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Khuutra on 30 March 2010
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axt113 said:
Khuutra said:

The langugage you use is too broad and non-specific; you mean to say that more consumers played New Supr Mario Bros. Wii than played Super Mario Galaxy, which means that they appealed to different value metrics. This does not make the former better than the later; it simply means that it has a wider appeal. There's a difference.

You can mak hypotheses all you want, but the fact of the matter is that it isn't possible to know, and no measure of flat-out denials will change the fact that it's not possible to know. I tend to think a 2-D Mario probably would have sold better, yes, but pretending that it's a sure thing is the very height of fallacy.

More, saying that 3-D Mario never had the ability to move hardware is itself fallacious; it's a pretty sure bet that if a non-packaged game sells to 33% of the userbase (ala Mario 64) then it probably moved some hardware.

My primary point is that trying to draw an absolute correlation between appeal and quality is fallacious to the point of being ludicrous.

Only in semantics, appeal is a view of quality, I don't go to watch certain types of films because most I consider to be snoozefests (English patient was one of the most painful experiences of my life), that to me is a view of quality, consumers are the same way, if they consider something unappealing, to them its not quality, just because you disagree, means very little, because why is your opinion any more worthy than another's.

No its not, its extrapolation, we know how well they sold before and after, we can easily extrapolate how it would have performed back during the N64 era.

Actually, that we can show to be false, by showing whether other 3D Marios have had hardware pushing power, and they haven't (I'm not talking about being able to move a few consoles the week of its launch, I'm talking about sustaining momentum, like NSMB Wii is doing for the Wii).

 I disagree, people find things they like to be appealing, if they don't like it, they don't view it as quality (the old saying "I may not know art, but I know what I like")

It's kind of surreal having to adapt the "metacritic doesn't equate to quality" argument to fit someone who insists that widespread appeal is an indicator of quality. I may have done it once with Avinash_Tyagi but I cannot be sure.

Now, you bring up an excelelnt point here, and I want to acknowledge that in more than one way:

just because you disagree, means very little, because why is your opinion any more worthy than another's.
This is very true, but the implication is not limited to the discussion we're having now: what it means, when taen to its logical conclusion (not so much a logical extreme) is that there is no absolute metric of quality to which everyone can agree - even if a majority agree, that is not a signifier of quality, nor has it ever been in any of the art forms (I can have a discussion with you about the critical history of popular literature if you like).

Extrapolation implies that we have a given data set that can be used to make predictions; predictions for the past are not possible. Extrapolations of nonexistent data sets are likewise not possible.

I should hope we can show a fallacious statement to be false, and Super Mario 64's numbers go a long way toward that.

When I say "absolute correlation between appeal and quality", what I mean is that it is intellectually dishonest to say "lots of people like it, therefore it is better than something that fewer people enjoy". That's simply not the case. This brings in the assumption that there are universal value metrics to which games try to adhere, and that the closer one gets to this value perfection the better one's appeal will be, but that's not the case. It doesn't go so far as to allow for different experiences, or even similar experience interpreted through different iterations.

I mean, Modern Warfare 2 is far ahead of NSMBWii right now and keeping good pace to stay ahead of it for a long time - still selling consoles right now, even. You're not goign to say that as of now it's a better game than New Super Mario Bros. Wii, are you?