| sundin13 said:
Again, I am not saying that the reviewers should make a value judgement on this content. I am saying that if the complaint is "there is not enough content to maintain my interest for months", that complaint is disingenuous due to the continuous release model. I believe a statement about how content will continue to be released for months should be factored into any assumptions about longevity, and I see that as a much more realistic assessment of the games ability to maintain interest. Many review sites understand that the current method of reviewing games is flawed due to the change in how content is released. This is not a new issue and it is one that many sites are trying to understand how to deal with and accomodate for. As Eurogamer said when they changed their scoring system "Scores are failing us, they're failing you, and perhaps most importantly, they are failing to fairly represent the games themselves". This discussion is largely a discussion about how to handle this large flaw of review scores...their static nature. Some feel the best way to handle it would be for the the reviewer to give what they feel is the most realistic assessment of the game's longevity. Others feel that the best way is to give a review in a vacuum, which is irrelevant to most buyers at release and becomes even more irrelevant as more time passes. As reviews are essentially buyer's guides, I feel that a realistic assessment serves that purpose more than an isolated "in a vacuum" assessment. |
Oh, I fully know that review scores have become nearly meaningless, and I've probably been talking about this particular problem far longer than most Nintendo fans. Months and months ago, when people were doing Metacritic list wars and brought up GT5, I pointed out that GT5 is nowhere near the game that was first reviewed, as it has added a colossal amount of free content over that time. Someone looking at Metacritic now would not see this, thus Metacritic fails the people using it after a few months. I assure you, that conversation did not begin with Splatoon.
However, the situation with Splatoon is not the same situation with GT5 or Mario Kart. GT5 launched with a ton of content and I assume the newest Mario Kart did, as well. Enough to say, "this game is on par with, or exceeds, the amount of content offered by its peers and it thus worth the asking price without any additional content being added."
The situation we're talking about here is where a publisher/developer is only shipping half the content with the core game, asking you to pay for all the content, then doling out that removed content over time, at their discretion, in order to keep people playing longer, which benefits the publisher/developer greatly. That's a much different animal. Now, if that's okay with you, if you don't mind a publisher/developer withholding content you paid for and telling you when you'll have a chance to play it, then more power to you. However, the idea that reviewers should give some kind of score credit for this, that makes zero sense. The distribution model should be noted in the text, absolutely, but it would be completely dishonest for a reviewer to give bonus points for content that is not there for the Day One consumer. That should not happen. Blind faith that the content they haven't played yet adds meaningful value to the game would be unprofessional.
Regardless of how you feel about what Nintendo is doing, or how you feel about review scores, writers partially basing a review score on content they have not played is not a solution. What if the next Halo or Battlefield comes out and the reviewer says something like, "I only played a couple of the modes and maps that were on the disc but they were a lot of fun so I'm going to assume that they other 20 maps and modes are really good, so I give this game a 90"--would you be perfectly fine with that? I would not.
