Jimquisition: Joy Begets Anger

[CitySquirrel]

Yep thats money and time im never getting back. Again I get that other people liked it, but I'm pissed off that these reviewers just gave the game such positive scores and mentioned only one or two of its shortcomings (or failed to see what other people wouldnt like) and even passed off these weaknesses as just meh.

I'm not trying to pick on you here but this is pretty much a widespread issue. Why do people believe that they are somehow owed a good experience? I get that games are expensive but the reaction of anger can only come from a belief that you somehow deserve to not be exposed to something you dislike. You had an experience, you did not like it, you moved on. Imagine going through life being angry at every meal you eat that you don't enjoy, every book you don't like, etc. And worse, being angry at the people who do like them. That is what is basically happening here.

 

[BrownGaijin]

I agree that it's a new thing in video games (or at least it's been growing at an unusual rate), but I think in other forms of media it's taken a good hold for a while. I remember going to YouTube channels featuring rock music and people just out and saying "You like Jus", oh wait make I get this right (clears throat), "YU LEIK JUSTIN PEEBER YO A (insert derogatory gay thing here) DIS IS REEEL MUSIC! SO FUK YU ALL HIP HOP RAP (insert derogatory gay thing here.)"

Does this mean that this behavior is okay? No. It's not.

 

[synobal]

Truth Jim, I've had the most awful things said to me/about me because I said I liked Mass Effect 3 including the ending.

 

[J Tyran]

Brilliant, this needed to be said. Jim didn't just say it though he dropped the hammer, I hope this trend dies away but my faith in the gaming community is at an all time low and I can only see this continuing.

 

[GonzoGamer]

Nowadays, you can't even be happy without it pissing someone off, and it's a damn sad time for all.

I usually don't like to reply directly but you have a legitimate question you deserve an answer for. I personally prefer a reviewer to underrate something than overrate something. Just before I started renting games, I spent $50 on No More Heroes because everyone (even Yhatzee, who is usually a strong critic) was saying it was practically the best thing on the Wii. After playing a few minigames based on jobs so boring we usually give them to immigrants, I felt like I had been tricked. Like some snake oil salesman got me to buy his tonic by getting Gary Null to lift a cart after drinking it in front of me.
That's my reason but I feel that it pertains to poorly put together games that get rave reviews and that seems to happen most at the beginning of a console cycle. If it's a well made game with a lot of good content (like any Zelda game I've played; doesn't include the controversial one you mentioned), then there's no reason for it other than it's "cool" to some people to hate things that are popular...or, yea, envy. I guess I envied the people who got enjoyment out of No More Heroes but only because they didn't feel like they wasted $50.

And thanks for giving me a reason to want a Vita; Tearaway looks like the trippiest thing since the invention of the Katamari.

 

[Bruce]

Yep thats money and time im never getting back. Again I get that other people liked it, but I'm pissed off that these reviewers just gave the game such positive scores and mentioned only one or two of its shortcomings (or failed to see what other people wouldnt like) and even passed off these weaknesses as just meh.

I'm not trying to pick on you here but this is pretty much a widespread issue. Why do people believe that they are somehow owed a good experience?

Because that is what you're paying for. If you didn't think it would give you a good experience, you wouldn't buy it.

To use your food analogy - if you go to a restaurant and the food sucks, you're going to feel annoyed. Particularly if it got glowing reviews.

In fact you may, as a lot of people do, go online and complain about it to a more general audience in order to warn others away from it.

 

[Imp_Emissary]

...sheeple...

Spoiler: Shhh! Do not say that word so loud. D: They'll wake up.

[https://imageshack.com/i/17wakeupsheeple211p]

Anyway, I got to agree with what you said first.
It seems no matter what people in the games industry do, right or wrong, there's always a group of people getting mad at them for something or another.

I cannot believe that this is actually a thing. I think "idiot" is being far too kind to people like that.

I don't know if this thing is really all that new, but it does pop up quite a lot. Especially recently with all the lists being made.

What surprised me though was that Jim has people being bigger jerks to him over positive reviews than negative ones.
Didn't see that coming.
Shame it was not just from "fans", but also Jim's peers.
:/ Kind of a bummer.

 

[Casual Shinji]

snip

Because God forbid people genuinely like these games. After all, how can anyone like something that doesn't reinvent the wheel, or is aimed at the lowest common denominator?

 

[Trishbot]

My only "anger" at positive reviews is when a review, like the Dragon Age II review here, unabashedly praises the game but fails to mention most, or even any, of the problems included in the game itself.

It's the same thing where, for instance, reviews came out for the new Forza and Gran Turismo and several didn't bother informing players that there was less content than before and a gross number of microtransactions in their place. Didn't even get a single mention from many major reviewers, and that's stuff WE WANT TO SEE MENTIONED before we make a purchase.

It's hard to be an informed buyer when reviewers fail to include both the good, and the bad, in equal measure. Give a game a perfect 10/10 if you want... but don't tell me it's a flawless game with absolutely no negative qualities whatsoever.

That mindset made GTA4 the highest rated game on Xbox 360... and, good grief, does that game have problems, to the point it's nowhere near my top 50 games on the system. So, so many bad game design decisions. But you wouldn't know it from reading the reviews.

 

[CitySquirrel]

I'm not trying to pick on you here but this is pretty much a widespread issue. Why do people believe that they are somehow owed a good experience?

Because that is what you're paying for. If you didn't think it would give you a good experience, you wouldn't buy it.

To use your food analogy - if you go to a restaurant and the food sucks, you're going to feel annoyed. Particularly if it got glowing reviews.

In fact you may, as a lot of people do, go online and complain about it to a more general audience in order to warn others away from it.

Except, if it was only the food you didn't like, you wouldn't complain. Anyone who said, in a complaint, "The Lamb and Lentil soup was terrible because I did not like the cilantro" would be considered a complete idiot; you not liking the taste of the dish does not make it a bad dish. I hate seafood, but this does not make people who enjoy seafood inherently crazy. And I won't get angry at them for raving about the fish chowder at the local pub.

Obviously if there is something STRUCTURALLY wrong with the food then there is a difference, e.g. "the food was late", the steak was not cooked the way I requested it", "there was a severed finger in my vegetarian entrée", etc. But you would not get angry at someone who recommended the restaurant, you would assume they had a different experience than you.

And, more to the point, we were not given a certificate at birth stating that we would enjoy everything we experienced. Bad meals / games will happen. Again, why do you feel you deserve never to have a bad experience?

Edit: I forgot to make it clear that a big issue is confusing matters of taste with structural issues. Going back to DA2, I loved it. It is very hard to objectively determine the issues that were structural in nature and the ones that amounted to "I don't like how this tastes."

 

[Acton Hank]

I think I know when this kind of overblown bile started; remember back in 2011 when Dragon Age 2 was released and and got metabombed and everybody was surprised because there was never a such a big difference of opinion between critics and players?

A popular or hyped game getting metabombed seems business as usual now, doesn't it?

It might have stared before this but that was when I first noticed it.

 

[Malisteen]

I rely on reviewers to give me fair, honest review. I bought DA2 after reading the escapist review, and when I was confronted by the overwhelming and very blatant problems with that game, I did not feel that the review I read had been honest about those problems. I don't usually* care about people liking stuff I don't, but I need to get something a bit more than that from a 'review'. Plenty of reviewers have produced reviews that endorse a film or game while still making clear to me reasons why I wouldn't like them, or vice versa.

Not that I've ever felt the urge to post hateful messages or troll forums or comment sections. Being disappointed in a review is no reason to be a dick on the internet. The internet has dicks enough, already.


*On the other hand, there are some games that are just morally repugnant, and when people like those, yeah, it's upsetting. Particularly people I otherwise respect. Again, no reason to be a dick on the internet, and I wouldn't call it 'upsetting', but it does bother me that an individual I otherwise respect like Mr. Sterling would think so highly of, say, Bioshock Infinite. But that's a conversation that's been done to death elsewhere [http://designislaw.tumblr.com/post/70292634713/the-allegiance-of-whiteness-the-games-village-of].

 

[Systemerror]

Obviously if there is something STRUCTURALLY wrong with the food then there is a difference, e.g. "the food was late", the steak was not cooked the way I requested it", "there was a severed finger in my vegetarian entrée", etc. But you would not get angry at someone who recommended the restaurant, you would assume they had a different experience than you.

And, more to the point, we were not given a certificate at birth stating that we would enjoy everything we experienced. Bad meals / games will happen. Again, why do you feel you deserve never to have a bad experience?

I think this is where the analogy fails. In a restaurant, the reviewer gets a different dish than you, so you could have a structurally wrong dish and the reviewer could've had a good one. But a game reviewer playes the exact same game you did, so he should point things out that are objectively wrong with the game. If a reviewer fails to mention that the ending of a game was clearly rushed from a production standpoint(the reuse of color-coded cutscenes in ME3 for example) than you have a right to be angry at the reviewer if you bought the game on his recommendation.

I think a reviewer should say if he gave a game a very positive review because he liked the game instead of it being objectively very good. That would solve the issue.

Everything else was very well said. Even if you wasted money and time on a game because you trusted a reviewer, insulting someone is never gonna help.

 

[Bors Mistral]

I have no problems with Greg liking Dragon Age 2. My issue is with him, as a professional reviewer, giving such a flawed game a perfect score and calling it "A pinnacle of role-playing games with well-designed mechanics" and "what videogames are meant to be".

Then, he goes on to do a TW2 review, and that's a game superior to DA2 in almost everything, and gives it a 30% lower score? I worked as a game reviewer from 2000 to 2007 and in examining some 60+ games I know that it's hard not to let your personal preferences influence you. However, especially when handing scores to games in the same genre that are released relatively close to one another, you should be able to stop, have a look, and see that something is wrong with your grading.

 

[Zombie_Moogle]

Jim makes an excellent point here that I hadn't really considered

As a western gamer with a long-standing love of eastern developers like Atlus & Nippon Ichi, this is nothing new.
Example: Catherine is probably one of my favorite games of all time. A lot of people didn't think so. I get that. It's a bizarre game on a fundamental level. Not for everyone. But the bile-spewing that statements as innocuous as that have earned many is, to me, more confusing than anything else

 

[Calbeck]

Sorry, Jim, but I can't let this one go.

Not because I disagree with your basic premise, because I don't.

But you're NOT "a stranger on the Internet", nor are any of the other persons who present themselves as noted reviewers. Not just of games, but of anything. If you're making a profession of it, people expect that you put some real thought and work into what you do, and in this case, that's reviewing.

The entire point of reviewing something is to give the community you're reviewing for a heads-up. Sure, opinions differ, and there's no way there can or should be a lock-step agreement on what rating or review any given game should get from any given reviewer or rater.

That said, it brushes aside the point when YOU get angry about OTHER people getting angry that a game which ISN'T perfect gets A PERFECT RATING.

That's an issue for legitimate criticism. Rage? Well, in terms of shock and perhaps a feeling of betrayal, sure. Rating a good game as "perfect" or a crappy game as "good" does the entire community a disservice. Backlash can and should be expected when a reviewer can't muster the basic objectivity necessary to at least place their review in the same ballpark as observable reality.


Personal insults and such are childish, no excuses there. But you yourself have gone off when a given reviewer has given a crappy game a pass, for the same reasons, and frankly, you've been just as vicious when you suspect the fix was in. That someone got special treatment or there was quid pro quo going on.

We "commoners" in the gaming community have the same reactions and often tend to leap to the same conclusions.

In the end, civility should always be the first resort, but you can't expect people not to feel betrayed when someone they rely on says "PERFECT!" for a game that clearly bears major flaws. That's not a difference of opinion --- it's a failure of trust.

 

[Systemerror]

I have no problems with Greg liking Dragon Age 2. My issue is with him, as a professional reviewer, giving such a flawed game a perfect score and calling it "A pinnacle of role-playing games with well-designed mechanics" and "what videogames are meant to be".

Then, he goes on to do a TW2 review, and that's a game superior to DA2 in almost everything, and gives it a 30% lower score? I worked as a game reviewer from 2000 to 2007 and in examining some 60+ games I know that it's hard not to let your personal preferences influence you. However, especially when handing scores to games in the same genre that are released relatively close to one another, you should be able to stop, have a look, and see that something is wrong with your grading.

This is exactly what I mean. If he would've said he liked the game very much and therefore gave it a perfect score that wouldn't have been a problem, even if he didn't point out the (apparent) flaws of the game. If the game was really objectively as bad as people say (since I haven't played DA) and he said the opposite thing, he clearly misinformed his readers.

 

[Raioken18]

I experience much the same whenever I talk to anyone about Anime, and I think it should relate to real life too.

I'd admitted openly to the sin of loving Naruto, so far I've never met anyone IRL who also liked Naruto... and had more than a few rage and tell be I shouldn't call myself an anime fan. Then there's when I like anything with ecchi in it and someone will just scream Hentai...

CoD/BF I get, I loved it but just can't justify the cost atm or I prolly would play it. But I know the series gets a lot of unnecessary flak.

Oddly some of the most harassment comes from my love of League of Legends and World of Warcraft.

LoL I like cuz it's free and just a bit of arcade/competitive (MOBA) style gameplay. I find it a bit more accessible than others and I just enjoy playing.

WoW... it's hard to justify to people. I'm not playing at the moment, again due to money issues, but I'd like to be and I understand why lots of people do play it so often. I loved just doing random quests and seeing where the lore takes me.

I just... don't think I'd ever have that reaction to someone else liking something...

 

[james.sponge]

One addendum though: Hating a review/review score is not quite the same as hating someone else because they like something. That perfect Dragon Age 2 score IS a travesty, not because the reviewer liked the game, but because professional reviews are supposed to be more than just whether the reviewer liked it or not, they're supposed to be a rational objective analysis of the components at play, and any objective analysis of the quality of Dragon Age 2 will find it wanting.

Reviews can't be 100% objective, they have to mix subjective opinion and objective facts (this game has 10 missions, it costs 60$, etc.) and form those objective facts write why the game is worth buying, renting, stealing from Gamestop, breaking or waiting until the price goes down. (For example the game has 10 missions, that's not a whole lot of variety 1/10)

Except many reviewer don't do that anymore, in many cases you get an extended love/hate letter to the developer with little to no meaningful information. I miss old gamespot reviews made by Greg Kasavin where the guy would usually give you information about the length of the game, replayability, graphics, music score and the content price relation which was usually enough to get you interested.

 

[PortalThinker113]

Yep thats money and time im never getting back. Again I get that other people liked it, but I'm pissed off that these reviewers just gave the game such positive scores and mentioned only one or two of its shortcomings (or failed to see what other people wouldnt like) and even passed off these weaknesses as just meh.

I'm not trying to pick on you here but this is pretty much a widespread issue. Why do people believe that they are somehow owed a good experience? I get that games are expensive but the reaction of anger can only come from a belief that you somehow deserve to not be exposed to something you dislike. You had an experience, you did not like it, you moved on. Imagine going through life being angry at every meal you eat that you don't enjoy, every book you don't like, etc. And worse, being angry at the people who do like them. That is what is basically happening here.

Pretty much hit the nail on the head in regards to what I was going to say. To elaborate further:

Why do so many people feel so personally slighted and hurt when they play a bad video game? The best way to address playing something bad is to acknowledge "Well, I didn't like that very much," take some knowledge about how not to design video games away from it, laugh it off, and move on. I love video games. They are a huge, important part of my life, to the point that I harbor some aspirations about going into game design myself. However, I do not let a bad experience that I have playing a video game turn me into a frothing ball of hatred.

Earlier this year, I was one of the poor saps who pre-ordered Aliens: Colonial Marines. Let me say that again: I PRE-ORDERED Aliens: Colonial Marines. That game was a steaming pile of horseshit, and I ended up forcing myself to play through it as a learning experience, but did I let that turn me into a hate tornado? No. I took it as a learning experience to learn more about how not to design a video game, laughed at myself for being an idiot, resolved not to pre-order games on Steam ever again, and moved on. In 2012, Paper Mario: Sticker Star was one of the biggest disappointments of a game that I've ever played, but it was a wonderful learning experience as well. I was able to pinpoint exactly what I didn't like about it from a design standpoint and jotted down my thoughts on it, and I came away having gained something positive from the experience.

My point is, you will inevitably play a bad game, or a game you didn't like. Not all games are good, but you can make each and every game, or any piece of media for that matter, into a positive experience if you just take away something good from it. Even if you will never actually make a video game in your life, you can learn about what you like and dislike and hopefully make a better purchasing decision next time. To link this all the way back to Jim's thesis, not getting so seethingly angry about not liking a video game will hopefully make you less inclined to respond with anger if someone else likes it. Entertainment is supposed to bring joy into our lives, not make us all unhappy wrecks.