Zero Punctuation: Mailbag Showdown
- Thread starter Yahtzee Croshaw
- Start date
Incorrect. Yahtzee's fan base consists of Yahtzee fan boys, who seem to like to attack other fan boys for whatever it is they are fans of. Which seems to be the very nature of fan-boydom itself:Patronizing said:
http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=fanboy
You sir, fail. Yahtzee's fanbase cannot be tired of fan boys if they are a bunch of fan boys themselves!
Are you honestly so naive that you think anyone even CARES about your opinion on their posts?
A word of advice: they don't.
No one will probably notice this, but I think this comment was hilarious. If lindsay is a girl, I'll bow down and grovel at her feet. A guy? Well, I guess, maybe we could play a game together?lindsay40k said:
ETA: oops, my bad. I forgot to actually say something about the review (and it was one, just not of a game). I like these sort of "talk back to the community" things. Also, I was glad to actually read some fanboy comments, as I stayed away from the SSBB thread when I realized how long it was in such a short time.
That's a fairly good assessment of the situation except for two things. Regardless of whether Brawl is mediocre or not, it isn't just a party game. It can be a party game if it's set up in a certain way, but it turns into a very deep fighter if you set it up a different way. In other words, it's versatile. The huge tournament community set up around Melee, the previous game in the series, should be enough evidence for anyone that the game's depth goes far beyond a simple party game. There are plenty of Youtube videos of matches between pros, and the things they do are far beyond anything a beginning player could hope to do.xanrethan said:
Secondly, many of the people who dislike Brawl have never played it. Their hate seems to stem more from the fact that it says "Nintendo" on it than from any of the legitimate flaws the game actually has. In the same vein, Yahtzee played the game and gave it a bad review. People aren't pissed that he didn't like it; they're pissed that he went on to say, "Not only is this a bad game, only extremely ignorant people will like this game. Since the game has no other redeeming features, liking it is evidence that you're a fanboy. Not liking it is evidence of enlightenment."
People are pissed because (in general) they don't like being insulted. Yahtzee's review lumps the people who like Brawl as a legitimate fighting game in with the fanboys that everyone is so quick to disparage. It doesn't create a middle ground where people can agree to disagree, and that's why people are pissed off.
I've never understood why people such as yourself read so much into his reviews. He didn't even discuss those of you who have legitimate gripes. He just found his mailbag full of hilarious non-arguments, and, since he wasn't quite ready with the GTA:IV review, he thought, what the heck. I'll let other people enjoy my fung31st said:
If you will actually take the time to go back through the "review archives", you'll find that Yahtzee often did listen to people. He's all for improving his craft, if he gets legitimate feedback. He just doesn't make it too obvious, or it would hurt his persona. But he does listen. I mean, he never did that FMV thing again, did he?
If you're talking about the Halo 3 review, you also weren't insulted repeatedly for liking the game. That review tore the game apart by pointing out its actual flaws. The Brawl review "tore" the game apart by calling anyone who likes it enough to get good at it a cat-ear-wearing fanboy. I can almost guarantee that there wouldn't have been 1500 comments if the Brawl review had been a review of the game's flaws instead of the game's fanbase.xanrethan said:
I think my cousins put it best when they said, "It's a fun game, but it has a steep learning curve." As such, without playing at someones house, who has everything unlocked, who knows what they are doing, who can help you out, then the game is doomed to fail. Especially because Nintendo seems to try and justify rehashing the game by just making it more and more chaotic each generation.
Er, but I also think Mr. Forsooth said it best when he said,
Er, but I also think Mr. Forsooth said it best when he said,
Even if I didn't like this review, and I did, I'd be happy that Yahtzee didn't rush a game for his review this week, and is instead fiddling around with GTA IV. The game is huge, and I'm sure it would be difficult to cram it into one week. And as filler, a rant in reply to hatemail is always hillarious. Yahtzee seemed to be channeling Maddox this week.Forsooth and Pi said:
Ok, lets leave the issue of whether or not brawl is good or bad - its all personal and subjective. I do have to say that you've read wayyyyyy to much into the last statement he made on the SSBB - he says IF you are a fanboy of Nintendo, you WILL then enjoy it irregardless of whatever the game is like. I.e. A => B, not B => A. He's not saying IF you like SSBB, your a fanboy.g31st said:
Anywho... I wonder if the post count here will exceed the SSBB one?
"Secondly, many of the people who dislike Brawl have never played it."
That's true for any game, but no smoke without fire...
I've played it, and my 2-sentence review would be: A lot of game for your money, but you're likely to get bored before you've managed to unlock everything.
"The huge tournament community set up around Melee, the previous game in the series, should be enough evidence for anyone that the game's depth goes far beyond a simple party game"
Stop right there. Any game with a the smallest bit of skill or excitment involved can become a tournament game. Just take Poker for instance : P I find it far more likely that a large number of people had fun with a game, and that to continue having fun with it they would have to seek out good enough opposition. Tournaments start that way.
That's true for any game, but no smoke without fire...
I've played it, and my 2-sentence review would be: A lot of game for your money, but you're likely to get bored before you've managed to unlock everything.
"The huge tournament community set up around Melee, the previous game in the series, should be enough evidence for anyone that the game's depth goes far beyond a simple party game"
Stop right there. Any game with a the smallest bit of skill or excitment involved can become a tournament game. Just take Poker for instance : P I find it far more likely that a large number of people had fun with a game, and that to continue having fun with it they would have to seek out good enough opposition. Tournaments start that way.
E-mail him more! Do it! WE NEED MORE OF THESE!
(See Yahtzee, you give us ANY attention, and it brings you more misery.)
(See Yahtzee, you give us ANY attention, and it brings you more misery.)
You're correct. The fact that he didn't discuss any of the legitimate gripes with his review might not have been so bad if he hadn't said at the very beginning of his "showdown" that he would respond to some of the "slightly more valid arguments" that people had had. There were no valid arguments in his review. He chose emails that made the so-called Brawl Defenders look stupid. I hoped for a bit better from him, but wasn't surprised that he didn't own up to any of the legitimate complaints people had.trlkly said:
I'm not sure if you read the forum thread which resulted from his actual Brawl review. Since I don't have access to his email, I will never actually know what was in his inbox, but there were so many legitimate gripes in that forum thread that I'll bet his mailbag was full of a lot more than just "hilarious non-arguments". To posit that there wasn't a single email in his entire inbox with a legitimate point would be stupid, yet he didn't address any of the valid arguments in his actual "showdown".
I've watched practically every video he has on the Escapist website. I haven't read any text reviews, so if you're talking about those, I don't have any comments to make. I will say this, though: The gripes that people have with his Brawl review have very little to do with him "improving his craft". The reason that people are pissed off is that he didn't perform his craft in the first place when he reviewed Brawl. People expected a review of the game, and got a review of Nintendo fanboys instead.
What's more, it wasn't just a review of fanboys. Using his review, he neatly lumped the people who enjoy Brawl as a deep fighting game and the people who enjoy Brawl out of loyalty to Nintendo in the same group and labeled them all "ignorant". It was insulting, plain and simple. Before you tell me that Yahtzee entertains people using insults, understand that there is a difference between trashing a game based on its actual flaws and trashing a game because of a predisposition you have towards its audience.
I thought G31t's summary of the situation was a good one. Ignoring the quality of the game, I am not a Nintendo fanboy, I think the Wii is a stupid name and I dislike games such as Metroid Prime 3 and Zelda: Twilight princess but I like Brawl and I object to being called a fanboy on that basis...
The barb is particularly sharp because calling someone a fanboy is pretty much the worst insult on the internet.
The barb is particularly sharp because calling someone a fanboy is pretty much the worst insult on the internet.
Hmm. So i read a couple of the last posts in the last little bit and I agree partly with what you said before and here. Specifically, that his review may have extended somewhat to it's fanbase. However, the thing I have a problem with is that this clearly ad hominem argument made by a reviewer well known for exaggeration (If this is your first review that you've seen, then perhaps you may not have known, but because you mention Halo 3 in a previous post, I assume you've seen at least enough to know this). He bashes game companies and gamers alike. That I liked Halo was irrelevant, I thought it was a funny review and I've been watching them since, albeit somewhat quietly. The 1000 post sensation is what it took for me to come out of hiding and give my share of a round of applause for Yahtzee. Whether you view his opinions of SSBB (and by extension, it's fanbase, as described and crudely lumped together by him) as a Self-Fulfilling prophesy or merely inflammatory is irrelevant. He clearly wants traffic, so the worst thing any individual could do to him at this point is stop watching altogether.g31st said:
The second thing I don't quite understand are tourneyf... players. A game that is hyped and released as a party game being simultaneously treated as a serious fighter somewhat irks me; much the same way as it would if someone were to defend, say, Half Life 2 from his rant, trying to state how one can use the physics engine in a Gary's Mod sort of way to make their own physics puzzles as a sort of defense against any ill he may have had against the single player campaign. Granted this example is slightly weak due to my current fatigue, but I hope you understand the point I'm getting at: He played the game as a party game and reviewed it as a party game. Trying to look at it from a different perspective to argue his is a bit contrived.
For the record, i've played brawl, melee and the original. My favorite, honestly, was the first one. There wasn't any real reason I could think of for not liking melee as much. It's practically the same game with more bells and whistles. Granted he didn't mention not playing the previous two games, like he had mentioned in reviewing Halo 3 outright, you could at least infer it from his mention of confusion surrounding Marth.
You can imply a lot without being explicit. That's what masters of language are good at.Doug said:
It's easy enough to examine the logic regarding the last bit of the video. Your logic regarding his words is correct. If you look at the images in the video, there's a gleeful fanboy with the words "HURR HURR IGNORANCE" over his head while Yahtzee's disparaging the fanboys who like Brawl "whatever its faults". Even though you can't logically get "if you like SSBB, you're a fanboy" from his words, the image says pretty clearly that the group of people who do like Brawl "don't get it" at best and are borderline retarded at worst. So, someone who's not a fanboy and who's asking themselves "Would I like Brawl?" need only ask themselves, "Do I get games?" or "Am I borderline retarded?" What do you suppose their answer would be?
In addition, I'm not sure if you remember, but there was an earlier part in the review where he was talking about "that guy". In that section of the review, he said that anyone who cared enough about playing Brawl to become good at it would seek out other "that guys" for the sake of some competition, and at that point they were lost to the bleak world of fanboyness forever. Even if you want to insist that the last bit of his review didn't imply that only fanboys could like Brawl, the part about "that guy" did. According to Yahtzee's review, it's impossible to become both good at the game and not be a rabid Nintendo fanboy.
I didn't play the life out of Melee when that was out, so I assume it will be the same for Brawl.g31st said: