Games journalism failed us with Amy

Amy is an example of games journalism failing the consumer.

[Godmars290]

I get where people are trying to defend journalist by saying they have to give developers a chance to fix any notable problems, are usually shown only the best aspects of a game, thing is there are often notes in previews and comments on podcasts of other titles that have been in trouble that have gotten better scores.

And then there's the repeated instances of games like Skyrim and COD with get 10s yet have versions that are so bug ridden to be unplayable.

[--Onilink--]

i dont remember skyrim or cod being unplayable, they might have bugs or glitches that can affect gameplay sometime and not to all people, but its certainly not the same as this game where the gameplay itself is just broken.

You are comparing a technical problem in a game to poor design and implementation.

On a game like skyrim its easy to overlook the glitches or bugs because of all the things it does amazingly, Amy instead prevents gamers from enjoying what good parts it may have because all the design and technical errors are too much to be overlooked.

We might be speaking of the same aspects but in reality they are complete opposites

[nveenio]

Skyrim was broken and unplayable for thousands of people, especially on PS3. For me, I dumped 30+ hours into a game before I noticed that one of my quest lines was broken. For a mage, being unable to complete the College quests definitely marred my experience. After that, I wound up putting in another 10 or 12 hours just to get dragon scale armor and awesome enchantments. Then, I beat the main quest and never went back.

I put about 65 hours in the game all total, but those negative things are what keep me from playing again. That's too much time to invest to have your game busted right in front of your eyes.

And the sad thing is that all of those quest bugs could have been avoided with a simple "restart" button on each quest. Poor design, right?

[despair]

@inveni0

your description is still not unplayable and I definitely came across some quests that I was unable to either start or complete (playing on PC so console commands come in handy) but none for the main quests and 95% of the side quests and thats not the definition of unplayable or broken, just glitched.

Amy on the other hand from the dozen or so reviews I've read, is just a terrible game and thats a far cry from some glitches and bugs. I am not excusing developers like Bethesda but to compare the two is illogical.

[Boody-Bandit]

Stopped right there. That is all the article needed to write and it would be one of the most truthful articles written in years. No content needed, just those words quoted above. Game journalism has been failing us for years.

[dirigiblebill]

@Brutallyhonest

Readers judging articles by their headlines is one of the reasons games journalists go astray.

[Vortex3D]

Keep defending to overlook the bugs is just saying go ahead and ship broken games. Even you didn't see the bugs others described, can you guarantee that the next player will not see the bugs. That's how bugs are, not everyone gets consistent experience. If you are lucky, you get a better experience than the next gamer.

Why can't the publisher print on the game box a warning that the game is buggy and just overlook them because the rest are amazing. Of course that publishers will never be honest with the quality control. That is why we see quality guarantee is on many non-games products because with games, the gamers are happy to pay full price for a buggy product. If you happen to see a lot of bugs, too bad and wait for patches. Maybe the game will be more playable eventually. That's price of buying games buggy.

For myself, I refused to buy games that are known to be very buggy. Why give the publisher the money first and hope the bugs get fixed?

Anyone in college, trying the same strategy as how game publishers release buggy and incomplete games. On the school project, come up with very promising idea and cool project. By the time you have to hand in your project, there are a lot of bugs and random problems showing up in the project. Tell the professor that it is how real world publisher ships products today and you expect to get an A in your project because it contains a lot of promising and cool ideas. If the professor disagree, complain and argue that the college doesn't understand how it's done in the real world.

If you think bringing college to compare the real world practice, I actually had class in college that went just like that. The college hired a real software developer to teach the entire progress of software development is done. Somehow through the semester, we all ran out of time. In end, the teacher said just hand in good ideas, how you think the whole process is done, and no need to ensure the project really works. I have to say he's the most realistic teacher coming to teaching how game publishers do it nowadays.

[Why o why]

dirigiblebill

Headlines written by whom

[--Onilink--]

@Vortex3D

im not defending a game that ships with bugs, though its getting increasinly complex to release a game without having some.

Im just saying his comparison of Skyrim that has bugs and Amy which is unplayable from a technical, design and execution point of view.

Its just not the same, skyrim's gameplay is great, polished and it works, it just suffers from other technical issues. Amy is unplayable, the gameplay is sloppy, hit detection works almost as if it were at random, awful checkpoint system (worse considering most times you die is the game's fault)

[Detoxx]

Skyrim is worth a 10 though, it has alot of content.. But COD!? Hell no

[Solid_Snake37]

Nope a 8.5

[PCgamer4ever]

Nope a 9.5

[Run_bare]

I don't think so.. Skyrim worth an 8.5 or 9.00 for me. It's a broken game on PS3, I finish it just for the sake of it but not enjoy it because it crashes, slow down alot. My save game is now 14MB. The Firmware update do not help and i switch off all the automatic saves, STILL not helping.

[jthamind]

why do people think a lot of content = a 10? i put about 125 hours into Blue Dragon, that's a HELL of a lot of content for a single player game nowadays. does that mean it deserves a 10?

[THR1LLHOUSE]

Your implication seems to be that games like Skyrim aren't deserving of their good scores, right?

It's not like a game critic is playing a different version of the game than the public is...and just because some people are running into major bugs doesn't mean everyone is. Anecdotally, the worst bug I've seen in Skyrim is water sometimes becoming invisible, so from my perspective Skyrim is completely deserving of its good scores.

I'm getting off topic here, but my point is that if people (not you specifically, but people in general) trust reviewers so little that they refuse to even accept near-universal acclaim, then I don't see the point of reading reviews anyway.

EDIT: -Onilink- says what I was going for in a much better way.

[admiralvic]

You have to remember that sites work off getting users there and users tend to over react over a "wrong" review score. Case in point Uncharted 3 8/10 score bullshit. People acted like those 2 points were like saying Mindjack was a better game...

On topic. Who trusts a person that pisses on a beta product? Anyways not to get on that point look at it like this using Uncharted 3 as an example

In the first beta it was a FANTASTIC online game which expanded upon everything. There was a fair bit of balance and many solid things. Later on there was the original Subway version. This version virtually made aiming pointless. MANY news outlets/users complained that this version of the online was worst than the amazing earlier game. Naughty Dog fixed it, but without this beta, do you think it WOULDN'T have made it to the final release? Sure it would be patched just like Amy could be patched, but it would make those very same previews look stupid in retrospect.

These are the things people need to keep in mind.

[Rainstorm81]

While Skyrim is a great game, I think devs are too easy to rate games because of their history, CoD (MW3 in particular) is a prime example of this.

Without set standards or review rules Game Journalism is unreliable at best. Its only somewhat reliable when u look and read multiple reviewers' opinions

[GraveLord]

Don't put COD and Skyrim in the same category. There is nothing in any COD game that makes it unplayable like that Skryim lag.

[dedicatedtogamers]

I wrote this exact article in my N4G blog about a week ago.

[SilentNegotiator]

http://n4g.com/user/blogpos...

A very good blog indeed. It just goes to show how messed up and corrupt game journalism is.

[admiralvic]

Let's be fair here... How does this show how messed up or corrupt game journalism is. I don't have the time to look into every topic, but many previews and reviews were done by different people and can hardly affect one another... it just shows two people thought things were different. If you looked into the review scores they all weren't completely awful either. Meristation (5), GamingXP (7.6), there was another site that gave it a 9.2 and 2 metacritic users that gave it 6+... there are definitely some users that thought it wasn't completely awful and NOTHING says the users that did the previews would feel the same. This is just people who took opinions way too seriously and think they've been wronged...

[RedDead]

Journo's completely over hyped the game too

[Megaman_nerd]

to be honest, your blog was better. XD

[StraightPath]

Never heard of this trash game until i saw it was getting 1/10 and 2/10s.

[Bioshocking]

Agreed....Journalist's are ruining gaming in general.

They have created stupid things like review scores, and then metacritic... and all of these are being used to judge games. And honestly these people worked 1000x harder than any journalist giving his 2 cents. Even the janitors work harder than these guys with keyboards.

And we pay so much attention to their reviews, their awards,and their opinions.

All because they get to play these games first, not us. And they get a paycheck just for their opinion.

And even corruption for hits with review scores. For example the Av club. They gave the Adventures of TinTin a C grade,and offered a 5-6 paragraph review. With Uncharted 3 they gave that same grade, with a 12 sentence review, that stated absolutely none of the flaws. And all the reviewer says is he did not like it. No reason why, but just says it. But with Tintin, their "credibility" magically reappears... and they state flaws.

I mean no one cared who the Av Club was until they posted that review. And the dude who wrote that review is thrilled, as all the people who enjoyed that game rushed to his review, giving him traffic and fattening his wallet.

And the funniest thing is he was hyping the game up. Then delivered the C.

I mean, these are the people representing gamers? These are the ones who fill us with ideas of which games are good and bad?

These guys fuel flamewars.. (seriously I saw people saying, oh gears is better than uncharted because the Av club gave it a perfect score)

You did not know or care who the Av club was until today, when you looked on metacritic!

And what about Skyrim... a game that was almost unplayable for people who wanted to invest time with it. The game got so many "perfect scores" with no mention of this problem on PS3. And even a PS3 game of the year award.

But after all their praise, then they say "oh yeah the game has problems"

WHY DID YOU NOT SAY THIS IN THE FIRST PLACE?

I bet this is how reviewers reviewed Skyrim

BETHESDA + BIG GAME + DOVAHKIN STATUE( Bethesda sent one to Ign) + "CONTENT" - BUGS AND GLITCHES = 9.5- 10

Gaming journalists are going to be the down fall of gaming and this cutlure.

They tear us apart, and get payed doing it

[3GenGames]

Mainly because it follows the money. Don't listen to anybody, that should be a rule on life. Judge for yourself, don't buy it unless you've tried it.

[MidnytRain]

"Don't listen to anybody"

That'll lead to a lot of self-inflicted agony. Sometimes one needs to take heed.

[SilentNegotiator]

I agree with the first sentence, but not the second. You have to trust SOME people, the trick is just discovering who that is.

For me, those persons are Ben Yahtzee and Jim Sterling. Despite using comedy, their reviews are some of the most insightful and deep on the internet. I trust them because I agree with them 99.999% of the time, and I never feel like they're trying to sell me something (except when Yahtzee is talking about an adored classic like Silent Hill 2, lol).

Always remember that the big boys like IGN and Gamespot will ALWAYS give out big scores because game journalism has been made a very hostile activity by publishers. You give them one low score and you might be out of their "early copies and previews/interviews club" for a LONG while.

I wish I had a poster with Jeff G on it that said "Never Forget", lol.

[Rainstorm81]

Really who still believes Game journalists, None of them are genuine in their previews of games, because of fear of no more previews by devs

[tigertron]

To be honest...the developers failed us with Amy.

[Krew_92]

This isn't the first time this happened. Many gaming magazines back then rewarded games with a high score, only for the game to be complete garbage in the end.

Still it's not a good thing, and it does take away trust from gaming journalism.

[tarbis]

Never heard of Amy until now. lol!

[Frankfurt]

Demos are very controlled. Journos may have even played the game on an early build without the framerate issues during cutscenes.

The consumer demo that is out doesn't have any glaring issues outside of ugly kill animations and the framerate during cutscenes. A person previewing the game from that demo would give it an ok or even positive opinion on it.

[Darkfiber]

Was just going to say this. I'm sure what IGN and other journalists were shown of this game was VERY controlled and polished during previews. It's not the journalist's fault in a lot of these cases, it's the developers for providing a false representation of their game.

[Newsman]

All I read was the devs didn't cough up enough $'s towards some media outlets.

[Basjohn]

"Gaming Journalism" is this era's greatest oxymoron, finally overtaking its arch-rival "Military Intelligence" at long last.

[Bobby Kotex]

I get the point of this article, but I never even heard of Amy. With that said, I've seen IGN hype up games and give them horrible scores. But then again I've seen them give mediocre games a 9 which is even worse.

[aliengmr]

Game previews are only good when you read between the lines. But mostly they fall in to the same category that, asking the PR reps at E3 why their game is the best, does. A complete waste of time.

Although I did read a recent Hitman preview that was a bit more honest than I thought capable.

[Brownghost]

Ign overhyped the game calling it ICO with zombies

[MaverickStar7]

Game journalism is no different than journalism for the film, music, television, and book industries. Generally critics, reviewers, and journalists are just not on the same level as your average consumer. Thats not to say the average consumer is dumb, but that the journalists often have a bit of an elitist attitude in their chose field and they seem to hype the positives too much, and make the negatives bigger deals than they really are sometimes.