My Battlefield 4 campaign review...

[theRepublic]

fatslob-:O said:

theRepublic said:

"Then what else can define quality quantitatively?" Probably nothing can.  Not sales, and not review scores.  If I had to pick one, I would probably pick reviews as being closer.  Even then, with how bad game journalism is right now, that only really gives you the 'hardcore' perspective.  I guess the closest you could get would be big consumer surveys after people play the game in question.

"How is minecraft a smash success..." Did you just ignore that list I posted?  Let's see that again:

Genre, art style, marketing, current market saturation level (both in and out of genre), publisher brand strength, developer brand strength, IP brand strength, consumer excitement, reviews, and quality all play a role in how much a game will sell.

Mincraft gets big points in a lot of these areas:

• Genre - Sandbox type games are very popular.  This particular type, where you mine and build anything you want, didn't really exist before.  Which leads me to...
• Current Market Saturation - Nothing like this game really existed before.  There is a huge first mover advantage here.  I would say this is the biggest reason the game is so big.  Malstrom says new content is what makes a game a success.  This game has that in spades.
• Marketing - True, this game does not have traditional marketing.  But it does have a ton of positive word of mouth marketing.  Which I would argue is even more valuable.
• Consumer excitement - See above.
• Quality - Yes, I agree this is a quality game, and that certainly helps a lot.

"Those are some pretty bad excuses if you ask me."  Not excuses, just reality.

"If a game were truly bad then it would have never been supported by the mass market."  Nice strawman.  Where do I say that a bad game sold well? (In case you were wondering, I think Wii Sports is a very high quality game.)  This is probably in reference to where I said that inferior products sometimes win in the market.  Sometimes that is on price.  Quality usually costs more, so a cheaper product can sell more.  Sometimes it is on marketing.  I've seen a documentary that did a blind taste test with Bud Light, Miller Lite, and Coors Light.  Nobody could tell them apart.  Yet they don't all sell in the same numbers.  That is because of marketing.

"Ever heard of the term the customers are always right about what they want." Yes, I have heard that, and it is wrong.  Dead wrong.  As much as I don't like Apple products, Steve Jobs was right when he said that customers don't know what they want until you show them.  That is how Apple was able to create or redefine products, and then make huge profits.  That is how Nintendo created the Wii.  Nobody was asking for motion gaming.  But once people saw it, they said "Holy crap, I want that!"

1)Then I guess review scores say that wii play bad was even though the mass market disagrees. I would rather trust the large sum of what people want than a small sample of reviews. Reviews are nowhere near close to the general audience thinks. Why are the user scores for modern warfare 3 so low ? The hardcore has basically infected game journalism to become not reliable again. 

2)Minecraft is what you would call a blue ocean game. Like malstrom once said, "It is harder to sell in a cold market than a hot market." Minecraft was in itself innovative by mass market and that added to the quality of the game.

I agree with the fact that minecraft has new content but that goes inline that new content increases the quality of a game also. 

3)It's true that the marketing came from the word of mouth, however the game needed to retain some initial quality in order to do that. 

Again to gain consumer excitement with minecraft it had to have some initial quality otherwise people wouldn't recommend it in the first place.

This basically all boils down to the quality of a game and nothing else. Those points were a part of quality. 

4)Please describe how inferior products can win ? You basically said inferior products in the market wins so I took that as you saying that inferior games can win in the market so how exactly is that strawman ? Oh and your reasons as to why they win is mostly excuses. It's not my fault that some people see more quality in some alcoholic beverages. What's more is that I wouldn't know because I don't drink those. 

5)Really ?! So your denying that people who wanted those apple products didn't want it ?! Instead you'll probably resort to saying that apple had the best marketing to do it but that alone will not cut it. Their iPods and iPhones were pretty good products at the time. Your right about nobody asking for motion gaming but your dead wrong about it being a fad. Nintendo aimed for a blue ocean strategy and that is how they flourished. Hence they created a new market with no contendors. 

1) It is like you didn't even read what I wrote. "Even then, with how bad game journalism is right now, that only really gives you the 'hardcore' perspective.  I guess the closest you could get would be big consumer surveys after people play the game in question."

2) Finding an underserved market has nothing to do with the quality of your product.  Neither does offering content not yet done by anyone else.  You can do both of those things but still have a crappy product.  An example would be if Minecraft was riddled was glitches.

3) There are all kinds of games that are very popular with their particular community, but for some reason the great word of mouth reviews don't really do much for the game.  Minecraft was lucky in that for some reason, it had the right people spreading the word so that it exploded.  None of this relates to the quality of the game.

4) As noted by Bazmeistergen, see VHS vs Beta for an example.  For the beer example, you don't need to be a drinker.  It is that the 3 beers are indistinguishable by taste.  They are the exact same quality.  But they do not sell the same amount.  All your arquments say that they should sell the same amount.

I thought you read Malstrom?  Haven't you heard of Clayton Christensen?  Low-end disruption is all about how a low quality but innovative product can push out established higher quality products that can't integrate the innovative quality of the new product.

5) Yes, people did want those Apple products.  But only after Apple revealed them.  Nobody knew they wanted it before.  Nobody in a market research group said, "I wish my iPhone was giant and didn't make calls."  But we got the iPad anyway, because Apple knew what people wanted, even though the people didn't realize it at the time.

Same with Nintendo.  They were able to hit the Blue Ocean precisely because they were able to give consumers something they didn't know they wanted.  That is how you create a new market.  If consumers knew they wanted it, it would already be a Red Ocean.  Again, don't you read Malstrom?  If you do, you don't understand it.  I know he covered this years ago.

I didn't say it was a fad!  Nowhere in my post did I say that.  Stop making stuff up.  That is why I and others have said you are using strawmen.  You are arguing against things that were not said.

And with that I am done with you.  I have backed up my points, you have not backed up yours.  You seem to barely skim my post, and don't even try to understand.  Then you make stuff up.  This whole thing is off topic anyway.