The problems with the supposedly "unbiased" review

[QuintonMcLeod]

I think you and I agree a lot more than we may both think. What are your opinion's on Polygon's Bayonetta 2 review?

After having just read it, it's a review that covers a lot of the gameplay points, and misses others, given that its a WiiU game, I can understand why graphics weren't a major consideration, the bulk of the review seemed to swing from talking about gameplay to the problems the reviewer had with the sexualization. The review also doesn't talk about the story as much as I usually like in my reviews.

The sexualization complaints are ones I both agree with the author on some points and disagree on others, and I can understand why it would hurt his enjoyment of the game, the text praises much of the game whilst deriding the presentation of bayonetta herself, and that while he enjoyed the action, the propensity for the game to have heavily sexualized moments interspersed during the fights seriously impacted his enjoyment of the game.

The podcast at the end features the reviewer talking about how he really liked the mechanics, but that there was a subjective component that seriously caused him issues, and he justifies his views fairly well even if I disagree with the degree with which they may impact. He also talks about how a couple of other negatives for the game were not mentioned for space reasons and how the scoring system works.

The score seems unusually low, but that's not so much Bayonetta specifically as it seems to be an issue with polygon in general, or at least a few reviewers on it. Polygon is sort of the anti-IGN, where IGN takes flak for criticizing a game heavily in the written review but still giving it an 8.5-9.5. Polygon seems to have a lot of reviews that heavily praise a game whilst only listing a few negatives, or negatives that don't seem like a big deal, and then sticking it with a 7-8 range score. Even games that don't list ideological complaints will often get very low end scores of 7-8.5 on Polygon, so that seems more like just how their scoring rubric breaks down. As a side note, the person who writes the text of the review isn't the sole arbiter of the score review, Polygon uses some kind of weird median score system amongst multiple staff members.

Overall, it's not my cup of tea, but I can easily see how such a review would be useful to some people, especially if taken in consideration with a range of other reviews and viewpoints on the game, from the other people giving it a 7-8 to the people giving it perfect scores.

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.

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.

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.

No, I believe you're actually missing the point entirely.

1) He has reviewed older games which had just as much or even more sexuality than what Bayonetta 2 is presenting, however, he mentions nothing about it in those games. Up comes along Bayonetta 2, and all of a sudden, it's an issue.

2) He's still pushing his own ideology upon the game in question, and he is "docking" points because of it. If he had played the game and completely skipped the cutscenes, would the game score this low? Of course not, because what he's reviewing is no longer the game, but rather, the sexuality surrounding the game.

 

[EternallyBored]

No, I believe you're actually missing the point entirely.

1) He has reviewed older games which had just as much or even more sexuality than what Bayonetta 2 is presenting, however, he mentions nothing about it in those games. Up comes along Bayonetta 2, and all of a sudden, it's an issue.

2) He's still pushing his own ideology upon the game in question, and he is "docking" points because of it. If he had played the game and completely skipped the cutscenes, would the game score this low? Of course not, because what he's reviewing is no longer the game, but rather, the sexuality surrounding the game.

1. you are going to have to provide context here, I do not know what other games he has reviewed with "more" sexualization than Bayonetta 2, which is a loaded and subjective statement on your part as I'm not sure I can honestly think of many games that are more sexualized than Bayonetta. Other than porn games, I would put Bayonetta's sexualization above pretty much every game out there, even games like DOA extreme beach volleyball and fighting games like Soul Caliber don't feature actual stripping and poll dancing throughout the games from the main character, so what you see as more sexualized games being overlooked, the reviewer may see as cases of less sexualized games that don't detract as much from his experience.

2. the sexuality is a much greater part of the game than the cutscenes, have you played Bayonetta? It is irrevocably linked to the gameplay, attack moves, enemies, story, cutscenes, and character designs, it is impossible to skip the cutscenes and still avoid the sexualization, so yes, he likely would have been just as hard on the game if he had skipped them.

Not that this point makes any sense anyway, if you have to skip a segment of the game in order to enjoy it more, that doesn't mean you are inserting ideology into it, if I skip the cutscenes in FF XIII that eliminates most of my problems with the games story, but if I were reviewing it, it would still be valid for me to critique the story because it is a part of the game, having to excise a portion of the game to improve your opinion on it is not a strike against the reviewer, and it doesn't mean he is pushing his ideology upon the game.

 

[Silvanus]

If he had played the game and completely skipped the cutscenes, would the game score this low? Of course not, because what he's reviewing is no longer the game, but rather, the sexuality surrounding the game.

Why is this relevant? The cutscenes are in the game, and there's no reason to discount them when writing a review.

 

[EternallyBored]

If he had played the game and completely skipped the cutscenes, would the game score this low? Of course not, because what he's reviewing is no longer the game, but rather, the sexuality surrounding the game.

Why is this relevant? The cutscenes are in the game, and there's no reason to discount them when writing a review.

I'm honestly confused by this as well, I'm not sure what he means by separating the sexuality surrounding the game. The sexualization is part of the game, interwoven into the animation, fights, and even the camera system, there isn't any way to separate the sexuality surrounding the game, because it's not surrounding it, its embedded into the very mechanics of the game itself.

The best interpretation I can come up with is that he thinks that the sexualization should be separated from the praises of the mechanical elements of the combat system and that they should both be rated separately, I'm not exactly sure, the cutscene line confuses me.

 

[Erttheking]

I think you and I agree a lot more than we may both think. What are your opinion's on Polygon's Bayonetta 2 review?

After having just read it, it's a review that covers a lot of the gameplay points, and misses others, given that its a WiiU game, I can understand why graphics weren't a major consideration, the bulk of the review seemed to swing from talking about gameplay to the problems the reviewer had with the sexualization. The review also doesn't talk about the story as much as I usually like in my reviews.

The sexualization complaints are ones I both agree with the author on some points and disagree on others, and I can understand why it would hurt his enjoyment of the game, the text praises much of the game whilst deriding the presentation of bayonetta herself, and that while he enjoyed the action, the propensity for the game to have heavily sexualized moments interspersed during the fights seriously impacted his enjoyment of the game.

The podcast at the end features the reviewer talking about how he really liked the mechanics, but that there was a subjective component that seriously caused him issues, and he justifies his views fairly well even if I disagree with the degree with which they may impact. He also talks about how a couple of other negatives for the game were not mentioned for space reasons and how the scoring system works.

The score seems unusually low, but that's not so much Bayonetta specifically as it seems to be an issue with polygon in general, or at least a few reviewers on it. Polygon is sort of the anti-IGN, where IGN takes flak for criticizing a game heavily in the written review but still giving it an 8.5-9.5. Polygon seems to have a lot of reviews that heavily praise a game whilst only listing a few negatives, or negatives that don't seem like a big deal, and then sticking it with a 7-8 range score. Even games that don't list ideological complaints will often get very low end scores of 7-8.5 on Polygon, so that seems more like just how their scoring rubric breaks down. As a side note, the person who writes the text of the review isn't the sole arbiter of the score review, Polygon uses some kind of weird median score system amongst multiple staff members.

Overall, it's not my cup of tea, but I can easily see how such a review would be useful to some people, especially if taken in consideration with a range of other reviews and viewpoints on the game, from the other people giving it a 7-8 to the people giving it perfect scores.

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.

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.

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.

No, I believe you're actually missing the point entirely.

1) He has reviewed older games which had just as much or even more sexuality than what Bayonetta 2 is presenting, however, he mentions nothing about it in those games. Up comes along Bayonetta 2, and all of a sudden, it's an issue.

2) He's still pushing his own ideology upon the game in question, and he is "docking" points because of it. If he had played the game and completely skipped the cutscenes, would the game score this low? Of course not, because what he's reviewing is no longer the game, but rather, the sexuality surrounding the game.

You cannot put opinions down to statistics. You want to know why he reviewed games with sexualization but didn't bring it up then? Because clearly he didn't get bothered by it then. There are some things that are ok in some games or just work that don't in other games. You can just sit down and go "If there is a 15% increase in boob shots then your opinion must change accordingly". Human beings are not robots.

I've yet to have someone explain to me why this is such a horrible thing. Reviewers tend to bring their "personal ideology" in when it comes to reviewing games. Namely on what they think is a good game. Technically every reviewer who praised Bayonetta is pushing their personaly ideology because according to their ideology, Bayonetta is a good character. But people don't complain about THAT do they? He doesn't like it...and? You've got countless other reviewers singing Bayonetta's praises, why is one reviewer giving it a not even that negative review such a big deal. Because he didn't like Bayonetta's design? Well if the developers wanted him to not have the cutscenes as part of the experience, they shouldn't have put cutscenes in.

 

[Scootinfroodie]

This is the second charge of "condescension" from you, and I was made curious. I read back through your posts in this thread, and then your post history in general. I don't know if you're oblivious to your own posting style, or simply calling out behavior your recognize in yourself. Yes, I am being condescending. I am most definitely not alone in that. Alas, I can't control your behavior, I can only control my own, so I'll try to be less of an ass. I would appreciate it if you would return the favor.

Your initial contribution to the thread was dismissal and condescension. Your responses made heavy use of shaming language and attribution of ideology. I have been attempting to discuss your views on this matter and how they may relate to your opponent's views, but cannot when I am met with deflection and anger rather than more concrete statements. Comments about political affiliation coming out of left field and used to bolster further condescension does nothing to promote any sort of discussion

For myself, "too much" would be that point at which the bias distracted from my enjoyment of the review. Either by completely obfuscating the information I'd come to find, or by presenting an ideological perspective I found unpalatable.

So your complaints, on some level, are a reflection of your own ideas on the issue

In general, not at all. It's not for me to police the internet and decide what people should or shouldn't be reading.

I feel like you grossly misunderstand the purpose of these sorts of discussions
If I talk to my friend about how a local restaurant ought to start listing vegetarian and non vegetarian dishes, I'm not attempting to police restaurants and deciding what people should and should not eat. I'm merely stating what I feel to be true. If enough people feel this way about it, the restaurant has a choice between accepting this idea or losing customers to a restaurant that will appropriately label their vegetarian dishes. No website should be getting their panties in a bunch over a 5 page thread, and I think it's absurd to suggest that anyone here thinks they will.

Okay, this is one of several points that provoked my "bad faith" comment. I know from your posting history that you have spent time in the Gamer Gate threads, including the mega thread. From your tone and the people you choose to debate, I'm relatively certain I know which side of the debate you land on. I know you're aware of the existence of a media blacklist, and I know you're aware there have been calls to drum people out of the industry. I know you're one of the major reasons for that call is a presumed "ideological bias" in the media, and that the ideology in question is "liberal". I know you're aware that there have been calls to have people fired, to crumble websites, to "go to war".

Lets break this down

I know from your posting history that you have spent time in the Gamer Gate threads, including the mega thread.

So have you, so has Zachary Amaranth, etc. etc. etc.
This is also irrelevant. We're discussing games media and not a twitter hashtag or the mega thread

From your tone and the people you choose to debate, I'm relatively certain I know which side of the debate you land on.

Please elaborate. Am I not allowed to argue with certain people on the forums without being placed in a certain box? I wasn't aware of the existence of sacred political cows

I know you're aware of the existence of a media blacklist, and I know you're aware there have been calls to drum people out of the industry.

By some, yes. In some cases they're for reasons that have been used as grounds for termination very recently. This, however is also irrelevant to the topic at hand

I know you're one of the major reasons for that call is a presumed "ideological bias" in the media, and that the ideology in question is "liberal".

Would you like to explain why liberals and flat-out Marxists are attempting to drum "liberals" out of the games media?
If you'd like to know my political affiliation, I can grant that as well. I can guarantee I'm not a Stephen Harper supporter (I'm Canadian). I don't see how it should be relevant overall however

As for crumbling websites, there are definitely people who want some of these websites to go away entirely. Many of these people held these opinions before August. I don't really believe that these people have the power to actually make these sites go away, and from what I've seen most people would rather that the sites improved in quality and included a set of checks and balances to ensure that nobody runs rampant or ruins the already sketchy reputation of the publication by writing about a lover, patron or roommate.

I'm not going to data mine 1600 pages of thread to provide you quotes. I'm sure you're a lovely guy, but my investment in proving this point to you does not run that deep. You can dismiss it all you want on grounds of insufficient evidence, if that is your preference. Burden of proof is on me, and I'm unwilling to provide it, because it's a lot of fucking effort for something that ultimately doesn't matter very much to either of us. If you wish to characterize me as a fabulist, you may do so. I know what I read. There is a reason for my rancor on this issue.

It matters only to the extent that it's distracting from the core conversation. You later talk about me wading in here "swinging" but your response for the past few posts has been to try to implicitly label me in some way when it has nothing to do with the discussion. This isn't really easy to see as a non-hostile action, particularly with the number of attempts at ad hominem based on political affiliation strewn about these discussions

There's a reviewer named Tom Chick. He's been plying his trade in this industry for a long time. He's known for a couple of things...idiosyncratic taste in games, and a propensity for being honest whilst employing his entire 5 point scale. He often gives popular games he didn't enjoy bad scores, most famously Deus Ex. He is LOATHED for it. On this website, a year or two ago, there was a thread discussing his review of some Halo game or other. He was called a troll and a malingerer, a clickbaiter and an attention whore. Some people don't like "honest". Some people like confirmation of their existing beliefs. Quite frequently when someone charges a review with being "too biased", what they mean is "too not what I believe".

These things will always be said, but that does not invalidate the conversation. Feel absolutely free to call out instances like that for discussion. I would say, personally, that a number of these instances stem from a severe lack of trust, which is both a combination of the appearance of wrongdoing and the lack of transparency that permeates basically everything in the games industry and surrounding landscape

That's fine, as long as you acknowledge this isn't any more reliable than Alexa. If I offered up "my own experiences" or "word of mouth" to contradict your beliefs on this subject I highly doubt you'd put any stock in them.

Except the claim is simply that "people are leaving". I posted on RPS as Beemann a grand total of twice. I read the site for about 6 months to a year and I tend to post quite actively on sites I visit regularly (I'll probably pick up the pace further on the escapist once I spread out to more boards)
If you check RPS, you wont find posts from me on there from about the time of the Skullgirls review onwards. This is because I don't visit. I talk to people who share their browsing habits for the purposes of highlighting quality sites. I have no reason to believe that they're sneaking back for a quickie with John Walker's rants. It may be that the abundance of clickbait is causing a spike in traffic, but that doesn't prove that people are not leaving these sites.

As far as bulk users go, the only thing available is the pulling of ads. I don't recall making a comment about everyone leaving though, just that these sites were unnecessarily losing users. If I made a qualitative statement concerning website traffic (aside from the 10% boost that Archon posted about) that's my bad

I'm referring to Gamer Gate in general. The commonly accepted narrative is that Gamer Gate "won", and that the sites who wronged them were devastated and bleeding customers. I've never seen any concrete evidence to support that.

I've never seen this claimed outside of jokes and shills. The hastag is still rolling along and has been for months now. It doesn't seem like anyone has "won" to me

Yes, I attributed a sympathetic if not wholly involved stance in Gamer Gate to you. That was unfair of me.

Totalbiscuit, Eric Kain, Boogie2988, Christina Hoff Sommers, Alexander Macris, Intel, Kraft, Mercedez Benz etc. all believe in an evil liberal conspiracy?

Yes, a quick Google search confirms this to be true. I'm certainly not married to Alexa, the first time I even used it was when I Googled something along the lines of "site traffic" when wanting to see if sites really were taking it on the nose. If there a better tool, I'll happily use the better tool.

That's certainly valid, however my point was not that it was not definitive proof that there has been no issue with the readership of the sites in question. I would trust companies like Intel to be more unbiased about who they support moreso than I'd trust easily gamed metrics.

My OP, despite hanging on a particular interpretation of the terms...one employed almost universally through the thread up to that point...was not unreasonable. Yes, I exhibited astonishment that there was even debate. I also clarified my opinion and provided context. Your response to this was to wade in swinging and say I was being "absurd". I was already in a bad mood due to the poor judgment I showed earlier in the day reading the contents of a variety of Gamer Gate threads on the Off-Topic Forum, so I was not in the mood to be snotted at about semantics. Things devolved from there.

Your tone suggested more than astonishment, and it took several posts for you to fully list the context of your statements, and another few to admit that not everyone might be posting from the same perspective. I don't really see how you don't perceive your own actions as deciding to "wade in swinging"

The unfortunate thing is I've actually tried to stay relatively moderate in this debate (not THIS debate, but the GG debate), and clearly I'm becoming a bit polarized myself if I'm reacting THAT aggressively to perceived agenda. I need to take a break from reading this shit.

I think after ~50 days of madness a break is a perfectly acceptable thing. I'll be around should you wish to continue any discussion on this issue.

 

[Fishyash]

I strongly object to this attitude of "you should only review games of genres you like and have extensive experience with".

If you normally don't enjoy platformers, and people who normally never enjoy platformers never review them, how would you ever be encouraged to broaden your horizons when someone with similar tastes as yours finds a game they actually like? I don't normally enjoy racing games, but I've still encountered some that where really fun.

By your review requirements a reviewer should only play games of genres they like, and games with broader appeal should never be reviewed by anyone who's not already likely to be a fan.

I mean if Yahtzee played a JRPG even he had to admit was fun I would be much more likely to check out. Even though I had my fill of JRPG's after FFX (which I found, for the most part, quite fun).

Hey, I'm not telling anyone what games they should review. There's clearly a place for critics who review games of genres they don't like. Hell, you explained it to yourself. I'm just stating whose opinion I would trust more.

It's not the bias alone, as I said before, the more important part is the experience. You can still hate a genre yet be very experienced in it. Your opinion will come across as well informed, although probably lacking in passion. The problem is most people who are biased against a genre tend to be not very well versed in it, and it comes across as very ignorant looking.

Let's say a new racing game came out: One critic, who adores racing games and plays lots of them, rates it a 2/5. Another critic, who doesn't really like racing games, he's only played 3 others, he rates it 5/5.
It doesn't matter what I think of racing games, I'm going to trust the person who rated it 2/5 more, and it will influence my decision on whether getting the game or not. Of course, this assumes both critics are up to the same quality standards in their writing.

 

[MerlinCross]

You want to know why he reviewed games with sexualization but didn't bring it up then? Because clearly he didn't get bothered by it then.

I'd buy that, if he reviewed said games like hmmm maybe a year ago or more. If he did it within weeks, I'd probably raise an eyebrow.

This is a guess. At time of writing, haven't looked at the reviewer's history so I don't know. Maybe go do that now.

 

[Erttheking]

You want to know why he reviewed games with sexualization but didn't bring it up then? Because clearly he didn't get bothered by it then.

I'd buy that, if he reviewed said games like hmmm maybe a year ago or more. If he did it within weeks, I'd probably raise an eyebrow.

This is a guess. At time of writing, haven't looked at the reviewer's history so I don't know. Maybe go do that now.

Things don't exist in a vacuum. Sometimes you can hate something in one situation and love it in another. Normally I hate rape jokes, but just a couple days ago I laughed my ass off at a rape joke in South Park.

 

[MerlinCross]

Things don't exist in a vacuum. Sometimes you can hate something in one situation and love it in another. Normally I hate rape jokes, but just a couple days ago I laughed my ass off at a rape joke in South Park.

So if to give an example, I can like the sexualiztion in DoA but hate it in Bayonetta 2 and not be called out on it or be called a hypocrite? Side note this is an example, don't know if the reviewer plays or even knows of DoA. Other thing, I couldn't varify that one guy's claim of the reviewer playing even more sexualized games so this might be a moot point by now.

 

[Erttheking]

Things don't exist in a vacuum. Sometimes you can hate something in one situation and love it in another. Normally I hate rape jokes, but just a couple days ago I laughed my ass off at a rape joke in South Park.

So if to give an example, I can like the sexualiztion in DoA but hate it in Bayonetta 2 and not be called out on it or be called a hypocrite? Side note this is an example, don't know if the reviewer plays or even knows of DoA. Other thing, I couldn't varify that one guy's claim of the reviewer playing even more sexualized games so this might be a moot point by now.

So long as the reason that you said you hated it in DoA was that you just think boobs are never appropriate then no, you're not a hypocrite. To be honest Bayonetta just does more with it's sexualization and in clever ways. In DoA it's just kinda there.

 

[BloatedGuppy]

Your initial contribution to the thread was dismissal and condescension.

I disagree. I apologize if you felt the tone was condescending. Tone is difficult to read. Go back and read some of your replies to Zachary whatsit. Do you think you strike a condescending tone? Yes, no? Do you think telling me I have "reading comprehension" problems indicates a calm and measured form of discussion? I've admitted I've been combative. It would be nice to hear a similar admission from you.

Your responses made heavy use of shaming language and attribution of ideology.

Please define "heavy use of shaming language" and provide quotes for substantiation, because I absolutely do not see that. I'd genuinely like to know what you are referring to.

Comments about political affiliation coming out of left field and used to bolster further condescension does nothing to promote any sort of discussion.

Gamer Gate has become a politicized discussion. I already apologized for this. I'm not entirely sure why you are piling on, unless you started replying without reading in full. I've done that many times myself.

So your complaints, on some level, are a reflection of your own ideas on the issue

Perils of this short form quote discussion, but I'm not actually certain what "complaints" you're referring to. My initial foray into this thread was to rebut complaints, not issue complaints, save the one about outright removal of voices from the discussion.

If I talk to my friend about how a local restaurant ought to start listing vegetarian and non vegetarian dishes, I'm not attempting to police restaurants and deciding what people should and should not eat. I'm merely stating what I feel to be true. If enough people feel this way about it, the restaurant has a choice between accepting this idea or losing customers to a restaurant that will appropriately label their vegetarian dishes. No website should be getting their panties in a bunch over a 5 page thread, and I think it's absurd to suggest that anyone here thinks they will.

There's that absurdity again. You've been on this website for...90 posts now? 100? I've been here for years. I've been here through Fake Gamer Girls, through the rise of Anita Sarkeesian threads, through the explosion of the "SJW" bogeyman, and more. People can, and do, make those sort of assertions all the time. This is also a single five page thread on the issue. There have been a pair of 1,000 odd page threads replete with website black lists and calls for mailing campaigns to smother sponsor support for particular websites. Whether websites 'get their panties in a bunch' is not really related to my statement. My statement is that I don't feel I'm the arbiter of what should and shouldn't be allowed as criticism in gaming. Other people clearly feel differently. If I started a blacklist and attempted to smother a website off the internet because I disapproved of it, I'd be removing that voice for everyone, not just myself.

Please elaborate. Am I not allowed to argue with certain people on the forums without being placed in a certain box? I wasn't aware of the existence of sacred political cows

I'm not "putting you in a box". If I make 50 pro-Christian posts on a website, and you saw them, and supposed I was Christian (I'm not, just an example), it would be rather needlessly churlish of me to slap your face and accuse you of "putting me in a box". If I'm incorrect about your stance on a given issue just correct it and move on. I also have no idea what "sacred political cows" you are referring to, or insinuating I referred to.

By some, yes. In some cases they're for reasons that have been used as grounds for termination very recently. This, however is also irrelevant to the topic at hand.

How are they "irrelevant" to the question of determining what should or shouldn't be allowed as criticism? I made the statement there are people who believe journalists should be fired for holding certain beliefs and allowing them to influence reviews. You have labelled that statement "absurd", and openly questioned whether anyone would ever do that. I'm becoming confused. Is this a miscommunication? And why does miscommunication keep coming up as a spelling error?

Would you like to explain why liberals and flat-out Marxists are attempting to drum "liberals" out of the games media?

Marxists? What?

If you'd like to know my political affiliation, I can grant that as well. I can guarantee I'm not a Stephen Harper supporter (I'm Canadian). I don't see how it should be relevant overall however.

Hey, good to know. I'm also Canadian.

It's relevant insofar as the dialogue around Gamer Gate, and this subsequent discussion of "objective reviews" (recently raised in that recent "girls of Gamer Gate" video), has been highly politicized for weeks now. If someone is coming at it from a political, entrenched perspective, it is going to hamper effective communication. However, as previously stated, I've already apologized for assuming a particular political affiliation for you.

As for crumbling websites, there are definitely people who want some of these websites to go away entirely.

Yes they do. And in many cases the supposed "corruption" being discussed is that they are "SJW journos" pushing liberal agendas and using their websites as pulpits. I'm totally behind someone saying "I don't like this, I'll never visit again". I'm not behind "Let's cut off their sponsorships and kill their websites, these people should be fired".

Many of these people held these opinions before August. I don't really believe that these people have the power to actually make these sites go away

Whether they can or not is rather irrelevant. The crux of our disagreement is I said there are people who wanted that, and you disagreed and demanded attribution and direct quotes.

It matters only to the extent that it's distracting from the core conversation. You later talk about me wading in here "swinging" but your response for the past few posts has been to try to implicitly label me in some way when it has nothing to do with the discussion. This isn't really easy to see as a non-hostile action, particularly with the number of attempts at ad hominem based on political affiliation strewn about these discussions

I'm not sure where you read ad-hominem, but I'm also not sure where you read "shaming language". Did I call you names? Did I undercut you personally? Did I say you lacked reading comprehension, for example?

These things will always be said, but that does not invalidate the conversation. Feel absolutely free to call out instances like that for discussion. I would say, personally, that a number of these instances stem from a severe lack of trust, which is both a combination of the appearance of wrongdoing and the lack of transparency that permeates basically everything in the games industry and surrounding landscape

There is a severe lack of trust stemming a presumption of back room deals leading to manipulated scores, yes. When people throw a fit over their favorite game getting a 3/5 instead of the 10/10 they insist it deserves, I don't read that as a lack of trust. I read it as a confirmation bias going unfulfilled.

Except the claim is simply that "people are leaving".

Sure, and without any other context or data it's a completely disinteresting claim. They could be leaving for any of a vast myriad of reasons.

I play a lot of MMOs. MMOs often suffer player shed, often quite rapidly. When this happens, you will have a long line up of people telling you exactly why everyone is leaving, and the reason is always their individual pet hate. The reality is that the reasons are always multi-factoral, and no one outside the individuals themselves and possibly the people parsing their feedback have the foggiest notion what is going on. You know as well as I do that humans like to shape events they witness to fit a narrative they form in their heads, and it's often a narrative they prefer. In this case, the narrative is websites being punished for their transgressions.

As far as bulk users go, the only thing available is the pulling of ads. I don't recall making a comment about everyone leaving though, just that these sites were unnecessarily losing users.

A question arises about which users, and why. I don't doubt they ARE losing users, they made some very polarizing arguments that made it abundantly clear that a certain stripe of user was no longer welcome. Total Biscuit, a supporter of Gamer Gate, has done the same thing...many times...rounding on his audience for their behavior, banning people for their comments, and eventually locking down discussion entirely outside of Reddit because he was "sick of idiots". He's lost viewers because of those actions.

Rock Paper Shotgun was quite frank about acknowledging that their "We're going to talk about feminism in gaming whenever we want" policy was going to cost them viewers. They evidently were prepared to lose said viewers. I don't know if you remember the comments on those articles before they were locked down, but some of those viewers were probably happy losses. As a person who once visited their site more regularly, I wish they'd given as much attention to keeping quality content on the site as they have to their wearisome punditry, but if wishes were horses...

I've never seen this claimed outside of jokes and shills. The hastag is still rolling along and has been for months now. It doesn't seem like anyone has "won" to me

How, exactly, do you determine a "shill"? God, I was in a thread just the other day where someone was stating that Gamer Gate had "already met all its victory conditions". It would be one of the multitude on Off-Topic. He also made some dire utterings about things becoming more violent, or something along those lines. Was that a joke? Was he a shill? How would you even know?

Totalbiscuit, Eric Kain, Boogie2988, Christina Hoff Sommers, Alexander Macris, Intel, Kraft, Mercedez Benz etc. all believe in an evil liberal conspiracy?

Few things...

1) A lot of advertisers just like to avoid controversy, period.
2) I don't know Total Biscuit personally, I have no idea what his beliefs are or aren't.
3) Christa Hoff Sommers is a member of a right wing political think tank (The American Enterprise Institute...and "right wing think tank" is their language, not mine). She rambled about "Hippy liberal art majors" among other naked pejoratives in her video on the subject (while affecting the most condescending sneer I've ever heard, I cannot imagine you would approve). I don't know her either, but I think there is sufficient evidence available to suggest we can be relatively assured of her political affiliation and views on the subject.
4) I don't know who these other people are.
5) No Milo Yannopolous? No Adam Baldwin? They're part of the discussion too, and have been quite frank about their opinions on the subject.
6) As I've said many times before, Gamer Gate is diffuse and there is no singular collective belief. Radical right-wing politics is most certainly a voice in the discussion, however. One of my favorite quotes from this forum on the subject was "You brought your politics into it, so we brought ours". Tit for tat, eye for an eye. Summarizes the tone of the entire debate nicely. However I DIGRESS I know you don't want to discuss Gamer Gate. I just think it's disingenuous to pretend it isn't a huge part of why this thread exists, and isn't informing the discussion.

That's certainly valid, however my point was not that it was not definitive proof that there has been no issue with the readership of the sites in question. I would trust companies like Intel to be more unbiased about who they support moreso than I'd trust easily gamed metrics.

Unbiased how? Intel has a single motivation, which is profit. We can't know what Intel's reasoning was or wasn't without a statement from them. Did we get one?

Your tone suggested more than astonishment, and it took several posts for you to fully list the context of your statements, and another few to admit that not everyone might be posting from the same perspective. I don't really see how you don't perceive your own actions as deciding to "wade in swinging".

I've freely admitted I was being combative. Again, not sure what the point is of piling on. If someone concedes a point do you traditionally continue to raise it?

I think after ~50 days of madness a break is a perfectly acceptable thing. I'll be around should you wish to continue any discussion on this issue.

That's fine, I'll continue talking to you, in this thread, provided we can keep the tone relatively conversational and accusation-lite.

 

[BloatedGuppy]

Let's say a new platformer came out: One critic, who adores racing games and plays lots of them, rates it a 2/5. Another critic, who doesn't really like racing games, he's only played 3 others, he rates it 5/5.

It doesn't matter what I think of racing games, I'm going to trust the person who rated it 2/5 more, and it will influence my decision on whether getting the game or not. Of course, this assumes both critics are up to the same quality standards in their writing.

Here's a more interesting dilemma for you...what if the fan of racers gives it 5/5, and the non-fan of racers gives it 1/5, and both raise salient points?

Fans can be just as problematic when it comes to giving quality feedback as haters. I dislike the term "fanboy" because it poisons the well, but there is little question that affection will color perception just as readily as dislike.

This is part of the reason why I actually LIKE review aggregate sites like Metacritic. I can sample a cross section of reviews from a variety of people to get a more coherent overall picture. To this extent, I'm very much in favor of a multitude of voices with varying perspectives, barring 1/10 score-bombs and 10/10 score-plumpers.

 

[MerlinCross]

This is part of the reason why I actually LIKE review aggregate sites like Metacritic. I can sample a cross section of reviews from a variety of people to get a more coherent overall picture. To this extent, I'm very much in favor of a multitude of voices with varying perspectives, barring 1/10 score-bombs and 10/10 score-plumpers.

This is something I could actually get behind. 2 reviews from 2 different people, maybe pulled randomly from the staff. This way we get 2 different views on the game, possibly good, bad, and any combination. Granted, most reviews tend to be written the week the game comes out unless they get a press copy, and even then timetables are a pain to deal with. So I'd like it, probably too much of a hassle to set up for the reviewers.

 

[Scootinfroodie]

I disagree. I apologize if you felt the tone was condescending. Tone is difficult to read. Go back and read some of your replies to Zachary whatsit. Do you think you strike a condescending tone? Yes, no? Do you think telling me I have "reading comprehension" problems indicates a calm and measured form of discussion? I've admitted I've been combative. It would be nice to hear a similar admission from you.

I extend the same invitation to you that you did to me. I wont deny being combative, but my goal in this is to call out what are necessarily bad faith arguments, whether or not they're ones you and Zachary meant to make. I don't feel that I shouldn't be when people's statements are dismissed out of hand as being conspiracy theories and attacks on liberalism

Please define "heavy use of shaming language" and provide quotes for substantiation, because I absolutely do not see that. I'd genuinely like to know what you are referring to.

I cannot believe this goes three pages. There is no such thing as an "unbiased" or objective review. The very concept of it is absurd

Implication of incredulity at people's interest in a subject

Notably, they seem particularly incensed at the idea of beliefs they do not share being espoused, or a game receiving a score they do not agree with.

Misappropriation of statements to imply suggestions of widespread censorship. Implication that it is a partisan issue

I have a hard time believing it too, but there you have it.

In response to

I have a hard time believing that "a lot" of people are dumb enough to believe that you can keep things "off teh interwebs"

Explicitly labeling people who want to discuss this issue as being dumb, further misappropriation

Well that is certainly your prerogative. People are often given to doubt the existence of inconvenient reality.

Purely exits for condescension

That said, some people have been pretty clear about their belief that 'biased reviews' should not exist, that journalists who engage in them should be fired, that "media corruption" equates to "having an ideology", etc, etc, etc.

Further misappropriation to the extent that a rather visible strawman has been created. Is there a purpose to this sentence other than to mock people who don't agree with you based on a separate context of the terms being used that you yourself choose to use?

Oh god, are they part of the social justice liberal media conspiracy too?

Implication that mentioning flaws in a website's management and/or stat tracking is akin to a conspiracy theory. Term already has negative connotations associated with 9-11 truthers, UFO chasers etc.
Reason given for comparison is

a sympathetic if not wholly involved stance in Gamergate

Implication is that anyone who has this stance believes in "the social justice liberal media conspiracy" which includes the names I mentioned.

Yep. That's "all I've done", and the entire summation of my argument can be boiled down to two statements. Good faith discussion. Really enjoying it.

Further misappropriation to bolster implied "bad faith" reasons for my having this discussion

Then you have a whole paragraph where you go on about Gamergate and my supposed position in it, and in doing so avoid giving a straight answer. You then suggest that a wider conversation on twitter is where I'll find these quotes, ignoring that this wasn't mentioned at any point prior, and that contextually accusations of calls for censorship were leveled at the people posting in this thread

This isn't getting into how these things affect the tone of what you say, and how other statements contribute to that overall feeling. These are simply statements that, on their own, serve no purpose other than to shame people and/or get angry

Gamer Gate has become a politicized discussion. I already apologized for this. I'm not entirely sure why you are piling on, unless you started replying without reading in full. I've done that many times myself.

I'm responding to individual things said. If you didn't keep mentioning these things, I'd have no reason to respond to them. Additionally, this is not a gamergate discussion

Perils of this short form quote discussion, but I'm not actually certain what "complaints" you're referring to. My initial foray into this thread was to rebut complaints, not issue complaints, save the one about outright removal of voices from the discussion.

You complain about what you see as an attempt at removing "liberals" from the media, when that hasn't actually been suggested. A separation between reviews/news and politics isn't removal of politics, because those ideological pieces can still exist as properly labeled editorials.

There's that absurdity again. You've been on this website for...90 posts now? 100? I've been here for years. I've been here through Fake Gamer Girls, through the rise of Anita Sarkeesian threads, through the explosion of the "SJW" bogeyman, and more. People can, and do, make those sort of assertions all the time. This is also a single five page thread on the issue. There have been a pair of 1,000 odd page threads replete with website black lists and calls for mailing campaigns to smother sponsor support for particular websites. Whether websites 'get their panties in a bunch' is not really related to my statement. My statement is that I don't feel I'm the arbiter of what should and shouldn't be allowed as criticism in gaming. Other people clearly feel differently. If I started a blacklist and attempted to smother a website off the internet because I disapproved of it, I'd be removing that voice for everyone, not just myself.

This isn't my first escapist account. My old one was attached to some pretty outdated stuff and rather than root through and try to reactivate old email accounts, I created a new one. I've been a lurker for years

Additionally, we're not talking about the entire history of this site, but rather this thread.

As for the points made, you can call the "SJW" thing a bogeyman, but Atheism+ actually did happen. There are people who are manipulative and who seek power under the guise of the benefit of the group. This isn't a new concept, but rather the newest iteration. People are accusing Miss Sarkeesian and a number of others of being part of this long-running trend in human behaviour. It's obviously not the most severe, but it *is* close enough to the ground that they can affect it in some way

As for blacklists and emailing sponsors, those are legitimate methods of consumer complaint. It is equally valid to complain about the removal of support and show solidarity with those whose actions are being protested. Additionally, getting rid of a website's funding doesn't equate to eliminating an entire voice. Instead, it's a way of reducing the volume of the megaphone they have. Games journalists were not mute prior to the formation of these sites, and other sites have sprung up to hire *more* writers to fill the gaps these sites have willingly left.

I'm not "putting you in a box". If I make 50 pro-Christian posts on a website, and you saw them, and supposed I was Christian (I'm not, just an example), it would be rather needlessly churlish of me to slap your face and accuse you of "putting me in a box". If I'm incorrect about your stance on a given issue just correct it and move on. I also have no idea what "sacred political cows" you are referring to, or insinuating I referred to.

Can you point out where I made the equivalent of "50 pro-Christian posts"? The sacred cows comment refers to your statement about "who" I decided to confront

How are they "irrelevant" to the question of determining what should or shouldn't be allowed as criticism? I made the statement there are people who believe journalists should be fired for holding certain beliefs and allowing them to influence reviews. You have labelled that statement "absurd", and openly questioned whether anyone would ever do that. I'm becoming confused. Is this a miscommunication? And why does miscommunication keep coming up as a spelling error?

The topic at hand is about objectivity/avoidance of bias in reviews, not "should Leigh Alexander be canned?"
Additionally, holding beliefs is not the same thing as directly attacking people on social media and on the website that employs you, and espousing beliefs can be done in a professional manner. Additionally, some of the calls for people to be fired are tied to CoI's, not necessarily what they've written in itself.

Marxists? What?

There are people on several boards who self identify as actual honest-to-god Marxists.
That's pretty left wing if you ask me.
iirc a number of them were annoyed at the notion of people referring to "SJW's" as cultural marxists. A number of feminists are equally pissed about these people calling themselves feminists. There's a pretty broad spectrum of issues and ideologies at play, and it's really interesting watching non-hierarchical organization occur from an anti authoritarian perspective

I don't consider the political compass thing to be definitive evidence, but that exists, and a large number of left leaning/SJ-minded folks exist on the pro-GG side because they don't view "SJW's" as being honest actual contributors to social justice. There's definitely some brand promotion involved, but it's important to note that it's coming from a number of causes. The political right just seems to get the most attention for doing so (which, hilariously, boosts their reach)

Hey, good to know. I'm also Canadian.

It's relevant insofar as the dialogue around Gamer Gate, and this subsequent discussion of "objective reviews" (recently raised in that recent "girls of Gamer Gate" video), has been highly politicized for weeks now. If someone is coming at it from a political, entrenched perspective, it is going to hamper effective communication. However, as previously stated, I've already apologized for assuming a particular political affiliation for you.

The conversation isn't about Gamergate.
This conversation could, should, and arguably would, still exist if there wasn't a giant twitter war going on

As for the girls of gamergate video, I wish there were more people with interview/public speaking experience being interviewed. I understood where they were coming from and I admire their passion for the subject, but they were all over the place and many of their statements were explicitly heat-of-the-moment

Also note that reference to previous political attribution, as well as a few other arguments, are here for clarification. I respond chunk-by-chunk after reading through the whole post as it's far easier to organize and clarify, even if it does lead to some level of redundancy. Some questions utterly necessitate reference to prior posts

Yes they do. And in many cases the supposed "corruption" being discussed is that they are "SJW journos" pushing liberal agendas and using their websites as pulpits. I'm totally behind someone saying "I don't like this, I'll never visit again". I'm not behind "Let's cut off their sponsorships and kill their websites, these people should be fired".

Can you list a website where the only reason for cutting off ad revenue has been a "liberal agenda"? RPS, Gamasutra, Polygon and Kotaku were part of the "gamers are dead" fiasco, and Kotaku has had several reported instances of CoI's. I'm also fairly certain that advocating a "violent" cultural uprising against "hood men" is not a typical liberal thought process, and that's one of the big things Gamasutra's Editor at Large, Leigh Alexander, is being called out for.
It honestly feels like you're oversimplifying the matter. The small group of people who would like to see political opponents shamed and defeated have no power on their own. They cling to the larger movement to achieve their goals much like a number of people/groups did with OWS. The difference here is that they haven't been derailing the movement

In any case, this is getting drastically off-topic. I'd welcome a shift in venue (PMs or the GG megathread) if you'd like to continue discussing gamergate itself.

Whether they can or not is rather irrelevant. The crux of our disagreement is I said there are people who wanted that, and you disagreed and demanded attribution and direct quotes.

I disagree that the sentiment exists within the thread. I'd also suggest that an opinion existing somewhere on the internet doesn't necessarily make it prime discussion material. We needn't talk about the "Flat Earther dilemna"

I'm not sure where you read ad-hominem, but I'm also not sure where you read "shaming language". Did I call you names? Did I undercut you personally? Did I say you lacked reading comprehension, for example?

I didn't say the entirety of your argument was undercut by what appeared to be a lapse in reading comprehension, whereas your prior attempts to paint me politically and ascribe the title of "conspiracy theorist" have been used multiple times in these sorts of discussions to write someone off for their political affiliations. In fact, the attribution of the label of conspiracy theorist, when not appropriately explained, can absolutely be an example of ad hominem

There is a severe lack of trust stemming a presumption of back room deals leading to manipulated scores, yes. When people throw a fit over their favorite game getting a 3/5 instead of the 10/10 they insist it deserves, I don't read that as a lack of trust. I read it as a confirmation bias going unfulfilled.

It depends on the rationale. I don't see why I should trust people to suggest products to me if, say, they show that they absolutely do not understand a particular product. That line, however, is drawn on an individual level. On the other hand, should enough individuals have that issue, I see no problem with them complaining to the website.

Sure, and without any other context or data it's a completely disinteresting claim. They could be leaving for any of a vast myriad of reasons.

Until they state the reasons why they're leaving
I, for one, left because John Walker's endless, poorly researched tirades got on my nerves. This was exacerbated by other similarly poor articles and visible disdain for opposing viewpoints in the comments section. John Walker has every right to use his space as a soapbox and wail at his readership, but if that's all RPS will be, I won't exactly mourn its eventual passing

Similarly, the one-sided moderation of discussions on Gamasutra and the slow but steady promotion of clickbait blogposts convinced me to leave before things got any worse.

I play a lot of MMOs. MMOs often suffer player shed, often quite rapidly. When this happens, you will have a long line up of people telling you exactly why everyone is leaving, and the reason is always their individual pet hate. The reality is that the reasons are always multi-factoral, and no one outside the individuals themselves and possibly the people parsing their feedback have the foggiest notion what is going on. You know as well as I do that humans like to shape events they witness to fit a narrative they form in their heads, and it's often a narrative they prefer. In this case, the narrative is websites being punished for their transgressions.

Except the loss in readership I'm referring to has been an ongoing process. Kotaku visibly went from being just another gaming site to being regarded as a joke. RPS hasn't exactly avoided this same fate. Polygon, I feel, is the most likely to redeem itself of the 4 sites in question as it isn't dependent on clickbait, isn't there to purely be a soapbox, and also because Crecente is a boss

A question arises about which users, and why. I don't doubt they ARE losing users, they made some very polarizing arguments that made it abundantly clear that a certain stripe of user was no longer welcome. Total Biscuit, a supporter of Gamer Gate, has done the same thing...many times...rounding on his audience for their behavior, banning people for their comments, and eventually locking down discussion entirely outside of Reddit because he was "sick of idiots". He's lost viewers because of those actions.

Sure, and if he decides to stop putting effort into his image as someone trustworthy and turns on his audience completely, I wouldn't expect a lot of them to stay. There are definitely a lot of people who (rightfully so) do not like TB, but they don't appear to be numerous or organized enough to do anything about it.

Rock Paper Shotgun was quite frank about acknowledging that their "We're going to talk about feminism in gaming whenever we want" policy was going to cost them viewers. They evidently were prepared to lose said viewers. I don't know if you remember the comments on those articles before they were locked down, but some of those viewers were probably happy losses. As a person who once visited their site more regularly, I wish they'd given as much attention to keeping quality content on the site as they have to their wearisome punditry, but if wishes were horses...

Honestly, after they clearly and distinctly goaded portions of their readership, I take whatever is said in the comments with a pretty hefty chunk of salt. It obviously doesn't justify what is said, but I at least know where it's coming from

How, exactly, do you determine a "shill"? God, I was in a thread just the other day where someone was stating that Gamer Gate had "already met all its victory conditions". It would be one of the multitude on Off-Topic. He also made some dire utterings about things becoming more violent, or something along those lines. Was that a joke? Was he a shill? How would you even know?

A common tactic on 4chan/8chan is to pretend to be on one side or the other of a particular issue, and use that to push a product or ideology. This happens less often on 8chan due to the fact that there are thread-specific ID strings but some people still don't understand this. If you frequent Anonymous Image Boards enough you start to be able to spot people who are insincere by the way they present their arguments. This isn't always a 100% accurate thing, but you can generally figure it out by attempting to calmly speak to them in a rational manner. They will generally change tactics on a dime, or attempt/spark a large freak-out
Basically posting while not attached to a username gives you a different perspective on how people present, respond to and share ideas.

1) A lot of advertisers just like to avoid controversy, period.

Yes, and what this shows is the reach of the controversy. Advertisers didn't back off due to Tropes Vs Women, after all.

2) I don't know Total Biscuit personally, I have no idea what his beliefs are or aren't.

He was a neutral up until about a week ago, when he decided he was pro-#gg

3) Christa Hoff Sommers is a member of a right wing political think tank (The American Enterprise Institute...and "right wing think tank" is their language, not mine). She rambled about "Hippy liberal art majors" among other naked pejoratives in her video on the subject (while affecting the most condescending sneer I've ever heard, I cannot imagine you would approve). I don't know her either, but I think there is sufficient evidence available to suggest we can be relatively assured of her political affiliation and views on the subject.

Poking fun at "hippies" != conspiracy theorist. AFAIK she's a registered democrat

4) I don't know who these other people are.

Erik Kain is a Forbes contributor http://www.forbes.com/sites/erikkain/
Alexander Macris is Archon, who is the co-founder of this site http://www.escapistmagazine.com/profiles/view/Archon
Erik Kain is neutral but involved, and has expressed sympathy for gamers on the #GG side
Archon has posted in the #GG thread, wrote the new set of standards, made reading suggestions on the topic of Cultural Marxism, and discussed the meaning of the term gamer in the set of standards. I don't know that he's taken a definitive position (other than "I like having gamers as readers for the gaming focused section of a site I manage), but he has made a number of entertaining comments on the issue
Boogie2988 is a youtube personality with a fairly large following. You may know him as "Francis"

5) No Milo Yannopolous? No Adam Baldwin? They're part of the discussion too, and have been quite frank about their opinions on the subject.

They're not relevant to the point that I made (though I don't think Milo is a conspiracy theorist, just a bit melodramatic), which is that GG sympathy != belief in a conspiracy

6) As I've said many times before, Gamer Gate is diffuse and there is no singular collective belief. Radical right-wing politics is most certainly a voice in the discussion, however. One of my favorite quotes from this forum on the subject was "You brought your politics into it, so we brought ours". Tit for tat, eye for an eye. Summarizes the tone of the entire debate nicely. However I DIGRESS I know you don't want to discuss Gamer Gate. I just think it's disingenuous to pretend it isn't a huge part of why this thread exists, and isn't informing the discussion.

I never said there was a collective belief. There are definitely people who want to bring politics into this
And I never denied that people were utilizing Gamergate and the events surrounding it in this discussion, I've simply criticized it.

Unbiased how? Intel has a single motivation, which is profit. We can't know what Intel's reasoning was or wasn't without a statement from them. Did we get one?

http://newsroom.intel.com/community/intel_newsroom/blog/2014/10/03/chip-shot-intel-issues-statement-on-gamasutra-advertising

Basically "We don't want to take sides, but we had a lot of complaints and so we decided the smart move was to remove ourselves entirely"

As for your response to Fishyash, I think the point ought to be expertise and not "being a fan"
While getting a "newbie" perspective is still important, as it stands the majority of prominent reviewers are perpetual "noobs".
I feel that this piece from gatheryourparty does a decent job describing this phenomenon
http://www.gatheryourparty.com/2014/07/16/tripping-on-air-why-game-journalists-cant-describe-games/

 

[BloatedGuppy]

It honestly feels like you're oversimplifying the matter.

It honestly feels like I'm trying to drive discussion back to my original post, and why I said what I did. You and I are spinning in circles arguing two points:

1) What definition of "objective" is being discussed.
2) Whether or not the events of Gamer Gate and what people have said and done in the throes of that debate have bearing on this discussion.

So, we can keep talking past one another, or we can try and settle the discussion down.

If you mean "BIAS" in the sense that someone is delivered a compromised review for undisclosed reasons, I absolutely agree that's BAD and should be condemned.

If you mean "BIAS" in the sense that the reviewer brings their beliefs and perspectives into the review, I absolutely assert that's FINE and should be accepted.

The question of whether or not it makes for GOOD JOURNALISM will depend on the writer in question. As an abstract idea, it's FINE.

On GAMER GATE.

I get the sense you want this to be a hermetic discussion about "biased reviews", completely free of the baggage of the wider discussion taking place around it. Although this isn't your thread, you've attempted to exert control at numerous steps over what the discussion is or isn't about. You appear to prefer an abstract discussion of bias in journalism, I am having an emotional discussion that is entirely informed by and a reaction to the debate consuming these forums for the last two months. Not on the same page. I'd gone through and responded to most if not all of the mega-reply before this, but I've snipped it all. This is what it boils down to.

I also expect we're on slightly different sides of an ideological divide, but that's just a suspicion, informed by the general tenor of the discussion.

PS - On "conspiracies". Would a website covertly manipulating traffic to puff up left wing websites and sink right wing websites not constitute a "conspiracy"? Because that sounds like the literal definition of a conspiracy to me.

PPS - On Hoff Sommers. Sneering at your opposite number in a debate and hand waving them as liberal arts hippies and sensitivity police is not "poking fun". It's the exact kind of condescending "bad faith" argument you're actively attacking. It's particularly embarrassing when it forms the crux of one's argument and one bills oneself as "factual".

In any case, this is getting drastically off-topic. I'd welcome a shift in venue (PMs or the GG megathread) if you'd like to continue discussing gamergate itself.

We should probably adjourn to PM's regardless, we are fucking up this thread properly. The length of the posts was getting comical.

As for your response to Fishyash, I think the point ought to be expertise and not "being a fan".

Yes and no. There is definitely room and an audience for "expert opinions" and deep analysis. But there are also people who play and enjoy games casually, and may prefer a more surface analysis. Reviews shouldn't necessarily be rated by the degree to which they appeal to grognards.

I feel that this piece from gatheryourparty does a decent job describing this phenomenon
http://www.gatheryourparty.com/2014/07/16/tripping-on-air-why-game-journalists-cant-describe-games/

Interesting article, but something really jumped out at me.

Spoiler

Some academics have criticized this, claiming it is shallow, and we need more criticism of games and less mere reviews. These academics are correct, but more frequently than not what they mean by ?criticism? of the game isn?t discussion of how the mechanics operate to create a fun, interactive experience, but rather analysis of the cultural significance of the game, how interactive functions are used for a narrative resonance, or the message the game is supposed to convey. Yet the problem remains that when I read the typical game review, I have no ability to tell from their writing whether the game is good or not and I am forced to rely on my friends or longer segments of gameplay footage to help give me an idea how the game actually works, and feels to play.

No shit. That's not what reviews are for. "Good" is not an objective assessment, and cannot be determined by a metric. I see this crop up a lot. "XX game got 9/10...I played it, and it wasn't good. That was a terrible review!"

I do agree with this entirely though, and have said the same myself:

Spoiler

...critics and academics tend to fall back on elements of film or literature theory that have dissolved into the public consciousness, and vague opinions on whether the game feels nice or not. This is part of why there is a general trend of the gaming press highly praising works with large narrative content.

That said, I think games with strong narrative content merit praise. It's incumbent on readers to determine why the game is getting praised by reading the review (and for the reviewer to communicate that, obviously), so people don't buy "Gone Home" anticipating "Resident Evil".

Some of the best "reviews" I ever read were Kieron Gillen's Onionbog and Captain Smith series on RPS back in the day. They say absolutely sweet fuck all about mechanics or how the game "feels to play". They're just descriptive, and funny, and communicate the spirit of the game in question. At no point does Gillen weigh in with "THIS IS GOOD" or give it a numerical score.

 

[Fishyash]

Let's say a new platformer came out: One critic, who adores racing games and plays lots of them, rates it a 2/5. Another critic, who doesn't really like racing games, he's only played 3 others, he rates it 5/5.

It doesn't matter what I think of racing games, I'm going to trust the person who rated it 2/5 more, and it will influence my decision on whether getting the game or not. Of course, this assumes both critics are up to the same quality standards in their writing.

Here's a more interesting dilemma for you...what if the fan of racers gives it 5/5, and the non-fan of racers gives it 1/5, and both raise salient points?

Fans can be just as problematic when it comes to giving quality feedback as haters. I dislike the term "fanboy" because it poisons the well, but there is little question that affection will color perception just as readily as dislike.

This is part of the reason why I actually LIKE review aggregate sites like Metacritic. I can sample a cross section of reviews from a variety of people to get a more coherent overall picture. To this extent, I'm very much in favor of a multitude of voices with varying perspectives, barring 1/10 score-bombs and 10/10 score-plumpers.

In regards to your dilemma, again I would trust the fan's opinion more. Again, this is primarily because he's likely played more racing games, so he's likely going to express a more informed opinion. He has a wider basis of comparison, a higher understanding of the mechanics and is likely to show a higher level of appreciation for the game he's reviewing. Positive bias primarily indicates the level of passion and the likelyhood of experience.

If both critics raise good points in their reviews I will definitely put both reviews in account, but on a gut feeling I am going to support the fan's opinion more.

You're right, fans CAN be just as problematic and can give just as terrible feedback as a non-fan, but I feel it's less likely to happen if the critic is actually any good.

Review aggregate sites are quite nice, but I am not a big fan of the "average score". To me scores shouldn't represent an average of parts, but a final impression or summary of your thoughts. However, being able to look up several opinions at one place is fantastic, and reminds me of some of the older video game magazines where you would sometimes get to read several opinions from different writers about a game.

 

[Azure23]

Holy Fuckwit Batman!

You find a reviewer who examines things through a critical lense that's important to you and that you understand. End of story. That critical lenses can be anything, pure gameplay, ideological progressiveness, narrative strength, fucking anything. Christ is this really something we as a community are complaining about now? I mean for fucks sake there's a reason that sites reviewing movies from the perspective of a Christian pastor exist, where else are all the people who care about God's Not Dead gonna get their movie recommendations? It's the same for gaming, and you know what? If a reviewer says "I don't like this character because they seem sexist" that's not a bias on the reviewers part, it's their fucking review, that's them divulging part of their critical lense. It's honest, and it's their goddamn platform. I suppose you want to arbitrarily limit their vocabulary when discussing a game next? It's not "sexist" it's "badly written," is that it?

Look you GG'ers have some decent points, publishers and their hired gun publicity consultants can and have exercised an increasing unacceptable level of control over the wording and release of certain forms of media (mostly YouTube videos, shadiness of mordor anyone?), that's a legit gripe, get on that. This is just fucking whining. Find a reviewer whose critical lense is more in line with your consumer concerns, that is all.

 

[BloatedGuppy]

Review aggregate sites are quite nice, but I am not a big fan of the "average score". To me scores shouldn't represent an average of parts, but a final impression or summary of your thoughts. However, being able to look up several opinions at one place is fantastic, and reminds me of some of the older video game magazines where you would sometimes get to read several opinions from different writers about a game.

Yeah...there's something I encounter called "Rotten Tomatoes" syndrome, where a well made but divisive film will end up in the 70's or even the 60's due to appealing strongly to a smaller audience, and middling populist fare that is hard to criticize but not particularly inspired can easily land in the 90's. It's part of the problem with "scoring" a fundamentally subjective experience.

 

[QuicklyAcross]

I keep seeing, and hearing, people talk about the call for unbiased reviews. But really, there can be no such thing from any human being that has ever played a game or has any opinions on anything. At least if you want an honest review.

Now, for sure, I don't think you have any business reviewing a game made by a friend or someone who you have certain financial ties to (such as where you stand to gain financially from the success of the game) or when you have worked on creating the game. That kind of bias through relationship is easy to identify, and avoid, and is generally considered as being corrupt - rather than just biased.

But let's get creative with an example of personal, rather than financial or relationship based, bias:

If I play a game where all the mechanics are excellent, production values are good, it's well optimized and the story holds up well, but I hate one aspect of the game so much it sours the whole experience (making me strongly dislike the game). How then should I then rate it?

Should I disregard my experience and judge the game wholly on its mechanics and execution, or should I take my experience into account and rate it based on how I experienced it - meaning based on my own values and enjoyment?

I think cases like these illustrate the problems with assigning a numbered score; as scores are problematic because it's often all people look at, rather than the actual review. Without scores the actual review does, in my opinion, carry more weight.

But as it is, ultimately, it's the number assigned at the end that carries actual weight.[footnote]I do not review games, but if I did I would not assign them scores. I'd possibly assign them arbitrary things like: "I give this game 4 penguins wearing funny hats, 25 sad seals and one seal whisperer - there to help cheer up the sad seals and teach them how to love again." or "One potted plant and a companion pillow with the print of your favorite banana, half peeled."[/footnote][footnote]Captcha: that will not work. Shut up captcha, I'll give whatever random nonsense that pop up in my head at the time as a hypothetical scores if I want to.[/footnote]

I can only speak for myself with my own interpretation means of the "unbiased" review. Bias is not the same as having subjective opinion or thoughts about something. Say for example that you dont like the taste of mustard but ketchup is alright, now if you would review a ketchup vs a mustard bottle we would already know that yes, to you in particular, mustard does not appeal. That has already been disclosed.
However, lets say that the company making that ketchup pays you a little bit or that you have ads on your review site for that brand, then it becomes a bias, then it becomes more than just a review or you giving your own personal opinion, because now money is involved. Doesnt always have to be money it can be any form of service for giving an upper hand to the ketchup in your ketchup vs mustard review for example, or just the ketchup on its own.

What id like to see from reviews is actually more in align with game ANALYSIS and not just subjectivism.
Example yet again:
This game features towers which shoot at your enemies until they die = Game Analysis
This games way of handling combat, especially the towers interaction with enemy units, is done poorly because of
how slow and little damage they do = Game Review

See the difference? If not then ill just have to explain further.
One just states the facts, objectively without adding any unnecessary subjective commentary.
The other presents an argument, and not the game.
The other presents the notion that YOU feel something or think something about this mechanic or part in the game that then tips the review in one way or the other.

I can yet again only speak for myself and my own country since the gaming journalism news we get in our magazines dont actually feature reviews, but instead feature mostly game analysis, yet theyre still called reviews, which i think is healthy since that is the way we should be approached the "unbiased review"