Are we too critical of games?

as games evolve so should the criticism, you aren't going to judge a modern game based on standards from the 90's

I blame the dawn of fandoms; when your personality is tied to something, monkey see opposing thing means monkey go attack. monkey see monkey do, even if it's making Driver: San Francisco a commercial flop

I think we need to be MORE critical if anything. We can't let the video game industry become complacent with putting out subpar games and we can't let them get away with shitty work practice (specifically abuse of developers from company execs). Video games are a huge investment of money and time and the best way to support developers and the games they make is always be critical of both the content of games and the practices of the executives who control how the games come out.

So I don't really think the question should be "are we too critical of games" and it should more so be "how can we be critical of games in a constructive and effective manner that not only supports quality games but the efforts of the devs that make them". There's a big difference between shallow, bad criticism and deep, effective criticism and we need to learn how to use the latter instead of the former.

It seems like the word "criticism" has a bad connotation when really it's a very neutral thing. Criticism of a game and critical analysis of games can be positive things too, not just negative. Even if you think a game is 10/10, I still think criticism of said game is valuable because 1. it's fun to analyze games and 2. it's important to recognize flaws in works that you would otherwise consider very good so these flaws can be learned from/improved upon in future games.

Far to entitled....

Sometimes way too critical...

There is a news site that I frequent that pretty much has the comment section tear apart eVeRyThInG..
"Uhh that framerate" "Ah that one texture" and my personal favorite "Why did they include online multiplayer ? *I* don't need that*.

WTF.

Enjoy games and stop bitching.
And if it really is GARbage, vote with your wallet and avoid games that suk too much (Hello FFVIIR, KHIII and PkmnS&S)

I'm not of the Camp that think Childhood Games should grow up, i.e. Mario et al should have deeper Storylines, because they should forever be part of someone's Childhood, either ours or the next Generation's. As I've said before, if that's one's fix then Rule 34 is always ready for you, arms and orifices open ...

That said, I am of the position some newer Games are indeed lazy, which is saying a lot coming from someone who doesn't create Games.
But I do create Art and the reason being I can critique is that these days there are many tools to empower oneself in Game Creation.

There will come a point where people will have a mental Price-to-Quality threshold for Games in general; if they are below said threshold then it's just better to create your own Game in the Game Creation Ecosystem available at the time. There are plenty, and I have no doubt the numbers will continue to grow.

For those lazy offerings, I tend to say that if you want something done right, sometimes it's best to do it yourself.

We are too critical. Just enjoy yourself and have fun.

Well if the producers ruin beloved franchises by cutting out content and not replacing mediocre, lifeless models (Pokemon) or by taking the series in a 'new direction' and drastically changing it, cramming in player-hostile mechanics and systems that just should not be there (Fire Emblem, Legend of Zelda, Star Wars Battlefront), then being critical is completely necessary.

We should honestly be harder games these days. Most AAA games these days are the same unfinished open-world/live-service game with a fuckton of additional paid content. We've literally seen the same games get ported from the PS3, to PS4, and now to the PS5, while there's still no word on squeal. Then you have the added insult of the prices of games going up while still slacking on the quality. There's so little to enjoy about most of the current gaming era because games are less a means of having fun and more a means of making investors more money.

Yeah I am in the not hard enough crowd. Too many shoddy development practices, coding horrors, lack of awareness of key concepts and more.

Equally while there is some merit to simplicity to introduce concepts (in board games then candyland and western snakes and ladders are arguably not even games but they serve to get ideas of cards and dice going on. Later down the line Settlers of Catan is usually dismissed by those really intro the whole German board game scene, and with good reason, but 99% of those will also say teach that before throwing someone head first into Agricola or Tigris and Euphrates) then much like there is a difference between pandering and having well written characters there is a difference there as well. I am also not sure I see that many critiques from that whole direction. Or if you prefer what age demographic was Runescape popular with and do you think you can give me an "elevator pitch" overview of its mechanics, economy and history like you might for COD?

No ,not critical enough that is why the industry has gone to complete shit
if you will accept shit they will make shit plain and simple

While I understand the point of view of people being too harsh, you have to be harsh otherwise the gaming industry will never grow and move forward. If a company can sell the same product with a different coat of paint on it without critisicm, they'll do it. Look at sports games. Fans buy the newest one simply because it is the newest one and not because it brings anything new (Mainly EA Sports games).

Both yes and no. Some games are overrated, others underrated.
When it comes to genres I just don't enjoy, like competitive shooters, I try to look at it obectively and understand why others might like them, but generally I am pretty subjective when it comes to games because they aren't designed to please everyone and that's OK.

If a game is full price or has paid DLC, it's fair to expect it to live up to a standard for the price point. If those games don't live up to that standard they deserve to be criticized.

If it's cheap or short and free like most of the stuff on itch.io, it can be a little shitty. Sometimes the shittiness can even be a part of the fun. The difference is that they don't market them as AAA games.

Like anything else people have little to no knowledge or experience in actually trying to create themselves, they're going to underestimate how difficult and time-consuming it is to actually do. Most games are incredible achievements by those involved in developing them, at least in parts and sometimes you'd swear it's harder work for players to play the games than for developers to create them, based on how people behave. Criticism itself isn't even a bad thing, but most gamers aren't constructive about it, by a long shot. Instead of just saying something sucks, how about trying to put out a suggestion on how it could be better? I really don't see a lot of that. Try getting involved in some indie developer's beta-testing runs, get involved and offer your feedback to them, that would make a worthwhile contribution to the scene, community and even industry as a whole. If you claim to be passionate about games, you'd prove it in that kind of way, not by constant vague complaints as an armchair critic.

"Instead of just saying something sucks, how about trying to put out a suggestion on how it could be better?" It wouldn't make a difference, the devs are not going to listen and fix every single thing that's wrong, it's just a waste of time. Of course, many people still do, it's just that the trolls and haters are the most vocal and typing "it sucks" takes much less effort than actually writing constructive criticism so you see it a lot more.

How i see it, it's great there are critics on games.
but it ain't all great:
* Some spoil the whole game.
* Some just are so early in the game no wonder they found a few bugs.
* Some people just don't understand that tastes differ from person to person.

Getting to know a bit of a game however is a great thing we didn't have when i was young.
These days it's more of importance cause these games are pricey, and i am limited in my spendings.
There are a lot of games series that gone sour over time, like about all EA games by now are without story, only fun for a few minutes, and boom pricetag: $70,- the only thing covered is graphics and engine, that's about 7X the price of a good game when i was young, and those got the engine, graphics and story covered for what was reasonable for it's time.

I think it's too bad some jump to negative conclusions so fast, cause it will keep people off trying it for themselves.

I get critical when the game is released as a beta. I expect the whole game to be completed with no major bugs. Little bugs here and their are fine. But those game breaking ones, just no

Captain_N said:

I get critical when the game is released as a beta. I expect the whole game to be completed with no major bugs. Little bugs here and their are fine. But those game breaking ones, just no

Click to expand...

I don't know how realistic that is for modern games and programs in general.
Though if the showstopper bug is not active sabotage by programmers or the confluence of 5 different sub systems unlikely to be seen through a normal playthrough of single player and/or multiplayer if that is a thing then I am inclined to raise an eyebrow.

That said such things seem fairly far off -- most development slogs we ever hear about seem to start out with there being a lack of a design to begin with (no engineering project should really start without a specification, indeed every major project screw up I have ever had has been when I go in without one), coding practices are anything but safe (at one point yeah the overhead was probably hard to justify but today barely is and there are better methods anyway), code testing is still rather primitive from what I can see, how many game devs can tell me what a Pareto frontier I would not like to guess and that is essential for balance (gamers are masters at finding unintended uses of what would be termed intangibles* after all), never mind the more involved aspects of game theory, dubious characterisation is the norm despite it being long completed in academia on down to internet videos, speaking of videos despite the industry seemingly being filled with failed film directors and those waiting for their break then shot composition of cut scenes and establishing shots many times would barely make it into a workplace introduction video....


*so you balanced your damage per second, accuracy, magazine/clip size, reload speed... between teams (ctrl c, ctrl v but change the skins most times) and weapon selections (harder to account for snipers clicking on heads vs sub machine guns but doable enough). You are doing better than most at this point but hey, and now you add something odd like a heal function and all of a sudden some players** discover something odd with it and it is now the most unbalanced weapon.

**granted my pointing and laughing at most competitions designed by players over the years as characters get banned and unbanned as new strategies discovered says they are not much better.

Not critical enough, I'd say, and the few times there is criticism it's often for entirely mind-numbing, idiotic political things reasonable and sane people would never even think twice about.
"Far Cry was not political enough - we wanted it to be all about dumping on Trump supporters, but it's not, and that's awful!" "Persona 5's mature love interests enforce toxic masculinity!" "There's nothing wrong with 'time-saving' real-money purchases, like Assassin Creed: Odyssey's EXP and money boosters!" "Anyone who dislikes Battlefield V is sexist!"

We need less of that garbage and more pieces about genuine issues about games - monetisation, betas released as final products, ads being inserted into games (I just remembered that being snuck into some sports games), severe lack of content compared to previous entries, "live-service" being nothing but a sham (scam, even) considering how often they're abandoned months after release, etc.

Some people are, but that's normal for someone who is really passionate about something. If it interests you so much, I encourage you to be critical of video games.
Personally, I'm not. If I don't like one, I stop playing it. It's just that, recently, I've been having bigger things going on in life, so games haven't occupied a lot of my attention. Perhaps this is part of growing up for me.