| vivster said: You cannot deny that there is a certain widespread positive bias towards Nintendo's big hitters. It doesn't have to be interntional bias. It certainly is worth noting that the big franchises of Nintendo get a whole lot more 10/10s despite reviewers acknowledging flaws. I gurantee you if this game did not feature Mario and was not related to Nintendo it would get 92 tops. Every other game gets its flaws marked down in the score. Maybe it's a different expectation of reviewers. |
Maybe I should clarify more: The problem I have with BraLoD's post isn't that he pointed out a bias, the problem I had with it is that he acted like it was the only bias, or at least the only important bias.
The reality is that, intentionally or unintentionally, big review sites almost always have a bias towards triple A games. And despite the accusations that reviewers give higher scores to bigger games for views, I wouldn't be surprised if most of the time it was simply an unintentional casuality. Reviewers are gamers, and they go in wanting to justify the hype these games get. I remember when I got BOTW I thought it wa awesome, now I think that I was wearing rose tinted glasses. I mean, it's still great, but being on that train definitely clouded my judgement.
While I think it is true that there are, in certain scenarios, huge biases for Nintendo (see: Skyward Sword review), I also think that Odyssey might not be a case for this. Let me give you an example. I'm playing Uncharted 2 right now, and at best it's like an 80/100 to me. Now in the culture of reviewers, Uncharted 4 comes out and it's this huge send off to the series that everyone and their mom loves, it's being heavily advertised by Sony, the hype is real, etc. I, an IGN reviewer, give that game a 9/10. Now, Super Mario Odyssey comes out. And I'm enjoying it wayyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyy more than Uncharted 4. But I gave Uncharted 4 a 9! So what do I do to show how special of a game Odyssey is, in a year with a lot of 9+ games? I give it a 10. The "10" score more often then not is used to show off how special a game is in a specific year or time period(generation) then it is the true quality of the game.
Now I don't know if that's why Odyssey got a 10, it could be Nintendo bias, but the problem is moreso systematic I feel. Almost all triple A games deserve a lower score then they got. I'm also not 100% confident in that analysis, becauses different reviewers feel different things. Maybe for some reviewers at IGN, they don't care about creating a score consistent with the values of the site. For some reviewers at IGN, they absolutely do(which seems to be the case for a majority of reviewers, seeing as how almost all IGN reviews are an 8.5 or a 9).
Another problem is expectations. I don't know if IGN reviews their games entirely on the game's singular merit, or if they review it in the context of the market, but some of their reviews like the ones infamously for COD, definitely focus on the echo-chamber of the COD ethos moreso than how important they are for the market.
To go back to point #1(Paragraph 3), IGN only had ONE complaint about Odyssey, and that was very very occasional camera issues that were minimized almost entirely by an options menu. I think there was another complaint, but I couldn't find it in the review. Point is the complaints were so small, it became almost pointless to dock the game points. On IGN's scale. On my scale i'd be fucking nitpicking to death, talking about this mechanic and that world etc. But this is IGN we're talking about. But i'm not IGN, or a big reviewer handing out 8's and 9's like candy.
Maybe there are some games that benefit greatly from being Nintendo IP. That could be said for nearly every game though. I wonder how worse the scores for Uncharted would be if they were from another developer. And of course let's remember bias can genuinely be a great way of critiquing a game. If you don't have the experience of previous Zelda games you might love Breath of the Wild. But if you have played the older Zelda games, you might have a different opinion entirely. Experience inherently equals some measure of bias, not bias that is inherently there from the start, but bias that begins as you start to form an opinion on the game.
The point is, I can't really deny there is a Nintendo bias, but I think the biggest issue is a systematic inflation of scores and a falsehood - a lack of equivalency, between what the reviewer is saying, and what the score means.
Sorry for the long post, here's a loli :
