Games

With the amount of 9s and 10s coming out, why would you waste time with a 7? The polarisation is just an effect of the language of clickbait spreading in society, but doesn't change the fact that average games are probably not worth your time.

We do have a problem of polarisation. But on the other hand we also have a problem of too many games, so we simply can't play them all. This leads us to a need to choose which one to pick. And a bad choice is very bad, because games are expensive and time consuming.

Now the real problem is when a community mistaken a new game for another. Like avowed was considered a terrible game because the leader scroll fanboys thought it would be their next game, and it wasn't. Anyone who know what old school bioware games were will certainly love avowed.

Now while veilgard is not a bad game, is it actually good? I'm not informed enough yet about it, but bioware has been terrible in the last decade, so I am clearly very wary of what they're doing.

I will wait for a discount for both those games, and I'll play avowed first because I'm informed and careful, and I have other games to play already.

On the side there's also the problem of fascist propaganda that will brand a game woke a try to destroy it.

But as regular people, gamers, Lemmy posters, why are we doing the same? How is it serving us? Are we all influencers in waiting, hoping to up our updoot count and build a following of… dozens?

Many people are rationalizing their purchase decisions. Not everybody can afford to buy (and play!) two games so if you have two highly anticipated games or consoles coming out in the same time, most people can only get one. And then they have to choose. Afterward, they don't want to hear that the other game is better, that it's also great and they are missing out on a lot of fun and that the one they didn't get is totally awesome.

It’s just the natural result of the sensationalizing of the news. Far more likely to get clicks or views saying something is fantastic or horrible. The grey areas don’t make $$$.

People generally don't talk too much about things that don't particularly stand out. If a game is bad, people will complain. If a game is good, people will praise it. If a game is middling, most people will just move on. Nobody's going to start a discussion about a game that was vaguely enjoyable but not noteworthy, unless expectations were unreasonably high to begin with.

I don't think this is a gaming problem.

It is a discourse problem.

People engage in absolutes. They either love a thing or hate a thing. There's no nuance.

And it must be made to cater for them, there's no expectation that it will contain choices they don't approve of.

And this stance, this modern relationship with the world permeates everything, especially forms of media.

You see it in films and books... Fans and stans and folk trying to take it down. There is no nuance or middle ground.

People don't accept that, perhaps, something isn't just "not for them". That's why you get grown men complaining about the direction of children's shows they used to watch.

And this is compounded with social media where polarisation, blunt takes and contradiction are the primary drivers of engagement.

Audience error.

Of course there’s middle ground. You just don’t see it much with AAA games because, as you mentioned, it’s all or nothing with those.

But don’t forget about indies. They comfortably fit in this middle ground because they’re not afraid to take risks.

i don't think they are polarising. imo, 77% is mid. nothing bad with a "just okay" game. sometimes you just want to play the experience of a new familiar world and this is it.

with tiktokers though, a mid game has less to talk about and so their narratives make what little or so difference sound like a big deal. sensationalism is where the money is for them.

i guess a good list of fair and reliable sources would help out here.

93% vs 77% doesn’t strike me as polarized. 16% difference?

77% doesn’t even seem that bad if it’s a style of game I like. From about 2001 I used to see sci fi movies that looked interesting as long as they had at least a 25% Rotten Tomatoes score because my tastes were different.

Is there something I’m missing? I haven’t played either game and I haven’t looked at reviews. Won’t buy KCD (no character creation) and probably will eventually buy Avowed.

I'll be honest, I downloaded Avowed through gamepass and couldn't stand it for more than 4 hours.

It's about as dull as a game can be and doesn't excel at anything, even when compared to games that released 15 years ago.

Do I think it's garbage? No, but I also would not recommend it to anyone, it's not worth their time nor money.

People are more likely to go online and complain than to compliment. But why take internet comments so seriously. I have a handful of trusted sources that I use to get my opinions on games. DLC Podcast for example is a favorite of mine. I've gotten to know their tastes and where they overlap with mine so when they get excited about a specific thing I'll know if I'm likely to enjoy it based on our shared interests.

When you get a handful of voices that have a strong overlap with your own taste then you can get outside of the tribalistic bitching of the hive. Comments don't even concern me anymore.

I’ve learned a long time ago that if you just wait a few years these games will go on sale for $20 and will have enough informed reviews to help make a solid purchasing decision. Gamers need to get off this new release hype train and be patient. I personally won’t play KCD 2, I disliked the first one. I will probably try Avowed in a few years after I get through my existing backlog of ~100 unplayed games in Steam. We are spoiled for choice and the market is filled with good indie games.

With recent big game releases, it’s become obvious that a game is either a resounding success, or complete shit. There doesn’t seem to be any middle ground.

You're saying this from a player opinion perspective which is accurate, but it's also interesting that companies act the same way. If a big game doesn't make 10 zillion dollars now there's a good chance the entire company gets shut down.

People are complaining about Avowed? What the fuck is wrong with them?

I've been too busy loving it to be online reading anything, honestly cannot fathom what their complaints are tho. Avowed has repeatedly impressed me by being more clever and nuanced than I was expecting a game to be, in writing, level design, and combat.

Is this more dumb gamer anti-woke hysteria?

From a mechanistic standpoint I think that mostly has to do with the high cost of entry for games.

At $80-$100 for a full priced game these days, it's hard to just buy on a whim. The only time you would is when they're on sale, which happens well after initial release. So initial sales of games are basically entirely driven by reviews and online discourse (which itself has an effect on reviews), and you basically just have a bunch of people all waiting for the signal to buy or not.

I do think that services like Gamepass are a genuinely good way of reducing that effect, because now anyone can try anything on a lark.

Makes me appreciate reviews that are able to give pros and cons to the game, and the ones that are able to say an opinion between "best game ever" and "absolute trash". Which I still often see on the Steam reviews, usually voted as one of the Most Helpful!

It’s been a problem for awhile. The media needs clicks so saying something is 7.5/10 doesn’t really drive engagement. Gamers have especially fed into this narrative because the media surrounding new products is always filled with hype and billed as the next greatest thing. It’s caused justified pushback from the community, but I think the pendulum has swung a bit in the other direction now. It’s tough feeling lukewarm about something when you’ve been told it’s supposed to be great. Additionally, the publishers, and some developers, in this industry are greedy cutthroats, which has made them easy targets for people’s frustration. The problem is now that frustration is focused on EVERYTHING involving the games industry.

The only problem is that people are idiots, especially online. Go to any comment section and you'll find people angry at the content, no matter what the content is. And you're taking them seriously, for some reason. Laugh at them and move on, no more polarization problem. As you've said, 77% of people enjoyed avowed. Probably even more, as people are a lot more likely to leave a bad review than a good one.

Brother, picking on your example, Avowed had the gall to charge 11€ more than KCD2 while offering a facsimile of what it promised while KCD2 improved upon their past game in every way. The polarisation stems from a game published by one of the richest companies in the world and in production for over 6y delivering a mediocre experience (at best) when compared to CHEAPER offerings that do much more. In truth, it's not polarisation, it's requiring a modicum of quality for your money. I returned it because I was advertised an Obsidian RPG and got a linear shooter with barely any choices and performance issues that would not be foreign in a mobile marketplace. That's the future gamepass brings, slop. Luckily, there's US indie, Asian and European developers making good games, KCD2 or BG3 being such examples. Shit, even Lords of the Fallen is a better experience than Avowed as people were delivered the experience that was promised in the promotional materials at less than 70€.

Edit: Dragon Age was technically well executed, but, again, as an RPG, it had little to offer. Would be another game perfect for a mobile app store. The total sales of that game and predicted sales of avowed confirm as much, it's shovelware capitalising on a franchise name to drive sales while having no craft or passion behind it. If you read the reviews for avowed, the overwhelming majority of the thumbs up reviews complain the game is not worth the price of admission and it's a mid game at best.