[HEADING=2]Industry's Finest Paradox:
[sup]Good Commonly Making Bad, and Vice Versa[/sup][/HEADING]
There's something entirely strange about the entertainment media at large, and the way we look at it. As a some time review writer for both recreation and publishing, I find that my best received reviews are often those where I have the most scathing comments for the product at large. To note, my reviews on Final Fantasy VII and Harry Potter were some of the most critical I've ever written, and subsequently the those most commented on by the community. Whereas, taking a title like SVC Chaos or Earthbound which I had almost nothing but praise for, the reviews slid remarkably under the radar.
Putting that into a somewhat less personal perspective, Movie Bob's latest review of Transformers has gotten (at time of writing) 109 comments, and has been out for a single day. Compared to his review of Drag Me To Hell, which has been out for 21, has only 82. The most noticable difference between these two is that the most recent, Transformers, is most scathingly biting, while the Drag Me To Hell review is very praising.
To provide another example, Ben "Yahtzee" Crowshaw's Zero Punctuation series. His two best reviews, Psychonauts and the Orange Box (113 and 171 respectively) have a combined total of 284 comments, whereas his scathing E3 review (released last week) has 474 comments.
http://i15.photobucket.com/albums/a395/NewClassic/Forum%20Stuff/Escapist/BadVersusGood.png
I think the point I'm working toward is that negative reviews are more widely spoken on than positive reviews. I couldn't explain the reason for this without going into a lot of philosophy, but I can say with some certainty that it certainly does create an interesting scenario. For creators to have the most word-of-mouth conversation, especially from the perspective of reviews, then it is in their best interesting to make either bad or unlikable games. As a consumer, this is a bad idea because it innately lowers the quality of any title released in favor of more positive word-of-mouth advertising campaign.
So, the odd situation is for a game to have a wide knowledge base, the game could simply be bad. That way, it will be featured more prominently in reviews, the reviews will be more popular, and the discussion of the games will be more widely accepted and heard.
As both a reviewing community and a series of consumers, why do we so rampantly eat up the idea of scathing being superior, and praising being put aside?
It does create a weird paradox, because we are encouraging the bad because we relish it. Every word, every insult, and every retort appears as a hot-button issue, and garners much more media attention for the negative. For an industry to guarantee success, the industry must also create failure. A game that fails as an entertainment object often does wonderfully in the review circuit, not because of the scores, but instead because of the awareness.
Normally, I wouldn't think a second on it, except that even games that are heralded as good are often split in that decision. A game like Mirror's Edge can be highly praised by one reviewer, and deemed not even worth a review by another. Historically, if Mirror's Edge had truly been an awful game, it would not have missed any reviewer's opinion, but because it was so split, it got less publicity.
Discussion Prompt
So, why do we find ourselves with this bizarre paradox? Shouldn't we be guaranteeing success for really great games, instead of only loving (if solely for the purpose of loving to hate) the terrible ones?
[sup]Good Commonly Making Bad, and Vice Versa[/sup][/HEADING]
There's something entirely strange about the entertainment media at large, and the way we look at it. As a some time review writer for both recreation and publishing, I find that my best received reviews are often those where I have the most scathing comments for the product at large. To note, my reviews on Final Fantasy VII and Harry Potter were some of the most critical I've ever written, and subsequently the those most commented on by the community. Whereas, taking a title like SVC Chaos or Earthbound which I had almost nothing but praise for, the reviews slid remarkably under the radar.
Putting that into a somewhat less personal perspective, Movie Bob's latest review of Transformers has gotten (at time of writing) 109 comments, and has been out for a single day. Compared to his review of Drag Me To Hell, which has been out for 21, has only 82. The most noticable difference between these two is that the most recent, Transformers, is most scathingly biting, while the Drag Me To Hell review is very praising.
To provide another example, Ben "Yahtzee" Crowshaw's Zero Punctuation series. His two best reviews, Psychonauts and the Orange Box (113 and 171 respectively) have a combined total of 284 comments, whereas his scathing E3 review (released last week) has 474 comments.
http://i15.photobucket.com/albums/a395/NewClassic/Forum%20Stuff/Escapist/BadVersusGood.png
I think the point I'm working toward is that negative reviews are more widely spoken on than positive reviews. I couldn't explain the reason for this without going into a lot of philosophy, but I can say with some certainty that it certainly does create an interesting scenario. For creators to have the most word-of-mouth conversation, especially from the perspective of reviews, then it is in their best interesting to make either bad or unlikable games. As a consumer, this is a bad idea because it innately lowers the quality of any title released in favor of more positive word-of-mouth advertising campaign.
So, the odd situation is for a game to have a wide knowledge base, the game could simply be bad. That way, it will be featured more prominently in reviews, the reviews will be more popular, and the discussion of the games will be more widely accepted and heard.
As both a reviewing community and a series of consumers, why do we so rampantly eat up the idea of scathing being superior, and praising being put aside?
It does create a weird paradox, because we are encouraging the bad because we relish it. Every word, every insult, and every retort appears as a hot-button issue, and garners much more media attention for the negative. For an industry to guarantee success, the industry must also create failure. A game that fails as an entertainment object often does wonderfully in the review circuit, not because of the scores, but instead because of the awareness.
Normally, I wouldn't think a second on it, except that even games that are heralded as good are often split in that decision. A game like Mirror's Edge can be highly praised by one reviewer, and deemed not even worth a review by another. Historically, if Mirror's Edge had truly been an awful game, it would not have missed any reviewer's opinion, but because it was so split, it got less publicity.
Discussion Prompt
So, why do we find ourselves with this bizarre paradox? Shouldn't we be guaranteeing success for really great games, instead of only loving (if solely for the purpose of loving to hate) the terrible ones?
