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TIGSource ForumsPlayerGeneralHierarchy of values on games
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SirNiko
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« Reply #40 on: February 16, 2012, 03:41:39 PM »

Gamestop makes Rent/Buy/Avoid kind of obsolete anyway. You can buy it brand new, play through it, and when you're done you can return it or keep it as you please.

If the game is digital download, "Rent" isn't really an option.

Back in the 90s, though, it would have been perfect. I could have really used that scale.
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AshfordPride
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« Reply #41 on: February 17, 2012, 11:10:42 AM »



SIX HOURS
SIXTY DOLLARS
TEN DOLLARS AN HOUR

If you have to pay your game more than minimum wage, it's not a good game.


I guess this would make all movies unacceptable, yeah?  A new DVD costs twenty dollars for a movie that isn't even two hours long.  Well, as long as IGN can stand by this model and consisten-...

« Last Edit: February 17, 2012, 11:17:49 AM by Samtagonist » Logged
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« Reply #42 on: February 17, 2012, 11:38:12 AM »

the whole concept of "price" being a factor in videogame reviews is bullshit anyway. just for comparison, ive been reading music magazines for a long time and i don't think i've ever seen a review that said "hey this cd is good but its also expensive so it sucks."
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Superb Joe
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« Reply #43 on: February 17, 2012, 12:31:03 PM »

give me a single good reason any narrative based game should be longer than 6 hours
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J-Snake
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« Reply #44 on: February 17, 2012, 12:47:03 PM »

scores are stupid anyway
Especially made by ign and similar channels when it comes to fighters and combat-systems, since no one of them knows how to fight.
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AshfordPride
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« Reply #45 on: February 17, 2012, 03:10:13 PM »

give me a single good reason any narrative based game should be longer than 6 hours

Because I was given a free reviewer cop-...  I mean because I have to spend my hard earned cash on it and deserve my money's worth derp derp!
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Dragonmaw
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« Reply #46 on: February 17, 2012, 03:17:47 PM »

I never really felt like I had to give a game a good score because I got a free copy. Getting lots of swag can definitely sway someone's opinion, though. A lot of the games I rated favorably when I was doing reviews were games I put out the money for. Then again, some of the games I absolutely detested I also paid money for.

Free reviewer copies isn't that big of a deal. Book reviewers do it, movie critics do it, so it only makes sense that game reviewers do it. It's when the publisher goes above and beyond in courting the reviewer that it crosses that threshold, IMO.
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SundownKid
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« Reply #47 on: February 17, 2012, 04:05:20 PM »

Numerical ratings are always stupid. I don't even know what that "presentation" stat means! Is it story? Is it cinematography, character design or dialogue? It doesn't seem to be any of them, specifically. Ok, so some games place more of an emphasis on one over the other, but that's no reason to have a double standard where good "everything else" can offset a bad story.

Quote from: Review
Well, there's not much here in terms of gameplay

Wait, what? The gameplay is inherently tied to the game! It's like he's judging the gameplay based on "whether it should have monsters to fight or not"!

In conclusion, game reviews should exist, but they should never have a score. They can still communicate 'this game is bad/good' without one.
« Last Edit: February 17, 2012, 04:11:31 PM by SundownKid » Logged

Tuba
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« Reply #48 on: February 17, 2012, 05:27:06 PM »

One thing I've been noticing is that people (or at least fanboys and trolls) care a lot more for the total score than for the review itself, probably thanks to Metacritic... so, a lot of reviewers just give their actual opinion in the review but give the game a big overall score just to not be bothered by the fans.

Anyway, a numerical score is not a good way to review a game.
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AshfordPride
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« Reply #49 on: February 17, 2012, 07:27:47 PM »

Anyway, a numerical score is not a good way to review a game.

I disagree, but near every way they're being used currently is nothing short of a travesty.  If a reviewer wants to assign tiered values to their revue for the sake of categorization and more importantly to build a par of quality, then I'm all for that.  

But I don't know a single name from IGN, and the folks from Kotaku I have intentionally memorized incorrect names to demean and belittle them.  Because I'm a sociopath.
« Last Edit: February 17, 2012, 07:34:14 PM by Samtagonist » Logged
shig
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« Reply #50 on: February 17, 2012, 07:42:11 PM »

No that would be a "masochist".
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TaintedFork
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« Reply #51 on: February 17, 2012, 08:36:13 PM »

If you have to pay your game more than minimum wage, it's not a good game.


I guess this would make all movies unacceptable, yeah?  A new DVD costs twenty dollars for a movie that isn't even two hours long.  Well, as long as IGN can stand by this model and consisten-...

This isn't necessarily true.

It's only true if you watch the movie once. For the first viewing, it would be $10 an hour (assuming $20 and 2 hour movie). But once you watch it again, it's gone down to $5 an hour total.

If you watch a movie more than 5 times, it's less than $2 per viewing.

Same applies to CDs, and games as well. Obviously you may not want to play a 6-hour-long game 5 times "just to get your money's worth," but it seems especially possible and likely for CDs, which are very easy to listen to multiple times.

And, of course, there may be some internal value that you hold the game/movie/CD for. You may feel that a certain movie is worth $10 an hour if you like it enough. Then again, those movies will usually be the ones that you watch multiple times and watch the price per viewing diminish.
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SirNiko
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« Reply #52 on: February 17, 2012, 09:28:55 PM »

For those that feel that price should not be considered when judging the quality of a game, do you believe "Replay Value" is a useful metric in judging the quality of a game?
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iffi
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« Reply #53 on: February 17, 2012, 09:44:07 PM »

For games that one would expect to get replay value out of (especially multiplayer games), yes. There are many games where it really doesn't make sense to judge replay value / lasting appeal, though. For that reason I prefer the amount of time one can expect to spend on the game to be estimated, preferably with a short explanation of what assumptions that time entails, rather than given some arbitrary numerical rating - what does a "6.0" in "Lasting Appeal" mean anyway? It's not like we need another quantitative way to measure "Lasting Appeal" when we already have units for time.
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DavidCaruso
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« Reply #54 on: February 18, 2012, 06:59:02 AM »

For those that feel that price should not be considered when judging the quality of a game, do you believe "Replay Value" is a useful metric in judging the quality of a game?

I don't believe in the concept of "replayability" in general. Any great game is fun to replay no matter how many extra sidequests or collectible bonus Donkey Kong coin ring medals it has. The only exceptions I can think of are puzzle games, and even then if you allow yourself enough time between playthroughs it could still work. And even if a game doesn't hold up on subsequent playthroughs that's not a mark against it in my book by any means; the first playthrough is always the most important one, and with the vast and constantly increasing number of awesome games I don't think there are too many games (even good ones) that are worth replaying instead of something that's new to me.

A better metric than the number of hours of content a game has might be the number of hours I could enjoy the game. For a lot of games out there this number is going to be less than the total content (i.e. a lot of games aren't even worth playing through to the end, let alone replaying.) It becomes a bit fuzzier once you take multiplayer games and MMOs into account however.

...

Yeah, all this just makes it even more apparent how ridiculous price is as a metric. Reviews shouldn't be written as buying guides, even if they often serve that function to a consumer.
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« Reply #55 on: February 18, 2012, 10:04:38 AM »

Quote
A better metric than the number of hours of content a game has might be the number of hours I could enjoy the game. For a lot of games out there this number is going to be less than the total content (i.e. a lot of games aren't even worth playing through to the end, let alone replaying.) It becomes a bit fuzzier once you take multiplayer games and MMOs into account however.
yeah pretty much. the idea of quantity of content being a quality factor is another one of those things unique to videogame journalism for whatever reason. i dont think ive ever seen it in a professional music, movie or book review.
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SirNiko
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« Reply #56 on: February 18, 2012, 11:06:22 AM »

Movies and CDs tend to all be about the same length, so it's rare when there's anything to actually complain about.

Movies, CDs, and Books are really easy to measure - the first two are rated by length in minutes / hours, and the last by number of pages. Books are especially easy because you can just look at the width of the spine (unless you're reading House of Leaves).

Games, by contrast, are completely opaque. A 6 hour game and a 100 hour game are identical looking. Furthermore, in all but the most linear of games you miss out on content with every playthrough. The amount of time it will take to see the entire game will vary wildly from player to play.

On top of that, many games offer different ways to play the same content (eg, you can play an RPG by choosing a different selection of skills, or fight the bosses in Megaman in a different order). This is where I think Replay Value is a useful metric - it helps separate a game like Saga Frontier which allows you to build wildly different parties with different tactics from a game like Final Fantasy 13 that has a claustrophobically narrow amount of choices that leaves every session looking and feeling exactly the same.

I think both game length and replay value are useful to know, not only whether or not they exist but how well they are implemented (artificially long games due to grinding as an example).
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« Reply #57 on: February 18, 2012, 11:34:30 AM »

"useful to know" isn't the same as being a quality factor. same with price. other media reviews usually mention length as well. the problem is more that "replay value" is somehow seen as a "good thing" in itself.

a bad game you can play in a dozen different ways is still ultimately a bad game and probably doesnt warrant multiple playthroughs (or even one) anyway. on the other side of things, ghost trick (for example) is a great game but has zero "replay value" because being a linear puzzle/adventure game, that's just not part of its design. should developers really be punished for making linear gams?
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« Reply #58 on: February 18, 2012, 12:03:21 PM »

Quote
should developers really be punished for making linear gams?

Video games content is often spread-out non-linearly. That's why the concept of "replay value" exists (albeit, I'm not defending its use).

Chess is not a long game, but its content is delivered through replay, not through going from start to finish. Adventure games on the other hand deliver content linearly - from start to finish.

The only thing that should matter is how many hours you spent on the game, disregarding whether you were replaying the game or not. (What Games Are explains this pretty damn well)
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« Reply #59 on: February 18, 2012, 12:16:42 PM »

Replayability and value are very tricky ones.  One of the few things that Icycalm wrote that I mildly agree with is that value is a horrible metric for games, since everyone values their time and money differently (Saudi prince has more than enough money to buy any game so a subpar game that costs $1 holds less value than an amazing game that costs $100), but realistically it can't be ignored since we aren't all Saudi princes. 

So too with replayability.  A game might be infinitely replayable, but that's more of a multiplicative effect than an additive effect.

I don't think that amount of time is a good metric either.  There are some games that I will play through once, never touch again, and they were totally worth it.  There are others that I will come back to again and again.  They too are totally worth it, but they aren't inherently better than the first class of games.
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