noname2200 said:
silicon said:
Sales doesn't equate to quality. You can see this in every aspect of life.
I.E. there are wine tastes who taste every wine and can distinguish quality. Is the best wine the one that has the most sales? No.
Consider clothes. The clothes that sell are usually made of the cheapest materials. Does that mean those clothes are quality? No.
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This is a false dichotomy, and you know it. In your scenario, as in the real world, quality products tend to be cost-prohibitive: as you point out, most people buy cheap clothes, because they have little choice, but they never claim that said clothes are of the highest quality.
By contrast, a good game and a bad game tend to cost the same. Unlike most other media, we don't have to pay extra for quality.
Video game reviewers play tons and tons of games. After playing a lot of games you begin to get a sense of what's good and what's bad and what's been done. Each reviewer begins to base their opinions on their past experiences.
I could not disagree more with the bolded. Neither I nor anyone else magically "learns" what makes a good or bad game by playing more. At best, we refine our own personal tastes as a result of playing. Take a look around these forums. Most of us are long-time gamers. How often do we agree on what's a good or bad game?
Take a game like Wii Fit. Chances are there's a huge group of people who's first experience into the world of gaming was Wii Fit.
If sales relate to quality then someone who has no experience playing video games can have a better understanding of quality than people who have spent the past 20 years playing video games.
Ask yourself this: why is Wii Fit most people's first game? I think we can agree that many of those people are not children, or people who otherwise had no chance to play games before. So why haven't they played games until now? Why, for that matter, does the majority of humanity (including the overwhelming majority of women) think that video games are puerile distractions that should be outgrown?
You're entirely on the wrong track. Wii Fit (and other "casual" games) are anathema to the small niche that is the "hardcore gamer" because it appeals to values that differ entirely from the ones they're accustomed to. And it's precisely that same appeal to new values that make Wii Fit attractive to the masses. These people are never going to "learn" the values of the "hardcore." They're never going to see eye-to-eye with people who drool over Metal Gear Solid or Gears of War. Ten years from now experience with gaming won't cause them to acknowlege that God of War is the epitome of gaming.
They have an entirely different definition of "quality" than you do. And they always will. You may not like it, but these people are putting their money where their mouth is by purchasing in droves what the "hardcore" deem "crappy games," and they continue to do so. So either you think that they're fools who are being suckered into buying shit, or you acknowledge that maybe their idea of quality games differs quite a bit from yours.
For the record, I don't mean any of this post as an attack on you. It was just easier to directly address you and your post than to step back and speak in generalities. My apologies if anything I wrote struck you as a personal assault.
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You made a few good points. Especially with regards to the bolded section.
I did not want to make an argument of hardcore vs casual becuase I don't really understand the definitions that people use on the forums for those terms.
The root of the problem is the association of quality with the number of sales. I do no agree that sales necessary or sufficient to imply that a game is a quality title.
It seems that what you're saying that quality is judged by the consumer. Someone with different standards can consider a title quality and their beliefs as to what is quality is different than somone elses, specifically my own. I agree that everyone can have their own personal opinion on how much they like, value or appreciate something.
There is another problem, and that is if a game sells well it implies that the consumer judges the quality of the title before playing the title. This could mean that the actual product is not what the consumers actually consider when making the purchase.
This is fundamentally different the view I proposed where quality is something inherent in the title themselves. The main difference is that I believe that something can be quality even with low sales. Something with high sales can also be quality. The inherent qualities can of course be made up of personal standards, which is why reviews are all over the place.
