It's very funny how suddenly an Annapurna game is an 'industry plant' (the new conspiratorial phrase of choice) by nepo baby Megan Ellison. As opposed to all their previous commercial and critical hits like Outer Wilds, Sayonara Wild Hearts, Stray, Cocoon, Neon White, What Remains of Edith Finch etc…
Don't get me wrong - I've grown much more skeptical of Annapurna Interactive since the mass staff exodus a few years back (and Ellison's reported role in it), and I'm openly hostile towards overtly ideological actors Larry and David Ellison's increasingly corrosive influence in American media. But Annapurna as a games publisher has had a major influence in bringing some really great games to people's attention (their actual job as a publisher!) for a decade now, and they've funded games by some of the most interesting developers out there (same as they've done in film). So kind of amusing now seeing them suddenly painted as some big nefarious propaganda outlet by people desperate to paint a conspiracy around Mixtape.
It’s quite simple - Eastern devs understand Real Gamers™ create passion projects with scantily clad anime proportioned women that deserve great scores, while Western devs creating projects that exist only to pander to the woke masses with their realistic looking women(what with them using real actors and all) deserve bad scores.
Any publication that deviates from this obviously has an agenda.
If you honestly believe this is a real masterpiece against all evidence in front of you, fine. I'm done.
I believe that many people have enjoyed it enough to consider it a 10/10 game. Someone giving it a 10 doesn’t mean that you’re going to enjoy it though.
What "evidence"? What, the fact they got the animation for rewinding a tape with a pencil wrong? That's enough to negate anyone's opinion that the game is great and worth playing (bearing in mind 10/10 does not and never has meant absolutely flawless… it's a subjective numerical value to summarise the reviewer's opinion as to whether the game is worth playing and how much they enjoyed it).
So go on… what all "evidence" do you have regarding the quality of this game? Not subjective opinions, actual "evidence", as that's the word you have chosen to use.
Bluesky is far left? Have we gotten so bananas where a place with normal discourse and an intolerance of fascists is now far left? It's centrist if anything. How would you even class an actual communist these days?
It's entirely irrelevant whether any given individual here thinks it's a masterpiece or not. It is, however, not remotely inconceivable that another individual writing or talking about the game in a media outlet does genuinely think it is a masterpiece because it had a strong personal impact on them (just as the opposite stance is equally valid, as is everything in between). Because different opinions exist - a basic fact that some people on X and YouTube seem very insistent on rejecting, because they are too insecure to accept the premise that anyone thinks differently than they do about video games.
'The discourse' is much more about that than it is about Mixtape as a creative work, and its subjective successes / failures in that respect. Because the people shouting loudest, as usual, don't care about that - they only care about there being something to get angry about, and rile up their audience about it. It's Mixtape this week, it'll be something else soon enough (though it'll always be IGN, because they really care about IGN review scores despite claims to the contrary).
The only evidence I need is that some reviewers thought it was worthy of a high score. Just like how you think Crimson Desert deserves a high score.
Difference in opinions and discourse about those opinions is one of the defining features of art. Only dribbling Gamergater morons believe there's some conspiracy in videogame press.
Can you not see how utterly ridiculous your stance that just because reviewers have a different opinion to you there has to be a conspiracy? It falls apart with the smallest amount of questioning.
Pure "The guards are to be rang" stuff.
The tape winding mechanic is pure stupid. Stick the fecking tape into the player and rewind it. The only time you'd be getting a pencil at a cassette was if it got mangled in the tape player and it was complete hardship. Tbf though, when you're getting to the point where you'd make an image of the offending cassette with a ream of text on it to show your ire at the game's wokeness, you're starting to look a bit snowflaky.
Same energy
Not conspiracy but theres been proven cases of shenanigans over the years. Gamespot/Gertsmann with Kane and Lynch and IGN with Konami/Castlevania LoS. They were obviously crazy.
I care less these "reviewer packs/chairs" that companies send out to obviously gain favour with the person reviewing the game.
I'll give Mixtape a fair go at some stage. I enjoyed Artful Escape and smaller games like this are needed for in between big games.
Anyway, back to playing Saros and Vampire Crawlers.
Both those incidents standout because they were anomalys and have nothing to do with reviewers having no ethics or being paid. More due to idiots at publishers.
Both GameStop and IGN happened because of new management that didn't understand how the industry works. This is how it usually goes down:
Bad review goes out.
Publishers advertising agency goes rogue due to bad/new management and threatens a boycott.
The reviewers publisher laughs at the threat. They ring the videogame publisher. Usually they sort it out on their side or else they threaten to pull advertising which usually does the job.
What happened in GameStop was their management not realizing how things worked and went nuclear, blaming the reviewer. In that case the reviewer would not give in anc change their review and left the publisher. In short Jeff acted ethically.
The second one with Konami was Konami's management blacklisting the site. Again ign could have given in to Konami but instead the acted ethically.
So, has anyone got any examples of when videogame press acted unethically?
has anyone got any examples of when videogame press acted unethically?
The most egregious example would be when they shunned Hogwarts Legacy.
School lesson on what ethical means:
So basically not supporting a game that helps enrich a transphobic gorgon is in fact the ethical position to take.
Try harder.
Not reviewing a game is not unethical. If they had reviewed it and purposefully given it a low score, that would be unethical.
Also worth noting IGN, despite outlining in their review that they disagree with Rowling's views regarding trans people, did review the game, gave the game 9/10, as well as detailing the need to separate their own views regarding Rowling from the game itself in the middle of their review:
As critics, our job is to answer the question of whether or not we find Hogwarts Legacy to be fun to play and why; whether it’s ethical to play is a separate but still very important question. So just as in virtually all cases, we’re choosing to expose and address the views of the franchise creator separately from our consideration of the work of the hundreds of game developers and evaluate Hogwarts Legacy as it stands, leaving behind-the-scenes context to be considered in addition to that evaluation, rather than in place of it, so that it can be weighted according to your own values.
Filip Miucin...
Try harder to what exactly? Between you "schooling" me and this you came across a bit rude for no fkin reason. We don't have to agree, that's the value of having discussion.
Who got fired when found out.
Anyway, yes that was unethical but different to the grand conspiracy of reviewers getting paid to review games you like badly for money. And IGN acted ethically in firing him. So it's a strawman at best.
Just pointing out you are wrong.
There's no discussion when you are provably wrong.
And if I come across as rude it's because I don't have time for Gamergate and it's philosophies because it is and always was just a thinly veiled excuse to harass women.
I was just answering your question that you asked at the end of telling me stuff I already knew about GS/Jeff and IGN/Konami.
I obviously know Miucin got fired.
I was also just explaining that the first two where examples of games journalists and publications have ethics and while the third one was an ethical problem with a journalist it's a strawman argument to the current conversation.
In this very particular case e.g. Hogwarts Legacy the only woman who got harassed was JK Rowling.
Do I need to get out the blackboard and chalk again and talk about the definition of harassment?
Like death threats? She got plenty. She never made any though.
And were these death threats from IGN, Eurogamer or any games journalists? Or are you going to waste my time with more strawmen arguments?
And you're wasting my time by shifting the goalposts. In any case since we're going nowhere I'm out.
No goalposts to shift when you are struggling to even stay on target and make an actual point.
Retro is shifting the goalposts?! Seriously?
Your example of unethical games journalism was some sites deciding not to review the game. When Retro pointed out that wasn't unethical, you switched to how Rowling gets abuse for her anti-trans views, and when Retro said that's not from games journalists, you accuse HIM of shifting the goalposts?
Wow.…
Anyway….
Finished Pragmata last night. Have Directive 8020 ready to go. Meant to be like ‘The Thing’ where you make the choices. My cup of tea
