warfjm said:
Therumancer said:
Now to be fair, I have not played "Portal 2".
This sentence takes away any credit away from the previous wall of text paragraph. If you haven't played it, then why bother writing an essay on the subject? Stick to the DLC argument not the game itself.
Two things:
For starters your wrong, since we're talking about how the game is received overall, and metacritic ratings and such at this point. What any one person thinks is more or less irrelevent in the scope of that point. I was pointing out that even if it's a wonderful game, it's getting bombed, and that takes a LOT of people, far more than can be mustered by trolls who go after just about any game out there.
Secondly, the attitude of "if you haven't played it, you can't have an opinion" is one of the most dangerous ones out there right now, and at the root of a lot of problems. Even if I was talking about the game content, as opposed to reception, the opinion of someone who didn't buy the game should be pretty well valued for the reasons on why they didn't buy it, as opposed to attacked.
Right now a big problem with the gaming industry is that when someone buys a game, and doesn't like it, the industry already has their money. With digital downloads, or purchused PC software, you can't decide "gee, this sucks" and bring it back, your stuck with it. It's quite a racket when you get down to it, and probably screws dissatistifed, legitimate purchusers worse than the pirates they are trying to crack down on screw the companies. Even with console games, they can be tricky to return. While Gamestop tends to be decent with people returning new games for full value within a couple of days, there are retail places that will give people major issues with returning any kind of opened software, including console games. Some game shops also force you to return any opened product as a "trade in" meaning you lose half or more of the value of the game just to try it and see if you like it.
Like it or not, with the price of games, the economy, and the leap of faith required, playing a game should hardly be a requirement to have an opinion. Especially seeing as by buying a game, even if you hate it, the industry gets to consider you a satisfied customer and you get put into that entire "we've sold X number of copies" speil.
To be honest even with the pre-order incentives, I'm rapidly becoming far less willing to go right out and buy games on release, since it's becoming a bigger and bigger racket.
In the case of this discussion though, understand that I have said nothing bad about Portal 2 itself, other than it's not being well received. The user ratings speak for themselves. The point is that all this talk about "metabombing" and how it's all over "trolls upset about day #1 DLC" are just excuses from those not wanting to face reality. Deserved or not, and loved by some or not, "Portal 2" is not being received as well as it has sold.
I think the refusal to face reality is largely because by acknowleging that what happened here and with "Dragon Age 2", it means the industry is going to have to change some things it really doesn't want to, since it will mean cutting down on their profit margins in one way or another. It's better for a lot of bean counters to try and deny reality and say "it's those blasted trolls" rather than accept that "damn, I guess our audience is smarter and has better standards than we assumed". Give it time though, I suspect this is a trend and it will get hammered into skulls eventually.... or it will contribute to an industry collapse.
I think it should be taken as a warning sign when two beloved companies like this get hammered the same way, right in a row. If a darling like Valve can suffer in the user ratings like that, it's important to walk away from it with the right lesson learned.
