Metal Gear Solid V: Ground Zeroes Review - Snake Oil

[Jason Soler]

How many copies do you think Phantom Pain will have to move to make a profit? Kojima is notorious for taking his time with his games and exceeding his budgets. Konami took a long look at SE and came to two conclusions.

1) A marquee game brand like Tomb Raider can't turn a profit on 5 million sales.
2) You can recoup your expected/unexpected losses by reusing tools and engines to crank out additional products in that series.

Why wait till after Phantom Pain, when they can start mitigating those losses now? Why should they pay for advertising when their diehard MGS fans will pay for it for them? I'm sure that the official stance on this product is that it's a treat for the fans of the series, and that they didn't actually HAVE to release it. If that's the case Konami should provide the budget numbers for Phantom Pain, because I GUARANTEE you this game is going to be over budget.

This whole thing is a new low for the gaming industry, and anyone that has ever been mad at a publisher for locking day one DLC on the game disc should be furious at this. The reviews have, for the most part, been kind of good though. This game is getting a free pass because it's part of a legacy franchise that hasn't had a mainline entry in 5 years. If Ubi tried pulling this with Assassin's Creed we would all be getting our torches and pitchforks right now.

Konami has packed demos with other games as recently as Revengence being included in Zone of the Enders collection. Why start charging now? They could have put this into The new Castlevania and added a ton of value to that game. I just don't think that the great graphics or added extras justifies this being released separately. As far back as Square releasing pack in demos with their Playstation games I can think of examples of full featured demos with beautiful graphics (for the time) being free with your 60+ dollar game purchase.

I know I don't HAVE to buy this, and I won't. My primary concern is the people that ARE buying it. Some are being fleeced, and others are just allowing Konami to establish another bad example for other publishers to follow. Say no to this product.

 

[-Dragmire-]

I find it interesting that TB just did a vlog that included the topic of whether the price should affect the score when prices go down over time while content stays the same. It means the score isn't future proofed so when the price drops, the score is no longer applicable. That said, deciding on a purchase entirely based on the final score without reading the review wouldn't be a very intelligent thing to do.

Spoiler: TB vlog for those interested

Relevant part starts at 4:30

Just to clarify, in the podcast last night TB said (IIRC, and I'm paraphrasing at best) that in this case, price should be a factor because it doesn't seem to be a complete game, but a demo, or as Jim said, a piece of advertising.

Ah, I haven't listened to that yet. Also, I should have probably clarified my position on the topic since my position isn't an exact mirror of TB's.

I have a more clear version of my feelings in a later post. Not the clearest though since I'm I don't hold a firm position just yet, still more to contemplate on.

Edited out stupid lack of proofreading... [small]I'm don't hold... seriously.[/small]

Spoiler: just a copy of my previous post

Spoiler

I find it interesting that TB just did a vlog that included the topic of whether the price should affect the score when prices go down over time while content stays the same. It means the score isn't future proofed so when the price drops, the score is no longer applicable. That said, deciding on a purchase entirely based on the final score without reading the review wouldn't be a very intelligent thing to do.

Spoiler: TB vlog for those interested

Relevant part starts at 4:30

Imo, review scores are never future proof. A game might be patched (for better or worse) or the reviewer might not have experienced problems that normal people will encounter either because they spend far less time with it or because some problems (e.g. broken servers) only crop up once the public has access.

I also disagree on TB's assessment: If anything, the price point should always be taken into account for reviews. If that be in the text, some disclaimer box or the game's rating doesn't really matter that much (at least to me), arbitrary as the scores anyways tend to be. I'd totally be ok if more sites gave additional disclaimers, recommendations (e.g. "pick up reduced" or "rent" as some sites and magazines did) or even dual scores (like a game magazine I used to read in my teens).
There are many good games with too little content for too high a price that I'll happily pick up once they had a few price drops. But at their starting price point I feel their price often isn't warranted.

It probably also depends a lot on your view what review scores are supposed to be. If they are seen as a recommendation near launch, factoring in the price can make a lot more sense than when seeing them as a pure quality rating. TB says himself that he doesn't like review scores and thus also doesn't use them himself but he is still telling you buying recommendations, be it in some of his WTF videos and even has a video format showcasing the best Steam deals.
I like his videos and the style he does them in and they are often a lot more helpful to me than a plain review score but then again reviews also consist of a lot more than just the rating.

If there is a problem, it is caused by people only looking at the scores to begin with. Which incidentally is probably also one of the reasons why games have gotten much shorter and seem to continue that trend.

I agree with you, I posted the video just because the value of this game was brought up so much by Jim that it seemed like quite a coincidence and an interesting topic.

It would definitely be useful info for a review to say the price point at the point it is reviewed(wonder how many regions would be listed on average, steam prices can vary wildly from region to region I hear). Good point about patches though, I forgot about how much of a difference that can make, especially when certain companies rely on patches to get their to the fully featured point it's supposed to be.

Still, if the price affects the score to the reviewer then that should be explicitly said. That seems fair all around.

 

[NiPah]

Yup, I love the game, but god'damn is it short.
I went into this expecting it to be short, but it could have used a lot more to flesh out the game to make it feel like an actual game experience, it really did just feel like a single mission in a much larger game that just so happened did not come with the purchase price. This is a shame too, I really went into this wanting to love it, but even with such an amazing experience it just doesn't justify defending it's length.