Khuutra said:
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? |
True, but majorities tend to have more impact on everything, I mean companies chase majorities, and majorities decide success in politics and even direct businesses. We have new York times bestsellers, not best critics.
Actually that's not true, its called interpolation when you do it within known points "interpolation is a method of constructing new data points within the range of a discrete set of known data points"
Mario 64's numbers show that 3D Mario has never had the success of Super Mario, so we can show that to be true.
Most of our measures of what is worthwhile are based on amounts Khuutra, we base things on profits, on sales, on majorities, you can argue that there is some other value that is not measured by numbers, but what bearing does that have on anything that matters?
NSMB Wii will easily surpass MW2, it doesn't matter how fast something sells, in fact selling fast and then droppng off shows that it won't be a classic game, NSMB will both pass it, it'll sell for far longer, possibly even longer than the DS NSMB, that shows a truly great game