| coolbeans said: Since other posters already tackled the article submission portion of this comment, I figured I might as well respond to the parts applicable to me. I think painting the review team in this surreptitious light is unhealthy. Instead of going down this rabbit hole of "hmm... are they thinking of covering their tracks with x, y, or z?" it seems like you simply have a disconnect with me and Paul's evaluations. All of your posted examples come back to us, after all. Although I can't speak for Paul's thoughts & experiences (haven't played Ghosts nor Returnal yet), I can safely say Jim Ryan didn't influence my thoughts on any of the games I reviewed. I don't really get that connection tbh. I'll follow this up with a friendly challenge: considering how much you've discussed creative risk in game publishing here, why the jump to conspiratorial musings when VGC's game criticism doesn't follow in lock-step enough with the herd? If I -- and others -- have succeeded in making the case for a game's score via the prism of the site's methodology, regardless of where the average outlet lands, I figure that's a net positive, right? |
I think we both know than to believe that I'm someone possessed of a herd mentality. That I will just leave at that.
Lest you get the wrong impression, while we obviously have our disagreements, it's not you or the fact that you have different opinions about Sony's first-party library overall that I take issue with. Matter-of-factly, I find you to be among the most reasonable contributors to VGC. You actually listen to other people. Sometimes we land on agreement and sometimes we don't, but the point is that we can have constructive conversations, which is why I'm responding to you right now and not someone else. Sometimes we land on agreement and sometimes we don't. That ain't the issue.
The reviews mentioned come back to the two of you...yes and no. (I could actually add the Spider-Man: Miles Morales review to this list even for a sixth example from within the last year and a half or so, but the amount of discrepancy between that score and the MC average is smaller, which is why I didn't mention that one before. Also, I've not actually played that particular game myself yet, so that's another reason I didn't mention it before.) The real issue to me is one of official sponsorship, as in why only people with relatively negative opinions (again, gauging relative to like average review scores on Metacritic as a kind of barometer) of seemingly Sony's entire first-party library are ever tasked with reviewing their games in an official capacity anymore, as contrasted with how say Nintendo's library is treated. Nintendo fans review Nintendo games. Sony detractors review Sony games. That's much more than just the two of you as individuals. That's an institutional decision about what opinions to sponsor and not. That is called institutional bias and the existence of it here at this point is not rationally debatable, but a fact.
What can be debated though are my perceptions of annoying little personal vendettas afoot by the staff here in general that correspond logically with this attitude I'm describing. For example, I was not aware of the stories highlighted by @Mnementh. Since none were referenced in the article in main article in question, my presumption was that this had been an investigation original to the VGC staff produced with remarkable timing.
One can be assured that I have my disagreements with some of Sony's recent corporate decisions as well, the biggest of which being the decision to consolidate the PlayStation Japan Studios. A newfound lack of interest in supporting smaller game developers outside the framework of gobbling them up (which honestly is probably something most such developers would love to have happen to them so long as they get to retain their creative freedom) doesn't help either and serves a narrative that says the company is becoming more profit-focused than it was during the PS4 era. Matter-of-factly, that sort of concern was the basis for the OP of this thread. I was seeking to voice concern that the company's investments in genuinely creative projects that have taken a lot of risks like Returnal may be shut down in the future if they don't make enough money.
