Totally Not Corrupt Professional Objective Gaming Journalism DRAMA

[Zewp]

http://www.polygon.com/2014/10/14/6974791/short-games-review

It's not that the game looked bad, or that the reviews rubbed me the wrong way — in fact everything released about the game made me believe it was right up my alley — but I knew I didn't have the time or energy for another game of standard length. And by standard length I mean anything that's eight hours or more.

 

[garren]

There's a market for him already, it's called mobile gaming

 

[Unkillable Cat]

[Polygon link removed]

Use that archive site instead of directly linking, please.

 

[groke]

There's a market for him already, it's called mobile gaming

This is going to be the big fucking fallout from the #gamergate bullshit, all of the indie cinema-game fuckholes and their journalist wankchamber are going to follow EA into the lands of App Store that lie beyond the sunset. A victory for both sides.

 

[Perkel]

I do think the call-out by the author and fans for "more short games" is interesting

I am yet to find dude who want shorter games. If anything 3h for me is unacceptable for any kind of game that wants to sell itself for more than 1$

 

[Angthoron]

You guys are missing the forest behind the trees:

And by standard length I mean anything that's eight hours or more.

Standard 8 hours
Standard 8 hours
Standard 8 hours

This is what it has come to.

 

[GrainWetski]

Only a journo would ask for shorter games.

 

[Infinitron]

You can play through the first episode of Doom in an afternoon. Probably not the entire game.

I would say that heavily "content-based" games have definitely gotten shorter. Systemic sandbox-type stuff, not so much.

 

[Zarniwoop]

Half-Life: 13 Hours
Call of Doody Black Ops: 7 Hours
Call of Doody Ghosts: 5 1/2 Hours

Neverwinter nights: 54 1/2 Hours
Mass Effect: 17 1/2 Hours

Yeah, definitely not getting shorter.

R00fles!

 

[GrainWetski]

Length is important for a lot of people. Mine is average, but I try to use it well.

 

[Redlands]

Game length is a terrible metric, especially on its own and doubly so when it comes to game reviews, because the two main interested parties have differing opinions:

• gamers want to get the most value for money, and so will generally prefer "longer" games, whereas
  
• reviewers earn more money if they write more reviews, and so will generally prefer "shorter" games.

The better metric to go for would be gameplay density, or how much time you spend with a game you're spending on play "versus" other factors (walking from A to B when there's nothing gained/lost by doing so except time, waiting for loading screens, cutscenes, etc.) You'd probably want to normalize the value by genre, but it'd help identify story-heavy games from story-light games at the very least.

 

[Zewp]

There's certainly nothing wrong with shorter games. I enjoyed the puzzles in Brothers: A Tale of Two Sons, but had it been any longer it would have worn out its welcome. There's something to be said for games that you can finish in an afternoon if you've got nothing better to do.

What rubs me up the wrong way is that a videogame journalist would complain about playing an 8 hour game, which most people would probably consider to be on the short side. Videogaming, by its very nature, is a time-consuming hobby. If you don't have the time to invest 8 hours in a videogame then maybe you shouldn't be writing about videogames as a fulltime job.

Then again, this is Ben Kuchera. A man who has built a career on spewing forth shameless drivel.

 

[Infinitron]

Adrian Chmielarz at it again: http://www.theastronauts.com/2014/10/one-myth-youtubers/

THAT ONE MYTH ABOUT YOUTUBERS
12 OCTOBER 2014 | AUTHOR: ADRIAN CHMIELARZ | CATEGORY: GAME DESIGN

The power is shifting, they say. Old media are dying. Your game on the cover of a magazine does not matter anymore.

“The influence moved very quickly from the press to the Web …and from the Web to YouTubers”. Being featured by a big YouTuber is the way to go.

But is it really?

All right, let’s do this quickly. No, not really.

Unlike being featured on the Steam’s front page, having your game exposed by the biggest YouTubers is not a magical ticket to sales heaven. I have confirmed this with a couple of developers, but here’s the kicker – you really don’t need any inside knowledge or access to secret sales data to realize the truth.

One way to see past the myth is to go to a YouTuber’s channel — go to PewDiePie, why not? — and check out the games they played. What, you don’t recognize some of these titles? Never seen them in Steam Top 20, or even Top 50? How is that possible when the game got 5M eyeballs?

Even better — let’s go for a hard evidence here — inside a YouTuber’s channel, find a game and check the date of its “millions of people watched this!” video. Note that you must find a video that was released not at the time of the premiere; otherwise it’s very hard to say what influenced the sales. Choose something published later: a month, two, a year, whatever.

Write down that date, then head to http://steamcharts.com/ and see if there was a bump in the amount of players at that date or a day later. Most of the time, you will see that despite millions of views, the video had no impact on the amount of players — and thus: sales — at all. Except for some extremely rare exceptions, the best I’ve seen during my research was a one day long tiny bump. That’s it.

And that, ladies and gentlemen, is because most people watch the biggest YouTubers for them, not for our games. Do you tune in to The Daily Show to learn the news, or for John Steward and the lols?



But at least in talk shows the hosts respect their guests, and when a guest band plays their song, no one is interrupting them. Not so much with games, where quite often they serve merely as a wall to bounce the joke balls off, as the punch bag for a comedian boxer. People watch the most popular YouTubers because they are entertaining to watch, and the game itself does not matter that much. It can be a triple A title, or a small obscure indie game – they all can be made fun of.

Don’t get me wrong, I enjoy YouTubers as much as the next person. Yes, including PewDiePie, I think he is great at what he does, and I find his videos entertaining. So sue me.

But when I really want to learn about the game, I read about it, watch its trailers, search YouTube with the “no commentary” key words, or go to a few select YouTubers who actually have something meaningful to say about the games they play.

To sum up this section: yes, millions of people are exposed to your game through YouTubers. But that rarely leads to actual sales. Great for YouTubers, not that great for you.

All of the above, however, does not mean that YouTubers are useless. Far, far, very far from that. It’s a completely different subject, but let’s take a quick look at two things:

1. With the very right game, the YouTubers can indeed skyrocket your sales. Stories of that happening are easy to find on Google. It does not happen too often, but it happens. But it really has to be right game.

What does a “right game” mean? Consider this: on the French-speaking markets, the average age of a YouTuber’s viewer is 17 (and I doubt it’s that different anywhere else). Meanwhile, the average age of the reader of the biggest French gaming website is 31. You can draw your own conclusions from this.


Here’s the full article. In French, but Google Translate does a decent job with it.

2. As an example of good influence of YouTubers, a week before the release of our game we have send the preview build keys to select YouTubers who respect the games they play and who actually like games like ours. I’m sure we missed some great YouTubers, but we’re new to this. Anyway, so we got a great coverage from a German YouTuber called Gronkh and a few others. Meanwhile, we could not locate a YouTuber in France that was of similar profile (again, probably our fault totally).

The result? 19% of the pre-orders for the game came from Germany, and only 3% from France. Is it because of the German YouTubers who exposed our game to the German public? There might have been multiple factors affecting the pre-orders (German economy in a better shape than France’s one, for example, but also we had more previews in the German press, etc.) but I think that YouTubers did play a role.

Please note, however, that we’re talking about a preview versus pre-orders here, and not a full LP/walkthrough versus purchases. (Read this on why targeting proper channels matters: original in French or Google Translate-d version.)

—

Some of the best critical analysis of video games can be found on YouTube (this,this, this, this, this, etc.). I try not to be a hypocrite, so I admit I have used YouTube to peek at game videos, LPs and walkthroughs countless times. Maybe this will change in the future if I gain more knowledge on the subject, but today I don’t think that LPs/walkthroughs translate directly to lost sales (when someone chooses a game video over a game it means to me that they wouldn’t buy the game anyway). Whenever someone asks us if they could stream or LP our game I always say “it’s okay, go ahead, have fun” and that’s it.



With the above, I hope it’s clear that this blog post is not against YouTubers. I wrote it just to make sure you’re not chasing rainbows, believing that 5M views on the video of your game will translate to great sales.

So much has changed, and yet nothing has changed. Still the best way to have a commercially successful game is to produce something that resonates with people, an engaging, unforgettable experience. Yes, you need to market it, “build and they will come” does not work. Despite the myth, not even Notch became the galaxy overlord this way.

There are no magical shortcuts, not even if the number of people who saw the video of your game is larger than the number of people who saw the latest Hollywood blockbuster.

His methods seem a bit dubious. Ignoring premieres, really?

 

[Perkel]

His biggest fallacy is that he compares dates of youtubers mentioning game and numbers from Steam according to date. And it is not only one problem with his statements. I am pretty shocked that indie dev in 2014 has so shitty knowledge on those things.

- First of all. People don't buy games just because they saw it once. Sure it can happen but it rarely does. More or less people first look at the game then they think if this is right game for them and if yes then they will usually drop it on their "research" stack. Then when they will have free time for that. Which can happen even weeks after they saw it on some random youtube channel they can research and then maybe will buy game.
Which means that you can't link steam sales data imminently to youtube viewers according to some specific date.

- Secondly. Type of game matters and type of viewer. Most of PewDePie viewers just want him to say some vile crap or scream like a girl. Id doesn't matter what they play. BUT. If game is really simple and you can download it on your phone in like 2 minutes and it costs like a fucking 0.99$ then you have big change ton of viewers will buy it. This is why Flappy bird fad was such a success. Now if you have adventure game it is hard to sell it for people who want to see rape jokes nor they want to go to steam and buy it and since game is not important in this case for viewer hardly this game will sell based on viewership.

- Thirdly. It is completely insane view considering today's indie motto is "be fucking everywhere" Because being everywhere = more sales. So even if game is not really something PDP viewers would like to play themselves it may be something which will be played by their girlfriend, friend or wife. Information spread best in relationships and since "you" heard about it then your friend may consider buying it.

Now those were problems. If we go for this problem from effectiveness standpoint it will look quite different.

Let's consider we have have an RPG to sell. If you want actually viewers to buy it you would need to send review coppies to actually channels that cover RPGs in first place. Because their viewers are interested in those games beside youtuber itself.

Let's consider you have HATRED game which we spoke about in other thread. This is the game you would want on PewDePie show. Because it is easy to pick up and violent. Something which PDP viewers like. Make it 10$ and watch as your account is growing.

Chmielarz cannot into marketing.

 

[TheWesDude]

honestly, the first thing i do when i find myself interested in a game is i look for a total biscuit WTF is video.

why? because i want to know what it is like playing the fucking game.

i dont give a shit about theatrical trailers, i dont give a shit about the plot...

i want to know if the gameplay is good. if the game play is good, thats the first test down.

see, thats what i care about. WILL THIS GAME BE FUN FOR ME? if its a console controller game, i want to know because i dont have one. is it a glorified hiking simulator? i live near parks, i could go to one of those and do hiking IRL.

i have bought several games based on TBs videos. hell, i even bought "Bad Rats" because i wanted to experience the horror and absolute garbage the title offered.

no, seriously, go watch TBs video on Bad Rats. that is why i bought it.

 

[Dexter]

Some of the best critical analysis of video games can be found on YouTube (this,this, this, this, this, etc.).

Matt Lees, PBS Game Show, VideoGamer.com, Extra Credits

Dear god, the brain rot has set in badly in this one, what the fuck happened to him? http://pl.linkedin.com/pub/adrian-chmielarz/34/3b/3ab

 

[CrimsonAngel]

I agree with the big red faced spoony taunter. Now TB is not the only one i watch, but peopel like him and Rurihkan, Quill18 and a host of ohter jerks on the inter webs are more likely to get me to throw my money at the screen then any thing else.

I know there taste in games and i will know if it is a game for me through that.

 

[tuluse]

Perkel

The first game I remember really getting the youtube effect and especially, PewDiePie, was Amnesia. So it's not just 99 cent mobile games.

Edit: Also if a game sucks and the youtubers reveal this, it's obviously not going to boost sales.

 

[jcd]

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[Cadmus]

honestly, the first thing i do when i find myself interested in a game is i look for a total biscuit WTF is video.

what's the problem, jew? TBs videos are just a bunch of gameplay footage with an explanation of them

 

[Akratus]

Some of the best critical analysis of video games can be found on YouTube (this,this, this, this, this, etc.).

Matt Lees, PBS Game Show, VideoGamer.com, Extra Credits

Dear god, the brain rot has set in badly in this one, what the fuck happened to him? http://pl.linkedin.com/pub/adrian-chmielarz/34/3b/3ab

I like the abridged videos Matt Lees does but overal that's some grade A doodoo.

Here's the real patrician critique:

Matthew Matosis
Investig8ive Journalism
Mr B Tongue
The Spoony Experiment
Shamus Young (No longer active)
Smudboy (Story critique ONLY)
Mechagamezilla

The one and only fitzthistlewits

 

[jcd]

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[Morkar Left]

http://www.polygon.com/2014/10/14/6974791/short-games-review

It's not that the game looked bad, or that the reviews rubbed me the wrong way — in fact everything released about the game made me believe it was right up my alley — but I knew I didn't have the time or energy for another game of standard length. And by standard length I mean anything that's eight hours or more.

Sounds more like he doesn't want to do his job and needs a holiday (or change his job).

 

[Average Manatee]

Reviewers hate spending time playing games. Remember the Rome 2 stats which showed only 30% of reviewers played the game for more than an hour? And that even less managed to fight a single real time battle?

 

[Bio Force Ape]

honestly, the first thing i do when i find myself interested in a game is i look for a total biscuit WTF is video.

why? because i want to know what it is like playing the fucking game.

And you'd better believe the folks at Polygon and Kotaku and print gaming journalism are well aware of this. You're not alone. They've even tried to create their own WTF-style videos, but they're just not pulling in TB numbers. Many of them can't stand the guy. You saw some of that in the GameJournos mailing list leak. Total Biscuit saw that too and it's at least partly why he's so pro-gamergate now I think.

It's similar to what's happened to music journalists. When the internet got fast enough that people could listen to music on it, I think it must have been a huge blow to music critics. Why read 1000 words of what some pretentious rock critic thinks when you can decide for yourself by simply listening to 30 seconds of a band's music? Why read some long rambling piece of criticism from Leigh Alexander when you can simply watch a couple minutes of someone's Let's Play on YouTube and decide for yourself if it's a game you'd enjoy?