Your Favorite Game Sucks

[Da Ork]

Not buying a game because you believe it won't interest you = Great
Going onto forums for that game/its developer and saying it is a bad game without trying it = Not Great.

Really any forum discussion on said game. If someone asks your personal opinion feel free to say that it doesn't interest you and move on.

 

[Athinira]

What if Gamer B doesn't have the same taste in games as you do?
What if you just happen to hate brown cover-based FPS games almost no matter what?

This is silly. I said, "Gamer B says that they thought the same thing" after describing Gamer A's opinion. But I went on to describe Gamer B's changed reaction after actually playing it. I was creating a situation wherein two gamers' opinions of a game could diverge on the basis of experience. My hypothetical taste in games hasn't come into play yet.

You should have stated so more clearly then. Stating that two gamers both thought a game would be sh*t doesn't imply that they are of the same mindset, it could just be coincidental that they had the same opinion of the game.

There is plenty of people out there for whom Player A's argument will still carry the most weight, even though B is the one who has experienced it. Experience doesn't give an opinion as much weight as a shared mindset (aka. if someone is of the same mindset about games as Gamer A and not Gamer B, Gamer A's opinion will generally always be thought the stronger by that person because they think alike), because the latter aligns preferences and is more likely to give you an opinion you can recognize as your own.

I established that both gamers had similar mindsets from the get-go, but that B changed his mind after experiencing the game. For someone interested in buying a game or wondering if it's worth it, Gamer B's experience with the game will be more meaningful. This is the majority of cases.

I disagree. While i obviously can't speak of how you feel, human tend to be skeptical of recommendations from people they don't know, so claiming that the majority would put more weight on Gamer B's words is incorrect if you ask me. There is still plenty of people who will have doubts when the recommendation comes from someone they don't know, most likely because we've gotten used to distrust commercials when growing up.

If you know Gamer B personally then it's a different story obviously.

 

[The Random One]

Okay now let me butt in into another discussion.

I don't think anyone's talking about opinions like "I like this game" or "I don't like this game." Those are obviously equal opinions, unique to the people who hold them. I think the issue of validity or the strength of an opinion comes into play when people start making statements about a game that go beyond that. Gamer A says, "I haven't played this game, but it probably sucks because it's a brown, cover-based shooter." This is an opinion, but a perfectly valid reason not to buy a game. Clearly it's not their cup of tea. However, Gamer B says that they thought the same thing, but after playing it found that the story was deep and engaging and the multiplayer was fast-paced and fun. If I was trying to decide to buy the game, Gamer B's experience would be more meaningful to me.

Is it?

What if Gamer B doesn't have the same taste in games as you do?
What if you just happen to hate brown cover-based FPS games almost no matter what?

There is plenty of people out there for whom Player A's argument will still carry the most weight, even though B is the one who has experienced it. Experience doesn't give an opinion as much weight as a shared mindset (aka. if someone is of the same mindset about games as Gamer A and not Gamer B, Gamer A's opinion will generally always be thought the stronger by that person because they think alike), because the latter aligns preferences and is more likely to give you an opinion you can recognize as your own.

I can't think of any reason to hold Gamer A's opinion over Gamer B's. You know that it's a brown and grey cover-based shooter. You have no experience. Therefore, Gamer A has the exactly same knowledge that you have. How are you going to expect to meet a different viewpoint than the one you already have by following his opinions? You are just going to reinforce your own.

Maybe Gamer A happens to have a taste in games that are just like yours, while Game B has a completely different taste. Even then, you'd do better to ask Gamer B. You could ask him 'Are the levels well designed?' or 'Do different weapons actually feel different?' or 'Is the game frustrating?' Even if his personal opinion is different from yours he will be able to answer these questions far more effectively. Gamer A can only guess and things like level design are something that are hard to glimpse from second hand accounts.

 

[the Dept of Science]

This may well have been said already, but the one issue that I would like to make is that "hate" is a very strong word for something that you don't need to experience and for something frivolous, like music or games.

I'll take Justin Beiber as an example, someone who on this forum, receives a high degree of hatred.

If perhaps, there was a law that meant I had to listen to Justin Beiber at least once per day, I would quite quickly grow to hate Justin Beiber. In fact, even in this situation, I don't think Justin Beiber would deserve HATE. The law could have had any number of mediocre musicians and I would still be pissed off. I would hate the person that made the stupid law. In fact, only if Justin Beiber lived next door to me and I had to listen to his music all the time, do I think that Justin Beiber would deserve hatred.
I have never understood the ire that Beiber gets. In fact, if this forum didn't rant about him so much, its possible that I would not have heard of him. I don't see how you can hate something which you can very easily avoid. It's like someone sticking their hand in a fire, discovering that it hurts, then sticks their hand in the fire again so that they can write angry forum posts about how shitty fire is. Just don't stick your hand in the fire!

My other point is that when it comes down to it, its just a game/film/musician. If I just made the first argument, I would anticipate some people thinking "You don't get subjected to racism/Stalinist Russia, but you still hate it". Well, that is true. However, Justin Beiber brings a certain amount of happiness to some people, and the people that he brings unhappiness to should see my first point.
When you strip all the whining out of the rants, you are essentially left with "a mediocre musician is making a lot of money"(ie. something that has probably happened since people first discovered how to sell music). While there are perhaps some negative effects to come from this, they pale in significance to pretty much any serious issue around the world.

So, to summarise, while I agree with Shamus that it is perfectly reasonable to say "I've heard that game isn't very good, I probably won't like it", I don't think it's reasonable to so say "I've heard that game isn't very good... LET THE INTERNET FEEL MY RAGE".

 

[Athinira]

I can't think of any reason to hold Gamer A's opinion over Gamer B's. You know that it's a brown and grey cover-based shooter. You have no experience. Therefore, Gamer A has the exactly same knowledge that you have. How are you going to expect to meet a different viewpoint than the one you already have by following his opinions? You are just going to reinforce your own.

Maybe Gamer A happens to have a taste in games that are just like yours, while Game B has a completely different taste. Even then, you'd do better to ask Gamer B. You could ask him 'Are the levels well designed?' or 'Do different weapons actually feel different?' or 'Is the game frustrating?' Even if his personal opinion is different from yours he will be able to answer these questions far more effectively. Gamer A can only guess and things like level design are something that are hard to glimpse from second hand accounts.

All Gamer B's arguments like level design, of weapons feeling different, assumes that the person asking actually cares about the level or weapon design to begin with. What Gamer B is essentially doing is telling us about his mindset. He is practically saying "I like good level design and i like that each weapon feels different". But if neither weapon nor level design means anything to you (or only means very little) in regards to the game, then we once again face the problem that you and Gamer B's mindsets doesn't align, and therefore his advice is useless in trying to convince you to like the game.

As for Gamer A, it is actually quite possible to get an idea from second hand accounts about a game: Reviews, review videos, gameplay videos, screenshots. All of these actually tell a great deal about a game (especially gameplay videos). The things you mention (level design etc.) is actually things you can pretty easily glimpse from second hand accounts.

And that is exactly why there is plenty of people out there who would rather cling to Gamer A's opinion if they are of the same mindset. It's true that if Gamer A practically didn't know anything at all about the game, his opinion wouldn't be worth much to anyone, but even i could find useful advice from him if he said "I've watched some gameplay videos, and the level design look awful", if i knew his mindset was similar to mine.

If you happen to share the mindset of Gamer A, then typically the only way you would weight more on Gamer B's opinion is if the thing he found awesome about the game are things you can't get from second hand accounts and still somewhat agree with. For example, if Gamer B said "The game really challenges you" or "The game is quite intense", the those are things you truly have to play the game to get an idea about, and therefore Gamer A can't comment on it.

But even if Gamer A can't comment on those things because he hasn't played the game, that still doesn't mean that Gamer B's advice is going to be useful to you, because they once again rely on the assumption that you share SOME of Gamer B's mindset, in this case assuming that you like challenging or intensive games. But if neither challenge, intensity, level design or weapon design matters much to you, then Gamer B's advice is still useless. And even if they do matter to you, Gamer B's idea of what makes good level/challenge/weapon/intensity design might be totally different from your own. In fact, it might be totally opposite, meaning that Gamer B's opinion is actually misleading you, in which case Gamer A's "silence" (because he can't comment on those things) might be more useful to you, because you would rather not hear about a game and not buy it than you would want to hear good things about a game and buy it, only to find out that you think it s*cks.

I guess the bottom line is that you simply can't rely on advice from people that don't share your mindset. No amount of praise of graphics, intensity, map/level design, weapon design, challenge design or whatever is going to convince you that this new RTS game is good if you don't like RTS games to begin with. In your example, for some people, the fact that it's a cover based shooter is enough to turn them off, no matter the praise it gets, because they simply don't like cover based shooters at all, and then it doesn't matter how good the game is otherwise designed.

 

[rsvp42]

I disagree. While i obviously can't speak of how you feel, human tend to be skeptical of recommendations from people they don't know, so claiming that the majority would put more weight on Gamer B's words is incorrect if you ask me. There is still plenty of people who will have doubts when the recommendation comes from someone they don't know, most likely because we've gotten used to distrust commercials when growing up.

If you know Gamer B personally then it's a different story obviously.

How well you know them? That's another variable. We're not talking about that. Pretend you know them both the same. This is a discussion of the benefits (or lack therof) of experience playing a game. Played it vs. not played it. I haven't really seen a good reason to take the word of someone who hasn't played it over the word of someone who has. You just keep making up hypothetical situations that throw the comparison off balance.

 

[rsvp42]

snip.

Furthermore, whether or not you are of the same mindset is another issue entirely, one that doesn't really need to be brought up. Yes, ultimately we would prefer to get information about a game from those we would normally agree with. But whether you agree with a person or not, you can't argue that it would be worse if that person had played the game. You get a better opinion that way.

Imagine this. You're talking with your two best friends about games. Let's say you all have the same taste in games (for argument's sake). The conversation moves on to a new game that just came out and you want to know what your friends think. One has played it, the other hasn't. Whose opinion will be more informed? Whose opinion will have the experience to back it up? Sure the one who hasn't played it could say how cool it looks or how fun the previews have been, but the one who played it will have first-hand knowledge. It may not be a huge difference in your eyes, but it is an improvement.

This is doubly so on an internet forum. If people are coming together to discuss a game and you have know way of knowing if you have the same tastes (like on a forum), then experience with the game is the only way to know how much faith to put into anything that's said. Sure, you may not agree, but you'll at least know that the opinion was informed and not based on commercials or trailers alone.

 

[drummond13]

Wow, I have rarely read an article I disagreed with more.

Has Shamus ever heard you can rent or borrow games BEFORE you buy them?

 

[Alistar]

No. 1, Everyone is entitled to their opinion, but if they are a reviewer, they have to come clean that it is not their "professional opinion" or that they have not "reviewed the game".

Now, most gamers by now, have SOME idea of what they like/don't like, and they must have SOME idea of how hype affects you.

Have some common sense, and read around and you will get the low-down on what "said-game" is like.

But for instance- if someone said "Oh sex is a horrific and pointless activity" -that is an OPINION, you ask" Have you done it then?"
He says "Heck no! but I just know! you know!"
Honestly I would say "Yeah right *roll eyes"

 

[Athinira]

How well you know them? That's another variable. We're not talking about that. Pretend you know them both the same. This is a discussion of the benefits (or lack therof) of experience playing a game. Played it vs. not played it. I haven't really seen a good reason to take the word of someone who hasn't played it over the word of someone who has. You just keep making up hypothetical situations that throw the comparison off balance.

Then you have entirely missed my point. My point is that mindset is everything and experience with the game is nothing. Period. No matter how intimate knowledge someone has of a game, you aren't going to be able to use his opinion if you aren't of the same mindset of him and like those kinds of games.

A person who has knowledge of a game still can't tell you whether or not the game is good, because your opinion of what makes a good game might be different than his. Sure, he can describe the game for you, but if his descriptions is subjective (which it is most likely going to be) and he is using terms like "The level design is _great_", then it is still going to be useless to you because you have no idea of his standards for level design.

Also, I'm not creating imbalanced situations that throws the comparison off. You ask me to assume that i know both Gamer A and B the same, but thats what I'm already assuming. That still doesn't change that Gamer A and B have a different mindset, and that the general person is still going to trust the one they identify the most with.

Just to give you another example, lets take the recent Final Fantasy game. On one hand you have Yahtzee who has played the first 5 hours and hated the game. On the other hand you have the people who played through the game (without necessarily being fanboys) and who is telling him that the game gets good 20 hours in. In this situation, most viewers still trust Yahtzee the most rather than the bloke who sat through the game, because after having watched his reviews for 3 years, they know his mindset (even if they sometimes disagree with it).

If you are asking about a 100% equal situation with 2 people you know equally well, is of EXACTLY equal mindset, and one has played the game and the other hasn't, then yes, i might agree with you that you would trust the person who has played the game (although not necessarily enough to buy it yourself). That situation is pretty much going to happen to anyone though, and even then there will be more factors involved, like how well they describe the game to you. "I haven't played the game, but from the gameplay videos it looks like a generic FPS with ugly graphics" is still more useful than "I've played the game and it's awesome, you simply have to try it".

 

[rsvp42]

How well you know them? That's another variable. We're not talking about that. Pretend you know them both the same. This is a discussion of the benefits (or lack therof) of experience playing a game. Played it vs. not played it. I haven't really seen a good reason to take the word of someone who hasn't played it over the word of someone who has. You just keep making up hypothetical situations that throw the comparison off balance.

Then you have entirely missed my point. My point is that mindset is everything and experience with the game is nothing. Period. No matter how intimate knowledge someone has of a game, you aren't going to be able to use his opinion if you aren't of the same mindset of him and like those kinds of games.

A person who has knowledge of a game still can't tell you whether or not the game is good, because your opinion of what makes a good game might be different than his. Sure, he can describe the game for you, but if his descriptions is subjective (which it is most likely going to be) and he is using terms like "The level design is _great_", then it is still going to be useless to you because you have no idea of his standards for level design.

Also, I'm not creating imbalanced situations that throws the comparison off. You ask me to assume that i know both Gamer A and B the same, but thats what I'm already assuming. That still doesn't change that Gamer A and B have a different mindset, and that the general person is still going to trust the one they identify the most with.

Just to give you another example, lets take the recent Final Fantasy game. On one hand you have Yahtzee who has played the first 5 hours and hated the game. On the other hand you have the people who played through the game (without necessarily being fanboys) and who is telling him that the game gets good 20 hours in. In this situation, most viewers still trust Yahtzee the most rather than the bloke who sat through the game, because after having watched his reviews for 3 years, they know his mindset (even if they sometimes disagree with it).

If you are asking about a 100% equal situation with 2 people you know equally well, is of EXACTLY equal mindset, and one has played the game and the other hasn't, then yes, i might agree with you that you would trust the person who has played the game (although not necessarily enough to buy it yourself). That situation is pretty much going to happen to anyone though, and even then there will be more factors involved, like how well they describe the game to you. "I haven't played the game, but from the gameplay videos it looks like a generic FPS with ugly graphics" is still more useful than "I've played the game and it's awesome, you simply have to try it".

Well in your Final Fantasy example, all the people you mentioned (Yahtzee and the other people) had played it. Sure Yahtzee had played less, but but he had still played. If you compared any of those testimonies to that of someone who hadn't even touched the game, you could see their relative strength. I definitely agree that mindset plays a big part in how much stock you put into someone's opinion and I didn't mean to suggest that it didn't. I was worried you were suggesting that experience had no beneficial effects on a person's opinion or recommendation. Clearly it does. That being said, whether or not you have the same taste in games is the next level.

The strength of an opinion is in how informed it is. It's relevance to any given person is based on mindset. I guess that's why I see them as separate, but connected issues.

 

[BrotherRool]

I honestly just plain disagree, I'm not even going to argue it because I can only vaguely see how you could be right. The idea is to save yourself time and money by evaluating other opinions, not to form an opinion of your own, which you then spread. That's how we get the "games kill people" debacles.

 

[Duskflamer]

I'm aware that this is an old article but I came across it through the "related news" list of the more recent How to read movie criticism [http://www.escapistmagazine.com/articles/view/columns/moviebob/8812-MovieBob-How-to-Read-Movie-Criticism.3] and I just felt a strong need to comment on this.

Forming your own, personal, private opinion on a game you haven't bought as part of determining weather you should buy it, is entirely valid.

Publishing (even on the internet) a semi-professional review that claims that your opinion of a game you have never played is just as valid as the opinion of someone who has played through every nook and cranny of the game, is absurd.

Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying that people are right for flaming people who say "Oh, I don't think I'd like that game" on a message board.

But if you're talking about a published review (even something as minor as a user review on Gamefaqs), there's an expectation that the person writing the review actually has at least some experience with the game. If this person admits that they never actually played the game they're reviewing (especially in systems where every review is given equal weight on a rating scale), they might as well have personally asked for every flame he/she gets as a result.

 

[grammarye]

Edit: Holy crap this is an old article. How did I get here

If I want to gain an opinion of a game, I read multiple reviews & opinions of a game, and then account for the potential bias of what I've read (for example I know from past experience that particular reviewers like the same sort of things I do). If it has a demo, I don't need any of that, but that's extremely rare, and even then you get caveats like 'oh this will be better in the release' and it turns out it isn't.

It's always a gamble. It always requires me to form and hold an opinion before playing the game. Renting doesn't count - money has still been put down by that point.

Advertising that opinion as 'this game sucks' is not particularly appropriate, but that wasn't Shamus' point. You can form an opinion of a game, try it anyway, be entirely informed, still like/dislike the game, and say so, and apparently you are just plain wrong. Yet in classic Internetz fashion, this thread is already busily debating completely the wrong points. It's entirely feasible to come away from reading others' reviews (real ones not three lines on Metacritic) and feel that game X is not for you for the following reasons etc. etc. Polite people will be open minded enough to ask the question 'so I've heard this, is this true? will I find I have trouble with the game if...?'

The deeper issue is that people refuse to listen to others, and debate in a polite manner. No no, it's much easier to be rude & fanatical (both liking & disliking), and people will latch onto any strawman they can to say 'aha clearly you are wrong!' - not having experienced a given part or any of a given game is just one example.

The idea that somehow you must have tried an activity to know it's good or bad completely misses whole swathes of human evolution & experience. You don't need to go out and eat glass to realise it's a bad idea. Why not? Millions of years of evolution of people telling you it's a bloody stupid idea has already informed you. In short, you listen to your peers and elders as you grow up. Reading others' opinions on a game is no different; it's just a smaller sample size over a shorter time period, and thus more likely to be variable in reliability.

Reviews do need to be informed. That's why they're called reviews (the word itself means 'seen again'!). Opinion can be held without direct experience.

But it begs the question; if you don't like a game, and you haven't tried it, why are you getting involved in an argument over something you clearly have no interest in in the first place? If you'd played the game, or even demoed it, and had genuine criticism for it, then I think its something to discuss, but wading into the troll pit blindfolded is not bringing anything to the table except bad feeling.

Four key takeaways I had from this would be:

'argument' - it shouldn't need to be an argument in the first place

'clearly no interest' - beyond the occasional genuine troll, I doubt many are there for kicks, though I empathise when dealing with those that just are there to cause trouble

'troll pit' - well that pretty much sets the scene doesn't it - why would anyone knowingly go to such an environment in the first place, informed or otherwise?

'only bringing bad feeling' - quite the contrary, they are bringing a viewpoint - I can explain rationally why I hate golf games despite only having played one in the 1980s, and someone else is welcome to try and convince me how today's golf game is just so much better & different, but I remain entitled to that viewpoint formed over years about a given genre of game. If the context of a given debate starts out with the diametrically opposing viewpoint of 'how can any idiot hate golf games!?!' (as it usually does on the Internet) then clearly my opinion is not only valid but informative of 'actually this idiot does hate golf games and here's why'. Presented well, that's useful feedback.

The real problem is huge numbers of people posting on forums fail totally at presenting their opinion, politely in the right context, as opinion.

Well, nobody ever said the human race had to be rational, I guess.