I don't believe anyone actually thought seriously about the question: are these reviews unprofessional? Important to recognize what we expect from professional criticism. An honest opinion for starters and that's certainly there. I have no reason whatsoever to believe either reviewer was paid off or compelled into lying or had any vindictive purpose in writing what they did. I wouldn't doubt a moment that every issue they brought up was indeed true. Assuming otherwise would be the height of foolishness.
Is it constructive? I would say, overall, yes but the particulars make it difficult to gain any positive benefit, benefit for the game, for the potential audience, for the developer, and for the movement that is indie game development. The concerns are all valid but the way they are voiced deadens their beneficial effect. What counter productive elements am I speaking of? We all get hung up on the score at the bottom but it's really the general tenor of the review that matters. Why then the puerile, unfunny, and unnecessary attempts at irreverence like "the controls are looser than a five dollar hooker?" Why the petty exaggerations likening the game to otherworldly hellish experiences? "Don't even say its name for that might give its already unholy form power?" That's not criticism. That's spiteful derision, only acceptable in a world where you never have to see the sadness of the person you're saying it to. You can't find anything good to say about the game? You're. Not. Looking. Hard enough. Because that is the refuge of people who enjoy pointing out failure as opposed to helping someone through that failure.
And that someone is hardly without blame himself. Luc, I can firmly and without reservation attest that PR is not your strong point and that, if possible, you should retain the service of someone far more capable than you of responding to something like this in a civilized manner. By communicating as you did, you merely reinforced the already overwhelming negativity towards your product. I understand that confidence is paramount when creating anything, without it you'd never get anything done and served up for public consumption, but you're teetering at the edge of arrogance. Please be careful.
And where does this leave us? An indie game developer who communicated with the Destructoid community now alienated and abused, childishly striking back at his tormentors as the ground crumbles underneath everything. Perhaps this particular developer was indeed a complete fucking moron who made a shitty fucking game. I don't know; I can't play it. But because we called him a complete fucking moron who made a shitty fucking game and we used words not that far removed from my profane exaggeration, why would anyone in their right minds ever want to share their dreams with us ever again?
I feel that, if this kind of interaction continues, the indie game movement will never take off. It'll never get the support that it needs from us, the people, because we won't be good enough to support it. When a small developer totally fucks up, we'll jump all over him and make him RUE the fucking day he decided to make a video game, the stupid bastard. And then the developer won't be thick skinned enough to exist on the internet, to take the good with the bad, to grow. We have to be better.
All of us, the reviewers, the audience, the developer, we all look at reviews as if they are the final judgement on a game. As if those 1's tell you everything that there will ever be of Eternity's Child. But development is iterative. Games are updated; transformed. Opinions change. The valid reviews posted yesterday are hopefully just the rough beginning of a pathway to something greater than what exists today.
Spero melior - I hope for better things
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Good read and I agree with you totally. That said you commited the cardinal sin of making a negative statement about Dtoid editors so prepare for a good flaming.
Dude, releasing patches doesnt mean it deserves a better score. After all, they released the game and it was flawed, fixing that with a patch doesnt change the fact that the game that was reviewed sucked.
Patches do not count. How many times do people have to be told this? The only product you can review with certainty is version 1.0: the initial release. If we start counting patches, we have to start counting mods as well, and good fucking luck reviewing Oblivion completely patched with a variety of mods.
What Luc tried to sell, initially, was a broken game. Should not have happened. End of story. People paid money for a platform game without a working jump button. This is not a small error.
I totally agree that a reviewer can only review the product as they see it when it is given to them. And I completely expect that from them. But to say that patches and add-ons do not count is just wrong. Let's say that a game is released completely broken. But it gets patched to completely restore it to not just a serviceable game, but an incredible one. A game that everybody would want to play and would enjoy immensely.
I don't know about you, but I would hope that there would be people trying to get the word out that said game has not just gone beyond it's negative reputation. I would hope that maybe reviewers could add updates to their reviews or that perhaps even being reviewed anew by another individual.
Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater was a broken game. Metal Gear Solid 3: Subsistence was one of the greatest games I've ever played. Revisions should not only be allowed but encouraged.
We're all here because we want great game experiences. It doesn't matter what a project's history is, so long as it eventually gets there. I would hope that we could celebrate a great gameplay experience when we see one, regardless of it original form.
I disagree, because I paid money for both Eternity's Child and Snake Eater, and I hated both of them, because both of them were terrible to play. While Eternity's Child has since been patched, it doesn't change that fact that what I actually paid for was a broken game.
And the idea that I should buy MGS3 over again for Subsistence because this version actually works is the most retarded thing I have ever heard.
The thing is, you can ONLY review the initial release. Once you start accepting other things, where do you draw the line? Three patches in? Four? How many mods do you count? When you're done, do you retroactively change your review score to reflect the changed game? Or do you just leave it as it is, because that's what was paid for in the first place?
Personally, I'd rather play games that are good and worth my time and money first time around. Spending every day of my life downloading patches for games that were shit in the first place in the hopes that they might magically get better one day is ludicrous. Yes, Eternity's Child works better now. The jump button works. Halle-freaking-lujah. Doesn't change the fact that the game still plays too loosely and imprecisely and isn't that much fun.
Sigh...I have to wonder how much people actually read the comments. You'll note that people were fairly civil, with a tone that said "better luck next time," until Luc came in, whining about "unprofessional" reviews, "personal" vendettas, and passing the blame to his programmers. People were not lashing back at him for trying to smear the names of the Dtoid editors like they were some holy deities, they were lashing back at him for being a douchebag. No one had a major issue with him trying to make an indie game and failing miserably. People took offense to him acting like a crybaby, telling us that it's really good, when he didn't get the love and attention he thought he would; he seems like he can't handle criticism and refuses to learn from his mistakes.
"As if those 1's tell you everything that there will ever be of Eternity's Child."
Any gamer worth his salt knows that a score is just an afterthought, put there to summarize for people who can't read and get linked on Metacritic. All the gamers I've talked to on Destructoid care more about the content of the review than the score. It's not like the review was scored a 1, but the review said there were some elements that had merit - no, the reviews matched the score.
@ Haxan and RJG
Solution: review Snake Eater and Subsistence separately. Like everyone did. Subsistence is a game that works, and if you want to try that version, do so. No one's forcing you to rebuy a game that wasn't right now that it's fixed. Besides, people should know the drill by now that Kojima is going to release a director's cut of a MGS game a year after, one reason I'm waiting on buying MGS4.
Necros, Bus's problem seems to be with the original reviewers' general tone more than the comments by Destructoid users. He also criticizes Luc for his reaction to the review, so it's clear that OP understands where the commentors were coming from, even if he didn't agree with their tone.
And I have to say that I agree with Bus about the original reviews. For example in this post I could have said that Necros's comment was terrible and no one should even mention it because his parents used to make him wear a helmet and bells on his shoes when he went out in public, but that's not really constructive criticism so much as it is a personal attack. I understand why hyperbole is funny, and I understand that we have to try to make things funny when we post them on the internet or else no one will want to read them. But it's important to note that the jokes about "controls being looser than a $5 hooker" and not speaking the game's name so as to not give its "unholy form power" are NOT FUNNY. I don't need to read a clumsily executed joke, just tell me that the controls don't work properly.
Eternity of complainers.
@ Lee Suggs
I thought no one knew about that part of my childhood.
Necros, we know all.
" You can't find anything good to say about the game? You're. Not. Looking. Hard enough. Because that is the refuge of people who enjoy pointing out failure as opposed to helping someone through that failure. "
I think, especially because there was that relationship with the site and Luc, that Destructoid HAD to put on its hard hat and be honest, if not completly brutally honest, about how they felt about the game. No Destructoid review has been a straightlaced, punch pulling affair or clinic on how to make the game better.
considering the 1-10 scale, and the delicate balance a review has to be between a consumer report and an evaluation of quality, I think the reviews were fair in taking in all parts, but focusing on what the overal experience was in their score.
I'd like to play the game still, because from what I read, that are a few good things here. But I'm certainly not going in expecting this to amaze me.
@ZServ and RJG
My comments on development being iterative were not: "Hey, let's wait for the inevitable patch." It was about a larger theme, that of the journey forward with many, not just this one stop along the way. I'm not talking about Eternity's Child 1.1 but Eternity's Child 2 or Luc's next game or the next indie game developer out there who wants to communicate with the Destructoid community.
I will ask this though: can we hold indie game developers to the same standard that we hold a high profile, big budgeted game like MGS 3? Or the latest college football game from EA that deletes your saved data? If almost no giant commercial release occurs without some measure of bugs and glitches, how can we even feign surprise when something like this happens?
Despite any impression you received otherwise, I will always agree that the actual content of those reviews were 100% valid. They are snapshots, frozen in time and as accurate as an actual photo, of a heavily flawed experience. What I take issue with is only the way that photo was presented. I reiterate my hopes for the future.
For some reason all this Luc stuff just ends up reminding me how amazing Audiosurf is.
Yes!
Up with stale reviews that have NOTHING but information about the game.
Down with the opinion of respected reviewers and friends!
@Skribble
The jokes I had a problem with (made by your respected reviewers) have NOTHING to do with being funny.
There is no problem with reviews that feature the reviewer's opinion. They can throw in jokes all they want. I liked that first review where the guy kept restating in different ways that the jump button didn't work two thirds of the time. That was well done and I thought it perfectly encapsulated the frustrating experience of playing a far less than perfect game.
What I'm asking is: Once you've addressed what's wrong with the game, what good does it do to say, "Don't even say its name for that might give its already unholy form power"? And I'm asking that question because I know the answer to it and I want to see if you can guess it.