CoD Vita and Aliens CM sales show game journalism is irrelevant

[UltimateUnknown]

Soleron said:

UltimateUnknown said:
I think its more to do that the developers managed to cash in on the goodwill of the consumers. People have been playing COD games for years and expect at least a general level of quality to be there, which there is. By releasing a bad game like this, the COD brand took a hit as people who bought the Vita game will be cautious before buying another COD game.

Similarly for Aliens, consumers trusted in Gearbox to deliver a good game because of the other good games they made like Borderlands, but now they'll be more cautious of the developer. Plus the Aliens series is probably going to take a hit in the video game market for this bad release.

The alternative I'm presenting is that these were GOOD games that served the needs of their customers, who are not your kind of person. Reviews need to adjust their values to review those games well on their terms, or die.

You're saying customers would buy a game they don't enjoy, en masse (and then not the next one). Can you give an example of that happening in the past?

Similarly with the branding example, I think consumers are smart enough not just to buy any game with the name on the box of something they like.

I said nothing about the reviews, but the games themselves. The only thing that can be said about reviews is that reviewers don't bring up points which can't be felt by gamers. While review scores may not matter, the cause of the bad review scores can matter. And that cause is a bad design. If a game is buggy, glitchy, looks horrible or barely functions gameplay wise, people will realise its bad. You don't need a review to tell them that.

But it can be easier for publishers to lure in the uninformed gamer through some good marketing. That has most certainly been the case for Declassified and Aleins CM from my own personal experience. In fact my jaws dropped to the floor when I saw one of the most important undergound stations in London had an entire interior redesign in the escalator area with an Aliens theme. I have NEVER seen any game that was advertised so heavily. Same with declassified but not as crazy.

So yeah you can't take marketing out of the equation. Many good games on the other hand have little to no mainstream marketing.