INCENTIVES FOR REVIEWING COMMERCIAL GAMES.

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Solitayre
Circumstance penalty for being the bard.
18257
author=Sated
Nobody values graphics and music and storytelling and gameplay and characterisation equally. Everybody values one (or several) of those over the others, not to mention countless other aspects you could mention. We don't play videogames for the same reasons, and our experiences are going to be different based on that. This is perfectly perfectly natural, and your opposition to it is completely nonsensical.


This, and it helps explain why having a codified list of standards for reviews is so hard. There are a lot of reasons why someone might like or dislike a game and it isn't our job to 'control' for peoples' opinions, nor do I think that would be a good idea.

I wrote out a list of general criteria for reviews here a few years ago. Note that I don't have a list of things your review needs to include. All I expect is that you explain why you liked or disliked it in a clear way and follow some basic guidelines of etiquette and grammar. Apparently some people think all I'm doing is just counting to make sure it has 300 words but there's more to it than that.
LockeZ
I'd really like to get rid of LockeZ. His play style is way too unpredictable. He's always like this too. If he ran a country, he'd just kill and imprison people at random until crime stopped.
5958
I'm probably one of the people on this forum who's most adamant that there are tons of things in games that are objectively good or objectively bad. I feel like people use "good design is all subjective" and "different people like different things" as poor excuses when they don't want to listen to critique due to pigheadedness. I get a lot of flak and hate for this.

But I still don't think there's any value in deciding what the criteria should be that is used by reviews. As long as the reviewer's criteria is explained adequately, that's all that really matters. Let me explain why.

author=alterego
Ok, I'm glad you feel this strongly about this particular issue, but what do you think about the graphics? What do you think about the music? Is it good or bad? And if you think this and this and this is good and only this one thing is bad, why the low score? Your conclusion is not supported by your thesis.
So, like, I agree these are definitely very important things that make a game objectively good or bad. And I think that people who don't mention them at all, and instead base 50% of their score on the game's attentiveness to Sonic the Hedgehog extended universe canon, or the game's inclusiveness of tumblr-approved minorities, or the number of post-final-boss dungeons that can be repeated infinitely to make the game last forever, or the game's number of possible sexual interactions, or how open-world the game is, are idiots and wrong.

But good news! I can read their reviews and see that they chose that shit as their criteria, and ignore their review. And for the small percentage of people who have the same shitty taste and whose enjoyment of the game therefor strongly depends on those factors, they'll be really glad that the review exists and that it doesn't place unnecessary emphasis on or bend its score for things that don't really matter, like the gameplay or the controls or whatever stupid shit LockeZ thinks is important.

Because the point of a review isn't to decide how good a game is. It's to help people find games they'll think are good. That's a subtle but important difference. And those stupid-ass reviews that spend six paragraphs complaining that the catgirl character was overly sexualized and not realistically developed and only three paragraphs on the entire rest of the game are helping people find games they'll think are good, and they'll therefore enjoy.
^
That, though I also think that reviews are aimed at the creator as well. ;p

Different people write different reviews and focus on different aspects. Granted, focussing on only one aspect and ignoring the others is, I think, completely stupid and it's why we have someone to double-check that due diligence is being done when it comes to reviews. Sure, it's not what you might think is a balanced review, but as long as it meets the standards it's fine. Besides, that's what the comment section for reviews is for - to point out any issues a review might have and further discuss what it might have missed, as follow-up from the game creator (and to garner some drama for the drama core in a few cases - very few cases. Like, this year we've had maybe... 3-5 reviews that caused drama? Not bad for almost 6 months.)


Quite frankly, you're never going to please every single person with a review, even if you cover every part of the game in detail. And we're hobbyists, not professional review writers - if someone writes a very detailed review it's because they felt strongly about the game or because they wanted to, not because they're forced. We just ask that it hit the standards we ask for.



And yes, you can quote me saying x or y on reviews and that's fine. People change their minds, people have opinions and people can see the sense after the fact. I'm sure you can find quotes from me stating a ton of things - I change my mind fairly often on stances... almost like case-by-case analysis is a thing.
For example: I started out hating non-scoring demos and I've since changed my stance on that. I'll admit that some of the reviews that get passed made me a bit ehhhhh, but I'm not the one dealing with the review queue and I'm not the one who has to judge them so I might pop in and say something sometimes, but that doesn't mean squat against Soli's input because that's his job and I'll back his decision completely. He hasn't messed with my work, after all, and hell, I'll even admit that after the fact they turned out for the better - that I was wrong. *GASP* ;p


Honestly, I'm sure some people hate how I handle the queue to them I say "Welp, those are the standards we ask for, sorry but not sorry" so I understand exactly how Soli feels about this thing. These are the site standards thus far. They might change in the future, they might not, but for now they work and we work with them. They're not broken, so while we can enhance them, there's no need to buy a whole new jeep.
If you want a review void of an opinion... you don't want a review, you want an overview
iddalai
RPG Maker 2k/2k3 for life, baby!!
1194
The Lord has spoken, lest ye petty squabbling end here!

Aremen!
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