Are games getting better, or reviewers getting more generous?

[Kelvin]

Are there more 10's and 9's being given out these days? In the last year or so, we've seen multiple sites giving tens to games like Zelda, Horizon, Mario, Celeste and most recently God of War.

Then you see games like Far Cry, Assassin's Creed and Wolfenstein getting multiple 9s.

I don't want to get bogged down in arguments about specific games, though, but rather the wider question of whether games are, generally speaking, getting better, or whether game's media is getting more generous in it's analysis.

Any thoughts on any of these possibilities?

[Kelvin]

I'm not even sure if I stand by the central argument of this thread, but I decided to post it anyway and see if it generates any interesting discussion.

[bgmnts]

The latter.

[Z]

I'd say it's a move away from some kind of ludicrous absolutism where 10/10 meant perfect as opposed to "clearly one of the best of its type". The medium is diversifying and ratings are adjusting to handle that.

You never see percentage ratings anymore for an individual review, do you? That was some serious bullshit, effectively anointing a "best game ever" status if you gave the new highest rating.

[magval]

I remember seeing high-scoring reviews for games that talked about how the single player 'campaigns' and story were severely lacking, which suggested to me that it's standard practice when reviewing games to focus on mechanics and aesthetics. Almost like a high score is acknowledgment that the designers and artists and everyone else worked really hard.

[falafel]

I'll be devil's advocate and say that I do think games, on the whole,are getting better over time. It's a much more mature medium than it was even ten years ago and although it is still subject to the same (or worse) commercial pressures as film, I have found on average an increase in the sophistication of storytelling, coherence, structure and technical excellence, all of which count for a lot. Maybe core gameplay is not evolving in the same way - and it's hard to argue that a bullet hell shooter is even comparable to a hack'n'slash game or Edith Finch, never mind better or worse - but that speaks to the diversity of games. I think it's kind of ludicrous that we refer to the whole medium all the time.

I also think that trends are independent of one another. In the same way that the quailty of action superhero films is independent of the quality of low-budget British kitchen sink dramas, is independent of the quality of animé... And I definitely think narrative mid-budget and indie games are improving.

There are also far more games than there were, so there wil be more good stuff to float to the top, even if that means there is proportionately more chaff. As far as I'm concerned I don't have any more hours in the day so I've just got more and better choice.

[falafel]

https://www.reddit.com/r/gaming/comments/2kh29h/average_metacritic_scores_20012014_courtesy_of/

This chart only goes to 2014 and the methodology isn't clear but it tells a story...

[biggytitbo]

Seems about the same as it always was. Big hyped up games or anything by Nintendo always gets an extra 1 or 2 out of 10 beyond their merit, it is just the way of the industry.


My favourite scoring system was amiga power, where they had a principle that an average game was 50%, as opposed to 60-80% like other magazines. That pissed off so many publishers.

[Noodle Lizard]

IGN is basically the On Cinema of game reviews.  "Yeah it's glitchy, not very fun to play and kind of boring, but how about that story? 5 bags of popcorn".  I never trust them.

This problem extends to movie and music journalism too, though.  I know someone who works for a publication which reviews both, and they're basically encouraged to be as hyperbolic as possible.  Because of the focus on clickbait headlines, they often feel the need to be extreme either way.  A boring, identikit Marvel movie?  "Mind blown! Will revolutionize everything!"  An ambitious, yet thoroughly flawed, box office flop?  "Disaster! Worst thing!"  I think games are somewhat similar.

The BeforeYouBuy YouTube channel has probably saved me from some fairly disappointing gaming experiences, moreso than any traditional reviews.

[Famous Mortimer]

I remember briefly working for a game review site, like 15 years ago, and getting sent a hilariously buggy, almost unplayable Mario Kart-esque cartoony racing game. I tried to be funny, mostly talking about things that were more fun than trying to get through a level of this, and sent it off, expecting my career as a big-money games journo to take off. Then the person in charge of the site was all "we can't publish this, please try and think of something positive to say about it. Company X is quite big" and after a few days of trying I gave up.

Which is a small example of the first part of Noodle Lizard's post above.

[Twed]

Do we really need games journalists anymore? It seems like a cushy job, something you wouldn't come up with as a new idea today. It's surely only a thing because of powerful publishing empires holding on and people not wanting to give up a good thing.

I get all of my sense of what games are worth looking at from everyday people on YouTube, forums, etc., it seems unnecessary to go seek out a creative piece of writing centered around the game that finishes by trying to reduce its worth to a single number.

[madhair60]

Are there more 10's and 9's being given out these days? In the last year or so, we've seen multiple sites giving tens to games like Zelda, Horizon, Mario, Celeste and most recently God of War.

Then you see games like Far Cry, Assassin's Creed and Wolfenstein getting multiple 9s.

I don't want to get bogged down in arguments about specific games, though, but rather the wider question of whether games are, generally speaking, getting better, or whether game's media is getting more generous in it's analysis.

Any thoughts on any of these possibilities?

They're getting better and there are more and more of them, more options, more genres, classic gaming is everywhere, indie games are huge and can offer any number of experiences, broad appeal, niche, doesn't matter. Affordable too. Yeah I'd say we're at the very top right now.

[Ferris]

I've never seen IGN give a game less than an 8/10 which seems inherently a bit dodgy.

There's no motivation for them to be honest, of course. Need to keep publishers and game producers happy or they won't give you games to review. You don't get those games, people will look elsewhere for content and your revenue drops. It's a vicious self-serving cycle.

[Claude the Racecar Driving Rockstar Super Sleuth]

What is point percentage scores? How do you meaningfully differentiate between 89% and 90%? Even scores out of 10 seem needlessly complicated. I should think a simple thumbs up or thumbs down is all you need. Out of 5 at the very most.

[Kelvin]

I think words are the most useful. Is it bad, okay, good, great or total fuckdown? 

[Ferris]

I suppose the response to that is you get stuck with thumbs up or thumbs down which isn't very definitive.

Games that are... fine get lumped in with games that are legitimately amazing. The "decent" fifa 2016 gets lumped in with the "fucking incredible" Red Dead Redemption, because there's no room for delineation between the two in that system* and they both get the same score, but those are clearly different tiers of goodness.

Five stars as a system works for RDR (it's a solid 5/5), but fifa is better than 3/5 so 3.5/5? But half stars is basically out of 10. At that point, you can decimalization further (7.3/10 is just 73/100) and you're back where you started with stupid percentages.

I don't have a solution, mind. Maybe not trying to quantify it in the first place is the best way - just write a review of it and hope readers are smart enough to figure out for themselves how good the game sounds.

^{*those are my opinions but you get the point}

[Bazooka]

I think words are the most useful. Is it bad, okay, good, great or total fuckdown?

But it doesn't attract views, therefore advertisers. I mean look at Anthony Fantano, he lives off the score system, yet in real terms never listens to an album more than twice probably and then spews out some fucking number.

Long gone are the days of reading Nintendo Power, Gamesmaster or whatever, I doubt many people who would be aware of IGN etc would then not go on to do further research which is basically a lets play on Youtube these days. I only use Youtube (multiple channels) to view gameplay now. Remember just taking a chance on a game, even if average it could still be fun.

Games are getting better technically, but it's all rose tinted glasses I suppose, example I consider Zelda Breath of The Wild to be a marvel of open world game design and a fucking good game, yet it's my least favourite Zelda game (not counting Triforce Heroes) because I felt it had none of the same magic.

[Ferris]

Yeah but the cost of them is mental.

I bought the new Far Cry last weekend - it was $90. That's ridiculous - I absolutely want some kind of reassurance in the way of reviews to make sure I'm not throwing money away. Problem is, every reviewer I looked at online gave it 100% / 5 out of 5 / Maximum Bananas or whatever their rating system is.

It's good, and a few times has made me guffaw when blowing up trucks or whatever, but it is not perfect so why have games people decided it is without flaw? It definitely has a few missteps and frustrating bugs in it. It's a big budget game so I think reviewers feel pressured to be generous.

[bgmnts]

Yeah but the cost of them is mental.

This is a big issue. Probably the biggest issue in gaming.

Having to pay more money for less content is just very anti-consumer.

[chand]

Yeah but the cost of them is mental.

I bought the new Far Cry last weekend - it was $90. That's ridiculous - I absolutely want some kind of reassurance in the way of reviews to make sure I'm not throwing money away. Problem is, every reviewer I looked at online gave it 100% / 5 out of 5 / Maximum Bananas or whatever their rating system is.

Is this really true though? I got Far Cry 5 for £42 I think, but I was paying £35-£40 for two-hour-long Mega Drive games in the 90s. In real terms I'm sure it's less expensive than it was 20 years ago, and considering the big budgets of these sort of games now it's not that surprising. Plus you can always just wait a year and get games for sub-£30, either second hand or in the sales. When I finally scrounged together enough money for a PS4 I bought games for about £8-£15 from Cex for a year.

In terms of review scores, I don't pay massive attention to them. Just read the actual reviews if you're seriously unsure about the game instead of expecting a nuanced and accurate opinion from the Metacritic score or some shit. The scores themselves are frequently bullshit, whether from corruption or committee or just an editor wanting to avoid legions of raving fanboys descending on them to complain that the latest CoD only got a 9. Scores are daft because it's impossible to be objective about games, whereas the text of a review ought to allow you to be more discerning and decide which things about a game matter to you. You can't really compare something like AssCreed Origins to something like Oxenfree in any meaningful sense using numbers 1 to 10.

[Danger Man]

It's good, and a few times has made me guffaw when blowing up trucks or whatever, but it is not perfect so why have games people decided it is without flaw?

Unless you're some sort of spoiler slave, why not watch the likes of TheRadBrad dick about with a game on YouTube before deciding if it's worth spending money on?

[Claude the Racecar Driving Rockstar Super Sleuth]

I suppose the response to that is you get stuck with thumbs up or thumbs down which isn't very definitive.

Games that are... fine get lumped in with games that are legitimately amazing. The "decent" fifa 2016 gets lumped in with the "fucking incredible" Red Dead Redemption, because there's no room for delineation between the two in that system* and they both get the same score, but those are clearly different tiers of goodness.

Well that's apples and oranges. I haven't played any FIFA games in years but, as far as the genre goes, the latest one might well be excellent. The main concern with a series like that is whether it's worth picking up the latest one, rather than saving your cash and getting last year's edition.

With something truly special, you can still conclude the review with a thumbs up and a brief summation. The main text is where you go into more detail.

If that's not nuanced enough, then a three point rating system ought to suffice: Good, Middling and Bad.

[Bhazor]

I think games are getting better. We have the tech now that so much can be done so easily. Stuff that would have taken months can be done in days. AI, pathfinding, real time lighting, physics, preloading, caching. Engines have all this stuff built in these days. Add to that programs that can for example create procedural animations, auto lip syncing, auto forests and stuff that wasn't even a thing 5 years ago like dynamic resolution. Every game can have all this and that is incredible.

Of course it doesn't eliminate the human aspect. The human part of telling terrible stories or making bad design decisions. It doesn't remove the thing that makes cunt developers aspire to being film directors and filling their games with thinly veiled non interactive cutscenes because they want you to FEEEEEELLLL the story that they think is so cool. This is what is dragging games down for me now. Its what has stopped me buying into the hype for God of War. All the reviewers talking about the boat rides as a high point. In 5 years time we'll be looking back at these games the way we look back at FMV games now.

[shh]

One trend is the way video games are slowly becoming a sub-genre of hollywood cinema. If this is what you expect from a game, then I suppose they are getting better.

Then again most games won't be reviewed by these types and hardly even played at all (think of the 000s released on steam every year).

[Bhazor]

Well that's nothing new. Remember the "1000 games on one disk" you used to get in Currys?

[Famous Mortimer]

I think games are getting better. We have the tech now that so much can be done so easily. Stuff that would have taken months can be done in days. AI, pathfinding, real time lighting, physics, preloading, caching. Engines have all this stuff built in these days. Add to that programs that can for example create procedural animations, auto lip syncing, auto forests and stuff that wasn't even a thing 5 years ago like dynamic resolution. Every game can have all this and that is incredible.

But that's just saying movies in 4K are "better" than movies on DVD, isn't it?

[falafel]

I think the relationship is a bit more complicated than that. More like saying Avatar is better than Citizen Kane. Which isn't true, still, of course, but technological improvements have at least two effects (1) they allow things to be created that were previously impossible, and (2) they lower the barriers to entry to make things that would in the past have been prohibitively difficult and expensive.

Plus games and their general impact and quality are far more dependent on technology than pretty much any other entertainment or artistic medium.

All of this, however, doesn't account for creativity or intellectual rigour, or the many creative benefits of working within constraints.

[Huxleys Babkins]

Reviews are part of the PR cycle now and are controlled by the game publishers rather than the press. If games don't get a certain minimum score and editorial exposure, publications/reviewers tend to get blackballed.

I remember Edge would always be forced to buy GTA games at retail and publish reviews later because Rockstar wouldn't send them pre-release review code unless they guaranteed an 8 and to put it on the cover. After Future sacked their entire editorial staff and put the Gamesmaster team on double duty, they flew off to the GTAIV review event (where Rockstar PR would handhold you through parts of the game over the course of a working day and you'd review it based on that) and duly gave it a 10.

Games probably have gotten better, but reviews of them have effectively become worthless.

[MojoJojo]

Reviews are part of the PR cycle now and are controlled by the game publishers rather than the press.

It's been that way for at least 30 years.

[Shay Chaise]

I think games are getting better. We have the tech now that so much can be done so easily. Stuff that would have taken months can be done in days. AI, pathfinding, real time lighting, physics, preloading, caching. Engines have all this stuff built in these days. Add to that programs that can for example create procedural animations, auto lip syncing, auto forests and stuff that wasn't even a thing 5 years ago like dynamic resolution. Every game can have all this and that is incredible.

I think games are also becoming more homogeneous because of these advances. There's no real difference between Tomb Raider or Uncharted or AC or Batman or Mad Max or Shadow of Mordor or one of many 3rd person action games. The characters all control in the same sluggish 'realistic' way, like you've got concussion, as the camera lurches around a focal point and where animations are interrupted at the player's convenience. Objects all interact in the same way (everything is made of plastic) and combat is identical, devoid of skill but designed to make the player feel they're doing something impressive. The only difference is that Naughty Dog have better graphic designers and invest more into the characters and production values. The rest are landfill, flickbooks of the current technological standard but completely forgettable.

You can extend the same criticism to your indie and mobile games, of course. Everything from Fe to Oceanhorn has a variant of that grotesque rounded clay art style that's even permeated into Sea of Thieves. It stinks of generic assets and textures. No personality. The pixelated style doesn't bother me particularly because there's plenty of opportunity for unique character with it. Compare Celeste to another 2D twitchy retro pixel platformer, Slime-san, and both games look very different and evocative in their own way.

I'll be ballsy and say that I agree with biggy about ARMS, Mario Kart and Splatoon all having a very similar plasticky sheen. I personally think that ARMS and Splatoon are exceptional in terms of visual design and character design and they have their own distinctive feel but I understand the criticism. Everything is shiny and there's an overload of colour. MK8D is possibly the best looking 'Nintendo' Nintendo game ever made.

The most distinctive and best looking game I've played this year is probably Gravity Rush 2. Shame the actual game is quite wonky in parts but that's the price of individuality. I'll take that.