Gaming Journalists Make No Damn Sense

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NewClassic

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Game difficulty options are good. They make games generally more accessible for wider audiences, wider audiences mean more people get to have cool experiences and share those in discussions about those titles, and having more people in gaming leads to more opportunities to have positive viewpoints added to development and the culture.

Games become better when more people can play.

If we strip away the trappings of the arguments against easier game modes, what it all boils down to is gatekeeping. Instead of believing there are few, exclusive "correct" ways to play games, I feel the opposite. There's no wrong way to enjoy a game, there's no wrong way to engage with mechanics, there's no wrong way to have fun. People who insist there is a "right" path to playing or enjoying games is wrong. Anyone who suggests the inclusion (or request for) more opportunities in games being a bad thing is wrong.

Couching it in a tired, boring belief that writing professionals in a niche hobby are just too bad at games is a lazy take at best, and does nothing more than enforce the idea that games need to be gatekept to some arbitrary, invented standard. Games critics and writers are the people with the megaphones, and they see ways games could be made better and more inclusive, and they're using the megaphone to that end. This is a reasonable way to behave.

If you had a megaphone, and you disagreed with them to write about how games have an ideal play method that should be adhered to, that would also be fine. Most would disagree with you, but whatever. Instead, you double down on attacking the critics themselves, which is harmful for no purpose. Writers can ask for difficulty modes, you can think that's a disappointing way to play. These two ideas are not in conflict, but you're forcing them to be that way by trying to stage one as "correct," and the other not. Don't.

Just let folks enjoy games the way they want, rather than trying to shame them into only engaging with games the way you feel they should be allowed to.
 

Phoenixmgs

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I feel like you're missing the point. You're stuck on numbers and difficulty sliders. I've already explained ad nauseum that the difficulty in a game like dark souls doesn't come from the number system, but from the enemies move sets and the geography and world design. As for things like enemy hostility, maybe some games use a difficulty slider to control a hidden variable, but I certainly don't, and I doubt dark souls does either. That seems like something built into a specific engine, which makes it unworkable for the vast majority of games. You're using an example from a specific sports title, and seem to think that the same system that works there would work for other titles. That isn't really the case at all.

The point I'm making with my example about souls is that changing the numbers around doesn't actually make the game that much easier. If you haven't mastered the controls, or the game play, then leveling up a character won't do much for you. So changing the difficulty in the way that you describe is pointless. You can be at level 500, and it won't make a lick of difference, because the anor londo archers will still knock you off the balcony, and you will still die.
I get that lots of parts in Dark Souls, the difficulty doesn't come down to numbers but knowledge or just your approach. I've played the game and Bloodborne and like half of Sekiro. However, Dark Souls still involves fighting tons of mobs that is mainly about the combat along with the boss battles. Sen's Fortress is like the only area that really has traps. What's the harm in putting in an easy and hard mode just by changing the basic combat numbers (tons of games already do that)? The 1st God of War had difficulty levels based on combat obviously and it didn't help in the goddamn platforming sections, but it's still better than nothing. I only brought up leveling to reduce difficulty because you mentioned that's a player way of changing the numbers already in the game. A lot of combat games have "taunt" moves that change enemy aggressiveness so it's built into most major combat games along with a lot of games' harder modes increasing aggressiveness as well. Like I said, I was speaking generally and not just about Dark Souls, maybe that variable isn't in Dark Souls.

I mentioned sports games not to say every game should have the same system but the fact that giving players all that power hasn't "ruined" sports games. Dark Souls won't get ruined if you let the player change some things. On the PC side, you have people modding games constantly, nobody complaining that some game is now ruined because players made a certain mod. All it takes is making the Options menu bigger because all that stuff you'd be letting the user modify is already in the game and part of the dev tools. You're not going to lose some feature because you're adding 5/10/20 things to an options menu.

Maybe if say Sekiro had an easy difficulty option that allowed a player an extra fuck-up or 2 during a boss fight, you'd have more players lowering the difficulty and slowly getting better at the game vs looking up a Youtube video to easily cheese or exploit the boss fight and thereby definitely not getting better at the game.

Instead of believing there are few, exclusive "correct" ways to play games, I feel the opposite. There's no wrong way to enjoy a game, there's no wrong way to engage with mechanics, there's no wrong way to have fun. People who insist there is a "right" path to playing or enjoying games is wrong.
I mean, Jim Sterling did totally play Vanquish wrong and rated it as a bad cover shooter when it really isn't meant to be played that way...

But, yes, players should have the option to play anything the wrong way!!! ;)
 

fOx

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Game difficulty options are good. They make games generally more accessible for wider audiences, wider audiences mean more people get to have cool experiences and share those in discussions about those titles, and having more people in gaming leads to more opportunities to have positive viewpoints added to development and the culture.

Games become better when more people can play.

If we strip away the trappings of the arguments against easier game modes, what it all boils down to is gatekeeping. Instead of believing there are few, exclusive "correct" ways to play games, I feel the opposite. There's no wrong way to enjoy a game, there's no wrong way to engage with mechanics, there's no wrong way to have fun. People who insist there is a "right" path to playing or enjoying games is wrong. Anyone who suggests the inclusion (or request for) more opportunities in games being a bad thing is wrong.

Couching it in a tired, boring belief that writing professionals in a niche hobby are just too bad at games is a lazy take at best, and does nothing more than enforce the idea that games need to be gatekept to some arbitrary, invented standard. Games critics and writers are the people with the megaphones, and they see ways games could be made better and more inclusive, and they're using the megaphone to that end. This is a reasonable way to behave.

If you had a megaphone, and you disagreed with them to write about how games have an ideal play method that should be adhered to, that would also be fine. Most would disagree with you, but whatever. Instead, you double down on attacking the critics themselves, which is harmful for no purpose. Writers can ask for difficulty modes, you can think that's a disappointing way to play. These two ideas are not in conflict, but you're forcing them to be that way by trying to stage one as "correct," and the other not. Don't.

Just let folks enjoy games the way they want, rather than trying to shame them into only engaging with games the way you feel they should be allowed to.
If I, as a developer, am unable to include multiple difficulty modes due to a lack of time and resources, how is that gate keeping? I said earlier that I support accessibility, but lack the funds to include things like color blind options, multiple languages, or multiple difficulties.

When I said that game journos are good, honest people, but don't usually understand game development, this is essentially what I meant. I'm sure you meant well, but I don't like the insinuation that I support gate keeping, or that I want to exclude people.

If I could include many of these options, i would.
 

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Games become better when more people can play.
In theory, that sounds nice, but in practice, it doesn't turn out that way. In practice, you get sub-par games that try to appeal to everyone and end up appealing to no one. I'm not saying that this is what happens when you start implementing difficulty options, this is just in response to the flawed hypothesis that "games become better when more people can play".

what it all boils down to is gatekeeping
Yes. In my opinion, gatekeeping is not always a bad thing and is sometimes necessary for the long-term health of the hobby. You should know this. You being a moderator means that you're a gatekeeper yourself, right? You understand that inclusivity has limits.

People who insist there is a "right" path to playing or enjoying games is wrong.
I think it's trivially easy to prove that there is, in fact, a right way to play and enjoy a game. That way is the way intended by the developers. In fact, they might go to great lengths in order to stop you from doing anything but the "right" thing. Have you ever run into an invisible wall? You went the wrong way. Have you ever encountered an enemy in an RPG that was impossible for you to beat at your current level, or with your current gear? You went the wrong way. Shooting your teammates and the game resets you back to the checkpoint? You went the wrong way. Is there a big flashing sign saying "WRONG WAY", like in some racing games? Then you went the wrong way.

There's no wrong way to play with a ball.
There's definitely a wrong way to play baseball.

One is a toy.
The other is a game.

One has rules, win and lose conditions, and provides a structured experience.
The other doesn't.

You're conflating toys and games. They aren't the same thing.
You play WITH toys. You PLAY games.

If you want to treat a game as a toy, by all means, feel free. I do that sometimes. I might intentionally go the wrong way (despite the warnings) in a racing game just so I can get into head-on collisions and see what the physics engine can do. Am I playing the game the wrong way? Yes. Am I having fun? Yes. Does anybody complain? No.

Games critics and writers are the people with the megaphones, and they see ways games could be made better and more inclusive, and they're using the megaphone to that end
Pretend that I had a megaphone that I can use to influence an industry. Let's say it's the beer industry.

Let's also say that I don't really like beer, but I do really enjoy wine. Let's say that I use this megaphone to try and influence the industry into making beer taste less like beer and more like wine.

What would you expect to happen? All the people who really like beer would get mad at me? They'd claim I'm trying to take away "their" beer? That they'd try to "gatekeep" me and take away my megaphone?

Yeah, maybe it's not such a good idea to give megaphones to the people who don't know what they're talking about, and who have no interest in the industry that they have a megaphone for. You can call it a "tired, boring belief" and a "lazy take", but that isn't a persuasive argument.

Just let folks enjoy games the way they want
Yes exactly. Just let folks enjoy their difficult games. This "debate" only happens when some games journalist says "X needs an easy mode". If these journalists could just let folks enjoy games without saying that the game "needs" to be changed to suit them, then we wouldn't be having this conversation.
 

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In theory, that sounds nice, but in practice, it doesn't turn out that way. In practice, you get sub-par games that try to appeal to everyone and end up appealing to no one. I'm not saying that this is what happens when you start implementing difficulty options, this is just in response to the flawed hypothesis that "games become better when more people can play".

Yes. In my opinion, gatekeeping is not always a bad thing and is sometimes necessary for the long-term health of the hobby. You should know this. You being a moderator means that you're a gatekeeper yourself, right? You understand that inclusivity has limits.
Geme pubs/devs have been making games to appeal to everyone because they want ALL the moneys for awhile now, it's why AAA games are so homogeneous. It's already been happening and it has nothing to do with difficulty levels. Tomb Raider has to be Uncharted because Uncharted is popular and platforming and puzzles aren't. Hitman had to be not Hitman (for Absolution) because it wouldn't attract everyone and make all the moneys.

Natural "gatekeeping" will happen just by game complexity alone. You make a complex strategy game and it's not going to attract everyone, Civ6's lowest difficulty setting isn't attracting all the people playing say Animal Crossing or Fortnite or COD or Dark Souls for example. It's there to attract people interested in that style of game that are new to the series. Even a series is an old as Mario, the newest Mario game is somebody's first Mario game. Dark Souls with an easy difficulty is still Dark Souls.
 

NewClassic

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When I said that game journos are good, honest people, but don't usually understand game development, this is essentially what I meant. I'm sure you meant well, but I don't like the insinuation that I support gate keeping, or that I want to exclude people.
I think there's a simple miscommunication here. Being unable to include accessibility features is understandable. It's not ideal, but there's nothing wrong with working within your scope. I specifically intended to mean "Insisting there is a singular right way to design / expect play" is wrong. As long as you aren't intentionally omitting accessibility, it's not a big deal. "Games should have an easy mode" is a different argument than "Games that don't have an easy mode are bad."

In theory, that sounds nice, but in practice, it doesn't turn out that way. In practice, you get sub-par games that try to appeal to everyone and end up appealing to no one. I'm not saying that this is what happens when you start implementing difficulty options, this is just in response to the flawed hypothesis that "games become better when more people can play".
You and I are making different arguments here. Yours amounts to "Too many cooks spoil the soup," which I tend to agree with. There are ways to overburden a single game's design. Mine is more akin to "You become a better cook if you learn Italian, Portuguese, Japanese, German, and American style soups in addition to French style soups, even if you continue to only cook in the French style." More knowledge, more perspectives, and a greater understanding of what games could be, even if one don't make them so, helps one be able to make better decisions.

Yes. In my opinion, gatekeeping is not always a bad thing and is sometimes necessary for the long-term health of the hobby. You should know this. You being a moderator means that you're a gatekeeper yourself, right? You understand that inclusivity has limits.
There's a wide gulf between the paradox of tolerance and letting in folks with differing perspectives. Games as they are will survive new perspectives, alternative design ideas being experimented with, and new design ideas. They have for years, so why is it that you think this is the change that games need to defend against?

I think it's trivially easy to prove that there is, in fact, a right way to play and enjoy a game. That way is the way intended by the developers. In fact, they might go to great lengths in order to stop you from doing anything but the "right" thing. Have you ever run into an invisible wall? You went the wrong way. Have you ever encountered an enemy in an RPG that was impossible for you to beat at your current level, or with your current gear? You went the wrong way. Shooting your teammates and the game resets you back to the checkpoint? You went the wrong way. Is there a big flashing sign saying "WRONG WAY", like in some racing games? Then you went the wrong way.
I omitted it for brevity, but I've written elsewhere "The only wrong way to handle games is to make others have less fun with them."

If all of the players are on board and the house rules have been discussed, what's wrong with everyone's doing a race to be the first player to get out of bounds? Or using glitches to speedrun? Racing to touch every invisible wrong? Challenge to get furthest in a difficult RPG, like Dark Souls, with no grinding or equipment updates before their first death? These aren't intended ways to play any given game, but none of them are "wrong." As long as it's not harming anyone else, why is it an incorrect way to pursue play?

Which is all to say you've got the right idea already:

If you want to treat a game as a toy, by all means, feel free. I do that sometimes. I might intentionally go the wrong way (despite the warnings) in a racing game just so I can get into head-on collisions and see what the physics engine can do. Am I playing the game the wrong way? Yes. Am I having fun? Yes. Does anybody complain? No.
But there are people insisting there are wrong ways to play games, you're doing it above, despite offering a stellar counterpoint. No one gets hurt, you're having fun; is that not the intent of a game?

Pretend that I had a megaphone that I can use to influence an industry. Let's say it's the beer industry.

Let's also say that I don't really like beer, but I do really enjoy wine. Let's say that I use this megaphone to try and influence the industry into making beer taste less like beer and more like wine.
"Beer makes should experiment with fruits and berries more often to round out their flavors." seems closer to the argument, rather than "Beer is dumb, brew beer like wine instead." like you're implying.

What would you expect to happen? All the people who really like beer would get mad at me? They'd claim I'm trying to take away "their" beer? That they'd try to "gatekeep" me and take away my megaphone?
I think there's gap here that's rarely bridged in discussions like these.

My perspective on this is that critics and writers rarely have the impact on the industry that the disagreeing audience accuses them of. Largely, folks in game criticism spaces usually stay in it for a few years before transitioning into either writing the games themselves, or moving into PR, or into less related fields. Very few actually end up having a marked effect on game development. Despite the general change in critic opinion on sexualization and inclusivity in games, games are still largely as they were when the general opinion seemed to gain traction. Games haven't really changed that much.

Despite the massive financial success that was Feminist Frequency's Tropes vs Women series, for instance, Red Dead Redemption still plays like a Rockstar game. Bayonetta / Nier-esque games are still getting made. CD Project RED is still developing the same kind of game they always have. Perhaps there are a handful more female protagonist options and gender inclusive character creators, but the games' content hasn't changed all that much. Games have survived critics "trying to take away" games players like.

Plenty of critics have left gaming spaces, but few to no games have been made into progressive utopias explicitly to chase out the more inclusive-resistant fans. So... Why is the belief that those with megaphones are endlessly campaigning to take away old-style games, rather than make them less un-inclusive?

Yeah, maybe it's not such a good idea to give megaphones to the people who don't know what they're talking about, and who have no interest in the industry that they have a megaphone for. You can call it a "tired, boring belief" and a "lazy take", but that isn't a persuasive argument.
Don't know what argument you're trying to get from that. Critics are in a niche industry, talking about ways it can be less niche. They also leave a ton of space for exclusively niche criticism, of which there is so much. It's incredibly easy to find very technical, gamer-centric commentary, and no critics or writers campaign to remove it. So the idea that writers are incompetent or disinterested is unsubstantiated and incomplete.

PCMag and Ars Technica are sites for folks who want more technically minded criticism, then every genre has niche sites for their genre of choice. So, when you want exacting, specific work, you have those. So, there's still room for more outside-in minded criticism.

Yes exactly. Just let folks enjoy their difficult games. This "debate" only happens when some games journalist says "X needs an easy mode". If these journalists could just let folks enjoy games without saying that the game "needs" to be changed to suit them, then we wouldn't be having this conversation.
"Imagine what the Dark Souls / Sekiro / Dawrf Fortress community could be if everyone who wanted to dip their toes in, could." isn't the awful take you think it is.
 
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Houseman

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They have for years, so why is it that you think this is the change that games need to defend against?
Define "the change". What are we talking about? Difficulty levels being added to every game, "or else"?

If this is "the change", that games need to defend against, then I think that they need to defend against it for all the reasons that fOx highlighted. It would take resources away from other features on smaller budgets. I'd go further and say that the artistic vision of the developer should be respected. If they choose not to add difficulty levels for artistic reasons, then that's their decision.

These aren't intended ways to play any given game, but none of them are "wrong." As long as it's not harming anyone else, why is it an incorrect way to pursue play?
Define "wrong". Morally? Of course not. "Wrong" as in "not the intended way"? Absolutely yes, it's the "wrong" way to play the game.
Unless the game developers intended to give you a toybox to allow you to make your own fun, there's an "intended" way to play, and a "wrong" way to play.

However, nobody objects to you playing the game the incorrect way, unless you're a games journalist. Given the scenarios you described with "house rules", nobody would object, and nobody cares. That's not what people are arguing against.

Very few actually end up having a marked effect on game development.
That's why those who are passionate about their hobby speak up. They don't want to see this happen. If the journos have megaphones, passionate fans only have cupped hands, and they will use their voices to say "this guy doesn't represent me. Don't listen to him". They can't wait around until a lucky journo wins the game dev lottery and gets to make an impact. They have to nip that in the bud or else not at all.

It's like what's going on now with the coronavirus. Even if only 1 out of every 100 people are infected, you still have to take preventative measures to avoid getting, or spreading, the virus. Are people overreacting? We might never know. But we sure will be able to look back to see if we didn't do enough. Which would you rather do?

So... Why is the belief that those with megaphones are endlessly campaigning to take away old-style games, rather than make them less un-inclusive?
I don't remember saying anything about "they're trying to take away old-style games", but it's probably because old-style games were inherently "un-inclusive", and to make them "inclusive" would mean changing what they fundamentally are to better suit people who don't even play those games in the first place.

Critics are in a niche industry, talking about ways it can be less niche.
Turning niche hobbies into mainstream hobbies destroys them. The core group of that niche hobby ends up leaving. You can't make artisanal products at scale. That's why your local burger place is better than McDonalds.

A good, current example of this is what's happening to Street Fighter V.

The pros are disappointed with the game because it's "more inclusive" and "more accessible" at the expense of the core audience, and all the things that made great to begin with. Their artisinal product was turned into McDonalds factory-grade beef. They don't like it.


They also leave a ton of space for exclusively niche criticism, of which there is so much. It's incredibly easy to find very technical, gamer-centric commentary, and no critics or writers campaign to remove it. So the idea that writers are incompetent or disinterested is unsubstantiated and incomplete.
I'm not sure how that follows. You're saying that, since the "bad" journos don't campaign to remove the content from the "good" journos, that means that they aren't incompetent or disinterested? If that's what you're saying, I don't see how a lack of campaigning makes them not incompetent.

"Imagine what the Dark Souls / Sekiro / Dawrf Fortress community could be if everyone who wanted to dip their toes in, could." isn't the awful take you think it is.
So how would you make a game like Dark Souls more "accessible" to everyone? How long would it take, and how much would it cost? What other features would have to be stripped because of it?
 
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TheMysteriousGX

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Rather than accept that they're too shit of a player to rise up to the challenge of Normal mode, they try to shit on the game's easy mode because it's "too easy".

Entitled whining at its best.
It is entirely possible to believe that including an easy mode doesn't ruin a game as well as believe a specific easy mode (in a game which has a third, easier mode) is specifically bad.

And that's before you realize that both articles weren't written by John Kotaku, but in fact have different writers. We want outlets to have a diversity of opinions, right?
 

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And that's before you realize that both articles weren't written by John Kotaku, but in fact have different writers. We want outlets to have a diversity of opinions, right?
Then have Kotaku publish a Point Counterpoint sort of deal where two authors writing for the same publication publish their disagreements with each other. That'd be great!
 

TheMysteriousGX

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Then have Kotaku publish a Point Counterpoint sort of deal where two authors writing for the same publication publish their disagreements with each other. That'd be great!
Except, in this case, it's not even a disagreement
Like, if one writer said "more movies should have LGBT characters", and another writer says "<X> character is Disney's third First Gay Character this year and it's bullshot", that's not a disagreement, that's discussing execution.

That said, hypothetically, if two writers do have different philosophies about a thing, it can be fun to read them go back and forth with each other, long as it's not too performative.
 

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Geme pubs/devs have been making games to appeal to everyone because they want ALL the moneys for awhile now, it's why AAA games are so homogeneous. It's already been happening and it has nothing to do with difficulty levels. Tomb Raider has to be Uncharted because Uncharted is popular and platforming and puzzles aren't. Hitman had to be not Hitman (for Absolution) because it wouldn't attract everyone and make all the moneys.
AAA games do so. And AAA games need to reach large audiences to be profitable.

Smaller studios can target niche audiences and be actually successful there because of the lack of competition. Which does happen all the time.



As for difficulty settings : Yes, those are hard to write properly. The more variety levels or game situations have, the more often you have to finetune that for every single difficulty setting. And that is not all. While the game is still in development, mechanisms change. And you have to properly test them in each setting as well. Together it is quite costly.

Sure, you can just change numbers and ignore consequences. But that is why so many utterly broken difficulty settings are around.

Sometimes i thing about whether cheats are a better way to make games accessible than difficulty settings. Cheats are sure easier to code and test and it is the players responsibility to chose how much they want to rely on them.
 

bluegate

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It is entirely possible to believe that including an easy mode doesn't ruin a game as well as believe a specific easy mode (in a game which has a third, easier mode) is specifically bad.

And that's before you realize that both articles weren't written by John Kotaku, but in fact have different writers. We want outlets to have a diversity of opinions, right?
I'm not comparing this article's author with other authors or their opinions, I'm also not talking about whether easy modes should or shouldn't be included.

So I'm not sure who you are talking to here, but I hope you eventually get your message through to them.
 

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I have never understood the utterly baffling and more than occasionally contradictory attitudes people have towards gaming journos. One the one hand, all powerful members of a sinister cabal threatening to turn all games or gamers into <insert insult de jour here> and all games into <insert snark here> or on the other hand whining losers with less power than a 1985 Dustbuster who don't matter. And the bitching about 'scandals' in reporting. Oh. My Christ. Who fucking cares? They're not journalists who do anything important. They write opinion pieces about a sector of the entertainment industry which is the most legendarily professionally incestuous area of reporting. In fact, call them anything other than journalists because every time someone uses that word for them I can feel the seismic activity coming from the graves of people like Woodward and Bernstein.


I'm aware this is a satirical comedy show, but shit like what Damien gets up to? That is journalistic malfeasance. Not the petty, schoolyard level shenanigans most non-entities in this industry get up to.
 

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You say that, but motor sport/car journalists are still a thing and they've been known to have absolutely no integrity and work in a field where the manufacturers have, literally, all the power. A game journalist or news outlet can buy a $60 game on their own to review, you'll have no such luck with a $40,000 car. Which means that any review a motor journalist makes is entirely at the convenience and leisure of the manufacturer. That's why stuff like the BMW carbon emissions fraud was discovered by regular news journalists before motor journalists picked up (if they even wrote about it): Because the motor journalist is out of a job the moment car manufacturers declare them persona non grata and stop inviting them to release events or offering them test drives.

Gaming journalism has a weird, dependent relationship with game publishers, but it has absolutely nothing on the sugar daddy relationship between Daddy Car Manufacturers and motor journalists.
Wasn't it Volkswagen who were involved in - that legitimately fucking criminal - scandal? Or do they own each other now? I have a bit of trouble keeping up which of the big European marquees own one another these days.
 

Nick Calandra

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I have never understood the utterly baffling and more than occasionally contradictory attitudes people have towards gaming journos. One the one hand, all powerful members of a sinister cabal threatening to turn all games or gamers into <insert insult de jour here> and all games into <insert snark here> or on the other hand whining losers with less power than a 1985 Dustbuster who don't matter. And the bitching about 'scandals' in reporting. Oh. My Christ. Who fucking cares? They're not journalists who do anything important. They write opinion pieces about a sector of the entertainment industry which is the most legendarily professionally incestuous area of reporting. In fact, call them anything other than journalists because every time someone uses that word for them I can feel the seismic activity coming from the graves of people like Woodward and Bernstein.


I'm aware this is a satirical comedy show, but shit like what Damien gets up to? That is journalistic malfeasance. Not the petty, schoolyard level shenanigans most non-entities in this industry get up to.
The only dependency is really getting game codes early so that you can have coverage out for launch day so you rake in the Google traffic.


I guess for interviews and such too for at least the bigger games, but that's about it.
 

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I have to wonder how many people here saying "making games more inclusive ruins them" also have complained "they stopped making that series I liked because sales were bad".
That is an interesting correlation. Honestly, people like that are barely worth the attention at all. Farts knocking in the high wind.
 

NewClassic

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Define "the change". What are we talking about? Difficulty levels being added to every game, "or else"?
"Or else" feels like the realm of folks who brigade, swat, and doxx. No outlet is ever going to run an "Or else." piece.

If they choose not to add difficulty levels for artistic reasons, then that's their decision.
And if people choose not to grind skills into a game for practical reasons, that's also their decision. But they'll be ridiculed for that. Why is it so harmful there's an audience lobbying for accessibility, but the audience defending artistic vision above all is definitively the right one? There are mundane, practical reasons for both.

Define "wrong". Morally? Of course not. "Wrong" as in "not the intended way"? Absolutely yes, it's the "wrong" way to play the game.
Unless the game developers intended to give you a toybox to allow you to make your own fun, there's an "intended" way to play, and a "wrong" way to play.

However, nobody objects to you playing the game the incorrect way, unless you're a games journalist. Given the scenarios you described with "house rules", nobody would object, and nobody cares. That's not what people are arguing against.
Speedrunning isn't the intended way to play a game. Yet you don't call it wrong. The argument you're making is that someone who "should" play games a certain way isn't, but the correct ways all boil down to "If you want to discuss games, you have to meet an arbitrary threshold of what I deem should be important."

Yet any gaming community has had at least a handful of "I'm trying to get my partner /child / friends into games, what games should I use to introduce them?" threads. Turns out by trying to enforce arbitrary thresholds of behavior that weeds out accessibility for decades makes games really unintuitive, and professional critics have noticed and are speaking up. Now you're trying to enforce the arbitrary standards on them, whole cloth, because... You're convinced they don't know what they're talking about? You think they're not really attentive to games? You think games are perfect and should be above criticism? I'm not sure I'm really getting where these standards are coming from, but they always boil down to gatekeeping in a way that isn't helpful, useful, or good.

That's why those who are passionate about their hobby speak up. They don't want to see this happen. If the journos have megaphones, passionate fans only have cupped hands, and they will use their voices to say "this guy doesn't represent me. Don't listen to him". They can't wait around until a lucky journo wins the game dev lottery and gets to make an impact. They have to nip that in the bud or else not at all.

It's like what's going on now with the coronavirus. Even if only 1 out of every 100 people are infected, you still have to take preventative measures to avoid getting, or spreading, the virus. Are people overreacting? We might never know. But we sure will be able to look back to see if we didn't do enough. Which would you rather do?
Not compare folks' beliefs to viral infections, for one.

Again, you're generating a clear Us and Them in this discussion. Game critics are all folks who play games. This profession is too unstable, too low paying, and too fickle for anyone to be in it for the profit. Folks in critical spaces are lobbying for ways they think games could be better, and a simple way to do so is to put more emphasis on accessibility, particularly because there is a lot of room for it to be given attention. More often than not without significant loss.

I don't remember saying anything about "they're trying to take away old-style games", but it's probably because old-style games were inherently "un-inclusive", and to make them "inclusive" would mean changing what they fundamentally are to better suit people who don't even play those games in the first place.
It's tough because you're making me argue against a concept, but no specific examples. So I have to take guesses about what you mean. So, let's bring up a specific example:

Celeste is a game with a wide variety of accessibility options, but playing "as intended" without those turned on enables achievements and certain accolades within the game. But those who want to experience the game for the game's experience can just dial down the difficulty and play through the story with enough tools to not have to struggle through hours of precision practicing.

This is the ultimate goal of folks lobbying for easier game modes. Something to let in wide audiences, and costs nothing for the more hardcore audience's experience should they want it.

So what most critics are asking for isn't actually going to harm what a game could be, it just wants to amplify potential accessibility practices that can make games well-suited to wider audiences.

Turning niche hobbies into mainstream hobbies destroys them. The core group of that niche hobby ends up leaving. You can't make artisanal products at scale. That's why your local burger place is better than McDonalds.

A good, current example of this is what's happening to Street Fighter V.

The pros are disappointed with the game because it's "more inclusive" and "more accessible" at the expense of the core audience, and all the things that made great to begin with. Their artisinal product was turned into McDonalds factory-grade beef. They don't like it.
Turning niche titles into mainstream titles destroys them. Niche hobbies at large have always had introduction vectors, though. Capcom trying to squeeze accessibility into core Street Fighter mechanics is a bad decision because the playing audience is already set up and built their vocabulary for the title, but that's not what critics are asking for. That's not what anyone in the gaming communities is asking for. That's what a boardroom wanted. Ditto Bethesda's recent approach to The Elder Scrolls and Fallout series.

However, putting in a mode to Street Fighter V that introduces wider parry windows and easier links could have been accomplished without taking away tournament-level skill viability. Tournaments just won't use that mode, same as the Smash scene doesn't enable big mode or items. You're casting the behavior of a profit-motivated corporate figure onto a freelancer that makes hundreds of thousands less.

I'm not sure how that follows. You're saying that, since the "bad" journos don't campaign to remove the content from the "good" journos, that means that they aren't incompetent or disinterested? If that's what you're saying, I don't see how a lack of campaigning makes them not incompetent.
This is another place where I have to take guesses at what you mean. Give me specifics, what is the "incompetence" specifically you think is pervasive in the games crit space, and why do you think that it's a fair title to give to critics in general?

So how would you make a game like Dark Souls more "accessible" to everyone? How long would it take, and how much would it cost? What other features would have to be stripped because of it?
In a menu called "Accessibility Options," include a toggle for reduced enemy damage, a toggle for increased player damage, a toggle that gives all shields the long parry timing, a toggle that reduces enemy attack knockback, and a toggle that makes it so players cannot roll or be knocked off of ledges. Any of these can be toggled on or off.

I'd imagine that is a pretty decent starting point.

I'm not a developer, so I have to make a few guesses as to what of those would be most challenging to code for. I'd assume the ledge-immunity toggle would be the most complex behavior, so that one would probably be what leads to cuts, if at all. And I'd probably cut one of the optional mini-bosses, which should shave some time off of development and reduce relatively little of the existing content while giving extra time to the toggle coding.
 
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