I can't think of other industries where dissenting opinions are so silenced.
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Don't You Dare Critique Video Games! (Jim Sterling video regarding Troy Baker's dismissal of TLOU2 criticism)
- Thread starter Raijinto
- Start date
I can't think of other industries where dissenting opinions are so silenced.
This a hundred times!
If people truly want games to be art, then they should be ready to handle the critique. If a game can openly display its flaws and accept them and still be considered great then that is better than just being showered with positive feedback!
Edit: Also critique is good for creators. You will never know what works and what doesn't if you do not listen to both negative and positive feedback
That's the nature of criticism and marketing in general though: Marketing people, in every industry, will seek out and form relationships with, people who consistently give their products good reviews as they use those good reviews as promotional materials (most commonly seen on movie posters/commercials) and a GOOD product marketing person will gather feedback from the people who had criticisms of the game and create data from that so that the team can try and make the next product better. All of that is completely normal. It's also why "influencers" are provided early copies of games, they use their reach to promote your title (provided they like it) to their wide network.
All of this is marketing 101, and all of it is completely fine. It's a delicate balance though, since marketers, PR people, developers have to not pressure people into higher review scores and carefully vet reviewers who DO give things high scores to make sure the review is genuine.
It's also perfectly fine to not provide an outlet with review copies of something if you don't want to. You'll be sacrificing that outlets coverage of your title in most cases and with thousands of outlets and influencers in the world, you can never cover everyone anyways.
It's when it becomes maliciously blacklisting outlets entirely that there's a large problem. It can rarely be justified and often seems like you are just trying to silence your strongest critics when a good marketing team should be vetting their criticisms and seeing if they can turn it into action items for the future.
With that said, my impression of the whole Twitter drama is:
- Troy Baker is extremely protective of the projects he gets involved in, as an artist. This causes the weird defensive tweets.
- Everyone was an asshole in that other Schindler's list comparison drama except the person originally making the comparison, since it was merely their (likely misguided) opinion.
- Critics in the industry tend to circle the wagons and try to protect each other, much like Jim has with this video, which is often a good thing when you are dealing with pressure from multi-million dollar companies. However, not everything a critic says needs to be defended and critics can be just as human as everyone else, and sometimes I think it's better to recognize your own bias in the situation and try to check that. Like I said, in my opinion, everyone in that Schindler's List comparison argument was an asshole, I don't think getting into semantics of who the truest asshole is/was is super productive.
This all goes back to the challenges of social media though, as that's the root of all of this.
There is no point in critics except to enhance sales as far as publishers are concerned. Their job is to maximize sales. Nobody releases a product in hopes that people will shit on it and decrease sales. This works the same way in every industry. You are sent review hardware or get to test drive a car for your magazine or review a test shot of a new toy only in the interest that it will increase exposure to your product and increase sales. You may deviate a little bit from universal praise, but in the end if you are causing damage to the product then your access is revoked at some point. If it's not, it's only in the interest of appearing fair to again further sales. If you are getting advanced copies of anything to review, you ARE part of the marketing arm.
Druckman and Baker constantly nitpicking every criticism of the game is honestly not surprising to me. It's endemic to gaming. Just look at all the review threads that are posted on this forum. They're full of people talking about how they hope the meta score is above 95 or and then people lose their shit when one review drops it. It's not about how they hope reviewers say the game is fun or thought provoking. It's the score, and an obsession with ranking This entire industry and hobby as a whole can't handle anything less than stellar, unmitigated praise.
It happens all the time, like reviews especially at launch are noting more then marketing
Completely agree with Jim here. The sensitivity to criticism is off the charts. Just look at the TLOU2 OT where any criticisms are met with ridicule and questions of your moral compass and sanity, and these are from people not even directly involved with the game.
@TheGummyBear One of the reasons why Tarantino continues to have such outbursts is due to having an image and films to promote.
I call it Enfant terrible syndrome. Spike Lee is another such loose canon. Why if I told you that ND also has a game to promote right now? It´s full price and only 1 week old after all. Would some (but obviously not all) of this start to make sense then? Part of the PR weirdness around the game has to be a stunt. Sony knew what would happen when the game came out due to the leaks so there was time to think things through and Druckmann is a known troll. Now the Rian Johnson of gaming but more talented. My boi Zack Snyder also lets some fun zingers fly when the Snyder Cut thing was gaining traction in 2019 as he needed to hit a certain Twitter threshold.
Yoko Taro asked for B2 porn on Twitter before his game launched, Sweary65 just called a person who is worried about the framerate of DP 2 a "troll" and gave him such an "achievement" in a post, Mikami, Suda 51 and certainly block you Kamiya are known for playing up their egos. Etc. I can go on. The hustle is real and these people have products to sell. All of us here are talking about Sony´s IP right now so something is working. And Jim gets views.
The losers here aren´t Baker or Druckmann.
I call it Enfant terrible syndrome. Spike Lee is another such loose canon. Why if I told you that ND also has a game to promote right now? It´s full price and only 1 week old after all. Would some (but obviously not all) of this start to make sense then? Part of the PR weirdness around the game has to be a stunt. Sony knew what would happen when the game came out due to the leaks so there was time to think things through and Druckmann is a known troll. Now the Rian Johnson of gaming but more talented. My boi Zack Snyder also lets some fun zingers fly when the Snyder Cut thing was gaining traction in 2019 as he needed to hit a certain Twitter threshold.
Yoko Taro asked for B2 porn on Twitter before his game launched, Sweary65 just called a person who is worried about the framerate of DP 2 a "troll" and gave him such an "achievement" in a post, Mikami, Suda 51 and certainly block you Kamiya are known for playing up their egos. Etc. I can go on. The hustle is real and these people have products to sell. All of us here are talking about Sony´s IP right now so something is working. And Jim gets views.
The losers here aren´t Baker or Druckmann.
I've often felt the same way.
It's yet another thing that makes discourse surrounding TLOU2 especially nauseating. There's an inherent disconnect in the hype machine: a fevered desire for the product to be considered high art coupled with content-choking review embargoes and an often childish reaction to substantial criticism.
Troy Baker's reply is kind of absurd but I don't consider a snippy and dismissive GAME TOO LONG tweet to be critique either.
Are there issues in the relationships between both sides? No doubt. Is this the molehill to make a mountain out of? I don't know about that.
These kinds of practices need to stop, but they aren't going to stop if gaming journalists keep on abiding by them.
Are there issues in the relationships between both sides? No doubt. Is this the molehill to make a mountain out of? I don't know about that.
How can they not view them as such when even today reviewers happily agree to not talk about 50% of TLOU2 or any of its major themes in order to score an advanced review copy? All of these advanced reviews were essentially the equivalent of reviewing MGS2 without mentioning Raiden.
These kinds of practices need to stop, but they aren't going to stop if gaming journalists keep on abiding by them.
For boundaries to be respected, first those boundaries need to exist.
How does it not? He's thing is literally to address whatever minor or major controversy is currently going on in the video game industry.
Four score and seven dollars ago our programmers brought forth on this continent, a new medium, conceived in COBOL, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are bored and need to pass the time.
Now we are engaged in a great twitter war, testing whether that medium, or any artform so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure. We are met on a great forum chronicling that war. We have come to dedicate a portion of our flippant remarks and drive-by posts as a final resting place for those who here gave their credit card numbers that this industry might live. It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this.
But, in a larger sense, we can not dedicate -- we can not consecrate -- we can not hallow -- this forum. The brave voice actors, living and dead, who struggled here, have consecrated it, far above our poor power to install or delete. The world will little note, nor long remember what we call trash here, but it can never forget what they did here. It is for us the players, rather, to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who stan have thus far so doggedly defended. It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great console generation before us -- that from these honored burnt we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full hashtag of devotion -- that we here highly resolve that these industry bigwigs shall not have cry cried in vain -- that these microtransactions, under Game, shall have a new birth of acceptability -- and that ownership of the medium, by those already in charge, for the stockholder, shall not perish from the earth.
Abraham Lincoln
November 19, 1863
No one is obligated to give serious critique all the time. Responding to a little barb like "video games are too long" with a fucking Teddy Roosevelt quote is some textbook fragility.
Maybe so but I can still read differing opinions on something like Endgame.
The games versions of Endgame are scoring 15-20 points higher. They are only used as marketing, they have stopped being useful for consumers.
I'm not sure I follow your reasoning. Let me get this straight... since "gamers" want to yell that games are art but don't want them to be subjected to the same criticism that art is subjected to, what medium exactly are you comparing this situation to? Since even if I accept your quaint division of more established media, which have the right to be considered art, and games, which (apparently arbitrarily) haven't earned that right yet, I don't see the situation being substantially different in other media.
For every critic/viewer who considers Jim Jarmusch's latest movie a work of art, you have someone who calls it a bunch of presumptuous bullshit. You often have the same interaction between artists and critics or their audience - there's temper tantrums on Twitter, Uwe Boll's videos asking critics to fight him, denial of criticism.
I feel like the argument "they're fucking video games" has ceased to be relevant at least a decade ago. Yes, the industry is dominated by dudebro shooters, much as the box office is dominated by spandex hijinks of Revengers 17: Fast and Revengery.
Both media also have their Nights in the Woods, their Disco Elysiums, their idk, Only Lovers Left Alive.
Its even funnier given that the context for this game has been virtually 95% positive in critic circles but thats not enough for them to not be bothered by the very few who were slightly critical of their work (or those who just think the game was too long lol)
They have always been for marketing tho. Like even with endgame most the major place game that bad movie glowing praise.
Maybe but I checked metacritic and it is at 78 with some who loved it down to those who hated it and everyone in between.
I haven't actively cared output Sterling's output but the behavior from the Sony camp around this is some embarassing that it's an easy layup of a video.
*I'm assuming the threadmark is referring to talking about anti-LGBT harassment towards the devs cause the video definitely does imply that publishers are at least indifferent towards harassment campaigns towards benign critics of their games.
*I'm assuming the threadmark is referring to talking about anti-LGBT harassment towards the devs cause the video definitely does imply that publishers are at least indifferent towards harassment campaigns towards benign critics of their games.
Well put, but I would nitpick by pointing out that (for the US at least), the legal protection for games are as speech rather than art, which aren't synonymous at all imo.
This only makes sense if you believe that Sony/ND are of the attitude that all press is good press which is kind of abusrd when you consider that a) the entire branding of the game hinges on it being an artistic masterpiece that pushes the medium forward and b) if they really believed that then they wouldn't mind negative reviews in the first place. If we're going by financial interests, the logic move is clear as day: the difference of a few MC points between being GOTY and GOTG is worth far money money than a couple days of Twitter drama that will only be cared about by people who bought the game in the first place.
When you only view video games as a product and not a piece of art, you're going to look at a 90+ Metacritic score and think it reflects some objective, undeniable quality about that game.
And because of that, you won't sincerely engage with good faith dissenting opinions.
And because you won't sincerely engage with opinions that don't fall in line with the consensus, you can't have discourse about the game, or games in general.
Things are just either good or bad, and no one is allowed to have opinions.
People want to compare their latest critically acclaimed game to respected works of art in cinema, music, or literature, but those mediums have (mostly) healthy discourse that elevates them to a level of cultural relevance video games may never achieve because as a medium, it's completely hamstrung by the culture that surrounds it.
And because of that, you won't sincerely engage with good faith dissenting opinions.
And because you won't sincerely engage with opinions that don't fall in line with the consensus, you can't have discourse about the game, or games in general.
Things are just either good or bad, and no one is allowed to have opinions.
People want to compare their latest critically acclaimed game to respected works of art in cinema, music, or literature, but those mediums have (mostly) healthy discourse that elevates them to a level of cultural relevance video games may never achieve because as a medium, it's completely hamstrung by the culture that surrounds it.
Films are more childish about such non-isses than gaming and I stand by that:
www.nytimes.com
He had to meet then Disney CEO Bob Iger over this one!
Let film and gaming critics never meet I say:
www.rogerebert.com
The wiki for Video games as an art form has a whole section about the Ebert saga, lol:
en.wikipedia.org
@collige ND has no real "bad press" so far outside of crunch culture reports and no one seemingly cares there. The toxic criticisms by the alt-right actually makes them look like a victim which is fascinating as they sold 4 million copies in one week. Sony hit a gold mine with this game. They became both critic-proof by regular joes and critically acclaimed by the press. Amazing.
Edit: And yes Arkanim94. ND/Sony also "believe their own hype". Can you fault them?
Opinion | Martin Scorsese: I Said Marvel Movies Aren’t Cinema. Let Me Explain. (Published 2019)
Cinema is an art form that brings you the unexpected. In superhero movies, nothing is at risk, a director says.
Let film and gaming critics never meet I say:
Video games can never be art | Roger Ebert | Roger Ebert
Having once made the statement above, I have declined all opportunities to enlarge upon it or defend it. That seemed to be a fool's errand, especially given the volume of messages I receive urging me to play this game or that and recant the error of my ways. Nevertheless, I remain convinced that...
www.rogerebert.com
Video games as an art form - Wikipedia
@collige ND has no real "bad press" so far outside of crunch culture reports and no one seemingly cares there. The toxic criticisms by the alt-right actually makes them look like a victim which is fascinating as they sold 4 million copies in one week. Sony hit a gold mine with this game. They became both critic-proof by regular joes and critically acclaimed by the press. Amazing.
Edit: And yes Arkanim94. ND/Sony also "believe their own hype". Can you fault them?
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Love this video. It's really a shame to see Naughty Dog win so gracelessly. They're making money hand over fist and aggregating at a 94 and still their creatives and PR team are attacking critics for critiquing the game. As mentioned in the video, Troy's performance was amazing in Arkham Origins, but he still contacted reviewers for finding *the game* imperfect. You didn't code it, don't take it so personally.
What an entitled bunch of narcissists.
What an entitled bunch of narcissists.
Sums it up better than I can
The whirlwind of discourse surrounding TLOU2 should be an interesting milestone to look back on imo
I agree 100% these are my feeling and thoughts on this subject in a nutshell.
I personally think that games are art because it's self-evident that they are. They're creative works meant to be engaged with by an audience, and this is regardless of the weight of the subject matter. As such, I expect that games should also be subject to the same criticism of mechanics, narrative, and sociopolitical themes that other artforms receive on a Tuesday, even if it hurts the precious feelings of any given game's fanbase.
A strong contingent of gamers don't act like this however. If anyone runs afoul of the consensus of media darlings merely by saying they didn't have fun with it, well now we need to discredit that critic entirely, and if we can't do that then we need to pull a Troy Baker and try to dismiss criticism as a whole. And that's just if you say you didn't have fun with a popular product; if you start actually delving into the sociopolitics of a game- discussing things such as race, gender, or sexuality- then god-fucking-speed to you. Hopefully you won't kickstart another alt-right terrorist movement.
I, ironically, hold games to a higher self-esteem than even many of the most hardcore gamers do because I believe that games should simply be treated like any other art form. Because they're art. Gamers do not. Gamers still consider their own medium dudebro toys through the way they act. They want games to be considered fashionable and grown-up and enjoy those sweet legal protections from censorship but don't want to actually engage sincerely with the process of critical analysis that these other grown-up mediums receive. And I could go on and on about where that fragility comes from, but different lecture for a different day.
It was always going to be interesting to see how much traction Jim's critical video about a popular publisher or game would have, compared to the excellent video he produced on Monday. Completely predictably, this one draws much more attention.
File in the same bin as the "Jim doesn't say anything positive!" takes.
File in the same bin as the "Jim doesn't say anything positive!" takes.
Troy Baker's tweet is definitely the most embarrassing response I've seen.
The thing I don't understand is why Naughty Dog and everyone who is associated with this game is so hyper defensive about it. It's an amazing game. It's a 93 on MC. It's sold faster than any PlayStation exclusive in history. It's clear that people by and large love it. Why does it matter that some don't?
The thing I don't understand is why Naughty Dog and everyone who is associated with this game is so hyper defensive about it. It's an amazing game. It's a 93 on MC. It's sold faster than any PlayStation exclusive in history. It's clear that people by and large love it. Why does it matter that some don't?
The greatest irony in this is that critics themselves don't seem to take well to criticism.
Most humans don't actually. The immediate response is usually to get incredibly defensive... Troy went way over board in his response but it's pretty human imo and some artist are incredibly sensitive. He needs to do better in that regard because that's a massive slip up, have more confidence in your art, you've been in the game long enough to know this.
This happens in film and movies too so I'm not sure why people act like it's only a gaming thing.
We all have a ego that we have to check or else it gets out of hand.
Look at how many people on this site argue over dumbshit and take shots at each other when challenged or criticized.
I'm most definitely guilty of it.
I don't think the point is that it happened but that you can simply react to it much much better.
Most humans don't actually. The immediate response is usually to get incredibly defensive... Troy went way over board in his response but it's pretty human imo and some artist are incredibly sensitive. He needs to do better in that regard because that's a massive slip up, have more confidence in your art, you've been in the game long enough to know this.
This happens in film and movies too so I'm not sure why people act like it's only a gaming thing.
We all have a ego that we have to check or else it gets out of hand.
Look at how many people on this site argue over dumbshit and take shots at each other when challenged or criticized.
I'm most definitely guilty of it.
I don't think the point is that it happened but that you can simply react to it much much better.
While I don't particularly agree with Jason Schreier's assessment that 85% of all video games are too long, I do think Baker's response here was a bit much.
I'm not sure how relevant that is to his tweet reaction, but as an interesting side note, he says in the Spoilercast that he often doubts himself and his performance on the set, so maybe this touched a nerve for him due to the fact he's not super confident in his art (though in my opinion he does consistently a great job and there's a reason why he's such a prolific voice actor).
I mostly agree with Jim here, though I will say, the way Jason acted wasn't much better.
Video game review culture is absolutely toxic. Saying people can't criticize games is ridiculous of course, but at the same time, review outlets KNOW how crazy people will go over their reviews for big games. Metacritic and numerical game scores need to be abolished. I fail to see any negatives to this. It would significantly diminish fanboy wars, and certainly many of the alarming reactions to reviewers including threats of harm and violence would be reduced. It would force people to actually read a review and put some thought into it.
You know how many reviews for The Last of Us Part 2 I read? ZERO... And I know I'm not the only one. But I surely have looked at some of the number scores. I'm not someone who relies on reviews to make purchasing decisions for 99% of games. But if I do, you better bet I'm actually going to read/watch a review. Review scores say nothing about a game, and are literally the catalyst for nearly all the shitty way's people treat each other over reviews.
Video game review culture is absolutely toxic. Saying people can't criticize games is ridiculous of course, but at the same time, review outlets KNOW how crazy people will go over their reviews for big games. Metacritic and numerical game scores need to be abolished. I fail to see any negatives to this. It would significantly diminish fanboy wars, and certainly many of the alarming reactions to reviewers including threats of harm and violence would be reduced. It would force people to actually read a review and put some thought into it.
You know how many reviews for The Last of Us Part 2 I read? ZERO... And I know I'm not the only one. But I surely have looked at some of the number scores. I'm not someone who relies on reviews to make purchasing decisions for 99% of games. But if I do, you better bet I'm actually going to read/watch a review. Review scores say nothing about a game, and are literally the catalyst for nearly all the shitty way's people treat each other over reviews.
I think the reaction was pent up animosity between some of the critics, Jason in particular, and Naughty Dog. On top of that, Troy seems to be incredibly defensive of the Joel character. None of what you said surprises me at all. He shows it.
Yeah, watched that one and this one back to back. One of his most hard hitting videos and one far more worthy of discussion (as far as I am concerned at any rate).
Here Troy Baker, Cory Barlog and Neil Druckmann have just come across as looking petulent, especially when you consider Jason Schriers reports on crunch culture. This is most definately one area where they would have been better keeping there mouths firmly shut.
I remember fanboys ardently defending BoTW and Super Mario Odyssey when it got criticism, but did Nintendo themselves step in to argue about criticisms from reviews like Sony PR, Neil, and Troy have demonstrably done for TLoU 2? This game is receiving a similar amount of universal acclaim so I'm just kinda perplexed on why the creators are getting in the weeds to this degree.
None of this is the fault of video game critics and is the fault of gamers who are so emotionally invested in their hobby that their emotional self-worth is tied into whether or not a game gets 90+. If you want these problems to go away, we need to actually start making inroads into making gaming culture a place where toxic masculinity and fragility aren't allowed to run rampant, because the fact is these people are just going to find something else to attach their impotent rage onto, probably some scathing sentence in the review itself, and then we're right back in this thread discussing the same shit.
Gamers are the problem.
Preach Nep. Simply put, this medium is still in infancy. It has a long, LONG road of self-reflection and self-awareness before it gets the same respect movies and music get.
I think your comment is spot on. Only thing I would say slightly different is it seems to be most of the big publishers and developers think like that.
This whole situation reminded me Mike Ybarra tweet about Anthem. His comments implied that game reviews are outdated and people should gain information about games from live streams, which is funny because big streamers mostly operates as modern advertisers. Both of these situations are same and I think publishers and developers would be very glad if there was not a single negative criticism source out there about their products.
Overall I agree on Jim's argument on this. This industry needs a regulatory voice. Reviews, articles about exploitative work culture or manipulate business methods and toxic work environment should be made and highlighted by journalists. Even if some of them might be hyperbolic or misleading.
I think in this case some of it might be because a lot of the more critical reviews of the game have come from non-gaming outlets. AKA outlets that Sony doesn't have as much immediate clout over. Threatening withholding of access to IGN or Polygon is one thing but Vice or The Atlantic don't give a damn.
The world is quite inflammatory these days and the public discourse has gotten so aggressive that the devs are letting themselves fall in the trap and get involved. They probably shouldn't but like all of us scrolling endlessly on twitter feeling terrible about the world and they too are victims of how things are.
I don't think that they can't take criticism, but with the discourse around this game being so extreme they seem to be struggling to find the line between what is genuine constructive feedback and what is just toxic attacks - and they are starting to responde to both as if they are one and the same. This is unfortunate, but I understand the humanity behind it.
I don't think that they can't take criticism, but with the discourse around this game being so extreme they seem to be struggling to find the line between what is genuine constructive feedback and what is just toxic attacks - and they are starting to responde to both as if they are one and the same. This is unfortunate, but I understand the humanity behind it.