The problems with the supposedly "unbiased" review
- Thread starter Kerethos
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I would find it hard to review anything honestly for anyone but myself, as I - while quite capable of empathy - can not imagine myself reviewing a game based on what I think someone else would think of it without just calling it guesswork (rather than a review). But your audience will obviously have expectations on the structure of your review, such as what parts of the game you'll be most critical off (as in what parts you talk about the most, be it story, gameplay or design) and possibly your general attitude towards certain types of games.veloper said:
You make a good point about not even doing a review, if you come to utterly despise the game, as a simple statement of "The game is too bad to be worth reviewing" is even more damning that 1/X.
I find them to be a good addition to written reviews, word of mouth, friends recommendations and let's plays. A video review is, after all, able to actually show what is being talked about, which I find quite valuable in my own decision making.loa said:
So if TB reports positive on the game, reviews are positive, other gamers are mostly[footnote]Everyone will hate some games, so if there's ever a game which is universally loved by everyone then I'm starting temple of and will conquer the world in the name of our new entertainment overlord. Or perhaps not, as that sounds like a lot of work that could be spent playing the perfect game instead.[/footnote] positive, let's plays make the game seem fun and your friends report good times (optional, since your friends might not have the game, if they too have these criteria before buying games) then chances are high of good times happening with the game.
Guesswork wouldn't come into it. It would only be a matter of applying the same criteria consistently, always.Kerethos said:
For me those criteria would include: gameplay, atmosphere, gfx, story, etc. with a big focus on gameplay, then at some distance atmosphere and far behind the rest. Personal issues or politics are NOT one of those criteria.
If I recognize the gameplay (mechanics, controls, balance, etc.) as being excellent (as indeed it is in your given hypothetical scenario), than I cannot honestly call the game crap, certainly not with all the other criteria being more than satisfied.
It would not even be a statement, but more of a boycott.
If I could be forced to start and finish the review, I would have to honestly rate the hypothetical nazi game: 10/10 AN EVIL MASTERPIECE!!
That's why I wouldn't want to review such a game in the first place.
Yeah, but you're completely misidentifying the nature of the "agenda" being forced.Res Plus said:
The "agenda" in videogame journalism is "buy our videogames!", not "be less shit to women"
Or maybe videogame reviewers are communicating human beings and, via communicating with each other influence each other. Because that's what human beings do, influence and take influence from other human beings via the medium of communication. The reason you see a lot of similar things in reviews might be because the reviewers have discussed it prior to final submission and found they agree with another reviewer's opinion and so include it in their own.
This doesn't require any form of conspiracy, it just requires human beings doing human being things.
But you can't evaluate without giving an opinion.BigTuk said:
Reviews are inherently subjective and biased, there is no way for them not to be. A good reviewer is aware of their own biases and applies critical thought to how those biases affected their opinion of the product, and says so in the review.
EternallyBored said:
I have to disagree with you. Saying Bayonetta 2 is over sexualized and then doxing it is the same as saying GTA is too violent and doxing that. If the series is known to be sexual (as Bayonetta 1 clearly shows), why punish the sequel for incorporating a tone the original already has? This is exactly what happens in this Polygon review. Saying a character is too sexy and then calling the game "bad" because of it is disingenuous to the gamers who really only want to know if the game is good or not.
DoPo said:
Believe it or not, being objective in a review doesn't mean giving straight facts. It means to be fair and balanced. How does one be fair and balanced when reviewing a game? By reviewing the game based solely on what it is, and not some arbitrary ideology someone has.
For example: If you hate Chicken Noodle Soup, you wouldn't review Chicken Noodle Soup. Why? Because you hate it and your review about it wouldn't be fair nor balanced. If you hate fighting games, you wouldn't review a fighting game, because you do not like them. On the contrary, if you loved fighting games, then you'd be the perfect person to review it, since you'd give a more insightful view than someone who doesn't. Why? Because, chances are, you know more about fighting games than a person who hates them, so you may pick up on more of what the game has to offer as opposed to a person who does not like fighting games. The same goes for Chicken Noodle Soup.
If you're a feminist or are sensitive to the portrayal of women in the media, you wouldn't review Bayonetta 2, because your review wouldn't be objective. Why? Because the game sexualizes the main character and the overall tone of the game would offend you. This would also apply to people who hate the depiction of violence in entertainment mediums such as video games or movies reviewing GTA. Do you think Jack Thompson would give GTA5 a glowing review? Of course he wouldn't. He'd condemn the game, so there's no way he'd review it objectively.
On the other hand, if you love fighting games you might be more willing to excuse problems inherent to fighting games* because you have a preconcieved set of ideas based on your familiarity with the format, in other words because you are biased.QuintonMcLeod said:
Your argument is "Bias X bad, bias Y good".
* Like crap tutorials and single player modes, endemic to fighting games but solved in other predominantly multiplayer competitive genres.
BigTuk said:
Everyone has bias, but that's not what objectivity means. When reviewing a game, objectivity, in this sense, doesn't mean to be free of bias. It simply means to be fair. Let me provide you a few more examples:
If you ding GTA5 for poor controls (for example) and you remove points from that game, then every game you review after that with poor controls should also be dinged. If you're willing to ignore glaring defects in a game simply because you enjoyed the game while condemning another game for having those same issues, then that's when your review is no longer objective.
The Polygon reviewer that reviewed Bayonetta 2 had reviewed other games that totally sexualized its characters, but he turned a blind eye to it. When it came to Bayonetta 2, he suddenly had a problem with it. That's the issue here (among many I've listed in my previous post).
This guy talks about this very same subject, but does so from a very interesting perspective:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VYJX2JW0IFY&index=22&list=LL_YLKB-BdjHJj1uA7ANrndQ
GloatingSwine said:
That's a very extreme example. In the fighting game genre, it's hard for a fighting game fan to ignore inherent problems in a fighting game, because those problems determine whether they win or lose. A long time Tekken fan can detect even the smallest change in gameplay upon the next iteration of Tekken. This is something they could pick up as opposed to someone who does not like fighting games at all, but I digress.
bi·as
ˈbīəs
noun
1.
prejudice in favor of or against one thing, person, or group compared with another, usually in a way considered to be unfair.
"there was evidence of bias against foreign applicants"
synonyms: prejudice, partiality, partisanship, favoritism, unfairness, one-sidedness
Basically I don't want games getting bad reviews because someone was eating meat in the game and the writer is a vegan, yes reviews will need a certain degree of personal opinion to make it entertaining to read, there is an old saying where I'm from "Never talk about politics or religion at the bar" simply because these will be different for different people, the same rule can be applied to reviews, just because it offended you doesn't mean it will offend me, and with that I won't have the same experience of the game. Rather talk about the things we will both see in the game.
ˈbīəs
noun
1.
prejudice in favor of or against one thing, person, or group compared with another, usually in a way considered to be unfair.
"there was evidence of bias against foreign applicants"
synonyms: prejudice, partiality, partisanship, favoritism, unfairness, one-sidedness
Basically I don't want games getting bad reviews because someone was eating meat in the game and the writer is a vegan, yes reviews will need a certain degree of personal opinion to make it entertaining to read, there is an old saying where I'm from "Never talk about politics or religion at the bar" simply because these will be different for different people, the same rule can be applied to reviews, just because it offended you doesn't mean it will offend me, and with that I won't have the same experience of the game. Rather talk about the things we will both see in the game.
Right, but that's a review that's only useful to people who are as invested in Tekken as the reviewer. But a good reviewer doesn't write reviews only for fans of the thing they're reviewing unless they are publishing in a limited environment where those shared biases can be expected.QuintonMcLeod said:
To anyone who isn't sufficiently into the genre to expect the conventions of fighting games "crap tutorial and singleplayer" might be relevant information (because those are gateway things that could turn them into fighting game fans) but a reviewer whose biases were "is a fighting game fan" might not think to comment much on them in the review because they expect them.
RagingTiger said:
This is precisely what I'm saying. Unfortunately, the industry is filled without people attempting to force their ideals onto other gamers who simply do not share them. Instead, they ought to just talk about the games they're reviewing.
I think you are missing several things, firstly, he never calls the game bad, not even enough to warrant putting it in quotes, he only mentions that the sexualization detracted from his enjoyment, he goes out of his way to remark that this is an entirely subjective point, and includes the caveat that it hurt his personal enjoyment, as he explains in the post review podcast, it is like when people docked points from Ninja Gaiden for being too difficult, as you say, difficulty was the point of ninja gaiden, but plenty of mainstream sites docked the game points for being frustrating or too difficult.QuintonMcLeod said:
Much like some people thought NG was too difficult, the reviewer here thought the game was too sexualized and that the sexualization hurt the game rather than helped it, saying "that's the point of the game", does not make it immune from criticism, you can still launch a critique of why GTA's over the top violence may detract from the game, or why sexualization does not work as well as the gamemakers intended. It is perfectly valid to criticize a game that does something intentionally if you still think the game isn't doing it well, or you think that the intention is wrong and subtracts from the other elements, in this case, that would be the reviewer's opinion of the quality of the combat system. That does not mean that such criticism is always right, but the intention of a game does not suddenly make it immune from being disliked either.
Finally, Polygon doesn't just dock points due to a single reviewer, as I said in my previous post, the score system that Polygon uses is a consensus between multiple staff on the sight, and it is also not supposed to be a determination of how good or bad a game is, they say multiple times that the score is a recommendation for how much the staff think the game is worth picking up, and a 7.5 is still a recommendation according to their review scale. Now, you can think that points system is silly, and I would agree, Polygon seems to have a lot of odd quirks to its points scale and how the final point score is determined, which would explain why a their reviews end up being controversial from time to time.
EDIT: also it's docking points, not doxing them. Doxxing is when you reveal someone's personal information over the internet, and docking is when you subtract something from the whole. Although this is also actually explicitly wrong, as the Polygon review specifically brings out in the podcast that their numerical score system does not work on a basis of starting at 10 and docking points from there, so even the word docking is not technically accurate because they are not subtracting points from a potential score of 10.
Every review is subjective and that's a good thing but only if it remains reasonably so.
At the end of the day your reviewing a game, your not writing it to showcase your political beliefs. Reviewers can tell us if they have a philosophical issue with the game but I don't think it should detract from the score. Is it fair to withhold points for something as inherently subjective as a political or social stance?
At the end of the day your reviewing a game, your not writing it to showcase your political beliefs. Reviewers can tell us if they have a philosophical issue with the game but I don't think it should detract from the score. Is it fair to withhold points for something as inherently subjective as a political or social stance?
First off, you don't want no bias, you want no negative bias and plenty of positive bias that might make one overlook things you don't find important.QuintonMcLeod said:
And here's an example:
I enjoy third person games and I'd probably guess they are, by far, the types of games I've spent the most hours of my life playing. Ranging from shooters to platformers to RPG's. By your logic of no bias I can directly think of a game that should never get anything above average in score, a game I'm currently playing (for the first time); Dark Souls.
It doesn't have good texture quality, controls are sluggish, tutorial tells you how to move (after you've figured it out), it runs like shit on any system due to poor optimization, the story is minimal, some enemies and traps just murder you without warning (unless you know where they are before you can see them, basically you've been murdered at least once already). It's a technical mess. But it's still a fun game; if you're a hateful masochist that enjoys trying to figure out wtf any of it means or what you're actually supposed to do or even where to go.
Based on your unbiased criteria's I should rate the game at best average, if I go by mechanics and technical aspects and ignore my own bias. At best, because that's being damn generous.
But even though most of it is, quite frankly, (and I'm being kind here) poorly done I - as evidently a hateful masochist that enjoys being slightly lost, angry, not knowing wtf I'm doing or going, unfair deaths and am able to forgive tanking framerates - still find the game quite enjoyable.
And so would, with all my bias, rate it fairly high (around 4/5) and gladly make sure people know the game has a load of problems you'll have to just suffer through. And that it pretty much requires you have a bias towards games that hates you, and don't want to tell you how the mechanics actually works, yet has an intriguing and strange world you want to burn and murder your way through in the hopes of getting that sweet revenge and perhaps finding out what most of the stuff actually does or is for. (Because good luck on that without a wiki or multiple playthroughs).
But that kind of positive bias is apparently acceptable. But if I didn't have the bias to overlook all these problems, I should not give an opinion on it. Because then the review would be tainted by my negative bias or political views.
Perhaps I just expect too much hand holding from games? Value story too much? Am a framerate junkie PC elitist? Can't see the artistic value through the poor textures and sluggish controls? I'm not good enough to play these challenging games and therefore should not?
Just to mention a few of the claims made of supposed "bias" that apparently means a reviewer should not review a game.
Dark Souls - a below average game that a lot of people, myself included, still think is great. All thanks to "the bias".
Captcha: "take care" - Yes, you certainly should while playing a Souls game. They are not for everyone, and you have every right to think they are terrible games.
And I see a whole bunch of people trying dictate to reviewer what is and isn't important enough to mention in their own review regardless of whether it affects their enjoyment or not because you don't care = it's "bias". It doesn't offend you? well good for you but the review isn't made for you. Other people might actually want know about this shit. If it's in the game they are talking about the goddamn game. So long as the reviewer isn't lying, doesn't gloss over and down play everything else to talk about one point and makes it clear what is affecting the score it's not an issue. If you don't agree with them that's fine. Feel free to adjust how good or bad you think the game will be based on how much you care about that problem or whether you like things they don't.QuintonMcLeod said: