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.
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.
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!
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”.
People who enjoy a game are more likely to have more playtime, therefore the higher the playtime in the ‘window’ of reviews that you look at, the more likely they are to skew high. This is exactly what you’d expect to see on any game, barring situations like the developers making changes that ruin a game that previously was good.
So after 2 hours of not having a good time, the game was deemed bad and negative reviews were written.
Two hours is the window for a refund, so I absolutely make a call within 2 hours. If a game - especially a new / expensive game - hasn’t engaged me within that time, I refund it and move on. I don’t have enough hours in the day to play games I don’t enjoy hoping that they’ll get good eventually. Why should anyone feel the need to do that, whether they’re giving the game the benefit of the doubt or not? It’s the MMO argument. “The game gets really good around the 100 hour mark!” I don’t care. I’m not sticking around for it. There are plenty of other games to play that are fun within the first 2 hours. If a developer expects people to slog through an unenjoyable 2+ hours to get to “the good parts”, they probably deserve the negative reviews.
therefore the higher the playtime in the ‘window’ of reviews that you look at, the more likely they are to skew high.
Yes, I’m looking at 2 hours, not exactly high.
Two hours is the window for a refund, so I absolutely make a call within 2 hours.
2 hours is arbitrarily chosen as a catch-all. You can finish some games and refund them within that time, it doesn’t work well in all situations. It’s not some objective measure of how much time you need to judge a game.
specially a new / expensive game - hasn’t engaged me within that time, I refund it and move on.
The example is a free game. There’s also a difference between moving on and leaving a negative review
“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.
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.
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.
