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Eurogamer: We're Blacklisted By 2K Games
Kalfer
Member Posts: 779
Tom Bramwell: I feel sorry for @TheRednerGroup today. We are blacklisted by @2KGames and it seems to be standard practice.( http://twitter.com/#!/tombramwell/status/81302961376071680 )
Story: It's because of their Duke Nukem Forever review. Like most other of Eurogamers reviews it's more well written than most other internet gaming journalistic reviews: http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2011-06-12-duke-nukem-forever-review
Historically(from my perspective) Eurogamer has gotten hate from angry bitter fanboys who did not favor their particular game. In many ways I think we are once again reminded of how stupid gaming journalism is. How silly and unproductive it is. More than the reviewers and publishers who "cheat" I think it's the end-readers who are the most dumb. To even have the slightest stock in someone elses opinion regardless of how legit they are, is failure at highest level.
Reviews are not to be agreed with. Finding a review with the same opinion as yours is not the ideal situation. A person will never find another person who they agree with 100%. That's not the point. That's not what it's about. A reviewer who has the oppesite ideas and tastes as one self might make a much more attractive source of information.
The review is supposed to be a tool. The thing that makes it different from a normal article is the cherry - The editors own opinion sprinkled in over. But many reviewers(including MMORPG.com reviewers) get this mistaken by thinking that they need to babble on about their favorite ice cream and what they think is cool and what is not.
A good review is a source of information to give the reader some facts about a game. The reviewers own opinion should not be the factor(AT ALL) about the readers own desire to play or not to play a game. The facts presented in the written format, should give the reader their own images in their heads about the appeal/lack of appesl about the title.
That is not what is happening today. Today we have scores. The tool for the dumb. The score is an excuse for people not to read the review, but just look at the score and thus have concluded in a single number about the games worth.
A score can never be a substitute for a review. It rarely ads to it. A score can only make it swing to a certain side. There is always a "but" and always a "if. Everyone is different, have different perspectives, preferences, experiences and are on different stages in their live. A score can never be a common ground for everyone. And if it had to just have an as wide an appeal as possible, every game should get 6-7 to cather to everyone, to be some idiotic "objective" opinion that ends up servering no one with it's "neutral stance".
Remove the score, remove the self absorbed ego, and make reviews fun to read again. If all reviews were fun/entertaining to read/watch, people wouldn't need scores.
And if people had any confidence in their own opinions they would not need scores to tell them what is fun and what is not. metacritic, gamerankings, ign, gamespot... These things don't matter. They shouldn't. It's incredible weak character to feed of these things, yet we see many people who do it. Who become upset when something they like, is not echoed throughout the so called "professional gamers".
A term which I laugh at. You can't be a professional reviewer or gamer. Not anymore professional than any fratboy playing Call of Duty teenager or the middle aged mom playing Sims. This is just entertainment. But the idiots on all side of the fence is turning this into serious business, as I am a proof of now as well, since I made this thread.
Comments
In most cases Euro gamer reviews are incredibly biased one way or another. Kind of like cheesy movie reviews by second rate critics. However, they were spot on with the Duke Nukem review. The game really did suck.
Topic title, meh 2K can do whatever they want. They can ignore critics, but reviews still going to be there.
OP's opinion afterwards...
"In many ways I think we are once again reminded of how stupid gaming journalism is. How silly and unproductive it is."
Next time you go buy a game, don't read any reviews, don't read any blog, or listen to anybody ok? And maybe do a little prayer, dance to the gods, and hope it's a good game.
"the so called "professional gamers". A term which I laugh at. You can't be a professional reviewer or gamer."
South Koreans would like a word with you. Heck, MLG in the US would also. And the staff at MMORPG.com and Massively, too. They're paid for doing it, they're professionals.
tl;dr: I strongly disagree with your opinions.
"I am the harbinger of hope. I am the sword of the righteous. And to all who hear my words, I say this: What you give to this Empire, I shall give back unto you."
-Empress Jamyl Sarum I
Who cares? what does that matter? everyone is biased. Show me a empty vessel of a reviewer who walks around with no soul being neutral. We're shaped by our past. Our ideas and preferences come from our lives.
the most jaded person can still provide factual information that might make me want to play it.
DNF getting 3/10 has no impact on my desire to play or not to play the game or not. The factual information and descriptions inside. these are not the personal anecdotes that merely are icing on the cake, but not the point of the article. what is an factual information? - The story is cheesy, the game is old school. Maybe that is exactly what I am looking for, and thus I am in a much better position to enjoy the game than the reviewer.
This is an example. A very square example.
*clap* And why would I do that? Where in your little head, did you mix up the difference between facts(roses are red) and opinions that don't matter(i hate red)?
If you don't understand something so simple, then you are beyond redemption, or just a tiny troll on a stroller, going to trollville.
Obviously you want to do research. research though is not taking someones personal opinions as disclose them as a proof of how good or bad something is.
If you dig deeper into the story, 2k Games no longer does business with the Redner Group due to their (Redner Group) statement saying they would be blacklisting eurogamer for their review.
F2P/P2P excellent thread.
http://www.mmorpg.com/discussion2.cfm/thread/282517/F2P-An-Engineers-perspective.html
*laughs*
I just love this stereotype. Just South Koreans in general are professional gamer? I'm aware of E-Sport and it's presence there, and other places, but how is this related to reviews, and even if you get paid for something, how does that make you professional or more qualified than anyone else?
I could pay a homeless man to go to the bathroom. that does not make him a pro at going to the bathroom. his opinion about bathroom protocol is not increased because he get paid.
Opinions are like ..." <- You already know it. Games are entertainment. nobodies opinion is more worth than anyone elses. Start by having a strong character and judge things for yourself before you take on the opinions of others on, like a hat.
Yep. This was not to smir 2K games.
Like the previous poster said(forgot his name), 2k games can do what they want. It's perfectly fair in the world of capitalism.
Couldn't be any worse than G4.
*shudders*
There's a clear amount of bias in many reviewers. Just like the public, revewing staffs can be, and regularly are, overtaken by fanboyism.
Professionally reviewing a game is difficult because so much of it is opinion. Fun? Easy? Smooth? Opinions. Things like "Buggy", "nothing new to see here", etc are typically based on facts.
Whereas journalism for other things, say professional sports can deliver an accurate review regardless of bias if the writer is good at his job. Sports' journalism is based on facts. You can argue with bias over the greatest player of a game, but when you write about a specific game, ("last night's basketball game") there's a scoreboard and much more detailed tallies to base off. You can hate an athlete and still be forced to admit that he performed well in a game.
Nearly everything for games is opinion whether you want it to be or not. For me, Wolfenstein 3D had such amazing graphics at one point, now I can't stand to look at it. I remember though, years ago, laughing with my friends as we got dizzy spinning the character in circles because of the amazing wood and stone textures.
Spec'ing properly is a gateway drug.
12 Million People have been meter spammed in heroics.
There's nothing professional about 90% of the so called journalists out there. They can't put together a proper sentence, and spend most of their time shilling for whatever corporate gods they want to impress so they get their review copy early. And then there's IGN and Jim Sterling who just continue to give gamers a bad name. None of what they do can be considered journalism. Hell, most of the shit articles on here are just glorified marketing. Give Aihoshi's articles a read, shilling at it's worst.
Bullshit. Here are some facts that reviewers should stick to, but rarely do.
Is it buggy? How much time should it take me to play through the single player mode? Was multiplayer available during my review time, and if so, how reliable was it?
Shit like that. Of course they're going to have opinions, and that's fine, but there are some core facts that should be covered in every review. And for the love of god, they had best be able to put together something that doesn't look like a 14 yo's blog post. And most important of all CONSISTENCY. How many reviews have you read that shit all over the game, then give it a 4 out of 5 or some such? Which just goes to show how "professional" these types are.
Is it possible to create a system of measurement which will take some of the opinion out of it? Baseball has stats, perhaps we can get some measurement system defined. Hmmmm.....
Epic Music: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vAigCvelkhQ&list=PLo9FRw1AkDuQLEz7Gvvaz3ideB2NpFtT1
https://archive.org/details/softwarelibrary_msdos?&sort=-downloads&page=1
Kyleran: "Now there's the real trick, learning to accept and enjoy a game for what it offers rather than pass on what might be a great playing experience because it lacks a few features you prefer."
John Henry Newman: "A man would do nothing if he waited until he could do it so well that no one could find fault."
FreddyNoNose: "A good game needs no defense; a bad game has no defense." "Easily digested content is just as easily forgotten."
LacedOpium: "So the question that begs to be asked is, if you are not interested in the game mechanics that define the MMORPG genre, then why are you playing an MMORPG?"
When you take opinion completely out of the equation, you end up with a pretty bland review
For a made up game for this discussion, pretend this is a review--
Was it buggy? No. In my hours of play, it only crashed once. There was one NPC that I had to restart the game in order to talk to but I can accept that something outside of the game might have caused that.
How long will Single Player take? You can speed through in 20 hours, but an explorer can get 35 hours of good fun out of this game.
Multiplayer was available. The game just launched so the servers were a bit laggy. This can probably be corrected by adding more servers which the company already intends to do.
There's the facts. It makes for an exciting review. Everything else after here is just opinion. Even things one reviewer might consider facts, "PVP is fairly balanced", another reviewer might scoff at or ignore entirely if he disagrees and wants to frame the game in a positive way.
Spec'ing properly is a gateway drug.
12 Million People have been meter spammed in heroics.
People should realize that a review is always subjective, and it is one persons opinion and weights on different aspects.
Also reviewers only have a certain amount of hours to play and often only scratch the surface.. and then there is the copycatting for the lazy reviewers, just like movie or theater reviews.
Reviewers don't tell lies just like your politicians never do, so on that part they are objective, but as we all know the truth is what you choose to see and what you choose to ignore.
I bought Duke myself and is playing it, and I have my opinion based on taste and what I find important and what is minor importance to me. Generally I think, the reviews are a bit harsh, and I know Duke would say "You got guts, lets see how it looks like". Microfast review: Great humor & atmosphere, ok graphics and handling (pc version), but horribly linear, will probably rock in multiplayer (didn't try yet).
"I am my connectome" https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=HA7GwKXfJB0
I highlighted the part of my quote that you seemed to completely miss.
A score has by no means the same value as a several page review. But if i read the 10th review by one site/reviewer, or the 100th, and i try the game, and think "they were right, it really does suck" or "its even more awesome than they said it would be", why should i need to read through several pages, if i can take a simple look at the score? They say it's a 3, so i think "well, i might not agree with everything, but based on past experience, i will most likely not like it either". Or they say it's a 10, so "wow, most be cool. I probably won't like everything, but should be worth to at least check it out".
I'm not interested in reading several pages to find out what they did wrong, when i can decide nearly as accurate without doing so.
Especially when you take a website like metacritic.com. Currently, Duke Nukem forever has 23 critics and 55 user ratings. Adds up to 78 total ratings. As they range from 0 to 9 (or 88, in case of reviews by magazines), it's not like the all would have a similar taste. The chance that i agree with one specific review is, like you said, quite low. Which means i'll end up somewhere in the middle of the other ratings. If you factor in that you are more likely to agre/disagree with certain people/websites, your past experience with the developer/publisher/franchise etc., a rating is actually quite accurate.
If i'm still interested in the game after a quick look at the description, screenshots and the rating, i'll probably read a review, but if i would read a (or better, several, as one single rating will not cover everything, even if unbiased) several page review for every game, i would never be able to play them.
I'll wait to the day's end when the moon is high
And then I'll rise with the tide with a lust for life, I'll
Amass an army, and we'll harness a horde
And then we'll limp across the land until we stand at the shore
...like a score?
There isn't a "right" or "wrong" way to play, if you want to use a screwdriver to put nails into wood, have at it, simply don't complain when the guy next to you with the hammer is doing it much better and easier. - Allein
"Graphics are often supplied by Engines that (some) MMORPG's are built in" - Spuffyre
I can't say much about their single player reviews, but nearly every MMO review I've seen out of Eurogamer has been garbage. They test games for about 10 minutes in the lowbie areas before making a decision on how they intend to review the game - and for an MMO, that's completely worthless.
Content Writer for RTSGuru.com
And overall bitter old man.
The problem with that is arbitrary scoring. I cannot count the number of reviews I've read where the cons outweight the pros, or the reviewer goes on and on about how mediocre and average the game is, then rates it a 7 or 8 out of 10. Scores are useless if they're inconsistent.
Game/Movie scores are based largely on opinion. Scores based solely or largely on fact don't say a lot about these subjects.
Spec'ing properly is a gateway drug.
12 Million People have been meter spammed in heroics.
Personally I would rather a reviewer had an actual opinion, good or bad, of a game. That way, as they review more games i can see if their opnions jibe with my opinions or not, and if they do i can follow their recommendations on games, or i can ignore their recommendations if i find i disagree with their reviews.
If they have no opinions in their reviews, i will never be able to see if they jibe or disagree with my own, and therefore their reviews can have little to no value for me in deciding wether to play a game or not.
F2P/P2P excellent thread.
http://www.mmorpg.com/discussion2.cfm/thread/282517/F2P-An-Engineers-perspective.html
Never heard of Eurogamer so im guessing their fairly new.. (or hobbyists perhaps?) but any effect of 'blacklisting' should be fairly negligible if all they are, is game critics.. not like they can ban them from talking... on the other hand.. there is the old saying, theres no such thing as 'bad publicity' so maybe their trying to make themselves heard by advertising their 'bad guys' status.. bit like the celebrity claims of.. 'your nobody unless you have a stalker' in showbiz.. maybe if your a game critic you need to be blacklisted before anybody starts paying attention...
well.. it worked.. i've now heard of Eurogamer..
Eurogamer are nowhere near new, they launched in 1999 and if you at least have anything to do with reading reviews, interviews and whatnot then you have heard of them as they are one of the most popular websites focused in gaming.
Unfortunately journalists around the world are paid to smile and give personal opinions according to their boss interest... who usually is some guy with political connections.
Just like I saw this last year in my country. Just to change public opinion and have an impact in our recent elections. True or not... its unprofessional for a journalist to make facial expressions, laughs and personal opinions.
Its actually a violation of their code of conduct if there is any.
Just like soccer on TV. We now got commentators instead of reporters. Guys that never kicked a ball in their life's are now promoted to commentators... whatever.
Anyway, I doubt any of this game reviewers are journalists at all. If they are, well... nothing we can do about it.
About game scores, ofc its completely ridiculous that Fallen Earth for example, got bigger score than World of Warcraft and so on so on.
If people don't like a game its fine... but common. You can't score like this. The differences in polish, content, lore, gameplay, etc etc etc are huge.
I play EVE btw not WoW.
EVE got a 8.12 and Fallen Earth got a 8.11
I could spend all day "reviewing" this scores and delete my mmorpg.com account just because you guys suck.
And before i get an email threatening me that I'll get my account blocked from saying "you guys suck"... yes, my english sucks.
Actually, people can be professional reviewers.
There are several problems, however: First amd foremost is the audience, sorry but most people under the age of 30 have the critical thinking ability of a slug. Understand, there is a difference between a blogger who is nothing more than an extension of various publisher's marketing departments and reviewers. Firing Squad, Eurogamer, PCGamer (to a lesser degree tho they seem to be trying to correct their path), and a couple of others actually test the games, make sure that they meet the metrics that the developer and publisher have set and report back with something more than opinion. See, there is a difference between opinion and objective facts. I understand that the media flooded world we live in today stresses opinion far more than fact, but again, that is because of the people's inability to actually think. I am pretty sure that the degree of sag in pants has a direct corelation to deficincies in IQ, see that is opinion :P
You say make the reviews fun to read again? Well, that is the problem. See, opinion is far more entertaining for the unintelligent than that which is measurable. Opinion is constantly argued, and with absolutely zero results. That is why religion and politics are things best left undiscussed in pubs lol. Verifiable facts, on the otherhand, cannot be argued or refuted without actual evidence, but that does nothing for the fanbots. Which of course means that there is no reason to discuss which means that people won't sit on the moronic website for hours possibly looking at an advertisement. Which is all the bloggers have to generate revenue from. Advertisments from publishers. Is it just a coincidence that when a new game from a big publisher comes out every shit blog out there gives over every advertisment spot, plus a popup or two, to that game/publisher? And is it any coincidence that the review always pops up right in the middle of the advertisment contract? I don't think so, but it is just my opinion based on what I have seen for the past several years.
In order to be a professional reviewer one must be able to separate fact from opinion. Most of these sites do not have contributors that are trained to know the difference. Hey, its not all their fault, most professional journalists from the Times to your local rag are incapable of dilineating between the two. Plus, you have to have people that are actually moral individuals. People who understand that they hold power over someone's purchasing of a product. When reviews cater to the publisher they are purposefully lying and defrauding the audience, you. And ANY publisher who gets their panties into a bunch over a negative review should immediately be blacklisted by every gamer. If you support immoral people they have no reason to change.
Props to Eurogamer and every other site that would not bow to a publisher. Too bad those are becoming less and less popular.
http://www.speedtest.net/result/7300033012