Not going to add a like. Just wishing you the best in the future.
I hope things turn out for the best, Scott. And I really appreciate your perspective when it’s so easy for us to resort to the go-to “Fuck EA, they’re eeevil!” angle.
-Tom
I know a bunch of folks around here (myself included) like to check out The Onion’s A.V. Club site for movie, TV and music info. But they’ve also started doing an interesting take on video game reviews called Game In Progress, where they put down there thoughts at certain intervals during a playthrough of a game. Kind of gets around that conundrum of waiting to post reviews until you’ve played all the way through, and also get their thoughts down as they go, to see how their impressions change over the life of the game. Today they’ve posted early thoughts on Prey:
Spoilery?
Potentially, I guess, though they usually tell you in the opening paragraphs if that’s going to be the case.
There’s a comfort zone, and Prey is outside this confort zone. I think many reviewers are creeped by that. Prey (aka System Shock 3) is not a easy game to digest.
Try this one. Kotaku am sad about Prey’s review situation.
[quote]
As of May 9, Prey has an 80 on Metacritic. Although that number may jump up and down a bit before it settles, it is not considered fantastic. (From what I’ve heard anecdotally, most publishers’ Metacritic bonuses require games to hit an 85 or 90. I don’t know if Prey has any such bonus.) This Metascore is based entirely on the thoughts of critics who have had the game for four or five days.
Boggles the mind, doesn’t it? Arkane Austin started developing Prey in May 2013, nearly four years ago. Reviewers have offered thoughts and scores, contributing to the big number that will hang on Arkane for the rest of the studio’s existence, after playing the game for less than a week. Those reviewers cranked through the game under sub-optimal conditions, rushing to beat the clock (and the competition) despite the fact that most Prey players will have far different experiences.[/quote]
[quote]
But still… I can’t help but wonder how that Metacritic number would look if Bethesda had given reviewers proper lead time with Prey. I’ve spent the past few days playing this game, soaking in the atmosphere and sneaking around to read e-mails and hunt down side quests. If I had to rush to finish it for a review, I’d be stressing out every time I ran out of ammo or failed to take down one of those damn fire Phantoms. Maybe I’d switch to Easy or try to cheese the game just to finish. I’m enjoying the game far more because I don’t have to worry about those constraints.
Bethesda’s failure to give reviewers that same opportunity does a disservice not just to customers who won’t get timely reviews from their favorite critics, but to the developers at Arkane, who spent four years on this game only to watch reviewers stamp numbers on it after just four days. There’s no way to know whether Prey reviewers would have felt differently if they weren’t rushing, but regardless, Bethesda’s policy is a bummer for everyone—even Bethesda.[/quote]
This forum needs an eye-rolling-at-Kotaku button.
I really don’t get it. What’s so unreasonable about that article?
Metacritic. lol.
Burn Metacritic to the ground and salt the earth so that nothing may ever grow there.
Yeah. My “lol” was I was surprised Kotaku thought it was still a thing. I mean, its been dead for a few years now. I am all for them arguing for or against Bethesda’s policy but don’t use an obsolete website as a way of making your point. It just looks silly.
Nothing.
Metacritic is dead? Alexa shows it ranked as 1,162nd most visited site in the world. That seems pretty decent.
Kotaku sometimes publish good articles, mixed with the miriad of “One weird trick gamers use to get high scores” stuff that link aggregators site have devolved into.
I visit it, and sometimes io9. io9 mostly to mourn the deceased site that it was. io9 was like my tribe, and without it I am homeless in a spiritual way.
Right, so in what way is Kotaku dead? They came out of the Gawker implosion fine, as far as traffic and stuff goes.
Not that I have any interest or love for Kotaku, but they are one of the big players in the games media, no?
I should probably walk back my eye-rolling with a whole lot of qualifiers. I may get around to it later, but don’t have time right now. In summary for now, my gut reaction is this is Kotaku trying to shame Bethesda for a decision that hurts Kotaku by framing it as a problem that hurts Bethesda, when certainly Bethesda already has all the info they need and the power to change their mind if withholding review copies is truly harming themselves. But maybe I’m wrong, I’ll think about it more later. I only read Telefrog’s quotes and about half of the article when I posted before.
I know it’s a long article, so keep in mind a couple of points:
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Kotaku has effectively been blacklisted by Bethesda for years, so even if the policy changed, Kotaku wouldn’t directly benefit.
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Kotaku has not published a review of Prey yet.
@Rod_Humble, and that goes back to your post about Metacritic’s health how?
There’s really nothing at all unreasonable about it. Schrier does a thorough job as usual, and heads-off the lazy criticism too like “lol kotaku just mad cuz blacklisted”.
He makes a completely solid argument. Prey sounds like an absolutely wonderful game, much like Dishonored 2 was, but both Prey and Dishonored 2 have appeared to be victims of completely broken PR campaigns.
I think Bethesda has severely underestimated the role the traditional gaming press plays at generating buzz via coordinated and embargoed early reviews. And in both cases, I’ve seen a lot of people claiming surprise that they didn’t even realize the game was coming out.
When 50+ reviews all hit for a game at the same time, that inherently creates a huge PR event, and if most of those reviews are good, it can cause a nice sales spike for the game.
Instead, Bethesda and Arkane are dealing with either rushed, shallow reviews written by writers who chose not to take the time to play it as intended, or nonexistent reviews from quality writers who are still taking the time to do it right.