Adam Sessler bashes Metacritic, saying that an industry that depends so heavily on review scores is a broken system, and video games should be more like Hollywood where (in his own words) "piss-poor quality products" like Avatar can succeed with good enough marketing.
On this week's episode, former co-host of G4’s X-Play and the current president of TheoryHead, Adam Sessler, joins host Josiah Renaudin to talk about the new games media landscape. They cover modern game reviews, how we talk about games, the importance of sites like Waypoint, how X-Play was done from episode to episode, the brilliance of Horizon: Zero Dawn's design, and what Adam's up to now.
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F this clown
He ruined God of War Acension because he's easily offended and sucked at playing it so they had to dumb it down for his sappy ass.
Uh...
Sony Santa Monica develops the game while Sony publishes.
If it was dumbed down it was by those two parties. Stating that they changed the game due to one individual is asinine as either
1) Sony Santa Monica and Sony then gave into the supposed demands of one individual and altered the game
2) Sony Santa Monica and Sony dumbed down the game based on their own opinion
Or 3) Sony Santa Monica and Sony wanted to push multiplayer with God of War Ascension then dumbed down the game to get individuals into the multiplayer with the micro transactions they introduced with the same title.
Either way it didn't come down to Sessler. He wasn't directly creating the game, publishing the game, or even involved outside of critique.🙂
I don't think his sphere of influence can impact a game and its development. However, he has made some statements I do not agree with but it doesn't take away that Xplay was fun to watch. They'd both shit on JRPG's almost every time and I'd shrug and still play them, lol.
Actually if Adam did a mock review for Sony it could have heavily influenced aspects of the game.
Mock review for those that don't know is when a publisher hires a game critic to do a mock review for internal use/feedback only. It gives them a sense for how it will review upon release.
@dirkdady: For them to want a mock review they'd had to have doubts with the product. Further for them to change aspects of the game comes down to Sony & Sony Santa Monica. They wouldn't do so unless they thought the feedback was valid.
Even still Sony & Sony Santa Monica would be involved in a green light. Not Sessler, again.
Huh? Only thing I recall getting changed because of him was the name of a trophy.
Hardly something that would ruin the game as a whole. They didn't even remove the trophy....just renamed it.
I've never been a personal fan of Adam Sessler but hearing his insights about game industry (or specifically in being a gaming journalist) is quite interesting.
I used to watch both those shows all the freaking time. I lost a lot of respect for Sessler after some of his ridiculous rants though. God Of War was the first wtf seriously moment, and then the whole backing out of the industry because of the share button thing was just the icing on the cake.
His review of Bioshock Infinite did it for me. He talked about that mediocre game play experience like it was the greatest game he had ever played. Didn't make sense to me honestly.
He literally just started contradicting himself and having little meltdowns toward the end, it would almost be funny if it wasn't kind of sad. Like I said, I used to watch X-Play all the time back in the day.
I'd post links just to show you what I'm talking about but my phone is ghetto and it's not worth the effort. Just look it up, it's not hard to find, he started slipping bad.
I lost complete respect for him the day he was at some E3 post conference show completely drunk off his ass, barely coherent, and just cynical as all hell. Claimed he had a cold, and was on cold medicine, even though he was fine early that day, and the next day seemed like he was not sick at all.
I've only enjoyed about half of the content he ever was a part of, and I did enjoy when he did interviews, because he was always fair, and even pushed hard on some questions at times, but his reviews either seemed shilled or extremely biased.
After that though he just started thinking his own opinion on how the industry should behave made him intolerable. Particularly his rant about not getting free stuff from the console markers. It's like the guy went off his meds, and all you ended up seeing what the bat-sh*t crazy side that just makes you uncomfortable to watch or be around.
Aos was trash. Screen Savers was better. Extended Play stomps X-plays crappy skits with interns and lame jokes.
It’s a spooky, scary time of the year in Brookago! So it’s a no better time
to bring back our newest minister, Adam Sessler! Adam has so many great
things going on, and we get right into to it. Between his new movie
Lumberjack Man and his excitement about the kickstarter/upcoming video
game, Friday the 13th, The Sess is everywhere! What would a show with Adam,
Kahlief, Cicero and Shareef be if there wasn’t a ridiculous amount of
hilarity? Enjoy episode 82 of the Spawn On Me Podcast!
Adam Sessler, Jeff Cannata, and Jessica Villareal sit down to discuss the latest trends and biggest news coming out of E3 2015. See what they have to say about the show’s hottest games, including Uncharted 4 and Halo 5: Guardians, as well as their thoughts on the impending arrival of Virtual Reality and Augmented Reality headsets that could change the way we game forever.
I can agree that it's unfair that some companies determine pay based on review scores (whether or not game sales are profitable) but why on earth would you want "piss-poor" games to succeed? That doesn't seem like a step forward for the industry at all.
Adam has always been spot on with his stance against Metacritic. The site is only beneficial for PR, marketing and publishers/devs in certain instances. Otherwise, Metacritic is fairly irrelevant for gamers and I still see no purpose in the site.
I've always hated the number system and Metacritic makes the problem much worse. People get enraged over scores all the time and it makes no sense. Reviews are always opinion based and so is the score attached. Anytime someone brings up Metacritic in a debate or topic I just shake my head in embarassement.
what I despise about Metacritic is that it has unknown gaming websites like "Xboxic" having more weight toward the average than a much more well known and respectable site like the GiantBomb (funded by Jeff Gerstmann). It really blows my mind and it makes absolutely no sense at all.
I honestly only rely on myself or friends for games. On meta, it's either the user reviews are plagued by fanboys against the game or review sites seemingly being paid off for high scores. It's hard to trust anything on that site.
Here's the reason why critics of the movie/music industries aren't afraid to give poor reviews:
Because consumers will buy music/movie tickets despite bad reviews.
Music and movie tickers cost somewhere from $6-$20(depending if your watching a 3D movie). This is a small investment.
Games on the other hand are $60(a large investment). Therefore, the value of the opinion of a game critic is more valuable than that of a movie/music critic because the investment for a game is 3x as much as the investment for movie.
The more expensive the content your buying is, the more reliance there is on reviews. THATS why Metacritic is more detrimental to games than it is for music/movies.
Unless they are fans of the developer or prior installments of the game, most gamers WILL pay attention to reviews since it helps diminish the risk of blowing $40-$60 on a bad game.