Gaming News

Skerries

Looks like handheld gaming is back on the menu with the current Kickstarter for a Steam Handheld also out there

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/smachteam/smach-z-the-handheld-gaming-pc

Sephiroth_dude

Never heard of this but the silver case is coming west too ps4


http://www.gameinformer.com/b/news/archive/2016/10/20/suda-51-the-silver-case-is-coming-to-ps4.aspx

Zero-Cool

Goddamn it Bethesda. New policy where they won't send out any review copies for future games until 1 day before release starting with Skyrim.

http://www.polygon.com/2016/10/25/13409774/bethesda-review-policy-dont-preorder

johnny_ultimate

Bethesda wrote:

“We also understand that some of you want to read reviews before you make your decision, and if that’s the case we encourage you to wait for your favorite reviewers to share their thoughts"

The world would be a better place if this automatically popped up anytime someone places a preorder.

SeantheMan

Zero-Cool wrote: »

Goddamn it Bethesda. New policy where they won't send out any review copies for future games until 1 day before release starting with Skyrim.

http://www.polygon.com/2016/10/25/13409774/bethesda-review-policy-dont-preorder

What's the problem there ?
Just wait till reviews come out anyways. Pretend the release date was a week later than originally announced. You don't HAVE TO buy or pre-order games.

They don't have to or shouldn't have to give out games to reviewers early if they don't want to.

Benzino

Even more so with Bethesda games, generally very buggy and always worth waiting a while to see how the game is received after a week or so.

gizmo

That'd be Bethesda Game Studios titles rather than the Bethesda published games, right? While the Fallout games have suffered from incredibly buggy launches I'm pretty sure the likes of Dishonored, Wolfenstein, The Evil Within and Doom have released without major issues?

As for the lack of review copies on their behalf, go for it. Anything that helps break the back of the pre-order mentality amongst folk is a good thing. Not only does it make sense in terms of waiting for reviews but it could hopefully pave the way for the end to pre-order bonuses, retailer or otherwise, and hopefully shift any possible early purchaser rewards to the first couple of weeks and/or initial pressing.

johnny_ultimate

gizmo wrote: »

Anything that helps break the back of the pre-order mentality amongst folk is a good thing. Not only does it make sense in terms of waiting for reviews but it could hopefully pave the way for the end to pre-order bonuses, retailer or otherwise, and hopefully shift any possible early purchaser rewards to the first couple of weeks and/or initial pressing.

As wonderful as that would be, the potentially positive aspect of the announcement is undercut somewhat by the Steam banner ad for Dishonoured 2 proudly boasting "pre-order now to get access a day early" :pac:

But yes, if it serves as a way to encourage players to just wait a few days that's only a good thing. With a stupid abundance of opinions about games now available within hours of even a non-reviewed game becoming available and the immediacy of digital downloads, less and less need to take a gamble on an unknown quantity.

Robert ninja

I don't think it's going to stop people pre-ordering. Hype has always been what causes pre-orders. Now there will only be marketing. Trust in game journalism is also at an all time low so it probably matters less than ever.

https://twitter.com/Brad_Glasgow/status/791034640635232256

Personally I don't remember ever buying a game because of critic reviews even when I was younger and would buy gaming magazines and read em' cover to cover. It was actually the guides that got me interested in something because they would naturally reveal a lot of detail about the gameplay and experience one could expect from the title with lots of actual gameplay pictures slots instead of big wallpaper-type CG art.

Penn

The thing about pre-order bonuses is that you can still wait for a week before actually buying/downloading the game, wait for the reviews, and then cancel your pre-order and get a refund if it turns out to be sh*t.

Pre-ordering doesn't mean you actually have to pick up the game Day 1. You can have the best of both worlds. If the reviews are good, you still get your pre-order bonus. Reviews are bad, you can get a refund and send a bigger message to the publisher.

gizmo

johnny_ultimate wrote: »

As wonderful as that would be, the potentially positive aspect of the announcement is undercut somewhat by the Steam banner ad for Dishonoured 2 proudly boasting "pre-order now to get access a day early" :pac:

Oh the change there isn't going to come from the publishers, it can only come from consumers changing their habits and publishers responding to it. That's going to be easier said than done however since even this announcement is going to see a rather large amount of pushback as people accuse Bethesda of solely using this as an excuse to push out inferior or buggy releases on launch day.

EDIT: Eurogamer have a piece on the latest announcement and point to some inconsistencies with the policy, assuming it has already been inacted, whereby some "influencers" seem to be exempt.

Robert ninja wrote: »

I don't think it's going to stop people pre-ordering. Hype has always been what causes pre-orders. Now there will only be marketing. Trust in game journalism is also at an all time low so it probably matters less than ever.

Trust in journalism across the board is at an all time low however the root cause of this appears to be people simply not liking the idea that their precious opinions may be different from others or, shock horror, misinformed.

In terms of games though, you're quite right, general pre-release exposure via marketing is fairly well recognised as having a larger contributing factor to the success of a game than anything else, reviews included. While not particularly surprising, it's also a little bit worrying for people who would prefer to see development budgets not being dwarfed by marketing budgets and the combined inflated budgets not being seen as a deterrent for publishers to fund more interesting ideas.

johnny_ultimate

Frankly I believe that 'games journalism is less important / trusted than ever' is something of a myth peddled by an exceptionally distrustful few (ditto the 'media bias' decried by Trump and his minions - some potentially legitimate concerns blown out of all reality). Given the fervour with which people actually consume professional critical reviews for games - heck, look at the excitement over review scores in these very forums whenever a new game is about to be released - I just can't marry that with the reality I perceive. Which is not to say other factors aren't significant these days too, whether that's 'influencers' or otherwise. If anything, too much weight is put on reviews and metacritic. Would be neat if more publications held off on release day reviews in favour of more considered, critical takes (Eurogamer say they're aiming for that, although Kill Screen remains my gold standard) while bearing in mind that yes, sites do unfortunately need 'hype' traffic to survive.

Anyway, **** pre-orders.

Varik

Anyone with a bit of charisma is jumping ship from the large sites, and people copy/pasting scores from meta critic is hardly a gauge of how valued "professional critical reviews" are.

Can't go a week without someone doing the rounds between podcast and youtube videos about their patreon.

gizmo

Varik wrote: »

Anyone with a bit of charisma is jumping ship from the large sites, and people copy/pasting scores from meta critic is hardly a gauge of how valved "professional critical reviews" are.

Can't go a week without someone doing the rounds between podcast and youtube videos about their patreon.

Can you blame them though? It's an industry predominantly made up of freelancers who earn, on average, $26,000 per year for US-based ones and marginally less for UK-based ones. Even those in salaried positions at Staff Writer levels don't earn particularly great money and in both cases, you're not necessarily going to be playing the games you want to play or writing the stories you want to write. Conversely, Jim Sterling takes in $10,443 per month from his Patreon on top of whatever advertising he gets from Youtube and his other freelance gigs.

As for the value of reviews, I think it's pretty obvious a lot of folk around here will look for reviews for the latest games and hopefully read them rather than just pasting the scores in. However, as we've seen fairly consistently over the years, the kind of posters here aren't necessarily indicative of the wider gaming public so it really depends on the context when discussing their validity.

Retr0gamer

Traditional games media journalism is on it's last legs I'd say. There's just so little money in it that publications are afraid to rock the boat and do some actual journalism in case they bite the hand that feeds basically. The glory days of the dot com boom era reporting are long gone.

Sites don't have the money to cover anything but the triple A games that publishers tell them to cover and the odd big name indie. It means the more interesting stuff gets no exposure. Eurogamer recently didn't cover Dragon Quest 7 because they were under staffed and even USgamer that does some good researched article work is understaffed that it can hardly cover anything but the biggest games.

The new non-professional media is taking over which is a bad thing in many ways. For every Jim Sterling or Super Bunny Hop doing some actual research and journalism there's thousands of clowns giving low brow uninformed opinions and trying desperately to put forward a funny persona to get clicks. The traditional media is trying to follow suit with the likes of Easy Allies (I know I rip into them all the time) putting forward personalities with very little knowledge or researching skills to back up any opinions they make.

gizmo

And here I am still lamenting the glory days of print era reporting.

Kiith

Bethesda wrote:

It’s about fairness, you see. They just want “everyone, including those in the media, to experience our games at the same time.

That's an absolutely hilarious excuse to give for withholding review copies.

pleasant Co.

If only there was some super easy solution to this non-issue, like if people just waited or something crazy like that

Stone Deaf 4evr

Kiith wrote: »

That's an absolutely hilarious excuse to give for withholding review copies.

They've no problem at all with giving youtube 'influencers' early access and exclusive footage etc though.

Robert ninja

gizmo wrote: »

As for the value of reviews, I think it's pretty obvious a lot of folk around here will look for reviews for the latest games and hopefully read them rather than just pasting the scores in. However, as we've seen fairly consistently over the years, the kind of posters here aren't necessarily indicative of the wider gaming public so it really depends on the context when discussing their validity.

The people who seek out 'forums' seem to have an overlap of with the few left who actually care for reviews. I think most people are certainly curious as to what critics think rather than actually waiting with bated breath to see if they should buy/not buy. It's more about keeping up things. "Oh it was great but didn't get very good scores." kind of situation. I don't even check metacritic or anything like that. Mainly because for the last few years I've predicted what kind of scores games will get pretty accurately without looking them up. I think that's how predictable it all is.

My gamer fiends, even the ones that only play AAA casual games, not one of them give a hoot about what critics say. Nor do many other online communities I find that don't take the forum format. (forums too are losing traffic)

johnny_ultimate wrote: »

Frankly I believe that 'games journalism is less important / trusted than ever' is something of a myth peddled by an exceptionally distrustful few

Actually it's the outlets themselves who shoot themselves in the foot more often than not. I think the infamous DOOM footage made a lot of people think why should they listen to people who don't understand games and only know how to waffle on. I was looking up Tekken 7 articles for any news and came across a game journalist's accompanying video to the content. I've seen my mom show more understanding of a fighting game and she can barely figure out how to use a TV remote. I wish I could find the footage but alas it's buried under so many other videos where the players actually understand the game. I'll leave the DOOM footage instead.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9yYp8ZeQ-I8

To keep things fresh

Microsoft announce VR for W10

Sieghardt

gizmo wrote: »

And here I am still lamenting the glory days of print era reporting.

I used to read Sega Saturn magazine religiously, cover to cover. wish I could ever have something like that again

johnny_ultimate

Retr0gamer wrote: »

Traditional games media journalism is on it's last legs I'd say.

It'll survive in some form, because honestly it must. Some worthwhile websites will go under, absolutely. Others will struggle with limited resources, sure. But there's enough people out there with a lust for good writing, robust criticism and actual journalism that some sites (and maybe even some magazines!) will survive. A world of only YouTube, bloggers and social media is rather terrifying, honestly, even with the exceptional few who do stellar work in those fields.

Sites don't have the money to cover anything but the triple A games that publishers tell them to cover and the odd big name indie. It means the more interesting stuff gets no exposure. Eurogamer recently didn't cover Dragon Quest 7 because they were under staffed and even USgamer that does some good researched article work is understaffed that it can hardly cover anything but the biggest games.

To be fair, reviewing something like Dragon Quest 7 is potentially a 100 hour plus gig, and when there's lots of interesting games - some significantly more interesting and worthy of attention than a 3DS remake of a 16 year old game, including one within the very same franchise - out there in a very short space of time it'll inevitably fall by the wayside. It's a shame, absolutely, that they can't cover anything. But no question something like Thumper or Sunless Sea - Zubmariner would win out if it boiled down to that if I was making that horrible editorial decision :pac:

Robert Ninja wrote:

people who don't understand games and only know how to waffle on

I prefer the people who do understand games

Like: thorough developer interviews about individual game mechanics; varied and properly critical reviews of a wide range of games both high-profile and less so; thoroughly researched and engaging investigative pieces; intelligent and engaging narrative & formal analyses; detailed looks at issues plaguing the industry like 'crunch' or the relationship between publishers & press; reliable coverage of niche titles; and so on and so on.

As said, you'll find the truly exceptional few doing this kind of thing elsewhere too, but I prefer to engage with the best games journalism rather than the worst.

Retr0gamer

johnny_ultimate wrote: »

To be fair, reviewing something like Dragon Quest 7 is potentially a 100 hour plus gig, and when there's lots of interesting games - some significantly more interesting and worthy of attention than a 3DS remake of a 16 year old game, including one within the very same franchise - out there in a very short space of time it'll inevitably fall by the wayside. It's a shame, absolutely, that they can't cover anything. But no question something like Thumper or Sunless Sea - Zubmariner would win out if it boiled down to that if I was making that horrible editorial decision :pac:

Well I kind of like the weird, not perfect stuff, especially when looking back at a generation and discovering. It's just getting totally ignored now and with so little exposure it's beginning to die off even more. Even on the indie side it's not dying off but a lot of good stuff isn't getting the exposure it deserves.

I can't really blame the publications for this though, there's just not the money or resources to cover this anymore. And yet you get absolute ignorable dung like Mafia 3 getting a lot of press because a publisher has told the press and audience that it's 'Triple A'.

ERG89

Retr0gamer wrote: »

Sites don't have the money to cover anything but the triple A games that publishers tell them to cover and the odd big name indie. It means the more interesting stuff gets no exposure. Eurogamer recently didn't cover Dragon Quest 7 because they were under staffed and even USgamer that does some good researched article work is understaffed that it can hardly cover anything but the biggest games.

Eurogamer is a site that has gone to the dogs the last few years, late posting news and I found they got in a habit of posting stories to get a reaction....
A lot of the site updates were overused to advertise the expo, overuse digital foundry and outside xbox to bloat the content on there too.
I wouldn't buy anything based on their recommendations now

super_furry

Stone Deaf 4evr wrote: »

They've no problem at all with giving youtube 'influencers' early access and exclusive footage etc though.

Exactly. Publishers aren't going to bother as much with traditional outlets who might criticise their games and publicise the fact that they're broken.

Instead they're going to 'partner' with Youtube channels who will be 100% positive and promote the game without question.

Retr0gamer

I still like most of their reviews and appreciate they will put them out late so as to give a more thorough review. Their weekend articles are top notch, it's just unfortunate that they are limited to the weekends these days.

As for Digital Foundry, I don't mind what they do at all because quite frankly the work they do is exceptional. Their analysis of the tech and new tech developments is exceptional. DF retro as well is probably the best thing about eurogamer these days.

However gone are the days of reading eurogamer and finding out about a weird Japanese only game called Demon's Souls or reading about Persona 3. It's a place I used to go to get informed about the hidden gems and stuff I would have missed out on. It's just covering the big games now and regurgitating press releases.

lawlolawl

ERG89 wrote: »

Eurogamer is a site that has gone to the dogs the last few years, late posting news and I found they got in a habit of posting stories to get a reaction....
A lot of the site updates were overused to advertise the expo, overuse digital foundry and outside xbox to bloat the content on there too.
I wouldn't buy anything based on their recommendations now

Agreed. I used to love EG but now they are days late with news, have multiple stories about tiny aspects of Destiny most weeks, they started relying on that Ellie woman's terrible 'comedy' in a lot of articles and they have **** all reviews now, maybe 3 or 4 a week.

gizmo

Robert ninja wrote: »

The people who seek out 'forums' seem to have an overlap of with the few left who actually care for reviews. I think most people are certainly curious as to what critics think rather than actually waiting with bated breath to see if they should buy/not buy. It's more about keeping up things. "Oh it was great but didn't get very good scores." kind of situation. I don't even check metacritic or anything like that. Mainly because for the last few years I've predicted what kind of scores games will get pretty accurately without looking them up. I think that's how predictable it all is.

That's probably fairly true of myself too however in addition to being curious as to the score, I'm also generally interested in just reading about what other people think about games I like or indeed don't like. It's part of the enjoyment I get from the medium in general and extends beyond reviews themselves. It's why I talk to friends about games, it's why I've enjoyed books from the likes of Tom Bissell, Cara Ellison and Simon Parkin and ultimately, it's why I post on a forum like this. I doesn't bother me in the slightest that other people aren't interested in this element of games too but it's also why I find it difficult to agree with the idea that "old media" is now somehow irrelevant in the face of the rise of Youtube and other new forms of consumption.

ERG89 wrote: »

Eurogamer is a site that has gone to the dogs the last few years, late posting news and I found they got in a habit of posting stories to get a reaction....
A lot of the site updates were overused to advertise the expo, overuse digital foundry and outside xbox to bloat the content on there too.
I wouldn't buy anything based on their recommendations now

This is the kind of post that illustrates the varying opinions we're going to have about different publications. Like Retr0gamer, I'm still a fan of Eurogamer for precisely some of the reasons you've listed as failings. Their DF postings, for instance, are one of their definitive features in my eye nowadays with their dissection of various releases and announcements standing above most coverage from competing sites. While their coverage of the latest news has become more sluggish, I find it hard to care that I'm without one more rehashed press release when instead the site is often home to considerably more interesting articles from the likes of Wesley Yin-Poole such as the most recent interview with the guys at MercurySteam on the aftermath of their work on the Lords of Shadow series of Castlevania games or the Lionhead article johnny_ultimate posted above. Similarly, the frequent Destiny articles lawlolawl bemoans above are, unfortunately, understandble due to their popularity and ability to drive traffic to the site using relatively cheaper pieces. If that then means that they can continue to invest in more video content which I enjoy, such as the Late to the Party series with Aoife Wilson and Johnny Chiodini, then so be it.

To bring all of this back around to the original post regarding Bethesda's latest decision, one of the other things that'd be nice to see are more in-depth reviews than what we've become accustomed to due to various publications trying to rush their copy out before their competitors. It'll still happen regardless of this of course but there's been a growing number of shops that seem to be going in that direction so fingers crossed it continues in light of this move.

SeantheMan

The big thing for me with reviews as opposed to 10-15 years ago when I was buying PC/Playstation/GamesMaster magazines, is the ability to go onto Twitch or youtube, and actually see people playing the game for myself.

Back then I had to put faith into that magazine, and trust that the reviewer was of a similar taste to me and then go on that.

Now if I'm skeptical or interested in a game (that I'll probably spend 20-60e on) I'll ..
1. Go to boards.ie , have a quick read through of the Thread created for the game and find out what people think, bugs, criticisms etc
2. Go to Twitch or Youtube and find some gameplay videos and maybe watch an hour of footage or gameplay
3. Finally go to review sites or people that I know/like/have the same interest as me and get their take on the game and if they recommend it.

Metacritic is awful, because it just seems to let anyone be a critic and affect the score ..which is fair enough.
There is a site called OpenCritic though, which is similar to MetaCritic...but is specifically for Games and the publications where the reviews are taken from seem to be of a higher standard than those on Metacritic.....where you'd probably get the Dublin Metro review score (is that free rag still around ? )

I want to get Civ6, but just blew a few hundred in the last few months on games, so waiting a bit...but I'll do the 3 steps above before I buy it.

Robert ninja

johnny_ultimate wrote: »

Like: thorough developer interviews about individual game mechanics

Wrote two timesabout titles from Talha Kaya with no disclosure that he was being financially supported by her via Patreon.

johnny_ultimate wrote: »

varied and properly critical reviews of a wide range of games both high-profile and less so

Articles about indie developer Terry Cavanagh X4 while being funded by him on Patreon.

johnny_ultimate wrote: »

thoroughly researched and engaging investigative pieces

Wrote two times on Sunset, with no disclosure of personal ties with Alexander and Ste Currant, involved in the game through their consulting company Agency for Games.

johnny_ultimate wrote: »

intelligent and engaging narrative & formal analyses

Rewrote the same article on "Project Cars" over six times. Although the list of things you could criticise Kotaku for would break boards character limit I'm guessing.

johnny_ultimate wrote: »

the relationship between publishers & press

So let's continue.

After allegations of cronyism between Brandon Boyer and Stephen Thirion, he published an article downplaying everything, quote "misguided at best" and saying it's all rather like a conspiracy theory since the person used as source to confirm these things denied having discussed them when he asked.No updated article even when further evidence of Thirion and Boyer's relationship was found — confirming the relationship existed and exposing Thirion had received coverage from Boyer and that Boyer was involved in at least five other conflicts of interest.

gizmo wrote: »

That's probably fairly true of myself too however in addition to being curious as to the score, I'm also generally interested in just reading about what other people think about games I like or indeed don't like. It's part of the enjoyment I get from the medium in general and extends beyond reviews themselves. It's why I talk to friends about games, it's why I've enjoyed books from the likes of Tom Bissell, Cara Ellison and Simon Parkin and ultimately, it's why I post on a forum like this. I doesn't bother me in the slightest that other people aren't interested in this element of games too but it's also why I find it difficult to agree with the idea that "old media" is now somehow irrelevant in the face of the rise of Youtube and other new forms of consumption.

I would agree. I love reading about and discussing in person about this hobby. Hell, just about every time I see my sisters we talk over games, new and old. Haven't read too many books about games but love to watch making-ofs and interviews. Wouldn't read anything by Ellison even if I did.

gizmo wrote: »

I find it difficult to agree with the idea that "old media" is now somehow irrelevant in the face of the rise of Youtube and other new forms of consumption

Not irrelevant of course but much less relevant. Interest in the printed word dropped massively when everything moved online and internet became easily accessible for people and now there's not even much interest there. It's not just youtube directly. It's podcasts, social media and funding sites like twitter/sealion.club and patreon, or for discussion they go the comment sections of press releases either via the official site or on a twitter string, threads in places like reddit or image boards.


@SeantheMan

That's it! You just have to have a look all around the gaff. No single place is really interesting nor reliable.