Are Reviewers Too Quick to Judge Sometimes?

When games rely on online features and communities, can we really judge them too harshly at launch?

[Activemessiah]

In an alternate earth: " Are Publishers too quick to release unfinished games?"

Yeah, send me there.

[Gazondaily]

Plot twist- alternate earth has no ice cream.

Still wanna go there?

Yeah no- a game should be released in its entirety. Don;'t put the blame on reviewers as opposed to devs who release a shell of a game and expect us to wait later on for it to be completed.

Heck, if you're going to do that, at least have the decency to have the price match the content and not sell us on your future promises.

[Activemessiah]

If I am to receive complete and unbroken games Day 1? To hell with Ice cream!

[Godmars290]

Why would you want to got to an alternate earth where games are released even faster and unfinished than they are here?

Find me the one where a reasonable amount of time is spent, narrative and art form are as valued as graphics and profit and the reviewers don't consider bias subjective and then we'll talk about other differences. Like the world being run by Nazis or hippies.

[zerocarnage]

Yeah I didn't get that either lol..

[Activemessiah]

It was more to do with people pointing at the wrong direction, yes the games are still the same but we wouldn't have bloggers blaming reviewers instead of publishers and pretty much almost advocating for the acceptance of broken/incomplete games.

[Godmars290]

More like reviewers are little more than bloggers. Bloggers who take preference towards game makers instead of gaming consumers for reasons ranging from taking ad money to gifts to personal relationships.

[Big_Game_Hunters]

lol?

[XtraTrstrL]

LOL, this articler ain't too smart. Maybe you don't charge $60 for an Early Release/Beta then. You don't charge $60, then say, hey, it's not done yet, can you hold off on reviews for a bit?

Especially when tons of the main future content will cost you still. Characters and certain non-premium costumes can be obtained through Fight Money, but after the first 2 characters or so, it may end up being a grind fest. They keep mentioning that doing all the intitial 16 character story modes gets you enough for a Character and 1 story mode costume.

Sure, that's great. Once you are done with the initial 16 characters stories and some survival though, it's only 1 character releasing at a time, we don't even know if they'll have a character story mode or survival. Even if they do though, you're only gonna earn 1/16th the FM you earned in that big initial burst, because it's only 1 character at most per month from there on out. So, the FM earnings are gonna drop drastically, and it'll depend largely on how they do the Daily Challenges/etc earnings.

So it can easily become a huge uphill battle trying to earn Characters/costumes/stages through FM after that, and I don't think it's fair to ask anyone to be that trustworthy of a company like Capcom when it comes to the potential of ripping you off. You took $60 from me for a barebones beta, where most of the little barebones content that's currently here doesn't even function properly or at all.

GTFO with the "can we really judge them too harshly at launch?" So, this article creator wants us to just continue to bend over 'n take it in the @ss from greedy publishers like Capcom. F*ck outta here.

[quent]

ille judge the f*ck out of them, especially online games that are content incomplete, "promising" future content updates, can I ask for a refund because they broke their "promise" ?

[admiralvic]

Editorials like this are one of the issues I have with certain "journalists." The concept is, at the very least, quite interesting. However, instead of really looking at the issue, discussing the ethical and morale aspects, talking about how the industry works and really looking at the issue, it's little more than "if the games not complete, lets give it the benefit of doubt," which is a terrible notion.

Going back to what I said, this is an important issue, because it isn't always fair. Street Fighter V has good mechanics, though its missing practically everything else. Splatoon was also a lot of fun, with lots of neat things, though there simply wasn't that much content there. And games like Super Mario Maker can really only get better with time, but I also feel like grading based off potential is extremely dangerous. A great example of this is Destiny.

When Destiny launched it was criticized for missing certain thing, lacking content and having serious issues. Some of these were corrected, though others (like a lot of social aspects) are still missing. Even though Destiny was light on content, it would be easy to assume there would be other events (because they did something for Halloween), Iron Banner/Queen's Wrath would continue to keep people busy and the two expansions would resolve the lack of content. However, objectively speaking, the reality is much different.

With the exception of the package we got for the holidays, there was just that one awkward event for Halloween for the full first year (we got a better event in Y2). Queen's Wrath, which is the only PVE event (besides challenges if you want to be semantic) in Destiny, happened a single time before it was decided to be a flop and then it was sort of forgotten over the months. Iron Banner managed to add something to PVP, though it was never anything more than a slightly different version of the base game with additional loot. And then you have the expansions.

Despite the high entry price, it's almost impossible to argue that The Dark Below added $20 worth of content. It was almost universally lampooned, viewed as overpriced and didn't do much to resolve the "content" problem. In fact, it was also criticized for making mistakes that didn't make sense (odds are you wouldn't need Eris' material service by the time you would unlock it, the amount of RNG/effort required to get the Necrochasm, etc). HoW did a better job at addressing concerns, but this was something like nine months after the games release.

Here in lies some of the issues. If you factor in the concept that things will improve, there is no guarantee that they ever will (there is a growing number of people who think TTK was a step backwards from HoW or at least is still far from perfect) and there is no telling their promises will ever pan out. Instead of pointing this out, talking about what is there and informing people of the potential in the future, it seems like some people, such as the author, just want to give publishes a pass.

[zerocarnage]

Reviewers can burn very good games, they're often so one minded because they do exactly that, there own opinion. They can't speak for everyone, it's impossible to do that.

People should just buy a game if they like the look of it, it appeals to them. It's like going to a library, not every book in there I want to read, but there are some that interest me, but I can judge for myself without anyone telling me or showing me any information that makes my own mind up for me..

Film critics are the same, scum of the industry in my eyes, they burn decent films and people listen to there crap..

[quent]

"Looking" at a game/movie if it appeals to you isn't enough, just like at E3, game publishers/movie studios always show their products in the best possible light, their should be reviewers/youtubers that shares your taste and opinions in games and media, big game "journalism" sites are just the little kids on the playground being bullied, to tell everyone else that the bullies(publishers) are the cool kids(bad analogy)
I myself also down trust review scores, but doing proper research before handing over your hard earned cash is important, right ?

[Kallisti]

Call me old fashioned but when I buy a game, I expect it to work straight out the box.

[TeamLeaptrade]

Yeah the whole idea of not getting the full game at release shouldn't stop people from reviewing how they see fit. If a game is not what we expected, we should be allowed to judge it based on past iterations. That's how I feel anyways.