Wii reviewers are the problem - Braben Comments by Robert Purchese

I like Braben, but I think he's got the wrong end of the stick. He's arguing for the innacuracy of the reviews, when Peter Moore's point was really about the general consumer for Wii titles not actually paying any attention to the reviews (accurate or otherwise).

(Edited for typo.)

Yep, it was reviewers that killed such family friendly classics as Thrillville:OTR on the Wii. If metacritic reviewed it as a 95/100 game it would have sold millions.

I kinda think that he has some sort of point. Game reviewers by definition play a *shitload* of games, most of them for the hardcore crowd. As such, it might be difficult for some reviewers to adjust to playing simpler family fare.

I have no idea what the solution would be, though. You can't exactly pay kids and soccer moms to review games.

...or can you?

/spies business opportunity

What Clive Dunn said - the target audience for these games don't know about and/or look at review scores anyway, so surely his point is moot...?!

Hmm I disagree. If there is such a thing as an accurate reveiw, and I believe there is, then I believe the reveiws are accurate and these games are crap. It doesn't mean that a lot of people won't enjoy them and it certainly doesn't mean they won't sell well. I myself enjoy a fair few poor quality movies (even though I know they're poor quality) and many people enjoy reading really poor quality romance or adventure novels. This doesn't mean a movie or literary critic would be being inaccurate to discribe such porducts as poor quality or give them a low rating, it might rather also be accurate to say that across all areas many people have very poor taste.

A bad game is a bad game. Wii Sports is a nice family game, and it reviewed generally well because it's a good game. Bad games get low scores because they're bad in some way. At least that's how I thought reviews worked. I better start buying games that got terrible reviews just to check!

How do you review a game that's fun for a moron? Tough question.

Eurogamer is perfectly capable of reviewing a game like Nintedogs objectively, but if you distill it down, they're basically suggesting that points are added on to a crappy game because its intended audience doesn't know any better. That's just dumb.

Leave those reviews to the 100-word reviews in newspapers and Heat magazine, where it's perfectly acceptable that Wolverine gets 4/5 stars.

He definitely has a point. I am a core gamer and my view of a casual game e.g. Carnival Funfair Games doesn't matter one bit. For a while, core gamers reviewing *certain* casual games have been about as relevant as asking Top Gear Magazine for their opinion on one of those single seater,low-powered battery toy cars toddlers can drive around in. I think the Wii has shown there's a large audience outside of the core and I predict gaming press (print and online) will end up having specialist reviewers on casual games who havemore in common with a games intended audience.

Clive Dunn (great name BTW) - I disagree with you on your comment. There are brilliant games that do review very highly and still don't sell the numbers the score deserves (BG&E, Psychonauts, ICO and many many more).

I always thought games reviews were written for the benefit of whoever reads whatever publication they appear in. Since "core" games read a site like this, readers here aren't likely to be so interested in a family game. Readers of some national newspaper or one of these blogging sites are on the other hand more likely to be interested in such games, so any reviews and opinions there should be more suited to that audience.

I read an article on this a while back. One of the examples cited was review scores for Rez. Edge Magazine gave it a score of 9/10, while a dedicated PS2 mag gave it 6/10. Readers of either publication would likely disagree with the review in the counterpart magazine, but at the same time the score is probably accurate for the magazine that they choose to read. Braben's suggestion that some kind of index of family review sites is a reasonable one, especially with an increased interest in audiences who are more interested in such games. It might be a while longer before traditionally non-gaming sources start to include the sort of reviews and scores suitable to produce such an aggregated score though.

So uhm instead of asking about rubbish can you ask Braben what he is doing about Elite 4 and The Outsider?

"What Clive Dunn said - the target audience for these games don't know about and/or look at review scores anyway, so surely his point is moot...?!"

Yes, but are there any "family-friendly" publications that they could look at instead?

"How do you review a game that's fun for a moron? Tough question."

Oh, I don't know. Why don't you tell me? How do people review the games that you find fun?

/zing

I know several people who love Carnival, and it really is quite fun at parties. That doesn't stop me from thinking it's a terrible average game.

I guess that these games are not for us! And by using that reference, I think I just put myself square in the core gamer segment. I don't even own a Wii either.

Some thoughts:

- The title of the article is a shame. Braben made a very nuanced and careful analysis, which in no way states what the title claims.

- He isn't even saying that reviewers should do something different. As he says, they review the game for their readership, and their readership is hardcore.

- He says that review score matter for Wii games aimed at the hardcore gamers and I agree. But I wonder exactly how many hardcore gamers have Wiis. Sadly, it may not be enough to sustain this part of the market (good Wii games).

- I can't help but feel that some games end up falling through the cracks in between the Wii's markets. Take Boom Blox. It's a good game, but it's also casual, so hardcore gamers won't buy it anyway. It's casual, but it doesn't make for an easy sell towards a casual audience like, I'm afraid, Carnival: Funfair Games does. The theme and how you transmit it is what sells a casual game and Boom Blox, starting with the name and continuing with the concept, doesn't capture the imagination.

- Man, industry insiders like to talk shit. (And I'm not talking about Braben.)

- The situation is exactly the same for films. Roger Ebert may think that A Night at the Museum sucks balls and his readers, people who care enough about films to read reviews mostly believe the same, but the majority, the 'casuals', don't care and they go see it anyway (and they enjoy it, too).

Who cares about Wii games? The wii is not really a console, but more of a party game machine or something that the old folk get out on birthdays and christmas.

The eternal struggle between reviews and sales to determine which one accurately measures the quality of a game rages on. Nerds lean on reviews, developers and business lean on sales. Which makes sense really.

Of course, games which sell well aren't necessarily good (like how I think Carnival is a turd,) and neither are games which review well (like how I think MGS4 is a turd.)

It's almost like the quality of a game is entirely subjective or something.

This bloody topic is "the problem".

There's no right or wrong here, and whichever side of the fence you sit on with your opinion it makes absolutely zero difference to the industry or your own personal enjoyment of games at all.

There's a couple of interesting points of discussion there:

Firstly, is this secretly a dig at core gamers and their inability to appreciate family games? Personally, if a game is good, I'll get it and play it and no doubt enjoy it. I bought Nintendogs, I think Milo is an interesting experiment, and if EyePet turns out to have some amount of depth I'll probably pick that up. If, however, it's a steaming pile of horse apples, I won't get it. Because I have taste.

'Core' and 'casual' aren't terms that describe the genres, lengths or content of games that people like; they describe the amount of experience someone has with gaming. A casual gamer will happily put up with 'Shitty Wii Sports Rip-Off 12', while core gamers are much more likely to say "That's clearly turd, I'm not playing that." It's the same, presumably, with game reviewers. There are those that understand that some games are good quality and some games aren't. Even a high-quality family game is worthy of 8s or 9s because, hey, it's high-quality (Lego Star Wars would be fair examples).

It would be a fairly damning indictment of our industry as a whole if we had to start pandering to developers of shoddy 'casual' titles just because the people that buy them don't know any better.

People buy shit games because they don't know any better. Either by review before hand or just generally don't understand what makes a good game. Be it great mechanics, good gameplay, longevity, lack of repitition, replayability. Gaming is still well in its infancy as a medium to the majority of the buying public.

That being said, the same also applies to movies, a medium that is well out of its nappies and people still buy and enjoy shit films. Films that are poorly received critically can still go on to make millions just like a shitty game can. I think at the end of the day, stupid people don't need much to be entertained, and not only that, don't make the discernible difference between a truly great game and some shovelware party pap because its usually just 60 minutes of their time turning their brain off, the same way they make it through Emmerdale or Hollyoaks.

There's plenty of good casual games that get good scores: Buzz, Wii Sports, Boom Blox, Guitar Hero, Mario Kart, Wii Fitt. Becuase they're actually good games, not cynical shovelware.


The fact that quality doesn't matter when it come to sales is another matter entirely. But Wii Fitt scored good and soled good.
That's got little to do with hardcore snobbery.

Man's got a point, in fairness. Plenty of games which simply don't even get reviewed, particularly during the busy period. And then a bunch of others which don't get a fair crack of the whip because reviewers want to move onto the next core title.

But then again, a lot of the specialist sites aren't writing for that kind of audience, so why should they spend valuable man hours on these titles? Bit of a vicious circle, really.

@Nodebug

Are you related to Hitler?


@Grogmonkey

"Because I have taste" - no, you simply have your own preference.

Mommy Bloggers are the new MILF's

I agree with him on the fact that games reviewers don't like or review waggle family games. But seeing as the target audience of these reviewers isn't the same audience as those games I really don't think they should at all. I don't even think sites like Eurogamer have to review Horse Riding Penny part 2. Let some other publications less product specific or more family oriented review them.

Also, a good game is a good game. There are lots of crap family movies which suck, then there's Pixar which doesn't. Same audience, huge leap in quality.

I have been waiting for the review of Horse Riding Penny part 2 and Hannah Montanna for ages when are they due?

As already pointed out the fact that these games review poorly makes little difference as the target mommy, granny, and kiddie audience will likely never read them anyway and base their purchase on what they see in those awful Nintendo ads on TV.

DFawkes said: "A bad game is a bad game. Wii Sports is a nice family game, and it reviewed generally well because it's a good game. Bad games get low scores because they're bad in some way. At least that's how I thought reviews worked. I better start buying games that got terrible reviews just to check!"

The naivité is killing me.

Games are subjective experiences, they're not "good" or "bad" in themselves. The preferences of the reviewers matter to what they write and think. It is a problem that most games reviewers are 20-35 year old men.

skillian said: "Eurogamer is perfectly capable of reviewing a game like Nintedogs objectively"

Nobody is capable of reviewing a game objectively. Reviewing games is inherently subjective.

skillian said: ""Leave those reviews to the 100-word reviews in newspapers and Heat magazine, where it's perfectly acceptable that Wolverine gets 4/5 stars."

Boo hoo. Now that's plainly unacceptable! How could they!

Perhaps they found the game fun?

"Our games aren't blatant ripoffs and shite, reviewers just need to up the scores."

Argh this is annoying.

Readers of games magazines and sites like Eurogamer largely couldn't give a shit about family based Wii games. They're just irrelevant and that's why they get the coverage they deserve. Go market your games in Asda or Tesco where they belong. If you want to be reviewed alongside games like Half Life 2 and WoW then you can't complain when your simplistic cash-ins get largely trounced.

Like a lot of people here say, a bad game is a bad game. I'd call Little Big Planet a family game, yet that received extremely positive reviews. That's because it was a good game. I used to love Nintendo but these people are becoming almost as annoying as Mac owners now!!

Games are subjective experiences, they're not "good" or "bad" in themselves.

Says you.

;p

My 7 year old daughter has played and loved a few games that the gaming press have slated. She's 7 you see, stuff a 'core' gamer can handle in terms of manual dexterity or puzzle solving or reaction speeds she can't. As such the 'simple' stuff goes down well, at least as well as the wii sports and other simple stuff that does appeal across the board.

So some games are simple with very broad appeal and some are just simple with no broad appeal.

Either way this site is not a site that I or she would pay any attention to with regard to reviews of casual (Wii) games. Having worked on a couple, and seen the reviews of them here and elsewhere, compared to people 'in the street' who've played them and enjoyed them, well, there's a marked difference in what one finds entertaining, even if there may be a substantive case for some form of objective quality assessment of such things.

DFawkes A bad game is a bad game.

Pretty much.

@Nodebug

Are you related to Hitler?

Did I miss something? Don't think anything he said was particularly offensive. In fact I tend to agree to an extent, though I would take the stance of 'inexperienced consumers' over, 'stupid consumers'. If you don't have a vocabulary and a knowledge of games, you won't expect so much or set such high quality benchmarks for stuff you buy, but that doesn't make you stupid.

The problem is, that an inherently bad/un-enjoyable game is still bad, and most likely won't be enjoyed by "core" or "casual" gamers, and publishers seem to be quite content releasing sub-par quality games to make a quick profit. To be honest, I think this can only harm the current 'casual' market. If a person buys consistently bad games but knows no better, they will most likely be turned off their new pastime. If on the other hand every game they play is as fun as say, eyetoy, wii sports, peggle, singstar, buzz or guitar hero, they might actually start gaining a larger understaning of games in general exploring titles that previously didn't interest them...

some sites cannot even review non family Wii games properly (EGs grand slam tennis review is the latest example) so what chance do family games have?

@dadrester

"Are you related to Hitler?

Did I miss something? Don't think anything he said was particularly offensive. In fact I tend to agree to an extent, though I would take the stance of 'inexperienced consumers' over, 'stupid consumers'."

.......

You come across as another games fascist.

"Also, a good game is a good game. There are lots of crap family movies which suck, then there's Pixar which doesn't. Same audience, huge leap in quality."

Hit the nail on the head, really. If someone gives me a big pile of money, I will quite happily purchase a Wii and every family/casual/whatever you want to call it game that is released, play them with my wife and son and review them. Then I'll track sales to see if the quality has any effect whatsoever on the sales of the game.

I'm predicting a "no."

It's perfectly possible to review objectively. At least part of a game, that is.
Some examples:
- Responsiveness
- Average gametime before completion
- loading times
- #bugs
- AI (partly)


Never completely objective, I agree, but never 100% subjective either.

Surely you should just turn to Ellie and ask her "5/10.....WHAT are you thinking? Its got coconuts and its in a carnival"

@orakio

True, but that would probably mean the end for 95% of all publications out of pure boredom that would generate. i like hearing someones opinion next to the technical facts.

This just in: GHIESTG OUESIBUSB!!"NRNRNRNJ"#JJJJj FOR YULETIDE AND QUEEN FFFFFFRRR,.,poRaaa22DK.

@ Doctor_What

+1

But still, his point that Wii games are generally reviewed by people that don't like Wii games is valid.

I personally am of the opinion that all review scores are irrelevant, you really have to go through the text of multiple reviews combined with other information sources (e.g. interviews, trailers) to form a proper impression of a game.

E.g. reviewers in general put high value on co-op, multiplayer, lots of pixels and replayability. Those are not important to me. If I just looked at scores, I would probably mis out on lots of games that perfectly suit my tastes.

Wii games buyers (or the parents of) Do not or will never read games reviews.
Wii users get their information from places like the Hannah Montana comics, the Jonas brothers magazine, SoccerMom Weekly, The Altzheimers Gazette and Loose Women.
i am sure these organs are giving fair and balanced reviews/ coverage of the latest Wii shovelware tailored to their key demographic and what these non-gamers like contained within their shovelware.

I remember a review (or possibly an editorial) that appeared here making approximately the same point as Braben - game journalists see games as game journalists, not as kids or non-hobbyist gamers. I don't think this addresses the point that Moore made, though, that they don't read those reviews anyway. If EG has an MMO section and a Retro section (and apparently a somewhat mysterious technical analysis section now in Digital Foundry), shouldn't it have a Family section too, and advertise it in family-orientated places?

@ MattDamon

What the hell is wrong with you? Some people are unintelligent and indiscriminate by nature - in a word, stupid. If you prefer, you could substitute the idea of them being ignorant, which is to say simply lacking the knowledge to be able to know quality from dross; it works as a concept, although it does ignore the sizeable population of people that should be more accurately described as stupid because they dislike accruing knowledge and actively don't want to. That's not a judgement, not an insult and not an opinion, simply a statement of fact. Stupid/ignorant people are not inherently bad, any more than intelligent/informed people are inherently good. Saying this does not make me or anyone else a fascist.

Game directed at kids in sells tons shocker....

Its funny the way you never hear anything from a successful shovelware game publisher/developer complaining about wii reviews. I bet these guys at Cat Daddy Games are proud of themselves for choosing to make a low budget game directed at the right audience on the wii.

i think he is right as most review sites are aimed at us hardcore and with notable exceptions casual games get hammered.should a game score only be judged on how well the game performs to the audience its targeted at even if they are under 10s or middle aged house wifes?

There I was thinking you review a game on its merits, rather than who's going to play it.

>I like Braben, but I think he's got the wrong end of the stick

Not at all. I'll give an example : You guys like to pick on wii music as being "shit"... AND it got bad review scores - But the reality is it's a GREAT kids game. Every kid that i've seen play it, thinks its the best thing since (i dunno) the tellytubbies (or whatever the modern day equivalent is)

Gamers who post on forums and read reviews seem to think that ALL games should be aimed at you (the teenage kids who like shooters predominantely). But in the example of wii music - it was PERFECT for the audience for which it was intended - 6 year olds. And as such, if it was reviewed fairly - it should've been scored accordingly.

But internet games reviews arent written for 6 year olds - they're written for teenagers like yourselves. Who'd find wii music crappy (as it's not aimed at you or me). And subsequently it got a crap score, and it got the whole internets laughing at it (unfairly imho)

PS : I pick wii music - because it's the only piece of "kids software" i have any real experience with.

Also, a good game is a good game. There are lots of crap family movies which suck, then there's Pixar which doesn't. Same audience, huge leap in quality.

You're unintentionally backing up his point here. Pixar movies are made to appeal to a broad audience, from 3 year olds right up to parents, so we think of them as a good example of a movie not aimed at "us", when in reality - they are. A movie made purely for kids isn't necessarily a bad movie, even if "we" hate it.

The Lego... games are the gaming equivalent, wide appeal. That doesn't then make a game exclusively aimed at kids bad, purely because they never considered the adult audience.

Tell us what games you made already Wii Flavoured Farticus :d!

Kinda bored of this whole divisive issue, not doing gaming anygood, we get it, its like music and films not everyone watched and wants to watch the same thing but people who have a real interest in games should be able to make a distinction between the surface (form it takes) and the substance (function it offers) of games in the past, Mario which appeal to a broad audience and such like so why are people suddenly incapable of doing so now?