| pokoko said: 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. |
Again, I am not asking any reviewer to make a value judgement on content they have not played. I am merely asking for reviewers to take the fact that the game will be constantly growing into consideration when making statements about longevity.
I disagree with a lot of the specific things you said, however, its 4AM (and I still plan on watching more anime) and this has already been discussed to death, so I will leave you with this example (which you may disagree with, but I would find that disagreement ridiculous):
Two Scenarios:
1. A game is released with a fairly low amount of content. The publisher says that no additional content is coming and the game will recieve no post launch support.
2. A game is released with a fairly low amount of content. The publisher says that there will be regular content updates including some major content updates and all of it will be free.
How could you justify giving both games the same score? It wouldn't be helpful for the consumer at any point in time to do so. Game two obviously will have greater longevity to it than game one... Saying otherwise (or scoring otherwise) would be a disservice to the consumer.
PS: I think you need to stop looking at things from the Publisher's perspective. You seem to be acting as if anything that benefits publishers should be thrown away, however Pro-Publisher does not mean anti-consumer, and from the consumer's perspective, I believe that assessing longevity as I suggested provides a more accurate (although not perfect) depiction of the game.
