Gaming Journalism Hurts the Industry Again. Also, It's Wednesday.

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Gaming Journalism Hurts the Industry Again. Also, It's Wednesday.

So, some weird shit happened recently. We're talking an 11 on the weird shit-o-meter. I probably would have written something in the Q23 but for some reason my account isn't allowed to post. They're a bunch of self-obsessed swine anyway. SOE was apparently gauging the possibility of paying journalists $1,000 to judge their games pre-release and the “gentlemen professionals” at Q23 don't like it. THIS IS AN AWESOME FUCKING IDEA, AND HERE'S WHY.

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[Signe]

You'd be perfect for it.  Don't forget the hotel.  I reckon in a year it'll be first class air, four star hotels and $1,000 an hour, including travel time.  And why not?  It would be cheap at twice the price.

[UnSub]

I'm also open to offering my services - hell, call me an "International" consultant. With the exchange rate I'd be cheaper than schild and less likely to scream and throw things. And I promise a Powerpoint presentation with every job! ;-)

As for the games journalism angle - I've met too many proto-journalists / writers fresh out of university / college / wherever who see themselves writing only about the stuff that really matters and will change people's lives and who will never sell out to the corruption of The Man. That they will break the big stories and save society from itself. This sounds like Q23.

Their first job, writing advertising copy for chewing gum brand variants, usually breaks them of those ideals.

[tazelbain]

But then who's going to keep the front page stocked with usefully cynical commentary?

[schild]

But then who's going to keep the front page stocked with usefully cynical commentary?

Me. I can make it a point to post about games that don't hire me for such a thing.

That's the beauty of this, it's like typing with hands made of lightning and god-power.

[Strazos]

I fully agree with Schild. 100%.

And quite frankly, I am shocked that there are not Multiple, large consultant operations already out there. Seems like a no-brainer to me.

Then again, you might end up telling people shit they already ignore, like "MORE QA lulz."


Also, the one-hour thing? Fuck, I'm pretty sure nowadays, that's not an exaggeration. I mean, I've personally given you grief before for your "one-hour reviews," but fuck...

If the game's not fun from the start, why fucking bother?

[Yegolev]

Then again, you might end up telling people shit they already ignore, like "MORE QA lulz."

Oh, corporations already ignore advice from consultants when they don't like what they hear.  The consulting firms are still very much in business, however.  Also, for actual consulting, this is cheap.  SOE wanted consultants, however there aren't any in the field, just a bunch of Jeff Albertsons on a web forum.

Undercutting prices for something like this is another reason the gaming industry isn't mature, it's the same mentality as people who program games for little or no money.  People work in games just to work in games; please refer to the old joke about the janitor in a theater complaining about his job but, when asked why he doesn't quit will reply, "What?  And leave showbusiness?!"  Me, I love games but I have a real job.  Having a real job doesn't prevent me from imposing my superior game-brain on others.

[Margalis]

Consultants that come in and tell you why your product sucks is an ok idea, but the game industry is in bed with game journalism enough as it is.

Look what happened when Schild visited the Austin guys working on the NGE.

[schild]

Look what happened when Schild visited the Austin guys working on the NGE.

NOT THE SAME. DON'T BRING IT UP. I HEREBY BAN IT FROM THE CONVERSATION K THX.

[Trippy]

Oh, corporations already ignore advice from consultants when they don't like what they hear.  The consulting firms are still very much in business, however.  Also, for actual consulting, this is cheap.  SOE wanted consultants, however there aren't any in the field, just a bunch of Jeff Albertsons on a web forum.

I thought the Themis Group did some of that. And there are consultants out there, I should know :-D

[dusematic]

I thought it was pretty intense and awesome until you started talking about suing people for stealing your idea and SOE backing you up.  Then I hoped you were joking.  And, if so, awesome.

[cmlancas]

Schlid, really good article. Without sounding too much like a brown noser, you're completely right. There is too much shitsucking and not enough truth-telling and genuine helping in the industry.


If enough people told VG/Horizons/Insert Game Here that his/her ideas were a big pile of shitty shit shit maybe Game_001 wouldn't be a flaming stinkbomb of Satan's feces.


I think that Kotaku set a really bad precedent with how it handled the situation a little while back and I think this is a direct result of this. Fuck stupid people. I am getting completely fucked by this in the long run because I want to take my English degree and use it somehow in the gaming industry. Now I'm more or less faced with editing (Not that I'd make gaming journalism my first choice) because Fuckwad_01 and Fuckwad_02 are so self-absorbed that they cannot think that games should be better.

Enough ranting. If we think that the gaming industry is run by father-son-uncle (all in the same) types, what the hell does it make the people who review them? The self-alienated I'm emo and stupid ginger stepchildren who pound their faces into the ground?

[Trippy]

Schlid, really good article. Without sounding too much like a brown noser, you're completely right. There is too much shitsucking and not enough truth-telling and genuine helping in the industry.

If enough people told VG/Horizons/Insert Game Here that his/her ideas were a big pile of shitty shit shit maybe Game_001 wouldn't be a flaming stinkbomb of Satan's feces.

Plenty of people did tell them that. They just chose to ignore it.

[cmlancas]

I meant in a consulting fashion -- i.e. "We hired you to tell us how we can fix this game and will genuinely listen to you and your ideas"


Sorry if it was unclear, the ragemeter was a little high while I wrote the post.

[Trippy]

For MMOs the developers get that consulting advice for free during their betas. There's no need to pay anybody to tell them their games suck.

[cmlancas]

Perhaps the MMO genre was a bad example. Focus more on Game_001 than the others I mentioned then. I think my point is still valid and you are being contrarian :)

[Trippy]

It's still not clear that it'll help things. Let's take the movie industry as an example. They focus group/test screen out the wazoo. And they know when they have a stinker on their hands (they don't screen it to movie reviewers) and yet they still release it. In the gaming industry I'm willing to bet that the companies that really care about the gameplay already have a methodology in place for getting honest gameplay feedback ASAP. This is how companies like Blizzard operate. They playtest and iterate through the early versions until they know the game is going to be fun to play. The companies that don't care they are building a crap product will ignore any honest feedback even if they bothered to solicit it.

[cmlancas]

So where would this kind of proposition help the industry? If we've made a case that operations that genuinely care about QA (Your example of Blizzard) already have a stellar department and those that don't have good QA don't care, why advertise this kind of work? Isn't it moot?

[Trippy]

The one type of company where this would be useful is one where for some inexplicible reason nobody at the company knows what a fun game is like and is willing to make the changes necessarily based on external feedback to make it more fun. But then you have to wonder why such a company is making games in the first place if everybody there is clueless about what makes for good/fun gameplay.

SOE has already shown many times over that they will blissfully ignore excellent feedback from testers to release games on some predetermined schedule rather than holding them back to actually make them fun first. It's not clear why they would be the ones looking to pay people to critique their games when 1) they can already get that advice for free and 2) they've ignored that advice in the past.

[MrHat]

Why pay someone $1000 when you can make a forum of 40 sign an NDA and just lay infos down there?

[cmlancas]

After rereading this thread in light of what Trippy had to say, I'm completely confused.


What is the point of flying someone out if you have a QA department?

[Trippy]

Presumably it's because your internal playtest group is incapable of giving proper feedback and/or has no clue if your game is fun to play. But again if that's the problem just invite some known hardcore gamers in your target audience to be alpha testers. Or fire your internal playtesters and find new ones.

[MrHat]

Presumably it's because your internal playtest group is incapable of giving proper feedback and/or has no clue if your game is fun to play. But again if that's the problem just invite some known hardcore gamers in your target audience to be alpha testers. Or fire your internal playtesters and find new ones.

Right, that's what I was thinking.  Just throw some of the hardcore peeps.  I guess Schild's reply will be something along the lines of jaded reviews since the hardcores feel like shoving their heads up dev's asses to get in those alpha groups.  How do you avoid the pole smoking/carpet hoovering?

Edit: Is "waiter is to waitress as pole smoker is to carpet hoover" correct?  What's the female counterpart to pole smoking?

[Trippy]

Actually I'm being a bit too cynical. Focus groups and the like do have their place even for companies that do know what they are doing. However I still don't understand why an MMO company would need to pay for this sort of advice.

[cmlancas]

Presumably it's because your internal playtest group is incapable of giving proper feedback and/or has no clue if your game is fun to play. But again if that's the problem just invite some known hardcore gamers in your target audience to be alpha testers. Or fire your internal playtesters and find new ones.

I think this is more spot on than I originally thought. I think it is mainly an issue with the playtesters being half-literate. Perhaps the employers believe that journalists would be much better at writing feedback than the people making $10.00 USD/hr.

[Phildo]

After rereading this thread in light of what Trippy had to say, I'm completely confused.


What is the point of flying someone out if you have a QA department?

QA is employed directly by the companies in question.  The idea of a consultant is to bring in someone from the outside who isn't beholden to the system.  And besides, how often is the QA department made up of people trying to break into the industry?  They have incentives to brown-nose and say "yes sir, it's a VERY good game, sir."  A consultant can come in and say "this game sucks horribly, redesign everything" and not worry as much about being fired.

I could be wrong, but I'm probably not.

[Trippy]

QA isn't really there to tell you if your game is fun or not, though they can do that if they have the time. They are there to make sure the game is actually working as intended.

[Arrrgh]

I thought internal testers all wanted to be devs one day? Someone in that situation isn't going to give honest feedback  and jeopardize their dreamed of promotion.

[Roac]

And quite frankly, I am shocked that there are not Multiple, large consultant operations already out there. Seems like a no-brainer to me.

Then again, you might end up telling people shit they already ignore, like "MORE QA lulz."

What schild is talking about isn't QA, it's critique of design.  Problem is, once you're at the point that you have a playable demo it tends to be expensive to go back and rebuild huge sections of the game.  In most cases, it'll just be more cost effective to publish as is and recoup what you can.  If a company's best guess is that increased sales due to game improvements won't match increased expenses, they don't make the improvements.  This is different from, say, a film focus group where it's not terribly expensive to reshoot just the ending, or even just manage it in the editing room to get the desired effect.  Eating a 5-10% cost increase isn't terrible if you are likely to recoup it, but systematic flaws are costly.

If the game's not fun from the start, why fucking bother?

Although the costs assossiated are very different, book review goes along this path.  If a publisher doesn't like the first paragraph + synopsis, then first page, then first chapter, they won't accept a book.  And that's if you can get them to even read the first paragraph.

[cmlancas]

QA is employed directly by the companies in question.  The idea of a consultant is to bring in someone from the outside who isn't beholden to the system.  And besides, how often is the QA department made up of people trying to break into the industry?  They have incentives to brown-nose and say "yes sir, it's a VERY good game, sir."  A consultant can come in and say "this game sucks horribly, redesign everything" and not worry as much about being fired.

I could be wrong, but I'm probably not.

You're probably very right here, but I do QA at my company (although I'm not specifically QA) quite a bit of the time and my company is very receptive to the criticism I have to give them. In fact, that is what I am there to do. They like it more when I say, "This system sucks, you need to redo it" because they know I am actually spending quality time with the system.


However, it would not be in line with the gaming industry's background to have a completely functional QA department. It sounds more like what you are saying Phildo.

[Yegolev]

I suppose I see this in two different ways.  The movie industry analogy was a good one, but you might note that the movie execs are not really interested in making good films, just good money, and the information they pay for reflects this.  If enough people will pay to see it to make a profit, they make the movie.  What schild is talking about is a service to help people make good games, and you will note he talks about artists instead of executives being the issue.  The more I think about it, the more I wonder what information a publisher would want.  I'm leaning towards ROI right now.  A development studio, they want to make a good game, but then they may not be very likely to invite outsiders to create a powerpoint of exactly how they all suck at making games.  You never know, though.

[schild]

QA isn't really there to tell you if your game is fun or not, though they can do that if they have the time. They are there to make sure the game is actually working as intended.

To be fair, if it's a game and it's not fun, it's not "working as intended."

Also, Developers don't have to LIKE IT. But they need it. There's a certain amount of art that goes into making a video game. And sometimes those artists need a swift kick in the ass. It takes an outside 4 seconds to figure out things like "gun movement is too weird" in an FPS. Whether that weird be floaty or seemingly inaccurate. I mean, simply example, but a good one in light of games like Shogo Armor Division or Tomb Raider: Legend. But it doesn't stop there. There are a million things that someone who understands the design process can nitpick on that can be fixed in relatively short term. Also, one of those thins is ambitious design. 90% of the companies out there, IMO, need to tone it the fuck down. Thankfully, this is one of those pieces of information that companies get for free.

I hope Peter Molyneux and Will Wright are reading this right the fuck now: Fable and the Sims suck despite sells, tone it the fuck down and streamline that shit, assholes.

[HAMMER FRENZY]

That was a funny posting. First because Schild apologizes for sounding like an egotistical bastard and second cause he thinks no one does this already, and three that there are not people better suited to do the job. I think that Schild knows quite a bit about games, but I have had my share of the game industry and can tell you that fools do this a lot. It is consulting and I have been an assistant consultant in the past on a number of games. I think that this whole thing just may work minus the cocky attitude and complete lack of tact. Also knowing a lot about games and game trivia and industry goings on and being able to design games well is two completely different things. "They are not in the same ball park, same league, they are not even the same sport." So for all you silly nillies that think you can do something like this,  This is something akin to film critics and book critics assuming that they could fix things and produce higher quality product. Nay I say. Hind sight is always 20/20. Luckily Schild has some game experience or I would call shinanigans on his ass.

So all in all, I think it is a good idea, albeit not original and certainly not a practice that has not been in use for several years at least. I think schild would do fine with a lot of the games that are thrown at him. But when it comes to fighting/combat systems and action and dynamic character interactcion/scripting  and animation key-framing..

Well...Monkey is really good at that too you know.... What I suggest? Actually make a company that does this and covers all genres of games. THAT has not been done before.

[schild]

If companies are doing this already, they're doing it wrong. But really, I'm mostly talking about MMOGs here. I just made it broad for the sake of the article. There are so few companies that should be making fighting games that I wouldn't even dare go near that. Of course there are people better suited for me. But then, I think we have a total of 3 hardcore fighting fans on this site. And zero fighting devs that read the site. So uhmmmm, yea! MMOGs could keep a company like this in business. Fighting games couldn't.

Also knowing a lot about games and game trivia and industry goings on and being able to design games well is two completely different things.

Yep, once you're entrenched in the latter, you seem to forget what "fun" is.

[HAMMER FRENZY]

I have to disagree. I think that, although fighting games are obviously not a bigger money maker than MMOG, they still make a good sum of money. No one scoffs at the money Sega makes off of VF or the popularity of Tekken, Soul Calibur or Dead or Alive. And you can be your ass that Smash Brothers is a major money making franchise. So I think that it is quite possible that other companies want a piece of that potential action. I think you are correct that there is not enough consultants out there doin this kind of stuff, but I also think that a lot of the consultants out there are also not qualified to do it. Honestly game design is not the hardest thing in the world but you and I know that apparently not everyone can do it, least of all some "designers".

Again I don't want you to think I think you are not qualified to do this kind of work on certain games. IE rpgs and to large extent mmorgs. But you seemed to target the industry as a whole and I can't really think of many designers who could tackle the entire industry single handedly and raise the quality of all genres.     

"Fun" is subjective. What is fun for me is certainly not fun for you and vice versa. I like playing fighting games. I actually enjoy sitting in practice modes and practicing combos and set ups and testing techniques. You actually enjoy level grinding and clicking a mouse endlessly while a random number generator takes its output and concludes your attacks success based on added bonuses of your equipment. Etc. I think designers need to focus on delivering a good representation of what they are making and that is it. It is too hard to please everyone and even the best examples of  completely accessible game play are still scoffed at by a good number of game players. designers need to do what they do well, and this will help keep their initial user base and ideally bring new players.