounts, is the most massive game ever... taking place in an almost infinite, procedurally-generated universe. 

For the purposes of the review, I played it for 30+ hours... and my conclusion by that point was that I like it enough to continue playing it. While also suggesting that I was starting to get a bit bored. I might "finish" it one day. I might not. I'll keep plugging away for now, but I was pretty confident that I was at a point where it felt fair to review it.

If the game changes dramatically after those 35 or so hours... then in my opinion that's some bloody awful pacing. Sometimes there's a reason why less is more.

I mean... because my own time is limited and precious... my reviews on here are written from the perspective of someone whose time is limited and precious; I can't afford to spend 100 hours on a game - or whatever it takes for the later experiences to emerge - before formulating an opinion. 30 hours of gameplay, which I mostly very much enjoyed, is pretty good. I felt I'd got my money's worth, more or less.

But get this: No Man's Sky is not alone. There are a whole bunch of games that I've reviewed on this site which I'll probably never finish: The Witcher III, Assassin's Creed Syndicate, Fallout 4... Why? Because I stopped playing them because I got bored. I wasn't prepared to waste any more of my life on an activity that I wasn't enjoying, or had grown weary of. 

And y'know... that's a review right there: I disliked Game B so much that I didn't finish it. Or I stopped playing Game Y because it wasn't important enough for me to keep playing it.

You might disagree with me. You might think I have some sort of ethical duty to scour every last pixel of today's enormous game worlds, so that I can tell you every last thing about them. And you might be right, and I might be wrong in thinking you're not right.

However, it is an interesting debate, and kind of cuts to the heart of why I review games, and my philosophy of doing so. 

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OLDEN DAYS
I'll hold up my hand and admit that we didn't always give every game a fair playing on Digitiser.

Most of the time we did, but occasionally, for reasons of time or lethargy or because we were too busy messing around or because I'd briefly lost my enthusiasm for my employer, we fudged a review.

And on a couple of occasions we ballsed up as a result.

​There's one specific time I recall, when we criticised a particular game for not having a certain feature. We received a furious phone call from a PR who insisted it did have said feature - we just hadn't played far enough in the game to find it.

Suffice to say, after that point we were somewhat more cautious.

Certainly, when I reviewed games for other publications I tried to give the games a proper going over, leaving no stone unturned. That was only right and professional.

It wasn't always like that with Digi, where the ultimate responsibility rested on my shoulders; I was prepared to take any flack, were I to knowingly play a game for too short a time to review it adequately. Frankly, my philosophy in those instances was... "Who cares?". If I wasn't enjoying a game, and stopped playing it because of that... surely that in itself speaks volumes?

That nevertheless made me feel a bit guilty at times. Even games I felt were bad had been worked on by people with the best intentions. A little voice at the back of my brain kept telling me I had to complete every game I ever reviewed - for them.

FINISH LINE
And yet, as time wore on, my opinion changed. I started to think that I didn't always need to finish games. Certainly, in coming back to reviewing with Digitiser2000, I am more than happy to state my opinion on No Man's Sky after a "mere" 30 hours of play.

Have I seen everything the game offers? Evidently not. But I also know that I'm starting to find what I am doing to be slightly repetitive. Albeit... not yet repetitive enough to stop playing. So in that respect... it's probably doing better than some other games I've reviewed on here, which I know I've quit before completing even 50% of them.

That's valid. That stands up as an opinion in and of itself. And in the case of NMS I was open about the amount of time I had spent on it.

I might one day get to the centre of the galaxy, but... frankly... I've got a family, and a job, and other things I want to be doing as well as playing, and I'll be dead soon probably, and I don't intend to dedicate the next couple of months of my life playing NMS until I'm certain I've seen everything it has to offer.

That's madness. I leave that sort of diligence to the hungry young boys and girls of games journalism, who still have three quarters of their lives ahead of them, and nothing better to do, because they get paid less than minimum wage, and live in a skip.

Lest we forget, I don't exactly get paid a lot to write Digitiser2000 - as grateful as I am to everyone who does contribute to this site via Patreon or Paypal. I mean, it's lovely... but it's hardly a full-time wage. 

Nevertheless... it doesn't change one important thing: I have formulated an opinion on No Man's Sky, and it's as valid as any other opinion, and I stand by it.

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HONESTY BOX
In all honesty, you could quite easily review a game from the box art alone, if you wanted to. There's no law against it.

​And even if there was a law against it, it would be an abstract and imaginary construct, which had nothing to do with the physical universe.

​It might not exactly be the most informed review, but it would be a review. So long as the reviewer stated that they hadn't played the actual game... It stands as what it is.

Every review is a product of the person reviewing it, and every person reviewing it is an individual. It should be about how the game made them feel - not an emotionless checklist of elements the game contains. 

This isn't aimed at Digi2000 reader Chris O'Regan - it's more inspired by the kind of debates I read about "ethics in games journalism", and the like.

Some individuals seem to feel that reviewers - whether they're professionals, amateurs, or washed-up veterans like me - have some sort of duty or obligation to dedicate their entire lives to the job of reviewing games from a completely dispassionate platform. That they should give over every waking hour to documenting every last principle of a game, and never bring their emotions into it.

We live in this ridiculous age where Rotten Tomatoes and Metacritic have distilled the worth of all entertainment down to a numerical value. Some people see that as some sort of intractable barometer of the worth of a given thing. 

NUMBERWANG
Do you apply numerical values to other things in your life; your family, your friendships, your dinner, your knees...? Of course not. And if you do then you need to have a stern word with yourself.

Yet a review is just as much about the relationship between the writer and the thing he's writing about. It has to be about that, and if it isn't about that then it is utterly meaningless. You might as well get a computer to review games. Y'know... at least they have the time to play everything to the end.

​If you split up with someone because they turn out to be a psycho stalker-type, then you have every right to have an opinion on that person. You're not expected to stay with them indefinitely so you can be sure your opinion of them is fair.

And equally, you have a right to formulate an opinion on a game after playing it for an hour, and switching it off and getting on with your life, because you thought that hour was a bunch of bobbin-y bollocks. Or, at least, I believe that I do, because I'm not employed as a games journalist, and I'm buying all my review copies out of my own pocket.

I'll leave you with this: having written about video games for more than 20 years... I can't think of a single instance where my opinion of a game changed from the point at which it formed. Games good and bad have their quality running through their DNA, from the opening screen to the final boss battle. If I liked or disliked a game, 99.9% of the time I'll have known from the start. 

FROM THE ARCHIVE:
REVIEW: NO-MAN'S SKY (PS4, PC - PS4 VERSION TESTED)
VIDEO GAMES AND THE HUMAN INSTINCT FOR EXPLORATION - BY MR BIFFO
​
VIDEO GAMES: A PRIMAL INSTINCT BY MR BIFFO


36 Comments
Def Leaphard
15/8/2016 07:07:58 pm

Hmm interesting. So Biffo, would you say that in most cases your opinion has been formed well after you've gotten to grips with the game and are not playing it as a novice?

I guess,as a gamer who doesn't really get to play that games an awful lot during my week, I wonder if my opinion would differ at different points in a game because it takes me ruddy ages to get to a level when I'm not accidentally strafing into walls instead of throwing a grenade - once I've become a competent player, then my opinion might differ because I'm playing the game as it was meant to be played (rather than as a cack-handed 5 year old). My initial frustrations may just be because I'm naff.

Saying that, I guess a game that DOES take chuffing ages to become proficient in may itself score more harshly - at least for a casual like me

For purposes of the question, let's assume I'm not talking about sequels Halo 17.2, CoD 29 and similar ilk) where, for the most part, if you can play earlier games in the series, you'll already have a fair mastery of controls and be able to play fluently.

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robojamie link
15/8/2016 07:08:32 pm

Just as you mentioned that you can’t remember your opinion ever changing from the opening of a game - likewise some people’s opinions of a review (and reviewer) are coloured by the headline score. If Metacritic has taught us anything it's that sales, and indeed developers bonuses, are dependent on only the scores, and the review text is just attached blurb.

This was kind of illustrated to me this week while reading the latest (paper!!) Official Playstation Magazine. In their review of Dino Dini's Kick Off, they mentioned while it was shite it didn’t hold the title of worst reviewed Kick Off game. That was in the last ever issue of Amiga Power where some terrible ’96 iteration was awarded 1%.

Which I thought was funny, as if i remember that issue correctly the 1% score came with a footnote revealing that the game actually merited about 35% but since it was the last issue - fuck it, two games were being awarded 1% and 99% no matter how they played.

I think it might have also been to piss off Dino Dini as well.

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David W
15/8/2016 08:30:31 pm

Your memory of the last issue of Amiga Power is slightly muddled.

Kick Off '96 was awarded a sincere 1% because it was riddled with horrendous bugs, such as first half injury time lasting forever in the majority of matches.

The false score was for Alien Breed 3D 2. It was awarded 98% in the neat little summary box, with the true score only apparent when reading the actual review.

Read the whole issue again for yourself, here:

http://amr.abime.net/issue_65_pages

Also, may I draw your attention to AP2? It's by two little Amiga Power guys who forget to stop writing when the magazine closed:

http://theweekly.co.uk/ap2/

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robojamie link
15/8/2016 08:40:05 pm

Ah, right you are. my mistake. Thanks for the link, I've spent the last 15 mins reading through it.

The last issue really was pamphlet sized!

David W
15/8/2016 09:52:01 pm

No problem. Any excuse to mention an excellent magazine that deserves more love.

If you're prepared to continue the descent into trivia about long dead publications, sly commentary on page count shrinkage began with Issue 58. It's like the writers thought of everything, except their future employment prospects.

lilock3
15/8/2016 07:21:43 pm

To some extent it must depend on the game, surely? For a repetitive grind of a game like NMS, 30 hours seems like enough for you to have formed an opinion - so fair enough. For a heavily story-based game with some unexpected twist in the last hours - maybe not so much.

One thing that has annoyed me with reviews in the past is when they haven't played far enough to see unlockables that come later on in the game; things like hard modes and gameplay customisations, for example, that fundamentally change the way the game plays. One the other hand, if a reviewer hates the basic game and knows that right away then no amount of unlockable extras will change that...

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Shish link
15/8/2016 07:26:18 pm

What does "finish" even mean, in a world of open ended sandboxes and procedural generation?

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Wrist Flapper
15/8/2016 07:51:04 pm

I think it means just east of Swedish.

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Chris Wyatt
15/8/2016 09:09:07 pm

You reminded me of my old housemate in Cardiff. I remember looking through rotten tomatoes to decide whether to watch a film or not, and basically got put in my place by my housemate, who will give anything the time of day. Granted, he was unemployed and on benefits, so he did have more time to seperate the wheat from the chaff. But he made me learn the errors of my ways.

Well, it's something I've always had in me anyway. A lot of stuff I like isn't the status quo, and the internet and social media does tend to push you towards the status quo, which makes it a subtle and dangerous thing.

There are some fucking awful movies, which I like, for reasons that I probably will never realise as long as I live. It's taken me a long time to learn to love my guilty pleasures, and it's one of the few perks of gaining a few years I think.

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Mr Jonny T
15/8/2016 09:39:40 pm

Sometimes I can form an opinion of a game upon hearing the name of it.

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timmpoos
15/8/2016 09:39:55 pm

Some R.P.G's take a few hours to "get" but generally I know if something's my cup of tea or not (milk is a good starting point).
How can you possibly see all of a game like NMS's content in a single week? You can't.
Quite a lot out of infinity is (I think) infinity, and therefore, a respectable score.
I like squeaky floorboards.

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Chris
16/8/2016 10:57:06 am

No, no, no. Milk is NEVER a good starting point. You're doing tea wrong!

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Lord Jonty McMonkey Twelfth Earl Of Thuringenshire
15/8/2016 09:47:44 pm

Really you should wait at least half a year until the game works properly, by which time there'll be a consensus of internet opinion and writing the review becomes a piece of piss.

I also like your idea of reviewing games based solely on their box-art, this would allow you to to bust embargoes months before release.

Sweeeeeeet

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Spiney O'Sullivan
17/8/2016 04:22:36 pm

This could be a great article if most game covers right now weren't "rugged white guy with gun looking moody".

Maybe Japanese game covers. Those are usually a bit more interesting.

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Euphemia
15/8/2016 10:35:40 pm

With Metacritic, I tend to find that the stuff (games/music etc.) that score between 6 and 8 are what I've engaged with most. Whether it's hype and high expectations, or just contraryness on my part, the 9.5 stuff tends to be ... unmoving.

I'm also several days into NMS and while it's repetitive as hell once you're balls deep into it, it's almost a soothing, zen-like experience. Can't say the same for, say, Assassin's Creed or Fallout/Elder Scrolls , where it's a thankless, unremitting grind in the high double digits.

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Scott C
15/8/2016 11:24:38 pm

I often rate my dinner with a score out of 10, even when I prepared it myself. Judge me.

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Mr Biffo
16/8/2016 07:20:17 am

33%

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wunk
16/8/2016 12:15:25 pm

I often rate Mrs Wunk's cooking with a score out of 10. She greatly appreciates it but everything has started to taste of almonds these days...

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Scott C
16/8/2016 10:30:53 pm

As a chemist, I appreciate your humour, but not sure "the others" will.

Seano
15/8/2016 11:40:47 pm

I am beginning to not quite understand how many games work now. Having been doing games for a good few decades now, the sweet spot (in a 1 player sense), for me, was being able to finish a game, by completing all the levels. Sonic, Mario, Tomb Raider, woteva.

The best of those experiences were tight and finely honed. One would never talk about how many hours were spent on it. And again, the best of those incrementally introduced new gameplay elements, difficulty and combos of the two to further test and stretch you. Not just smush in another 7 races and 18 pineapples to collect.

Yes yes this isn't strictly about reviewing games but i think it ties in. Due to the open, sandbox nature of what games designers create, the link between the creation/world/game and the experiences of gamers is becoming more and more stretched.

Does this then less to issues with reviews. How is one supposed to know what the true quality of a Digi 69℅ review is?

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Damon link
16/8/2016 03:26:36 am

People do assign numeric values to everything now.

Your dinner is based on how well your instagram audience reacts to it.
Your "friendships" are mostly "contacts" for "networking" rated by how useful to you they are professionally.

Knees can be assigned a numeric value based on how well they work, if you've hurt them and their general health and usefulness to your life.

Your family? The amount of money they'll loan you.

It's very easy to assign arbitrary metrics and fool yourself into thinking your life is good if your dinner goes well with your Instagram followers, you have useful contacts in high places, your knees are in working order and your family will throw money at you if you whine enough.

I have spent enough time knowing that metrics can be framed in all sorts of ways based on how creatively you want to calculate them.

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Chris O'Regan link
16/8/2016 08:34:04 am

It's not often I inspire an entire feature article, so thanks for that Mr Biffo!

Now this may as a bit of surprise but I'm actually extremely 'time poor'. I know, a horrid phrase but I'm going to use it dammit! I work a full time job and a 3 hour daily commute to it so time is precious to me. So if this the case why did I of all people declare the review of No Man's Sky as authored by Mr Biffo as null and void because of the duration of play? Well I was trying to liken it to other media that can vary in length and require extra effort in absorbing. War and Peace is a good example of this. Did reviewers of that vast tome stop reading a 10th of the way in because they didn't have time to finish reading it? No, they didn't. That text requires extra effort to absorb just like No Man's Sky does.

My position on No Man's Sky and other games of its ilk is this; if you're prepared to make comment on it after only experienced a tiny fraction of what it has to offer than you should be transparent about it. This is something Mr Biffo is and has always been when reviewing games as he, like me, respects the medium itself.

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Damon link
16/8/2016 11:04:24 am

I actually like to read and I found War & Peace to be a tome better left supporting my shelf next to a 1978 Physician's drug reference than something read for enjoyment.

It isn't by any means a bad book, obviously, but I don't know that I would really recommend someone read it outside of an abstract interest in literature.

Probably a 'C' book, really.

Games, then, follow through the same way-- There may be nothing wrong with a game. It may have changed the face of gaming. That doesn't really mean you'd recommend it to someone, that you actually like it or that you think someone else would like it.

Reviews are not judgement of how abstractly good or bad a game is, they're recommendations.

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Pendant
16/8/2016 04:04:06 pm

War and Peace is not a good example of this - in fact the opposite.

The first version of it was released in installments. Arguably the full novel would not have been released etc if it wasn't for the initial reaction (reviews).

Mr Biffo
17/8/2016 08:37:21 am

Yes - thanks, Chris. Hope you didn't feel it was any sort of attack on you; it just got me thinking, because it's something (in this age of massive games) which plays on my mind when I write reviews knowing I've not seen everything they have to offer.

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Chris
16/8/2016 11:02:52 am

I've seen lots of reviews by people who haven't played a game, or seen a film, or received the item they're reviewing.
10/10 - Looks awesome!

Amazon is full of such things, for starters.

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Bruce Flagpole
16/8/2016 11:20:59 am

I'm with you on this 100% Mr B. Real world reviews for real world grownups! I don't have time/inclination to play a dull game for hours on end just to get to the bit where it gets better. Fair enough games have learning curves, and your skills improve with time, but that process shouldn't have to be a chore. I play games for 'fun' ultimately...when it gets to the point where the game has been 'not fun' for long enough for you to be bored and not want to play anymore, you've played it enough to review it (and i've played it enough to stop and never play it again!).
I would hope that as long as you're upfront about the time spent on a game (especially if it's a particularly short time) that people reading would at least accept it for what it is - your review of your experience with the game.

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wunk
16/8/2016 12:22:07 pm

Everyone rates things really, if we're being honest. However, I tend not to use metrics or numbers but words. For example my knees are "ACE" but my family is "shit".

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combat_honey
16/8/2016 12:25:05 pm

I've never really understood the idea that someone has to complete a game in order to form a fair view of how much they like that game (which, ultimately, is what reviews are, after all).

Human beings are very good at pattern recognition, and games themselves almost always follow a certain pattern, so it's really not difficult to extrapolate what the final third of a game is likely to be like if you've played the first two thirds.

Of course, there will be exceptions - if the main selling point of a game is its story rather than its gameplay mechanics, then there *might* be a case for arguing that it must be completed by a reviewer before that reviewer can form a fair opinion. But for the vast majority of games? Not so much.

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Rebecca Gunn
16/8/2016 01:20:28 pm

To be fair - and as personal clarification. The ability to finish a game isn't the problem so much as how one fills the review space.

When I was younger I'll freely admit I quite enjoyed later issues of magazines like SEGA Power that at times basically gave the entire space over to writing something vaguely related/ more comedy based with maybe a few genuine insights about the game in it.

But then you have slightly more "serious" magazines who would do pretty detailed interviews and I liked those too. In general the way one usually presents content forms expectations.

Back in the 90's and even early 3D era games were not epically long, that's been a more recent thing. But I can understand if it's not the day job, then your really under a limited obligation to "finish" a game. If it *is* the day job then I care a bit more about at least an attempt to finish a game or get far as possible. But it's not be all and end all. Certainly so when your given game is technically designed to not really have an "end" or goes on for a few zillion hours.

I mean nobody expects a game reviewer to sit down and catch all 700+ Pokemon and a few shinies to accurately review a Pokemon game (but there are people dedicated enough to do that sort of thing)

It's more when your review becomes a dull rant, or something like "I feel bad about this game because [insert vaguely real life issue here] " - the reviewers of the old days did some of their own soapboxing, but at least you could generally tell it was done for laughs, ass pull or as maybe a way of saying "don't pick this up omg"

I think the issue in some respects is poor relationship between reader and writer. I'm sure almost all the mags I read back in the day had their less ethical moments, but because we generally liked the writers (because there was already a level of respect), we let it slide. Plus generally if caught getting it wrong in some cases, they did usually go "ah yes we did the bad thing, sorry!" .

I mean Digitizers always been more something you read for jokes, entertainment and some video game news. I don't come here expecting an intellectual breakdown of the latest "sliced bread" and how it's totally going to redefine everything. But I do appreciate that it's always had a certain spin on things the others don't have.

But when your original statement was "we'll be the bestest most awesome games reviewers and really give you *proper* reviews with *strict standarfs*" to a point where you make a fancy-ass actually-serious documentary about it (not naming any names : P ) - yes I kind of expect you to live up to it.

(It's funny really, I wish another site or mag had made a version like that, but intentionally funny like those old filler "day in the life" articles mags sometimes had)

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clive peppard
16/8/2016 03:06:40 pm

Ive not read all the comments on this but ive read enough to decide i like them.

7.5/10

well done everybody

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Paulvw
16/8/2016 05:01:05 pm

You're sounding a bit annoyed Mr Biffo and the barb about the Patreon donations seems a bit chippy.

I think as long as reviewers are open about how long they played something you can't really complain about their opinion which can be judged in context. As you say it's ridiculous to expect an opinion to only be formed once a game is fully completed.

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Mr Biffo
17/8/2016 08:34:52 am

Huh? The Patreon thing wasn't barbed!

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Col. Asdasd
16/8/2016 10:46:32 pm

It's a difficult circle to square, but fair play Biffo for having a go.

It's always struck me that people who care about integrity in the games media should really want that reviewers get a dependable (and preferably, a liveable) return on the hours they put in to a review, because that would obviate the need for other, shill-ier revenue streams to make up the difference.

How can reviews be a viable source of income? Well, maybe a part of it would be if time commitments (with their commensurate economic opportunity costs) didn't fluctuate wildly from game to game while pay remains stubbornly fixed to the word count.

Come to think of it, maybe the rise of 2-hour indie experigames among yer polygonistas of the revieweratti isn't so much due to hipster persuasions but simple economic rationale.

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lmfs
22/8/2016 02:53:07 pm

There are two things I wish reviewers disclosed in their reviews: First is exactly how long the reviewer has spent playing the game and how far they went, both for MP and SP. Some reviews seem to ignore lack of balancing later in the game, thinness or gamebreaking bugs on either mode, while others were just parroting the issued press release and it's likely they spent a couple hours fiddling around if the game actually worked.

The other is the version the review was based on. I recall reading a few that mentioned features that were absent from retail, and later an apology (if we're lucky) was issued as the feature wasn't fully implemented on the beta/preview but the developers promised it would be,
I wonder how many NMS reviews were written with Murray reminding if something promised is missing from their preview, don't take it into account because that version is old and he will totally make sure those features will be shipped with the retail or day-one patch version.

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Alan Stock link
30/8/2016 07:55:15 pm

Mr Biffo, I have recently started reviewing games and found this article really interesting as its a moral debate I started having with myself. As an avid gamer myself I was strongly of the opinion that reviewers should have played all of a game, at least to the conclusion if there is one. Then I ended up playing a number of huge titles like No Mans Sky and Witcher 3 where it became clear that in order to reach that finishing point it would be a case of sinking hundreds of hours into those games. Although I think its good if a reviewer does finish a title before review, in the case of larger games I've changed my tune. As a gamer I'd probably take months or years to finish a game of that length, if at all. But that doesn't mean I didn't enjoy the experience I had, so why should a reviewer have to slog through all of that to get an experience 1% of the players will experience. Look at titles like The Witness, we can see now with PS4 Trophy stats just how little the percentage of players actually get the "true ending", or even the "normal ending".I think its important to have some reviewers that play a huge game to the bitter end but just as important for others to play the game the same amount as a regular person will to form an opinion. After all, if you've played a game for 30+ hours and still haven't seen the features it has to offer, is the average gamer going to persevere just to reach them? Your policy of honesty is welcome with No Mans Sky, you tell people based on what you've played whether you feel like continuing with it or not, and at the end of the day a large part of a review's function is to guide players as to whether they should pick it up in the first place.

Another new thing I've experienced since reviewing games is having to play average or terrible games - ones I'd never bother with as a player because I do my research before I buy. I recently put myself through the entirety of the new Ghostbusters game for a review, even though after 20 minutes I was pretty sure it was going to remain terrible and repetitive, and of course I was right. Lets say for argument that the game miraculously got good two hours in. As a reviewer, it would have been fair to the developer to point out it gets better for the readers - but the average player still wouldn't bother playing 2 hours of awful gameplay just to get to the good bits. So arguably its still valid to write a review in that circumstance after 1 hour of play to reflect what a normal player will experience.

At the end of the day there's no right answer and it's down to what players want to get from their review. But for me personally, its a guideline as to whether I should play the game at all, and if its worth picking up. I don't need a reviewer to have played all of a huge game or a crap game for their opinion still to matter to me. Reviewing games myself has made me question my ethics on this and what game reviews mean to me and also given me a great deal of sympathy for reviewers. Perhaps more transparency is required from reviewers about how much they've played a game, but ultimately its up to the player to trust in the reviwer's judgement of the game overall, no matter how much they've played.

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