The_Liquid_Laser said:
Runa216 said:
Nope! If so....AStro's Playroom would be GOTY everywhere. Its user score is the highest I've seen all year. |
I'm not even talking about reviews though. I am talking about popularity. If you look at sales or social media/google mentions, twitch streams, etc..., the games that dominated this year were Animal Crossing and Among Us. When I think of games from 2020, these are the first two that come to mind. These were the games that people were actually playing. None of the others are even close. These GOTY picks are biased because they are so heavily based on reviews. The critics' tastes are not the same as the average gamer's tastes. |
Yeah, but I think the world at large needs a bit of perspective on reviews in general. Game reviews, movie reviews, book reviews, all that. Critics of all types are generally expected to play/watch/read all manner of media, from stuff they love to stuff they hate and as such usually consume more than your average consumer whether they want to or not. As a result, they are more attuned to the subtleties inherent to any media and thus care a lot more about little things like cinematography or art direction or voice acting than the average player. Most people are happy with shooty bang-bang games or vroom-vroom racing games or runny ball-kicky sports games and don't NEED innovation, they just want a well-made game that caters to their needs.
A critic NEEDS innovation because even good or great games get boring if they're all the same. They NEED creativity or new ideas to fuel them because even shit like Call of Duty - which is an objectively well made game - is just the same thing over and over again. Consumers LOVE that shit and eat it up every year, but critics are growing weary of it and the franchise has been getting lower and lower scores despite them still selling well. Innovation and creativity in games are both very important to the critic because they're novelties in a world where 95% of games, regardless of how good they are, are unoriginal.
That's why something like The Last of Us part 2 got so much love. Love it or hate it, it did something that got people talking. the gameplay wasn't anything great, sure, but the story was so incredibly bold that it's hard to not respect that, from the perspective of someone who sits through The Division and Anthem time and time again.
Like I said, I personally didn't like The Last of Us, but I understand WHY it gets so much praise. I didn't care for animal Crossing but I agree with all the love it got. there are plenty of popular games that bring something new or important to the table that I love, even if I don't care for them. That's why there's so much of a disconnect between critics and consumers. One is just looking for something to entertain them, the other is looking for innovation and creativity and originality.
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