So last month I took a chance and became obsessed with an excellent game called Echo. It was so outside my wheelhouse, being horror, queer, a visual novel, and furry, that a month later, nothing has truly captured my interest. Echo was so foreign, weird, and interesting that typical gaming experiences seemed so predictable by comparison. While I was writing my review for that game, I learned the author took a two year break in the middle of Echo’s development to complete an entire unrelated visual novel, for their mental health. And few things spark my curiosity like art made as an escape from one’s own creations.
Setting the mood: Imagine if David Lynch took a break from making Twin Peaks to direct a hentai before returning for another season as if nothing happened.
I initially felt compelled to compare Adastra to Echo because Echo felt so profound in ways that were easily accessible and relatable to me. But that does not help explain what Adastra is. Adastra is wild, ridiculous, and indulgent in all the ways my biases aligned upon first hearing the words “gay furry visual novel.” I had fun with it! But I am keenly aware this game was not made for me, and it is rare for that feeling to be so strong I become unsure in articulating my thoughts about it. Because there is nothing worse than outsiders coming into a niche space to proudly offer their ignorance as insight.
Especially since my enjoyment of this game is very much in spite of its goals. There’s politics, there’s sci-fi soap operatics, but the primary goal is romancing a himbo alien wolf man. A large part of Adastra is indulging in the fantasy of having a buff, rich, big-dicked boyfriend who loves you, provides your every material need, is always horny for you, never asks you to change, would kill to defend you, and also - happens to be a 7 foot wolf man. As a result, the build-up, justification, and logistics of the relationship are abridged, because existing in that indulgent fantasy space is the appeal.
I’ll be honest - I did not like space wolf boyfriend! He is an idiot!
What kept my interest in Adastra enough to finish it was the commitment to worldbuilding that arose from placing indulgences first. You can almost work backwards in seeing how the plot, setting, and character relationships were reverse-engineered to service different indulgences. The setting is in outer space, with aliens whose cultures were the inspiration for the Roman Empire and Ancient Egypt. Why? So that every character could be shirtless and pantless 100% of the time. Swimming and visiting the communal bath are both common activities in the plot. The player character, a human man from Earth, is kidnapped by a wolf man to be his pet, which basically means grooming, massaging, and sexually pleasing him. Adastra is a textbook case of how anything “being justified by plot relevance” can just as easily be reinterpreted as “plot relevance being used to justify inclusion.”
By committing to sex slaves as a concept, Adastra is a world with whole planets of indentured servants. By committing to the idea that all these buff furry aliens are both politicians and fucking, sex and sexuality becomes central to the machinisms of the plot. I initially found it odd that, in a game going out of its way to include Annubis dolled up in glittery gold eye liner, homophobia and sexism are ingrained in galactic culture. Until I realized that by making homosexuality stigamatized, the mere existence of gayness could become the plot in a way not possible if the alien societies were more liberal. Adastra then surprised me by giving sexy Annubis enough depth to become the most nuanced and sympathetic character in the game. Even after I saw him getting absolutely railed to climax.
I’ll be honest, I laughed while playing this game more than once. At first, I feared I was being a Mika. But having finished it, I’m convinced Adastra was inviting me to laugh with it at its own absurdity. The character designs are so goofy and exaggerated. Every furry calls the human character’s love for rhythm in music quaintly “simian”. At one point, the player character dresses up as a tiger for a play, later horrified to realize this is the in-universe equivalent of blackface and the wolves are very cat racist. Above all, between the needlessly complicated politicking and the mostly mundane nothingness of most of its plot, Adastra is fun. And that is a tone very hard to write.
In my rating system, 2 stars represents an average, C rank game, and Adastra, while too niche to recommend to anyone I know, (even me!), is too much dumb schlocky fun to be considered average - especially for a game released for free(!). 3 stars at B rank feels appropriate, even if it comes with a lot of caveats. Namely, this is furry, it is very gay, you will see canine dong. My curiosity for Adastra came entirely from my experience with the author’s other work. If this level of indulgence was required in order to keep Echo the focused mastercraft that it is, I’m very happy the author got the opportunity to refresh themself here.
---
As Adastra’s explicit art very much did not awaken anything inside me, I feel my curiosity with the furry visual novel genre is currently sated. Adastra currently has twice the number of ratings on itch.io as Echo, which, while being both understandable (Echo is dark) and a travesty, means I have absolutely no idea how I would reliably investigate the genre. I fear I might have repeated my experience with JRPGs by starting with Chrono Trigger, and the genre was mostly down hill from there.
I initially felt compelled to compare Adastra to Echo because Echo felt so profound in ways that were easily accessible and relatable to me. But that does not help explain what Adastra is. Adastra is wild, ridiculous, and indulgent in all the ways my biases aligned upon first hearing the words “gay furry visual novel.” I had fun with it! But I am keenly aware this game was not made for me, and it is rare for that feeling to be so strong I become unsure in articulating my thoughts about it. Because there is nothing worse than outsiders coming into a niche space to proudly offer their ignorance as insight.
Especially since my enjoyment of this game is very much in spite of its goals. There’s politics, there’s sci-fi soap operatics, but the primary goal is romancing a himbo alien wolf man. A large part of Adastra is indulging in the fantasy of having a buff, rich, big-dicked boyfriend who loves you, provides your every material need, is always horny for you, never asks you to change, would kill to defend you, and also - happens to be a 7 foot wolf man. As a result, the build-up, justification, and logistics of the relationship are abridged, because existing in that indulgent fantasy space is the appeal.
I’ll be honest - I did not like space wolf boyfriend! He is an idiot!
What kept my interest in Adastra enough to finish it was the commitment to worldbuilding that arose from placing indulgences first. You can almost work backwards in seeing how the plot, setting, and character relationships were reverse-engineered to service different indulgences. The setting is in outer space, with aliens whose cultures were the inspiration for the Roman Empire and Ancient Egypt. Why? So that every character could be shirtless and pantless 100% of the time. Swimming and visiting the communal bath are both common activities in the plot. The player character, a human man from Earth, is kidnapped by a wolf man to be his pet, which basically means grooming, massaging, and sexually pleasing him. Adastra is a textbook case of how anything “being justified by plot relevance” can just as easily be reinterpreted as “plot relevance being used to justify inclusion.”
By committing to sex slaves as a concept, Adastra is a world with whole planets of indentured servants. By committing to the idea that all these buff furry aliens are both politicians and fucking, sex and sexuality becomes central to the machinisms of the plot. I initially found it odd that, in a game going out of its way to include Annubis dolled up in glittery gold eye liner, homophobia and sexism are ingrained in galactic culture. Until I realized that by making homosexuality stigamatized, the mere existence of gayness could become the plot in a way not possible if the alien societies were more liberal. Adastra then surprised me by giving sexy Annubis enough depth to become the most nuanced and sympathetic character in the game. Even after I saw him getting absolutely railed to climax.
I’ll be honest, I laughed while playing this game more than once. At first, I feared I was being a Mika. But having finished it, I’m convinced Adastra was inviting me to laugh with it at its own absurdity. The character designs are so goofy and exaggerated. Every furry calls the human character’s love for rhythm in music quaintly “simian”. At one point, the player character dresses up as a tiger for a play, later horrified to realize this is the in-universe equivalent of blackface and the wolves are very cat racist. Above all, between the needlessly complicated politicking and the mostly mundane nothingness of most of its plot, Adastra is fun. And that is a tone very hard to write.
In my rating system, 2 stars represents an average, C rank game, and Adastra, while too niche to recommend to anyone I know, (even me!), is too much dumb schlocky fun to be considered average - especially for a game released for free(!). 3 stars at B rank feels appropriate, even if it comes with a lot of caveats. Namely, this is furry, it is very gay, you will see canine dong. My curiosity for Adastra came entirely from my experience with the author’s other work. If this level of indulgence was required in order to keep Echo the focused mastercraft that it is, I’m very happy the author got the opportunity to refresh themself here.
---
As Adastra’s explicit art very much did not awaken anything inside me, I feel my curiosity with the furry visual novel genre is currently sated. Adastra currently has twice the number of ratings on itch.io as Echo, which, while being both understandable (Echo is dark) and a travesty, means I have absolutely no idea how I would reliably investigate the genre. I fear I might have repeated my experience with JRPGs by starting with Chrono Trigger, and the genre was mostly down hill from there.
8 Comments
I will say that 1) 2.5 isn't the true midpoint either (there's no midpoint in a 10 point scale) and 2) it's easier to acknowledge gradations of good games than bad I would think. if you're finishing more good games than bad (and who would want to be finishing mostly bad games?) then it makes sense to have more degrees of freedom to rank good games
@FrozenRoy My review philosophy is that categorical ranks are more useful than stars / numbers. Specificity in appraisal is important for avoiding score creep. As such, I use the star rating on this site as an approximation to the S A B C D F I ranking system that I use on my own. @Pangburn got it mostly right, in that my priority is discussing the differences between something good and something great - I don't think the "average" experience should be in the middle, because most art that is below average is either amateur, (as in not commercially viable), and therefore inaccessible, or not worth even reviewing / assigning a score. I don't mind if my star ratings make me look like a contrarian, as I'm mostly using this website as an outlet for my own ideas and personal tracking. I would hope my writing conveys that I attempt to approach all games in good faith.
It's true there's no true midpoint because Backloggd doesn't go to 0 but 2.5 IS closer to the middle.
@Bavoom Not the way I'd do it for sure because I don't really know about that for below average, but it's a fair way to look at things, and gave me more insight into why that rating system is used. Good luck on the reviews!
@Bavoom Not the way I'd do it for sure because I don't really know about that for below average, but it's a fair way to look at things, and gave me more insight into why that rating system is used. Good luck on the reviews!
It's good to see people discussing the public importance of a good rating system in good faith like this. One other thing worth bringing up is if you don't use half stars, it'll make it so the scorelist is measured as a 5 point scale instead of a 10 point scale which is smoother instead of all the gaps. For example, if you know Lethugbro, go check out his profile and you will see on the front page the 5 point score. So this is another reason why people may have strange rating systems you need to readjust to.
If I may be so self indulgent, I know I use a 4 point scale, with 1 star being outright bad, 2 being mediocre/average/has its moments, 4 stars being good, and 5 stars being great. I had to meditate a lot on whether to make the games I had a mediocre opinion 3 star or 2 star. Ultimately I decided on 2 because I liked the symetry in how it looks, stuff I like on one end and stuff I don't like segmented on the other. It's also possible that this would grab people more and more honestly reflect my sentiments of my feelings towards meddling or disinteresting games, etc. Videogames tend to last longer than other mediums, so for me to have mixed feelings or feel let down by the experience, it means I may have spent 10+ hours on a game I ultimately didn't enjoy that much. That's a comparatively larger investment in comparison to watching a movie that is kind of mid, but even this point is sort of subjective if you assess the cash to enjoyment ratio. Maybe you already don't think positively of films as an enjoyable thing to do, then you go to the theaters only to pay 20+ dollars for a movie ticket to watch a 2 hour film you didn't like and cant even interact with (indeed, I'm a big proponent of watching things at home instead because you have a lot more control over the pace of the movie). In this case a 'mid' movie experience might just be a 1 regardless, like the actual functions of how you enjoy movies might bring the whole score down.
There's two other things worth bringing up. For one, a lot of people who decided on a scoring function...cant really change it? If bavoom was to change the scoring system a LOT of things would have to be physically reorganized, theres already stuff in 3 stars spot so where would that move? This stuff takes a lot of time to reorganize properly, its its own commitment, and its made far worse if you are scoring with the same system across several database websites. This could take hours or days so people have an incentive to stick with what they are doing more, for better or worse.
The final thing to say is that while 'communication is key' is a swell virtue and all, there's a cynical shadow there, perhaps what's really key is outrage or startlement. Most articles and news media change to make things seem more shocking and surprising than they really are in order to hook people into reading what is written. Thus everyone is incentivized to be a little contrarian sounding on the internet just as a matter of natural attention seeking behavior and a desire not to say the same thing as everyone else anyway. There's decent evidence to suggest this actually works on Backloggd to because negative insights of games everyone likes gathers a lot more traction.
I ultimately agree with Bavoom's categorization system because it simplifies the thinking process and makes it more focused on the 'why' you feel that way rather than constantly appraising for nuance within. I try to work with the minimal points to reflect this. The ranking system is a decent system other it can turn into a teacher grading the 'value' of a work, the only issue with this is what standards you are grading on and how harsh a teacher you are. For example commercial value is not important to me at all and trying to assess commercial value actually distracts from my views most of the time, and I would guess it would get in the way and be an albeit cynical way to view games anyway, seeing as there's a gigantic desire for games not to be 'commercial' in the first place. This is pretty much the only caveat I take with Bavoom's otherwise solid system.
Scoring psychology/philosophy has always been interesting for me, so I have a lot to say on it obviously. Apologies if its too much of course. Take care all.
If I may be so self indulgent, I know I use a 4 point scale, with 1 star being outright bad, 2 being mediocre/average/has its moments, 4 stars being good, and 5 stars being great. I had to meditate a lot on whether to make the games I had a mediocre opinion 3 star or 2 star. Ultimately I decided on 2 because I liked the symetry in how it looks, stuff I like on one end and stuff I don't like segmented on the other. It's also possible that this would grab people more and more honestly reflect my sentiments of my feelings towards meddling or disinteresting games, etc. Videogames tend to last longer than other mediums, so for me to have mixed feelings or feel let down by the experience, it means I may have spent 10+ hours on a game I ultimately didn't enjoy that much. That's a comparatively larger investment in comparison to watching a movie that is kind of mid, but even this point is sort of subjective if you assess the cash to enjoyment ratio. Maybe you already don't think positively of films as an enjoyable thing to do, then you go to the theaters only to pay 20+ dollars for a movie ticket to watch a 2 hour film you didn't like and cant even interact with (indeed, I'm a big proponent of watching things at home instead because you have a lot more control over the pace of the movie). In this case a 'mid' movie experience might just be a 1 regardless, like the actual functions of how you enjoy movies might bring the whole score down.
There's two other things worth bringing up. For one, a lot of people who decided on a scoring function...cant really change it? If bavoom was to change the scoring system a LOT of things would have to be physically reorganized, theres already stuff in 3 stars spot so where would that move? This stuff takes a lot of time to reorganize properly, its its own commitment, and its made far worse if you are scoring with the same system across several database websites. This could take hours or days so people have an incentive to stick with what they are doing more, for better or worse.
The final thing to say is that while 'communication is key' is a swell virtue and all, there's a cynical shadow there, perhaps what's really key is outrage or startlement. Most articles and news media change to make things seem more shocking and surprising than they really are in order to hook people into reading what is written. Thus everyone is incentivized to be a little contrarian sounding on the internet just as a matter of natural attention seeking behavior and a desire not to say the same thing as everyone else anyway. There's decent evidence to suggest this actually works on Backloggd to because negative insights of games everyone likes gathers a lot more traction.
I ultimately agree with Bavoom's categorization system because it simplifies the thinking process and makes it more focused on the 'why' you feel that way rather than constantly appraising for nuance within. I try to work with the minimal points to reflect this. The ranking system is a decent system other it can turn into a teacher grading the 'value' of a work, the only issue with this is what standards you are grading on and how harsh a teacher you are. For example commercial value is not important to me at all and trying to assess commercial value actually distracts from my views most of the time, and I would guess it would get in the way and be an albeit cynical way to view games anyway, seeing as there's a gigantic desire for games not to be 'commercial' in the first place. This is pretty much the only caveat I take with Bavoom's otherwise solid system.
Scoring psychology/philosophy has always been interesting for me, so I have a lot to say on it obviously. Apologies if its too much of course. Take care all.
Love this insight by the way. Talking about games outside your wheelhouse is always a difficulty but you did it well. And 'being a Mika' is now a great addition to my dictionary :3
@Erato_Heti - Of all game reviews, this is the one most fair upon which to be indulgent.
Commercial value is a metric I consider separate from the rating on this site. This game is a prime example - it's free, but its subject matter is also controversial enough for many to still see negative value in the time it would take to download ~200 megabytes, as even talking about it is grounds enough for others to assume they are furry or queer by association. I’m certainly not ready to develop a system that accounts for perceived negative commercial value, or how to accommodate experiences for which I have zero interest in that I could also not be persuaded with money to try. Give me $10 and I’ll spend a half hour with Punky Skunk, but some games have enough motion blur to make me motion sick.
Games are the only medium I’m comfortable having a loosely ranked system at all, since each game is a piece of software that needs to function. No one rates novels based on the physical books by which they are delivered - that standard of pages being printed in the correct order, that each page turns correctly, is expected. It makes sense to rate different print editions of a book, if different paper or font sizes are used, but games force you to make that kind of reckoning of delivery and functionality in addition to the content. For me, that provides a vector for understanding why someone is likely to have a certain type of experience with a game that feels tangible enough to talk about.
Written and video media are so personality based that any rating system even remotely quantitative feels worthless. The same movie intensely analyzed by some is used as kitchen background noise by others. The nature of game design makes it easier to intuit what range of use cases a game is likely to sustain, (Cookie Clicker vs Bloodborne), which I think focuses discussion. Having an implicit understanding of which goals a game can be measured against provides enough consensus for rankings to have meaning.
I like Backloggd because it shows rating distributions for user reviews as prominently as the average review score, and the distribution is much more interesting to me. Individual scores are useless unless you know the methodology of the reviewer, but a distribution shows concentrations of consensus. Nothing makes me curious about a game more than a perfect uniform distribution, except possibly an inverted bell curve. Since my distributions of ratings follow an almost logarithmic scale, anyone clicking on my profile from a 2-star review should have an idea of how I operate. Was not intended, as I had no idea what my distribution would look like as I was entering my existing data. But I am now curious about the 4.5-5 star rated games of people who have similar logarithmic distributions, since I know they are being selective in a similar way.
I think most review scores would be lower if more people were accustomed to reviewers who did not have a financial incentive to be nice. But professional reviewers want to matter to Metacritic, so even if amateur (non-paid, not low effort) reviewers don’t have a reason to award the new hotness full marks, their barometer for how to discuss quality will still be affected by the language of the industry.
The energy of this comment thread.
Commercial value is a metric I consider separate from the rating on this site. This game is a prime example - it's free, but its subject matter is also controversial enough for many to still see negative value in the time it would take to download ~200 megabytes, as even talking about it is grounds enough for others to assume they are furry or queer by association. I’m certainly not ready to develop a system that accounts for perceived negative commercial value, or how to accommodate experiences for which I have zero interest in that I could also not be persuaded with money to try. Give me $10 and I’ll spend a half hour with Punky Skunk, but some games have enough motion blur to make me motion sick.
Games are the only medium I’m comfortable having a loosely ranked system at all, since each game is a piece of software that needs to function. No one rates novels based on the physical books by which they are delivered - that standard of pages being printed in the correct order, that each page turns correctly, is expected. It makes sense to rate different print editions of a book, if different paper or font sizes are used, but games force you to make that kind of reckoning of delivery and functionality in addition to the content. For me, that provides a vector for understanding why someone is likely to have a certain type of experience with a game that feels tangible enough to talk about.
Written and video media are so personality based that any rating system even remotely quantitative feels worthless. The same movie intensely analyzed by some is used as kitchen background noise by others. The nature of game design makes it easier to intuit what range of use cases a game is likely to sustain, (Cookie Clicker vs Bloodborne), which I think focuses discussion. Having an implicit understanding of which goals a game can be measured against provides enough consensus for rankings to have meaning.
I like Backloggd because it shows rating distributions for user reviews as prominently as the average review score, and the distribution is much more interesting to me. Individual scores are useless unless you know the methodology of the reviewer, but a distribution shows concentrations of consensus. Nothing makes me curious about a game more than a perfect uniform distribution, except possibly an inverted bell curve. Since my distributions of ratings follow an almost logarithmic scale, anyone clicking on my profile from a 2-star review should have an idea of how I operate. Was not intended, as I had no idea what my distribution would look like as I was entering my existing data. But I am now curious about the 4.5-5 star rated games of people who have similar logarithmic distributions, since I know they are being selective in a similar way.
I think most review scores would be lower if more people were accustomed to reviewers who did not have a financial incentive to be nice. But professional reviewers want to matter to Metacritic, so even if amateur (non-paid, not low effort) reviewers don’t have a reason to award the new hotness full marks, their barometer for how to discuss quality will still be affected by the language of the industry.
The energy of this comment thread.
@Bavoom,
Just so we were clear, I was engaging the discussion on behalf of finding more consensus with your perspective than the one brought into question against you. So I figured it was worth bringing up with more precision in defense of your wonderful methodology, and to some degree the futility of speaking against it (although this is probably more a result of the fact Backloggd does not have open forum spaces for bringing up those concerns, besides maybe through creative use of lists, which is something I've tried to do but has not as of yet garnered any inquiry within). Therefore, any comment section on Backloggd with an open insight (my stand in name for a 'review' to respect the range of writing on the site) is bound to bring upon either antagonistic or non sequitor dialogue (or both if you're exceptionally unlucky).
I assent that every point you made is entirely valid, and your abandonment and even cynicism towards more enhanced reviews is inspiring. Though I think there is 2 points worth merit:
1. On the subject of formal range, its worth noting that which the internal game limits and expectations do in fact give them a more formalistic way to appraise or critique it, the range of experience and interaction may be still quite high. For example a lot of people think New Vegas is one of the best RPGs ever made, but I would wonder how many of them are saying that with reference to having the anti crash mod installed since that game is a beast. The game itself does not come automatically installed with one, but any time around the discourse of that game is bound to get people talking about it. However there's still 2 seperate experiences just on that note alone, do we critique the original design or its capacity as an easy mod experience. When people talk about Skyrim being a great game, that opinion might make a lot of difference depending on whether its a wacky game with Thomas the Tank Engine installed or if its the Vanilla campaign. Similarly, are you playing it emulated or not? With the original controller? Etc. At first it may seem that simplifying these issues in support of original hardware and installation is the way to go, but that would not only be unexciting but would obviously leave a lot of peoples opinions out to dry. On the other hand you can play without the rulesets of a game literally on the fringes of its design mechanics, to explain quickly what I mean by this, consider the fact that most FPS games have a duck and cover system. If you're behind cover you are probably safe. But any game that doesnt have punishing AI pathing in terms of crowd control (for example the use of grenades or swarming) can be exploited as a totally different experience: A waiting game. Just wait for the weaker enemy to come to you, then you kill it. Now depending on a bunch of different things about each game this can be seen as a genuine design flaw but there's a good bunch of them where I would argue its a legitimate experience. Fallout 3 has a lot of moments inside its malls for example, where hiding and using enemy sound patterns is the way to go. It turns an arguably mundane action shooter into a riveting suspenseful horror game, at least to me. I feel like this range should be respected for what it can speak to since eventually peoples perceptions can actually make them interact with games in weird and offputting ways, speedrunners are proof of that.
2. On the subject of rating appreciation averages, I understand your cynicism here, although my own scale is high in terms of how much I appreciate the average game (almost 60% of all games I play to completion I 'like') so I feel some defense should be had here since I'm complicit in this. My guess is you wouldn't necessarily be wrong that most people would be more critical of their enjoyment if their was not a financial psychology backing it. Every game of the month on backloggd is like 3.5+ rated, loved by most people, ect. with more nuanced biases coming in a few months after the hype dies does. I wouldn't dare naturalize how cyclical hype cycles are, this is economic. However most people don't spend a lot of time with games they don't actually enjoy. Games functions as audio visual spaces usually, and most of them are a bit on the longer side. Even then, I think there's a lot more to get out of the 'average' than you would expect to the extent it becomes 'good' at least in the subject of games. By my logic I would think most people with more critical scoring systems simply have more lines for positive gradiation in most cases rather than that they would dislike an average game more. A 7 would mean more genuinely positive enjoyment and appreciation rather than a 7 being 'average'. Rather than that everyone would just start giving out '2's more because they realize that games are ultimately not as special as our limited time allows. You might be the exception to the rule here, but maybe not, maybe you've got it psychologically in your head 'average' means good but then have to express more nuance of the issues since its not as high up on the totem pole as everything else. Maybe you have this figured out to, this is mainly a limit of my knowledge with how you do things but its still worth thinking about. Although it changes very little.
The funny part then is your tier listing system is in a lot of ways ultimately the tier list path is probably the way forward for more critical enjoyment. I've always figured even though my 4 point system is fine, I wouldn't attain 'mastery' until I have a few tiermaker/topsters under my belt. For me, stuff towards the top of the list would denote more 'priority/self identification' rather than pure quantitative appreciation, but the biggest thing I miss in my limited and symmetrical 4 point system is how obscuring it is of an array I would 'identify' among the classics. Perhaps its best it remains obscured in my case though since it keeps me sustained on the hunt for longer, though. But I lightly reject the hypothesis that people would simply dislike videogames more if given more free time. After all its not a surprise to me, people's favourite games come in the summer as children, where time is ephemeral and the amount of time you had to spend panning each game was longer. This nostalgia for non colonized free time likely what more accredited games critics are capitalizing on however. Making their scripts punchier and fleeting and free.
Regardless. I agree heavily overall and your closing comment is very funny :p
Let me try, this is what I imagine outsiders reading think reading this
Just so we were clear, I was engaging the discussion on behalf of finding more consensus with your perspective than the one brought into question against you. So I figured it was worth bringing up with more precision in defense of your wonderful methodology, and to some degree the futility of speaking against it (although this is probably more a result of the fact Backloggd does not have open forum spaces for bringing up those concerns, besides maybe through creative use of lists, which is something I've tried to do but has not as of yet garnered any inquiry within). Therefore, any comment section on Backloggd with an open insight (my stand in name for a 'review' to respect the range of writing on the site) is bound to bring upon either antagonistic or non sequitor dialogue (or both if you're exceptionally unlucky).
I assent that every point you made is entirely valid, and your abandonment and even cynicism towards more enhanced reviews is inspiring. Though I think there is 2 points worth merit:
1. On the subject of formal range, its worth noting that which the internal game limits and expectations do in fact give them a more formalistic way to appraise or critique it, the range of experience and interaction may be still quite high. For example a lot of people think New Vegas is one of the best RPGs ever made, but I would wonder how many of them are saying that with reference to having the anti crash mod installed since that game is a beast. The game itself does not come automatically installed with one, but any time around the discourse of that game is bound to get people talking about it. However there's still 2 seperate experiences just on that note alone, do we critique the original design or its capacity as an easy mod experience. When people talk about Skyrim being a great game, that opinion might make a lot of difference depending on whether its a wacky game with Thomas the Tank Engine installed or if its the Vanilla campaign. Similarly, are you playing it emulated or not? With the original controller? Etc. At first it may seem that simplifying these issues in support of original hardware and installation is the way to go, but that would not only be unexciting but would obviously leave a lot of peoples opinions out to dry. On the other hand you can play without the rulesets of a game literally on the fringes of its design mechanics, to explain quickly what I mean by this, consider the fact that most FPS games have a duck and cover system. If you're behind cover you are probably safe. But any game that doesnt have punishing AI pathing in terms of crowd control (for example the use of grenades or swarming) can be exploited as a totally different experience: A waiting game. Just wait for the weaker enemy to come to you, then you kill it. Now depending on a bunch of different things about each game this can be seen as a genuine design flaw but there's a good bunch of them where I would argue its a legitimate experience. Fallout 3 has a lot of moments inside its malls for example, where hiding and using enemy sound patterns is the way to go. It turns an arguably mundane action shooter into a riveting suspenseful horror game, at least to me. I feel like this range should be respected for what it can speak to since eventually peoples perceptions can actually make them interact with games in weird and offputting ways, speedrunners are proof of that.
2. On the subject of rating appreciation averages, I understand your cynicism here, although my own scale is high in terms of how much I appreciate the average game (almost 60% of all games I play to completion I 'like') so I feel some defense should be had here since I'm complicit in this. My guess is you wouldn't necessarily be wrong that most people would be more critical of their enjoyment if their was not a financial psychology backing it. Every game of the month on backloggd is like 3.5+ rated, loved by most people, ect. with more nuanced biases coming in a few months after the hype dies does. I wouldn't dare naturalize how cyclical hype cycles are, this is economic. However most people don't spend a lot of time with games they don't actually enjoy. Games functions as audio visual spaces usually, and most of them are a bit on the longer side. Even then, I think there's a lot more to get out of the 'average' than you would expect to the extent it becomes 'good' at least in the subject of games. By my logic I would think most people with more critical scoring systems simply have more lines for positive gradiation in most cases rather than that they would dislike an average game more. A 7 would mean more genuinely positive enjoyment and appreciation rather than a 7 being 'average'. Rather than that everyone would just start giving out '2's more because they realize that games are ultimately not as special as our limited time allows. You might be the exception to the rule here, but maybe not, maybe you've got it psychologically in your head 'average' means good but then have to express more nuance of the issues since its not as high up on the totem pole as everything else. Maybe you have this figured out to, this is mainly a limit of my knowledge with how you do things but its still worth thinking about. Although it changes very little.
The funny part then is your tier listing system is in a lot of ways ultimately the tier list path is probably the way forward for more critical enjoyment. I've always figured even though my 4 point system is fine, I wouldn't attain 'mastery' until I have a few tiermaker/topsters under my belt. For me, stuff towards the top of the list would denote more 'priority/self identification' rather than pure quantitative appreciation, but the biggest thing I miss in my limited and symmetrical 4 point system is how obscuring it is of an array I would 'identify' among the classics. Perhaps its best it remains obscured in my case though since it keeps me sustained on the hunt for longer, though. But I lightly reject the hypothesis that people would simply dislike videogames more if given more free time. After all its not a surprise to me, people's favourite games come in the summer as children, where time is ephemeral and the amount of time you had to spend panning each game was longer. This nostalgia for non colonized free time likely what more accredited games critics are capitalizing on however. Making their scripts punchier and fleeting and free.
Regardless. I agree heavily overall and your closing comment is very funny :p
Let me try, this is what I imagine outsiders reading think reading this
FrozenRoy
2 years ago