Season 6, E3 Special

[fishbang]

This episode doesn't bear much similarity to the rest of our work. We wanted to tease out some of Scott's feelings about E3 while the trip was still fresh in his mind, and we were more interested in his ground-level view than anything else. There were a lot of rough feelings during and just after this year's expo, and it's hard to understand why some of us make so much noise about the show and so little about the games it's there to highlight. We don't have any answers here, just exhaustion and frustration and an awful lot of yearning. Next year's show might just turn it all around, right?

[tacitus]

Really interesting episode; thanks for doing it. Nice James rant about entitlement.

[kyrieee]

I think the reason the games press is expressing their opinion is because there's a demand for it. Personality driven media has really taken off and if you look at some sites like GiantBomb they actually do part entertainment and part reporting. Nowadays it's super easy to distribute facts about games (unlike the print days) so websites have to do more than just relay facts.

[Kadayi]

Pretty active on RPS, but actively agree with your criticisms of their E3 coverage at times in terms of the unnecessary handwringing and bemoaning. Personally I don't care that much for the 'sky is falling/everything was better years ago' games journalism. Unfortunately there's a large audience of hipsters who are more happy to join in that particular sing song of 'everything is terrible' and profess their personal boycott of this or that developer/publisher because of some perceived personal sleight. Article about Ubi? You can guarantee there will be people carping on about always on DRM, even though Ubi largely moved on from that some time ago. Article about EA? There's someone there telling you about how Origin is spyware and EA are right now reading your emails and that everything should be on Steam because Valve are fucking wonderful and Gabe is the second coming. There's no self assessment as to the validity of these sort of statements or mindset and it's kind of depressing at times tbh.

[Psykoboy2]

Originally Posted by kyrieee

I think the reason the games press is expressing their opinion is because there's a demand for it.

I think that's fine, but more and more all I ever see from opinion expression in games journalism is negativity and snark. It's to the point where I very rarely read a full article anymore based strictly on the snark of the headline or the person writing the article.

Originally Posted by Kadayi

Pretty active on RPS, but actively agree with your criticisms of their E3 coverage at times in terms of the unnecessary handwringing and bemoaning.

I'm snipping out most of your comment but I wanted to, for starters, welcome you to CoG, and, secondly, agree with everything you said. It got even worse after E3 when journos got on some high horse about sexism in the industry. I agree that it's there, but they seemed to be blasting E3 on the issue rather than focusing on the games that do it themselves.

Regardless, it just sounded like it was coming off a bit less than sincere and more a grab at attention. Not to quote Dennis Miller, but I don't want to get off on a rant here because something like this probably deserves its own thread, but I don't think E3, a somewhat closed to the public event, should be the target of sexism in gaming when about 98% of the gaming public aren't there to experience it. They experience the event through whatever the journalists write, which pretty much brings me back to most of this episode and our issues with games journalism.

[kyrieee]

Nice lurk

[Psykoboy2]

Yeah, I just noticed that they aren't really new to CoG, just first time posting is all.

[Kadayi]

Originally Posted by Psykoboy2

It got even worse after E3 when journos got on some high horse about sexism in the industry. I agree that it's there, but they seemed to be blasting E3 on the issue rather than focusing on the games that do it themselves.

I think half the problem is and it was sort of touched on in the podcast is that by on large there are very few actual journalists in the gaming press (namely people who genuinely understand journalistic process). The only qualification most people writing in the gaming press have is that they play games and write about them in a reasonably articulate fashion. The problems often come when they try and transition from writing about how a game plays or compares to others (arenas where they can claim some degree of expertise), to talking about other aspects of the games industry which really fall outside of their full understanding.

A good Journalist will naturally go into a subject with some assumptions, but they will test them out as to their validity before drawing conclusions (all that glitters is not gold). Sadly time and again however various luminaries of the gaming press seem more than happy to stick with their initial impressions as to a situation and just roll with it without any form of self assessment as to their actual worth. I think it's a real problem because these people do unfortunately possess a degree of power in terms of influencing peoples buying decisions and when they perpetuate falsehoods/encourage fear mongering rather than clarifying matters of concern they benefit no one in the process (not themselves, their readers or the industry).

For example the whole ME3 ending fiasco was just facepalm embarrassing. Firstly in the agressive partisan stance seemingly adopted across the board against the unhappy fan base, and secondly by the fact that seemingly no one (bar perhaps Giantbomb) had any issues with the games narrative ending at all. A clear disconnect between reviewer score Vs player expectation had come to the fore, and the press didn't really know how to handle it and instead decided to mishandle it in spectaular fashion.

The fundamental problem is that for a long time reviews have tended to focus on playability, appearance and stability as the principal scoring factors and narrative/storyline coherence have been viewed as a bit of an after thought. As long as you make a capable game you're likely to get an 80+ score from most sites because storyline is just viewed as the icing on the cake. With other media like Film & Television the critical emphasis is on the narrative/storyline coherence and production (albeit still inportant) takes more of a the backseat. Although the interactive medium is still evolving on a technical front I do believe we've reached a point where in the weighing of games needs to put a bit more emphasis on the value of the narrative aspect as we move forward.

Originally Posted by kyrieee

Nice lurk

Heh. A man listens to many gaming podcasts (I enjoy the no nonsense approach of IGC), but is limited by time at to the number of forums he can regularly post at unfortunately.

[Psykoboy2]

Originally Posted by Kadayi

For example the whole ME3 ending fiasco was just facepalm embarrassing. Firstly in the agressive partisan stance seemingly adopted across the board against the unhappy fan base, and secondly by the fact that seemingly no one (bar perhaps Giantbomb) had any issues with the games narrative ending at all. A clear disconnect between reviewer score Vs player expectation had come to the fore, and the press didn't really know how to handle it and instead decided to mishandle it in spectaular fashion.

I appreciate the kind words on the show. All of us on the show talk about games off-air the same as we do on-air so it's hard for me to remember what we've talked about on the show as opposed to outside of it. I remember having this conversation with James either out in my driveway after a show recording or during - not sure, but we brought up the fact that nary a review of ME3 mentioned anything about that ending. I'd imagine reviews aren't supposed to talk about the ending but none of them made reference to how it all ends, which turned out to be the biggest issue. Part of me wondered if that was something put on by EA instructing the reviewers never to mention anything about the ending in their reviews of ME3 or if it was just some big coincidence that no one did. Either way, the game came away with glowing reviews from the press, complaints and disappointment from the players, and ridicule from the press to the players/readers on their complaints and disappointments.

It was another sad face we had looking at the games press and what they do with their power and influence (again noting RPS in this as I think James may have mentioned them specifically).

Originally Posted by Kadayi

Heh. A man listens to many gaming podcasts (I enjoy the no nonsense approach of IGC), but is limited by time at to the number of forums he can regularly post at unfortunately.

We appreciate you listening and sticking with us since 2008 at least (I'm only guessing you probably came over from the EvAv days, maybe not). We see the chat room during recordings and go over emails and tweets from the usual listeners. For the most part, we figure about a good 10 people listen to the show. Then I'll meet someone at E3 or PAX completely out of the blue or we'll get a post from you or Navid from a few shows back and we remember that a whole lot more people than we think are listening. It reminds us to do better, both in the quality of show we provide and the timeliness of getting that show provided to you.

We appreciate it all, good or bad, so thanks for posting. We hope you'll post more. Same to you Navid, if you're reading this.

[Kadayi]

Originally Posted by Psykoboy2

I appreciate the kind words on the show. All of us on the show talk about games off-air the same as we do on-air so it's hard for me to remember what we've talked about on the show as opposed to outside of it.

What I specifically like about your show is that you're happy to get into the granularity of a game which is something other shows aren't necessarily always able to do because they are often trying to cover a bunch of games, rather than just a couple.

Originally Posted by Psykoboy2

I remember having this conversation with James either out in my driveway after a show recording or during - not sure, but we brought up the fact that nary a review of ME3 mentioned anything about that ending. I'd imagine reviews aren't supposed to talk about the ending but none of them made reference to how it all ends, which turned out to be the biggest issue. Part of me wondered if that was something put on by EA instructing the reviewers never to mention anything about the ending in their reviews of ME3 or if it was just some big coincidence that no one did. Either way, the game came away with glowing reviews from the press, complaints and disappointment from the players, and ridicule from the press to the players/readers on their complaints and disappointments.

I don't think it's a case of big business conspiracy more that by on large most reviewers (there are exceptions) aren't necessarily fans of the games they play for review to the extent regular gamers are and subsequently aren't as invested in the subject matter. A series like Mass Effect has a significant time investment attached to it and it's the people who've really put the hours in, got absorbed into the game world and have a couple of characters on the go who felt letdown/betrayed by the ending. Reviewers are tourists rather than inhabitants, if you catch my drift. Now that's not to say their opinions are invalid (fresh eyes can be a good thing), but failure to largely understand storyline investment is a huge oversight in my view.

As regards how the gaming press has largely shat on gamers, I think that utter contempt for their audience has been there for quite some time, and it's only really now beginning to come to the fore. I thought this was a particularly telling article in terms of reviewer mindset: -

http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/20...we-you-nothing

Valve stated that Episode 3 would be completed by Christmas 2007 (or words to that effect) when they announced the episodic model. It was on the very basis of fast turnaround that they sold episode one to a largely skeptical player base at the time (coming off a disappointing ending to HL2). I can't think of any other business where in a company can blow their own deadline and then not feel any sense of obligation to inform their customer base as to a revised ETA tbh. Sure no money has changed hands, but who else is likely to be buying the end of a trilogy save the people who've bought the first two parts exactly? In which case what's the big deal 5 years down the road with certain customers asking what's going on? The people being out of order in the equation aren't the consumers here, it's Valve.

There's definitely something toxic at play in terms of this villifying of the game fan whilst rabidly defending the developer here, both in the example above and the numerous articles/opinions voiced regarding the fan backlash against ME3. The desperate clinging to the artistic sanctity of the singular auteur just don't hold any water when the products in question are being designed by commitee. In both cases promises were publically made and not delivered upon. I'm not sure where games journalism goes from here in the long term, all I can say with certainty is that several journalists I used to give some credence to have dropped off the respect meter.

It was another sad face we had looking at the games press and what they do with their power and influence (again noting RPS in this as I think James may have mentioned them specifically).

I like RPS generally, however JW has a tendency to go off the rails when he's on a crusade, whether that's over DRM, Origin, TOR servers not being up when he specifically wants them to be or some other bugbear and it can bit a bit /facepalm. Occasionally a bit of distance and daylight is required before posting I feel.

We appreciate you listening and sticking with us since 2008 at least (I'm only guessing you probably came over from the EvAv days, maybe not). We see the chat room during recordings and go over emails and tweets from the usual listeners. For the most part, we figure about a good 10 people listen to the show. Then I'll meet someone at E3 or PAX completely out of the blue or we'll get a post from you or Navid from a few shows back and we remember that a whole lot more people than we think are listening. It reminds us to do better, both in the quality of show we provide and the timeliness of getting that show provided to you.

keep it up. I like the cut of your jib on the whole (though I don't believe DA2 was terrible). I did like the fact that you had some excitement for what had come out of E3. Personally I thought Tomb raider looked pretty good and The last of Us is making me think I should maybe spring for a PS3 at some point as well (PC gamer on the whole). Watchdogs certainly has my attention, though I'm curious to hear more about it.

[Limee]

I should have popped in here earlier, but I just wanted to say that this episode had a very different feel to it. I liked how you went about discussing the show from your personal perspectives. The amount of coverage we get now sitting in our homes is great. You can see all the major press conferences and within a short period most of the trailers/game footage is up to be seen. You can then get the hands on views from your site(s) of choice. Years ago it used to be about waiting on the post E3 magazines to read about the new games.

I agree with the whole discussion in here on the gaming press and the disconnect with their audience. The Mass Effect 3 ending controversy was the big deal for me, because of my love for that universe. I guess it was the easiest thing in the world to just label the people unhappy with the ending as idiots on the internet, there are after all a lot of idiots on the internet. However peoples problems were with the fact that not only was it an unhappy ending or a bad ending, but it was fundamentally flawed. I guess the reason they didn't want to dig into this too much was the fact that these same sites had reviewed the game without picking out the fact that there was any problem with the ending. The artistic integrity argument was the next line of the failing defence. If they had true artistic integrity then they would not have produced an extended cut ending (which did make changes to the endings they originally produced). Perhaps if they had dug into and gained an understanding of the real reasons people didn't like the ending they could have passed that onto Bioware. It is so different to our normal non gaming press as they would absolutely love to get their teeth into something like this.

[Navid]

Thought E3 was very good this year, lots of games being shown and amongst them quite a few new IP's and a few surprises... Sure the Press Events were probably not designed for me personally, but I knew that going in.

Let's be honest, Press Events are one part for gamers who are streaming the event, one part for more casual gamers who are either watching the event on TV or hear about it via other popular media that and finally one part for investors. Saying or expecting that the event should only focus on the gamers is frankly a bit silly.

If you want coverage of the smaller or less featured games then check game reporters impressions from the show floor, there is plenty of of info on all the titles if you go looking for it.


Finally, have to say I can't agree with James on the idea that Quantic Dream should stop doing what they do and instead make "games". First of all, what are we defining as games these day and second I would say titles such as Heavy Rain/Flower are as much games as Doom.

Just because it doesn't have a reticule on screen or follows the same set pattern of progression based (defeat enemies/collect keys to doors/jump across platforms) gameplay doesn't make it any less of a game.

To be honest the last thing I want is for Quantic Dream and developers like them to make "traditional games" because I am already spoilt for choice when it comes to those... no, what I want is for them to keep making the stuff they make that no one else is willing to risk making.

Doesn't matter if the end product might not end up quite as polished as one would like, some times I'll take that less polished new experience over a spit and shine polished iteration of a already established experience.