Games today are different than they were two to three generations ago. Before the modern era of day one patches, hotfixes, and releasing “broken games” at launch, games used to ship to much simpler fanfare: a developer would work and toil on a game, iron out bugs to the best of their ability, print copies of the final game, and be at the mercy of reviewers and fans. One shot. One kill.
Often, a bug or two slipped by. Sometimes, games were released in such a horrible state, that they were sent to be slaughtered by critical reviewers. And whatever that final score was, it was unwavering. Games released as is, and sometimes, maybe developers reprinted games with updated code. But this made no significant difference to the product that was ultimately released, scored, and perceived by consumers.
Yet today, this process is much more complicated. Some will yearn for the days of old, criticizing the state of AAA games releasing with half-hearted efforts that lack polish or worse, releasing games that simply are not ready.
Others will praise the advent of continuous developer support-- they will scour forums, even communicate with developers, and perhaps even contribute to changing the state of a game, as developers work with consumer reflection to change something like the rate of fire on that one overpowered gun in Battlefield.
Suffice to say, the games launched today are never in their ultimate form. They evolve. They grow. They reflect the community's input. Sometimes, they even break what already exists on the disc. And other times yet, they add a massive amount of features that far exceed what is printed on the disc.
It is with this consideration that I ask...should games released on launch be reexamined and rescored a year from now? Two years? Six months? Ever?
At the center of this question are two games of recent infamy. Driveclub, for the PlayStation 4, and The Master Chief Collection for the Xbox One.
Both these games have a pedigree behind them. One is a historic collection of one of the highest rated franchises in history. The other comes from an experienced developer that consistently released beloved Motorstorm titles on PS3.
Yet both these games suffer incredibly from a total failure and oversight from development. With the Master Chief Collection, the game's online infrastructure and significant portions of the single player were so broken, that it single handedly killed a community that was once excited to relive the glory days of past Halo games. With Driveclub, an oversight in handling large amounts of traffic (pun intended) on their online servers resulted in a collapse that required a total rewrite.
Perhaps more interestingly is how these games ultimately were scored by reviewers. The Master Chief Collection received rave reviews despite the problems that STILL persist today. While Driveclub received average to mixed reviews, despite the failure of the online network that was only apparent after launch (and therefore after reviewers had already played the game for review).
What does this say about modern games? Well, for one, games do release in states that are completely unplayable, but not all is lost due to the ever popular strategy of patching games post-release. And in this case, both Driveclub and Halo: MCC have received constant updates to get the game running to consumer satisfaction.
Let's first ask this question: What is the purpose of a review? Traditionally, it was used to assess a game at launch, and to have a reviewer score the components of a game on a numerical scale. The IGN of old used to famously have a rubric that measured gameplay, sound, replayability, graphics, presentation. These are often considered key components to measure a game's worth.
But what is the purpose? Is it to judge a developer's skills? Their craftmanship? Is it to look at a game and measure its worth around a rough numerical standard?
I argue that these are secondary goals of a review, because the most crucial goal is simple: to inform consumers.
Otherwise, why else is a review written? This may seem obvious, but it's a staple to my question: should reviews of past games be re-reviewed, re-scored, and reevaluated?
If you agree that the purpose of a review is to inform the consumer, and if you agree that games are constantly evolving, this question should be considered.
At the heart of this, I want to focus on Halo: The Master Chief Collection (hereby referred to as Halo, or Halo: MCC) and Driveclub. When Halo released, it received incredible reviews that praised the game for being a valuable collection that celebrated the legacy of the Halo franchise.
Yet in its state after launch, and really, still today, the game has been an unplayable mess. Constant outcry of matchmaking issues, game breaking bugs, and crashes both in single player and multiplayer have been rampant throughout user experiences. If a review was to inform the gamer, what does it say to a consumer who sees fantastic scores...yet experiences something completely unlike what they read in a review?
Games today are not released complete. For better or worse, developers add more features, change content, and update the overall experience. Should reviews not reflect the current state of affairs?
And now let's look at Driveclub. Driveclub was panned by reviewers for a number of reasons: A.I was often brought up for being aggressive, while lack of variety in race types, lack of personality, and lack of variety in car types (too many European vehicles, not much else) was often brought up. In addition, the user interface was also criticized.
The networking issues that followed managed to stay under the noses of reviewers who simply did not experience the crash that came after the influx of consumers.
Today, Driveclub is a lot different. The online networking issues have been reworked, with the PS+ edition finally released just over a few days ago. The game is still under construction to upgrade their servers, with a promised update for the network features (online racing, challenges, and leaderboards) all being reintroduced soon.
More than this, the content that has been added is significantly impressive: Driveclub's post-launch model includes a series of free vehicles and tracks (in fact, a whole new location for free-- Japan), in addition to game updates like photo mode.
Should reviews not reflect the state of the game to consumers?
It's an interest precedent: on one hand, it is arguable that games do change and that reviews should reflect the state of the game. But on the other hand, people are afraid: what happens if games can be rereviewed? Does this encourage more developers to update their game? Or does it encourage more developers to release a game in a broken state?
Others may argue that you only review “what's in the box” day one, and these people would insist that a game review is most relevant at launch, and should only reflect the state of the game at launch, since this is when the game is released at full price.
Further, rereviewing games creates a messy situation: what happens when reviewers go back to review some games but not others? Why should a reviewer chase a constantly evolving game, when they are not obliged to do so? How often should a review even be reevaluated?
Driveclub may have released to mixed reviews, for example, but should these scores have been even lower once the networking was proven to have caused issues to the networking? Should it then have been reevaluated a third time after the issue was fixed, and reevaluated a fourth time to reflect the free updates?
Should Halo: MCC have been reevaluated after launch to criticize the amount of bugs, and the reality that people paid full price for a product that did not really work...at all? Should it then have been reevaluated a third time to reflect the constant developer updates that attempted to rectify this issue?
Websites like Polygon and even Gamesrader (that has since updated its Driveclub review) have taken the initiative to reflect this modern gaming practice. But in doing so, they have been inconsistent, whimsical, and inconsistent. Because reviewers only are paid to review games at launch, it becomes very political and problematic to have scores reviewed for some games and not others. Outcries of bias are already rampant with some consumers, who criticize websites for siding with one company, or being inconsistent in a review policy between two games guilty of the same fault.
Despite all this, the fact is that there is a clear disconnection between reviews today and the state of a product that is available to a consumer. To ask for reevaluations would require a much bigger movement that encourages a media culture of reevaluating old work. Most reviewers are unlikely to do this. But it's still a worthwhile question because reviews become meaningless quite fast when they fail to take into account the state of a product. Games are much like services that evolve over time, and are no longer a frozen product that is unchangeable. Some will yearn for the days of old. Others will praise the advent of continuous developer support. But the reality is, we live in a different time, and perhaps it's time to reevaluate our standards.
-Alpha
The old IGN Review Rubric
A look at Evolution's Evolution of Driveclub (this infograph covers both free content, game updates, and season pass content that ultimately has come a long way from Driveclub's launch)
After years of development, Project Awakening is still nowhere to be seen. What exactly is going on?
I was impressed with the trailer and hoped to find out more and then it fell off the map with no new information. Not sure if it's vaporware or not but I stopped thinking about it and moved on. Maybe it was moved to a new and improved engine, moved to PS5 development and suffers the long Dev times that many games had/have suffered from lately. Who knows. But we'll see.
As for gaming bolt, that video was trash. A long winded video that says nothing for 7 minutes going back and forth on it may or may not still exist and just kept going and going and going trying to produce an informative video with barely any information. Like an article with a word quota that's just paragraphs of nothing. Showing me that they haven't gotten any better at game journalism. If we can even call it that.
One of the directors for the game already said that game was still being worked on just last month....
https://80.lv/articles/proj...
Just how shock-ing is it?
VGChartz's Thomas Froehlicher: "Although Rauniot is shy on its lore and narrative, it still excels at captivating the player with an eerie, haunting world and incredibly tough riddles. It may also only be a few hours long, but those are hours of intense thinking and a deep sense of reward. Rauniot could never be described as user-friendly, but you'll want more anyway if you're thirsty for mysteries."
I don't care how much "fixing" is done after release, the fact still stands that if I am paying full price up front I expect a full game in working order up front as well.
Would these gracious publishers allow me to put up a small fraction of the purchase price so I can play the part that works then pay the rest when it is fixed? No? Then watch as I relentlessly destroy their image because as far as I am concerned I have been robbed.
We are in a sad state when gamers would rather read reviews form sites that are paid off from various publishers than see if a game works for themselves. There is a reason demos are no longer distributed to enhance sales. Gamers will show up anyways with their wallets wide open for a game they have no guarantee will work.
You seem to be confusing review scores with reviews. They aren't the same thing.
You also seem to have missed that there are actually 2 distinct types of review. The consumer guide type and the artistic criticism type. Arguaby a 3rd, purely technical type has a place, but it usually gets covered in both.
The very simple answer is "Yes." Customers deserve to know what they're buying (patch notes and a bit of google will tell you if any particular problem has been fixed) and the Devs deserve proper criticism so they can improve.
Yes they should. A very long time ago I came up with an idea for a website that did just that. Users could submit reviews in kind of the same way stories are submitted here but it would only be reviews and then that review would be reviewed for objective or subjective language, obviously unwarranted hype, etc.. and there would be a separate section for reviewing reviewers themselves so gamers could know who is more likely to give obviously skewed reviews, who is bought and paid for, etc...
Something that needs to happen, and needs to happen in a big way, is the entire industry from PR, to News, to Developers, to Publishers need to be taken to task. Bad moves and poor customer service needs to have a face put on it and all involved should feel ashamed of themselves in those instances.
And then we review the reviews of the reviews.
( ಠ益ಠ)
Seriously, I think general discussion by the public is good enough of an indicator of the change in a game's potential. I think re-reviews should really only be for MMO-style games or DLC. Otherwise, so long down the road, I think most people will tend to rely more on word of mouth than reviews.
I think a lot of reviewers may tackle games with the line of thought that technical issues should be downplayed, because they'll probably be fixed in the future. I also think reviewers may be inclined to be more lenient or harsh about bugs, depending on how much hype is behind a game. Obviously, there are most likely many factors contributing to this issue.
I'll play Devil's Advocate in favor of this re-review idea. Here are my points:
1. If game reviews are normally expected to be revised after big fixes and updates, reviewers may be encouraged to be more open and critical about technical issues in the initial reviews - a good thing for informing consumers.
2. If that happens, videogame makers may be encouraged to release their games working properly on release, because if technical issues are negatively factored in more by initial reviews, then they can lose out on initial sales (sales in the opening weeks are by far the most important) - a good thing for the quality of initial releases.
3. Additionally, if reviews became typically revised after big fixes and improvements, that may give incentive for developers to develop patches more since that effort will be rewarded with favorably altered critical reception - a good thing for already-released buggy games.