🚀 go-pugleaf

On Wed, 15 Jul 2015 22:33:27 +0100, "Trimble Bracegirdle"
<no-spam@never.spam> wrote:

>Games Reviewers Not Doing The Job properly as we need.
>Raven's Cry came out at the beginning of the year & was stamped & hammered
>for its awful unfinished state.
>I wondered if the patches - three of them I think - has led to any 
>improvement.
>So I've been Goggling for recent reviews .
>I can't find any & that lack of follow up by reviewers is typical.
>Isn't right I say !
>
>Also early last year I played a lot of the Elder Scrolls Online Beta .
>I'm now considering buying it & want / need reviews of how ESO is now.
>(Xocyll commented here recently that it is much improved - & he's not easy 
>to impress ;)
>
>I thought I'd find plenty of recent NEW reviews as its only just been 
>released for the Consoles .
>But not really.
>Any recent Reviews seem essentially copies of the PC release time ones last 
>year.
>Metacritic has hundreds of Professional reviews listed under PC version - 
>every one from last spring.
>At the end of the very long list of user reviews there are some recent 
>comments.

Just go into the comments on Steam under the v1.03 patch and you'll
learn everything you need to know about it.

In article <mo6ji7$2t3$1...@speranza.aioe.org>, no-spam@never.spam says...
> 
> Games Reviewers Not Doing The Job properly as we need.

Long  gone the days of early Computer Gaming World where you'd get 
actual, real, honest several-pages-long reviews of games. Does anyone 
else remember the early editions printed on coarse brown paper? Then 
they were taken over and turned into an advertising glossy, and I 
eventually stopped my  subscription because the content was getting less 
and less in favour of advertising.

These days  when I look at a 'review' on one of the 'professional' 
gaming sites, it's mostly just some idiot paraphrasing the publisher's 
publicity guff, typically without any critical review at all. A few 
colourful screenshots. They've all turned into mindless cheerleaders. 
Few of them seem to've played the game for more than half an hour.

I find I do a hell of a lot better by, as Mr. Stowleigh says, looking at 
user reviews on steam, or other fora. My online boxed-games store for 
instance does publish critical user reviews despite the fact that it 
might hurt their business.

-P.

On Mon, 20 Jul 2015 13:45:29 +1200, Peter Huebner
<p.w.h...@gmail.com> wrote:

>In article <mo6ji7$2t3$1...@speranza.aioe.org>, no-spam@never.spam says...
>> 
>> Games Reviewers Not Doing The Job properly as we need.
>
>Long  gone the days of early Computer Gaming World where you'd get 
>actual, real, honest several-pages-long reviews of games. Does anyone 
>else remember the early editions printed on coarse brown paper? Then 
>they were taken over and turned into an advertising glossy, and I 
>eventually stopped my  subscription because the content was getting less 
>and less in favour of advertising.

If you're ever feeling nostalgic, you can view old issues here:

http://www.cgwmuseum.org/galleries/index.php?year=1981&pub=2&id=500

>These days  when I look at a 'review' on one of the 'professional' 
>gaming sites, it's mostly just some idiot paraphrasing the publisher's 
>publicity guff, typically without any critical review at all. A few 
>colourful screenshots. They've all turned into mindless cheerleaders. 
>Few of them seem to've played the game for more than half an hour.

This is one of the joys the interweb and Google advertising has
brought us.  Pretty much everyone making a living in any sort of
writing these days does so with one primary focus in mind -- to sell
ads.  Thanks Google.

There was a time when articles were primarily written by writers who
were subject matter experts on a given subject, they wrote the content
without much thought to marketing, and marketing people handled
advertisement matters while keeping their mitts out of the content.

Things have changed.  Writers are mostly now marketing professionals
in disguise.  

I actually had a number of technical articles published in nationally
circulated "hardcore techie" magazines in the 80's and 90's.  For the
most part, I'm pretty sure the editors had no idea what I was talking
about, yet published them anyway, without any regard to the fact that
whatever I was saying might have been, in essence, badmouthing the
advertiser on the glossy page one flip away.  Back then things like
that just went under the radar.

Those days are gone.  Real writers no longer write for magazines or
publications where they are 'directed' on what to write.  If they are
worth a crap they went freelance and started their own blog long ago.
But thanks to Google, and the public's resistance to learn any other
search engine, in order to get proper organic search hits they have to
pander to the the type of writing that lands results.  This has
effectively ruined the traditional review.  They can't be trusted
anymore.

Some of our best bets are people like the "Worth a Buy" guy who have a
Youtube channel and review games, but even then they have a stronger
interest in luring people to their site and selling ad clicks than
they have an interest in investing time to understand gaming better,
understand their audience better, and provide info that benefits their
audience.  They have to look out for themselves and getting their
bills paid, and sometimes that turns them into entertainers more than
informative reviewers.

>I find I do a hell of a lot better by, as Mr. Stowleigh says, looking at 
>user reviews on steam, or other fora. 

User reviews (Steam or elsewhere) was one thing we didn't have easy
access to (aside from word of mouth) back in the early days.  I'm sure
plenty of us have wasted money on games that we thought we would like
based on one reviewer's description, only to play it for an hour or
two and never return.

User reviews have helped quite a bit in that regard.  When gamespot
first started publishing user reviews (15 years ago?  Not sure), I
started comparing what the audience at large thought to my own opinion
and seeing how that number compared to the individual professional
reviews.  The user reviews are always a more accurate meter for me.

It's simple mathmatical/statistical nature at work.  A sample size of
tens of thousands is going to produce a better and more accurate
median reading than what a handful of "professional" editors have to
say.

> My online boxed-games store for 
> instance does publish critical user reviews despite the fact that it 
> might hurt their business.

I think these online retailers have learned that critical user reviews
don't hurt them at all.  If someone is looking for a game they are
going to buy a game.  Whether they spend their money on a good one or
a bad one is inconsequential to a retailer.  Retailers know that it is
in their best interest to drop all crap products and try to stock only
the best of breed.  They make more money when their customers are
happy, support calls and refunds are expensive.

That said....

What I think we probably all miss (and your reason for bringing up old
school CGW issues and probably Trimble's reason for post) is that in
the old days, we were sometimes inspired to try games based on reading
about someone else's in-depth experience with them.  By reading the
reviewers experience, we might see things a little differently or
maybe try something new that was out of our comfort zone before --
gaining a new appreciation for a game or a new angle on it.

And, that is diminishing (at least in its previous form).  It's not
gone, by any means.  There are plenty of great authors/reviewers out
there who put their honest opinion out on their blog as a simple
hobby, with no marketing angle at all.  The problem is that there is
nothing inspiring them to do it regularly (like a salary for doing so)
and there is nothing that compiles all these works into one
easy-to-subscribe-to place (like CGW).

PC Gamer is still a valid resource.  I appreciate the fact it is still
available in print, a reasonable effort to quality of writing and
humor is invested, and just having it arrive in my mailbox
occasionally (even if I do little more than flip through it these
days) brings back good memories.

But things are not what they used to be, that much is certain.

On Sun, 19 Jul 2015 23:55:05 -0400, Rin Stowleigh
<rstow...@nevrhadgmail.com> wrote:

>On Mon, 20 Jul 2015 13:45:29 +1200, Peter Huebner
><p.w.h...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
>>In article <mo6ji7$2t3$1...@speranza.aioe.org>, no-spam@never.spam says...
>>> 
>>> Games Reviewers Not Doing The Job properly as we need.
>>
>>Long  gone the days of early Computer Gaming World where you'd get 
>>actual, real, honest several-pages-long reviews of games. Does anyone 
>>else remember the early editions printed on coarse brown paper? Then 
>>they were taken over and turned into an advertising glossy, and I 
>>eventually stopped my  subscription because the content was getting less 
>>and less in favour of advertising.
>
>If you're ever feeling nostalgic, you can view old issues here:
>
>http://www.cgwmuseum.org/galleries/index.php?year=1981&pub=2&id=500

Just a side note.  It's kind of funny to see a $40 price tag on an
Apple wargame in 1981.  And people bitch about $50-60 in 2015 :)

>From the October 1990 issue:

"The IBM version of Red Baron will be released in October
($59.95). An Amiga version is planned but no release date has been
announced."

Holy shit they were ahead of their time.   They predicted the base
price of a AAA title 2.5 decades later ;)

Am 20.07.15 um 03:45 schrieb Peter Huebner:
>> >Games Reviewers Not Doing The Job properly as we need.
> Long  gone the days of early Computer Gaming World where you'd get
> actual, real, honest several-pages-long reviews of games. Does anyone
> else remember the early editions printed on coarse brown paper? Then
> they were taken over and turned into an advertising glossy, and I
> eventually stopped my  subscription because the content was getting less
> and less in favour of advertising.

Ah CGW I even subscribed to that one in Europe.
The german games mags sold out even way earlier than the US counterparts.
I stopped reading german games magazines when they gave Ultima 8 a 
blatant 90% rating despite being released in an unusable state at that time.

Nowadays I mostly rely on user ratings on various gaming related sites 
and Steam.


Werner

On Sunday, July 19, 2015 at 8:55:01 PM UTC-7, Rin Stowleigh wrote:
> On Mon, 20 Jul 2015 13:45:29 +1200, Peter Huebner
> <p.w.h...@gmail.com> wrote:
> 
> >In article <mo6ji7$2t3$1...@speranza.aioe.org>, no-spam@never.spam says...
> >> 
> >> Games Reviewers Not Doing The Job properly as we need.
> >
> >Long  gone the days of early Computer Gaming World where you'd get 
> >actual, real, honest several-pages-long reviews of games. Does anyone 
> >else remember the early editions printed on coarse brown paper? Then 
> >they were taken over and turned into an advertising glossy, and I 
> >eventually stopped my  subscription because the content was getting less 
> >and less in favour of advertising.
> 
> If you're ever feeling nostalgic, you can view old issues here:
> 
> http://www.cgwmuseum.org/galleries/index.php?year=1981&pub=2&id=500
> 
> >These days  when I look at a 'review' on one of the 'professional' 
> >gaming sites, it's mostly just some idiot paraphrasing the publisher's 
> >publicity guff, typically without any critical review at all. A few 
> >colourful screenshots. They've all turned into mindless cheerleaders. 
> >Few of them seem to've played the game for more than half an hour.
> 
> This is one of the joys the interweb and Google advertising has
> brought us.  Pretty much everyone making a living in any sort of
> writing these days does so with one primary focus in mind -- to sell
> ads.  Thanks Google.
> 
> There was a time when articles were primarily written by writers who
> were subject matter experts on a given subject, they wrote the content
> without much thought to marketing, and marketing people handled
> advertisement matters while keeping their mitts out of the content.
> 
> Things have changed.  Writers are mostly now marketing professionals
> in disguise.  
> 
> I actually had a number of technical articles published in nationally
> circulated "hardcore techie" magazines in the 80's and 90's.  For the
> most part, I'm pretty sure the editors had no idea what I was talking
> about, yet published them anyway, without any regard to the fact that
> whatever I was saying might have been, in essence, badmouthing the
> advertiser on the glossy page one flip away.  Back then things like
> that just went under the radar.
> 
> Those days are gone.  Real writers no longer write for magazines or
> publications where they are 'directed' on what to write.  If they are
> worth a crap they went freelance and started their own blog long ago.
> But thanks to Google, and the public's resistance to learn any other
> search engine, in order to get proper organic search hits they have to
> pander to the the type of writing that lands results.  This has
> effectively ruined the traditional review.  They can't be trusted
> anymore.
> 
> Some of our best bets are people like the "Worth a Buy" guy who have a
> Youtube channel and review games, but even then they have a stronger
> interest in luring people to their site and selling ad clicks than
> they have an interest in investing time to understand gaming better,
> understand their audience better, and provide info that benefits their
> audience.  They have to look out for themselves and getting their
> bills paid, and sometimes that turns them into entertainers more than
> informative reviewers.
> 
> >I find I do a hell of a lot better by, as Mr. Stowleigh says, looking at 
> >user reviews on steam, or other fora. 
> 
> User reviews (Steam or elsewhere) was one thing we didn't have easy
> access to (aside from word of mouth) back in the early days.  I'm sure
> plenty of us have wasted money on games that we thought we would like
> based on one reviewer's description, only to play it for an hour or
> two and never return.
> 
> User reviews have helped quite a bit in that regard.  When gamespot
> first started publishing user reviews (15 years ago?  Not sure), I
> started comparing what the audience at large thought to my own opinion
> and seeing how that number compared to the individual professional
> reviews.  The user reviews are always a more accurate meter for me.
> 
> It's simple mathmatical/statistical nature at work.  A sample size of
> tens of thousands is going to produce a better and more accurate
> median reading than what a handful of "professional" editors have to
> say.
> 
> > My online boxed-games store for 
> > instance does publish critical user reviews despite the fact that it 
> > might hurt their business.
> 
> I think these online retailers have learned that critical user reviews
> don't hurt them at all.  If someone is looking for a game they are
> going to buy a game.  Whether they spend their money on a good one or
> a bad one is inconsequential to a retailer.  Retailers know that it is
> in their best interest to drop all crap products and try to stock only
> the best of breed.  They make more money when their customers are
> happy, support calls and refunds are expensive.
> 
> That said....
> 
> What I think we probably all miss (and your reason for bringing up old
> school CGW issues and probably Trimble's reason for post) is that in
> the old days, we were sometimes inspired to try games based on reading
> about someone else's in-depth experience with them.  By reading the
> reviewers experience, we might see things a little differently or
> maybe try something new that was out of our comfort zone before --
> gaining a new appreciation for a game or a new angle on it.
> 
> And, that is diminishing (at least in its previous form).  It's not
> gone, by any means.  There are plenty of great authors/reviewers out
> there who put their honest opinion out on their blog as a simple
> hobby, with no marketing angle at all.  The problem is that there is
> nothing inspiring them to do it regularly (like a salary for doing so)
> and there is nothing that compiles all these works into one
> easy-to-subscribe-to place (like CGW).
> 
> PC Gamer is still a valid resource.  I appreciate the fact it is still
> available in print, a reasonable effort to quality of writing and
> humor is invested, and just having it arrive in my mailbox
> occasionally (even if I do little more than flip through it these
> days) brings back good memories.
> 
> But things are not what they used to be, that much is certain.

I generally agree, but you need a large number of non-professional reviewers.  It works for computer games as there are enough people reviewing things.  It seems to work fairly well with amazon if there's enough reviews.  I find the same on rotten tomatoes, you have to look at audience scores, the reviewer's scores are not to be trusted.  

However I keep trying to use Yelp, and have been repeatedly burned by places that have high reviews, even with mid 30 numbers of reviewers. Horrible burger places, chinese food, and repair shops that get very high reviews.  Still trying to find a better way for the local stuff, but doesn't seem to be possible, there just aren't enough people able/willing to review to overcome the astroturf.

- Justisaur

Justisaur <just...@gmail.com> wrote in
news:6ce15095-f3ef-4...@googlegroups.com: 

> On Sunday, July 19, 2015 at 8:55:01 PM UTC-7, Rin Stowleigh wrote:
> 
>> But things are not what they used to be, that much is certain.
> 
> I generally agree, but you need a large number of non-professional
> reviewers.  It works for computer games as there are enough people
> reviewing things.  It seems to work fairly well with amazon if there's
> enough reviews.  I find the same on rotten tomatoes, you have to look
> at audience scores, the reviewer's scores are not to be trusted.  

With Amazon, I tend to check the negative reviews as well as the positive 
ones.

All-too-often, the positive reviews are damage control by corporate shills. 
>_<

> However I keep trying to use Yelp, and have been repeatedly burned by
> places that have high reviews, even with mid 30 numbers of reviewers.
> Horrible burger places, chinese food, and repair shops that get very
> high reviews.  Still trying to find a better way for the local stuff,
> but doesn't seem to be possible, there just aren't enough people
> able/willing to review to overcome the astroturf. 

For a while, Yelp was deleting reviews that were posted my 'Non-Members' 
and this hurt the sales of many businesses in my area.

Nowadays, I can only assume that they're deleting reviews that bash their 
(paying?) members and bolster the non-member 'riff-raff'. -_-

It's why word of mouth is better overall. 9_9

Signed,
Warewolf

Am 20.07.15 um 12:22 schrieb Werner Punz:
> Ultima 8 a blatant 90% rating
Ups I meant Ultima 9. I actually liked Ultima 8 after the first patch 
which removed the jumping. It was quite a good game.

In article <hjsoqa5o7empcpkfa...@4ax.com>, 
rstow...@nevrhadgmail.com says...
> 
> On Sun, 19 Jul 2015 23:55:05 -0400, Rin Stowleigh
> <rstow...@nevrhadgmail.com> wrote:
[snip]
> Just a side note.  It's kind of funny to see a $40 price tag on an
> Apple wargame in 1981.  And people bitch about $50-60 in 2015 :)
> 
> From the October 1990 issue:
> 
> "The IBM version of Red Baron will be released in October
> ($59.95). An Amiga version is planned but no release date has been
> announced."
> 
> Holy shit they were ahead of their time.   They predicted the base
> price of a AAA title 2.5 decades later ;)


Well back in the day we were gouged $150 for a game, here in NZ. 
That's more or less what I paid for MOO1 and the like. 

One reason I ended up getting a credit card and buying overseas ...
and why a lot of people resorted to piracy.

Digital distribution has levelled the playing field in that respect, at 
least for games and ebooks. 

-P.

In article <6ce15095-f3ef-4988...@googlegroups.com>, 
just...@gmail.com says...
> 
> I generally agree, but you need a large number of non-professional reviewers.  It works for computer games as there are enough people reviewing things.  It seems to work fairly well with amazon if there's enough reviews.  I find the same on rotten tomatoes, you have to look at audience scores, the reviewer's scores are not to be trusted.  
> 
> However I keep trying to use Yelp, and have been repeatedly burned by places that have high reviews, even with mid 30 numbers of reviewers. Horrible burger places, chinese food, and repair shops that get very high reviews.  Still trying to find a better way for the local stuff, but doesn't seem to be possible, there just aren't enough people able/willing to review to overcome the astroturf.
> 
> - Justisaur
> 
> 

Hahaha, try Goodreads some time. There are legions of people there 
giving gushing 5 star reviews to books that are complete crap, badly 
edited mary-sue fantasies with inconsistent worldbuilding, continuity 
problems and horrid editing, and actually no ending, leaving you on a 
cliffhanger to sell the next one .... 

 .... I've practically given up on them as a useful review site. Even 
reader reviews on Amazon seem to be more balanced, generally speaking.

-P.

On Tue, 21 Jul 2015 09:10:08 +1200, Peter Huebner
<p.w.h...@gmail.com> wrote:

>In article <hjsoqa5o7empcpkfa...@4ax.com>, 
>rstow...@nevrhadgmail.com says...
>> 
>> On Sun, 19 Jul 2015 23:55:05 -0400, Rin Stowleigh
>> <rstow...@nevrhadgmail.com> wrote:
>[snip]
>> Just a side note.  It's kind of funny to see a $40 price tag on an
>> Apple wargame in 1981.  And people bitch about $50-60 in 2015 :)
>> 
>> From the October 1990 issue:
>> 
>> "The IBM version of Red Baron will be released in October
>> ($59.95). An Amiga version is planned but no release date has been
>> announced."
>> 
>> Holy shit they were ahead of their time.   They predicted the base
>> price of a AAA title 2.5 decades later ;)
>
>
>Well back in the day we were gouged $150 for a game, here in NZ. 
>That's more or less what I paid for MOO1 and the like. 
>
>One reason I ended up getting a credit card and buying overseas ...
>and why a lot of people resorted to piracy.

It works both ways.  There was a time when I was working in game
development, so I witnessed first hand the need for high price points
to justify the cost of and still try to squeek out a profit when the
number of pirated copies in use were going to dwarf the legimately
purchased copies by 10:1.  Once people got modems and the BBS scene
emerged, getting folks to legitimately purchase a game at any price
point was difficult.

Then we had the fact that the total potential audience was somewhat
limited -- a lot of people still did not even own a personal computer
back then, much less game on them.

>Digital distribution has levelled the playing field in that respect, at 
>least for games and ebooks. 

It has helped a great deal.  Not only has it reduced publishing and
distribution costs, but the audience of PC gamers is much larger now
than it used to be, so games can be sold at a lower price point and
still earn enough money to be worthwhile.

On Mon, 20 Jul 2015 16:51:44 GMT, Warewolf <warewol...@shaw.ca>
wrote:

>Justisaur <just...@gmail.com> wrote in
>news:6ce15095-f3ef-4...@googlegroups.com: 
>
>> On Sunday, July 19, 2015 at 8:55:01 PM UTC-7, Rin Stowleigh wrote:
>> 
>>> But things are not what they used to be, that much is certain.
>> 
>> I generally agree, but you need a large number of non-professional
>> reviewers.  It works for computer games as there are enough people
>> reviewing things.  It seems to work fairly well with amazon if there's
>> enough reviews.  I find the same on rotten tomatoes, you have to look
>> at audience scores, the reviewer's scores are not to be trusted.  
>
>With Amazon, I tend to check the negative reviews as well as the positive 
>ones.
>
>All-too-often, the positive reviews are damage control by corporate shills. 
>>_<
>
>> However I keep trying to use Yelp, and have been repeatedly burned by
>> places that have high reviews, even with mid 30 numbers of reviewers.
>> Horrible burger places, chinese food, and repair shops that get very
>> high reviews.  Still trying to find a better way for the local stuff,
>> but doesn't seem to be possible, there just aren't enough people
>> able/willing to review to overcome the astroturf. 
>
>For a while, Yelp was deleting reviews that were posted my 'Non-Members' 
>and this hurt the sales of many businesses in my area.
>
>Nowadays, I can only assume that they're deleting reviews that bash their 
>(paying?) members and bolster the non-member 'riff-raff'. -_-
>
>It's why word of mouth is better overall. 9_9


The problem is that the damage control situation you mentioned above
is usually outsourced to marketing agencies that do a number of
things, from writing positive reviews to generating positive word of
mouth about their product or service, to writing biased articles.  

It goes back to what I was saying about honest journalism versus what
has happened in the online marketing space.  You can't trust word of
mouth any more than you can trust online reviews.

You might say "well I know these guys who have been on the CSIPG* NG
for years aren't paid authors" and yes that's true but its such a
miniscule sample size of opinions, that the only way you're going to
find useful info here is by finding someone in the last remaining of
the usenet community whose opinion aligns with your own 100% of the
time.  A unicorn I'm sure.

What I find most useful are reviews on places like Amazon and Steam
where there are such huge numbers of actual user ratings that the paid
marketing damage control shills have very little power to influence
the numbers.

I order stuff from Amazon all the time -- not so much games, but just
general products like tools to do something around the house or
whatever.  What I've found over the years is if it has a few thousand
reviews and a 4 or 4.5 star rating, it is unconditionally going to be
a great product.

Part of the reason that works is that Amazon indicates verified
purchases, and I don't think Steam even allows a user to rate the game
if they haven't bought it.  You can also look at the user at how many
games are in their library -- most marketing shills are not going to
build a library of 500 Steam games and spend 20 hours a week playing
them just to get one positive review in for one of their clients.