I often bemoan the fact that marketing or circumstances surrounding a game have a disproportionate amount of sway on the perception of quality in video games. “Bad” games can be successful and “good” games can be review bombed to hell. With this post I would like to look at why the situation surrounding a game is as important to its perception than its actual quality. I don’t think marketing brain washes people into liking games, but rather, it buys benefit of the doubt.
Recently, Highguard released to the dreaded “overwhelmingly negative” review tag on Steam, meaning most people had left a negative review. What interested me was that many of these reviews, even discarding the obvious review bombing ones, were written after fewer than 2 hours. I think this is a big sign that the game did not get benefit of the doubt. The terrible perception of the game from it’s failed marketing hadn’t afforded it that. So after 2 hours of not having a good time, the game was deemed bad and negative reviews were written.
I had a different approach to Highguard than many of these reviewers. I was actually rooting for it, I like a lot of the previous work of the developers. After 2 hours of play, there were a few things I didn’t like at all about the game, but instead of thinking they were bad, I was wondering why these elements were included. There had to be a reason, right? I had to play more to find out. I wasn’t necessarily enjoying the game more than most, but by granting the developers the extra benefit of the doubt, I didn’t leave a negative review (nor a positive one), and came back the next day to play more. This seems to be a trend as if you only take into account reviews with 2+ hours of play time, Highguard’s opinions are “mixed” rather than “overwhelmingly negative”.
This is something I’ve noticed throughout my journey in video games. If I’m invested in a game before I even play it, there’s a much greater chance I’ll like it. That’s exactly the job of marketing and franchises, getting you invested before you even play.
The first time I noticed this was in my early teens, when I pirated a lot of games. I noticed that I tended to like games I bought more than the ones I pirated. The monetary investment pushed me to try harder to like them, while dropping a game that cost me nothing was pretty easy.
This goes in pair with another of my big complaints in video games: tutorials are terrible. On average, the first hour of a video game is sub par. It does take some determination to get through these early parts to get to the good stuff. Without some benefit of the doubt, many good games would be dropped and deemed bad. Wanting to like a game is a really important factor.
On average, the first hour of a video game is sub par.
If it’s a golf game, you’re doing all right then.
Heh, didn’t expect a golf joke here.
It’s what I’m here… Fore!
“Without some benefit of the doubt, many good games would be dropped and deemed bad. Wanting to like a game is a really important factor.”
That depends on what game and what crowd you are talking about. 4x/Grand Strategies/management crowds are much more patient; 70+ hrs/playthrough is common with a steep learning curve, and this is where a reputation for being complex overrides the need for intuitive tutorials, so people are much more forgiving.
Highguard is not one of those games; it was doomed to be Concord 2.0 at the beginning, but then again, I don’t really understand those crowds either, since I hardly play PVP shooters.
Even after having gone through the tutorial, 2 hours is more than enough time to see the loop of Highguard several times and decide you don’t like it. 2 hours is more than enough to count as “the old college try” for any game, as it should be a goal of the designers to make your game fun and interesting right away. If I’m waiting more than how long it would take me to watch a feature length movie before I start having fun, then they screwed up.
Probably a result of living in a highly judgmental global society that would rather form an immediate opinion, even if it is objectively wrong, than spend the time to actually investigate what the facts about something are.
As an example, some people say that any person named in my comment should immediately be jailed. I feel this is a wrong opinion, because any person can be named in a conversation that they aren’t party to. I could, for example, start talking about Mr. Rogers, and he is technically named in my comment. But some people say that the name just being in my comment is enough “evidence” to jail him forever. Rather than spending the time it would take to realize I was only saying “I liked Mr. Rogers’ show on TV,” they want an immediate resolution despite however wrong or inaccurate it would be.
Investigation and research matters, and we live in a global society that villifies this ideology in favor of forming immediate and often wrong opinions about things they spend almost no time actually investigating.
I mean, I remember a time where you were expected to not be able to win a game in a single sitting, and in fact, you might not get all the information about a game in the actual game. We had to read manuals for tutorials, maps, and story exposition. Try releasing a game nowadays that does that and you’re going to get slapped with a 1/10 because people nowadays have less patience than a goldfish.
Personally, I primarily blame legacy news outlets and social media for this. But I digress.
We had to read manuals for tutorials, maps, and story exposition. Try releasing a game nowadays that does that and you’re going to get slapped with a 1/10 because people nowadays have less patience than a goldfish.
I kind of get where you’re coming from but your dismissive framing means it comes across as out of touch, ‘old man yells at clouds’ type stuff.
The shift has far less to do with patience and more to do with designers getting better at integrating tutorials into the games themselves. Games now are designed to teach you how to play through playing, so reading a manual became unnecessary. That’s not a flaw, that’s an improvement.
The only reasons this wasn’t done earlier was because the field of UX was still developing, and because cartridges limited how much text could be crammed into the games themselves.
That said, there are still well-received games that rely on manuals, but it’s now an explicit design or aesthetic choice rather than something everyone has to do to make up for limited tutorialisation. Check out Tunic, Keep Talking and Nobody Explodes, or TIS-100 as examples.
I’d rather games only include a manual because they wanted to, rather than because they had no choice.
A lot of good older games had gameplay explained through play, but it wasn’t as common as it is now for the reasons you stated. Other people had to catch on and then learn how to implement the better design.
And there are still plenty of games that do a terrible job of explaining how they work or have complex mechanics with no apparent way of conveying it to players.
I know they’re called “reviews” but they actually often wildly swing between actual, in-depth reviews and quick impressions. Blame Steam for having no interest in differentiating between the two, not users for using the feature as intended.
They could have a “Quick Impressions” section with no minimum character limit, and a “Reviews” section with a 500-word limit or more, and even have a separate score for each. Or any alternative solution that achieves the same result.
Though Highgiard probably deserves to be a failure, I have noticed these snap judgments too, and don’t often enjoy them.
I even see them the other way. A crowd knows a game for its notoriety, and they worship the amazing payoff at 30 hours. But, in the face of that positivity, no one is making good observations about how 15 of those hours were useless padding and the game’s main mechanics are severely flawed.
That’s not an observation that should retroactively pull down the score of a game that left impacts on people though. Analyzing flaws can help us work out how to improve sequels, or even patch games to help people dive further into them.
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Reviews are the least important info. If you like the theme and screenshots/video looks nice enough to you, then download the demo and test it yourself. If it’s good then it is good, if it isn’t then no GOTY-awards would change that.
Most of the games have a demo version. You just need to look up in the right place.
Reviews that explain the positives and negatives are extremely useful.
I rarely see demos for games anymore.
99% of the games have demos. Except for ones with denuvo or similar shit, but you shouldn’t play them anyway.
if your game isnt interesting within the free-refund time period on steam, expect bad reviews
simple as
Alright, here’s a hot take:
I’m 7 hours into Clair Obscur. It’s intrigued me a little, and I know it has good reviews for excellent story, but nothing I’ve seen has wowed me. Should I give it a negative review?
imo, that one was popular cause it was artsy enough to hit the mainstream. the game bits of it are too easy to be engaging for “veteran” gamers.
if you don’t like the game aspect of it i would recommend just lowering difficulty to minimum or watching a letsplay, cause story is good
Sorry but this sounds kinda condescending to me. I know you’re trying to make a point about expectations affecting people’s judgement (which is obviously correct) but it really comes off as pretentious instead ; I hope this is not on purpose.
It feels like you’re saying “I thought about the game and asked questions while everyone was just dismissive and didn’t think, so it’s their fault for not enjoying it” (I know this is not what you said, I’m exaggerating so you can maybe see how you come off)
Ironically, by saying people shouldn’t be so dismissive, you are being quite dismissive of them. I think there are better ways to phrase what I believe to be your main argument (expectations affect experience), although I won’t pretend I’m great at those things (I probably sound quite condescending here ; I promise I’m actually trying to help)
