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There's a game coming to PC/360 called Borderlands. It's a first-person Diablo-em-up with random content. Anyway, a big marketing element is that the game has millions of guns, and this is CONSTANTLY reported, re-reported, questioned in interviews, mentioned in trailers, etc. It's a Big Fucking Deal that will sell games and make money.

Except it's really, really ordinary.

Diablo had millions of weapons too. Sure, it only had about seventy inventory sprites and maybe a dozen character versions, but it had endless variations of clubs, swords and bows. Nobody gave a shit because roguelikes have the same thing.

And yet, this single element has caught the imagination. Even though there are only 7 types of weapons (FPS standards) and obviously a limited number of weapon models, the gaming press keep repeating the whole 'OMG ARE THERE REALLY THOUSANDS OF GUNS MAN' questions. Sure, there will be five thousand different coloured revolvers of +5 incendiary gyro sharpness. Is this a big deal?

In today's absurd and stupid gaming marketplace, it apparently is. To the credit of the delveopers, they have mentioned it and are following the obvious interest in their marketing and statements, but I imagine they're as bemused as everyone else. Diablo game has generated weapons! AMAZING!

The lamest part is that the game also generates levels, terrian, quests and mobs the same way, which actually IS interesting. Apparently the mobs don't just vary in colour, size, resists etc, but in behaviour, attack styles and vectors, number, all kinds of things, so that rats/scorpions/etc aren't just all the same or predictable - something that may go a long way to make the game last and retain it's freshness. So why does everyone focus on the not-very-interesting 'millions of guns' thing with breathless, soggy-pants excitement?

In short, is the gaming press a bunch of fat idiots?

Did you see the way that IGN pushed Damnation?

Yes, they are well paid idiots. Or possibly their audience is. Or both.

Apparently the mobs don't just vary in colour, size, resists etc, but in behaviour, attack styles and vectors, number, all kinds of things, so that rats/scorpions/etc aren't just all the same or predictable - something that may go a long way to make the game last and retain it's freshness.

Did any previous game have this? I could have sworn this has popped up before- it sounds like a good idea, but does it apply to all the enemies?

I'm guessing the focus is on things that sound the most impressive- random enemy behavior just doesn't have the punch they want.

So... looking up some info on this... It looks sounds like Diablo & Fallout 3 had a digital flipper baby, and Stark's complaining about an advertising bullet point being overemphasized.

They're likely pushing it because... Well, to go off the inspective method: In most FPS, the weapons are generally the -only- way to interact with the world. To go off the memish method: More dakka, more better. The denigrative method: Average Gamer is a goldfish, in more ways than one, and will somehow believe that all of these script compiled weapons will be functional or even fun to use.



It does seem interesting though.

Except it's not an FPS beyond 'it is first person' and 'you shoot things'. It's a Diablo-em-up, with a totally Diablo-em-up standard feature that every idiot gaming 'commentator' is blowing his load over. If anyone with a brain can put 'loot-em-up' and 'lots of guns' together and get 'thorium enchanted poison veteran's revolver of antioch +2 wind power', why can't people who are paid to know what they're talking about?

Oh right, you have no idea what you're talking about and never even heard of the game. Thanks for contributing lol. How the fuck is xyz gun + fire damage + accuracy going to be not functional or fun? Does Diablo regularly throw up weapons that don't work? Of course not.

Have you even played a game like this in your life? Ironically it's closest cousin is Hellgate, which HAD EXACTLY THE SAME INFINITE GUNS, even having more than 7 base types. Other features are FAR more interesting (dynamic maps? dynamic mobs?) and you don't even appear to know they exist.

Oh shit, I'm informed, intelligent and independent. No wonder fat idiots can't converse on this level!

On one hand, a big portion of their target audience start salivating at the mention of massive amounts of guns´. It isn't a coincidence that the amount of different guns keeps being promoted in shooters, even if the changes are minimal (Functionally, a German Luger is the same as an American Colt in BF1942, but they count as two different guns).

On the other hand, most game reviewers are little more than glorified publicists, who are given the gist of a game, the main selling points, and a number of pages to fill with shameless praise.

In other words, there's a lot of stupid people to capitalize on, and a lot of stupid people you can hire to do it.

Stark wrote:Except it's not an FPS beyond 'it is first person' and 'you shoot things'. It's a Diablo-em-up, with a totally Diablo-em-up standard feature that every idiot gaming 'commentator' is blowing his load over. If anyone with a brain can put 'loot-em-up' and 'lots of guns' together and get 'thorium enchanted poison veteran's revolver of antioch +2 wind power', why can't people who are paid to know what they're talking about?

Maybe because they generally aren't paid to review a game. They're paid to blow smoke up the most recent high profile game's asshole.

If you think the real press is anything less than completely honest, why would you expect competency from a paid pet of the gaming publishers?

Fuck, the only other review I've seen so far, is tearing into it for being a FO3 rip off. Clearly that was before they got their marketing check. (And the art change.)

Oh right, you have no idea what you're talking about and never even heard of the game. Thanks for contributing lol. How the fuck is xyz gun + fire damage + accuracy going to be not functional or fun? Does Diablo regularly throw up weapons that don't work? Of course not.

Having looked around a bit more, it seems they've got gave the program a number of "manufacture styles" to work it's guns off of.

Though, I'm sure there're going to be a fair few bad guns. Even when they're only trying to balance a dozen weapons devs make fuck ups. Hell, I'm dubious on that alone. There're probably quite a few attributes they didn't give proper weight in this generator.

It does look fun, and I'll definitely be giving it a go next month.

Have you even played a game like this in your life? Ironically it's closest cousin is Hellgate, which HAD EXACTLY THE SAME INFINITE GUNS, even having more than 7 base types. Other features are FAR more interesting (dynamic maps? dynamic mobs?) and you don't even appear to know they exist.

Damn straight they're more interesting. But we're not talking about what would market a game to you and me, we're talking about the bought and paid for Game Press, and why they're on about a sparkly bauble on the frame of what you seem to take as the gaming equivilent of the Mona Lisa...

Oh shit, I'm informed, intelligent and independent. No wonder fat idiots can't converse on this level!

And yet you're frothing at the crotch because, to market to the idiot masses, they're trumping their weapon numbers.

So your answer to why people are excited about something that is totally genre-standard is 'lol dishonest'? No shit. But when it's so obvious how can it possible work? Please note; it IS working.

It isn't even 'weapon numbers'. It's exactly the same as Armoured Core saying on the box 'two billion robot combinations'. Nobody gives a shit because it's OBVIOUS that 99.9% of the random combinations are going to suck... just like in Diablo. Please try and restart your brain and put aside your amusing attempts to look 'cool' by saying things like 'people are stupid' and 'omg u so mean' and whatever else you're wasting everyone's time with.

I guess I should start ignorantly posting about shit I have no idea about based on Wikipedia and then get shitty and insult people when my ignorant nerd-chic no-opinion isn't treated with any respect?

Since Blizzard is good at marketing, I expect D3 to have hilarious 'billions of axes' marketing nonsense for mouth-breathers like Fireborn.

Alright, what exactly is it you want out of this aside from venting, because you're annoyed at a marketing strategy? One that you yourself say is working.

Honestly, I don't expect respect, least of all from you. But, getting a burst of bile for an off handed quick comment in reply to what is clearly a rant about marketing saying "Lol gunz!" makes it seem a little like you're off your meds.

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Or wait, maybe this left over bile from the whole section 8 thread?

Oh man, just when I think your trolling can't get any better. You honestly ask what I 'want out of this'! Are you -retarded-? Can you -read-? Are you capable of critical thought? The best part is when you then get all butthurt after getting flamed BACK. And ill-informed idiot who can't participate in a discussion AND a cowardly hypocrite! On the internet?!?!?!?!?

WHO KNEW.

Heh, that's about what I though.

I'm almost sad I fell for your bait. But this has been amusing.

I'm cautiously optimistic for Borderlands, though the change in visual design they took a while ago is still something I'm not quite sure about - gonna have to see more video first.

I actually really like the style; it's silly (which is probably going to be a good thing given the content and playstyle) but it hides the weaknesses of consoles well while still looking good. I'd give it even odds of being good or being Hellgate again; it all depends on how much of the pipe-dream stuff is deliverable. If it stays fresh it could be a good long-term cooper, but the skill system seems to be pretty basic for a Diablo clone (4 classes, 3 skill trees per class with 5 tiers) so I'm not sure. At least it's not L4D-style 'you must have one of each type of guy', which would have been terrible.

Take press release, rewrite with own spin, congratulations, you're a journalist now!

For games journalism, make your own look as much like adcopy as possible, to attract advertisers and their lovely fat wallets.

Well, we germans do have at least one quality review magazine.

I'd love to see some statistics one day showing the correlation between media frenzy and video game sales if it's ever done. I imagine we won't be surprised by the conclusion, but WILL be surprised by its magnitude.

Anyway, lots of gaming journalists tend to share marketing deals with developers over advertising. Sometimes they even share the same corporate parent company. It turns out business partners are gauranteed never to say anything bad about one another as long as both of them are set to make money?

So why does everyone focus on the not-very-interesting 'millions of guns' thing with breathless, soggy-pants excitement?

Probably because the reviewers were bribed to think so.

To paraphrase a blog/article (can't remember exactly) the problem with gamer media isn't that the reviewer sites and magazines add to the hype but that they ARE the hype.

In short, is the gaming press a bunch of fat idiots?

I'm inclined to think so. Perhaps not necessarily fat, but idiots or at least not particularly intelligent or tasteful.


There are lots of reasons why games are somehow different for reviewers than for players. For one thing, they play a game with different expectations and goals.

You play a game to have fun. A reviewer plays because its his job and has to do it if he wants to get paid.

You play a game whenever you want to. A reviewer has to finish at least a good portion of the game to make an opinion for release deadline.

You pay for your copy of the game with money that didn't exactly fall into your lap (and even if it did, it was money you could have spent on something else). A reviewer gets one free from the publisher or the magazine pays for it.

You play a game with say, a mid-level system or with the basic kit that came with the console you play on your old CRT TV. A reviewer can and usually does have a high-end system or even any custom modifications for his system (better controllers, bigger plasma TV, surround sound system, fuck me if I know what else).

Then the greatest difference: the relationship with the developers and publishers. Publishers know that this nerd's score will influence other people how good the game is (and say anything about Yahtzee, at least he doesn't use scores).
Scores are great for marketing men: stick that XY magazine that the publisher was able to bribe put a high number on the game box and your average nerd is a bit more convinced. High recommendations work for films and even books (or at least, they still do it anyway), so why not video games? Hell, look at Metacritic that averages scores.
Even if we're not talking about direct bribery or indirect bribery, there is the relationship with the developers.

You see, one of the points of gaming magazine is that it tells stuff (or at least tries to) that most other magazines don't or that isn't obvious from just playing the game (I have yet to find one that does this). Exclusive content and if the developer studio is kind enough to show you exclusive content, they sort of assume that you'll ignore some of the more minor flaws like that the game is practically unplayable due to shitty debugging.

It's not even bribery or blackmail, its just that its easier to call out the shit of a developer if you haven't met them, drank coffee with and one that gave you the privilege of playing their broken game before anyone else. It's easier to criticise strangers than to criticise friends (or people that were nice to you at least).

And really, if you're a developer, you don't want a very aggressive or very critical guy to come over to your studio. If I were a developer with a beta/alpha, I would choose the guy that is reputed to be friendly and even a little dumb than say, Stark. This thinking is likely to go trough several developer's mind and thus a sort of natural selection will prefer magazines that share the developers and perhaps the marketing men's vision rather than the audience's vision.

No offence man, but really, look back at this thread: you may have a solid argument and certainly have a valid point, but you're sure as hell not winning any favours with anybody with that style.

I recall the first episode of the A Life Well Wasted Podcast had some good insights into gaming journalism and why its such shit.

I think if most video-game reviewers actually focused on content more than buzzwords they'd be derided less. But that might require them to actually work instead of figuring out how many times they can use "dynamic" in one paragraph.

Wasn't there an incident with one of the major game reviewing sites where one of the reviewers objected to the review and got fired because the review did not reflect the true quality of the game? I forgot when it happened.

Fingolfin_Noldor wrote:Wasn't there an incident with one of the major game reviewing sites where one of the reviewers objected to the review and got fired because the review did not reflect the true quality of the game? I forgot when it happened.

There was an incident with Gamespot where one of their editors was supposedly let go over their Kane & Lynch review, yeah. I don't know if that was ever confirmed.

General Zod wrote:

Fingolfin_Noldor wrote:Wasn't there an incident with one of the major game reviewing sites where one of the reviewers objected to the review and got fired because the review did not reflect the true quality of the game? I forgot when it happened.

There was an incident with Gamespot where one of their editors was supposedly let go over their Kane & Lynch review, yeah. I don't know if that was ever confirmed.

I remember the incident, I also recall that game being fairly well recieved by gamers though which struck me as odd about it as well.

Ah yes I still remember reading about Jeffs firing from Gamespot, The fact that he basically got fired over giving a much hyped game a 6.0 instead of 9.9999 like Bioshock still amuses me. In the world of hollywood style big budget games all reviews start at 8 it seems.

I presume they're paid well so they feel inclined to be nice, or to at least find good aspects of it to balance the negatives, are themselves likely to be swept up in things, and don't always understand or have played the game they're reviewing.

On the other side are the biled-filled angry reviewers who hate on games pretty hard, which I enjoy, because I don't need to be told what I'll like as much as what I don't like. And if I decide I want to spend money on a game, I want to know what not to buy with it.

I think it's more likely that game review readers are big fat nerd idiots and that the ones who write them are little skinny idiot nerds that don't want to get beat up for their lunch money anymore, and like their newfound positions of authority, and don't want to marginalize themselves (or their employers) by being 'overly negative' and 'impartial' about a game.

The reason I rip on games myself is not even through a heightened state of nerd rage, but because it's relatively easy to do x/y/z in a development atmosphere and those things are usually what brings a game down. Very rarely is the huge, hard stuff (game engine, art, etc) the stuff that makes it suck. I can't actually think of a good game whose bad graphics made it terrible, or a game that had good controls and mechanics and story, but a cludgy engine that ruined the fun. It's usually either sloppy all around, or functional big stuff and still a dull, lackluster product. And it's the big stuff that takes the most work, so what the fuck? Most everyone likes the Arkham Aslyum game, I've not played it, and I know not everyone likes it. But it should have been obvious to anyone that having batvision puzzle-solver mode was a bad idea for the game.

They were copying Metroid Prime's solution to puzzle problems (switch vision modes to reveal hidden paths) but did not make it useless for everything else. So instead of Prime's x-ray mode that made it nearly impossible to do actual fighting or navigation outside of specific contexts, you have batvision which just makes everything easier and ruins the ambience. Durr?

Anyway, whatever. Reviewers are impotent if you just don't listen to 'em. I blame readers, not reviewers, since reviewers are paid to review--not paid to be brilliant and insightful. Why do I want to read the opinion of an average joe? I want to see the game stress-tested, not lovingly enjoyed.

That's an interesting point, Cov. Back in the day, when online gaming journalism was new and those invovled pretty accessible, pretty much all of them were random fat ST-obsessed twenty-three year-olds. Is it any wonder you can read a review containing NO ACTUAL INFORMATION AT ALL because they're too busy gasping over the latest nerd-chic thing? I don't understand the motivation, because I have the trinity of a dick, a spine and a life, but I've honestly seen people throw out that sort of thing (about games or other media) and sit there expected instant nerd-cred acceptance. Why would the give a shit?

Holy crap, I nearly just asked why 'journalists' (ps not journalists) aren't professional.

I think it's obvious nobody with a brain ever listens to gaming 'press', but sometimes what they are saying is so stupid it reveals everyone involved as either massively corrupt or amazingly stupid. Sadly there's no ad-money in actually being critical.

Covenant wrote:On the other side are the biled-filled angry reviewers who hate on games pretty hard, which I enjoy, because I don't need to be told what I'll like as much as what I don't like. And if I decide I want to spend money on a game, I want to know what not to buy with it.

It's a little more than that. I've found that a lot of the games I like have scored 6 or 7 out of ten as much as they do 8 or 9, and plenty of 9/10 games I simply have no interest in playing.

"Fun Factor" is a nebulous concept, but in the end is the only reason to play a game. Whether from gameplay, music, story, or dialogue, the game has to be fun to play.

I think it's more likely that game review readers are big fat nerd idiots and that the ones who write them are little skinny idiot nerds that don't want to get beat up for their lunch money anymore, and like their newfound positions of authority, and don't want to marginalize themselves (or their employers) by being 'overly negative' and 'impartial' about a game.

I would like to point out that these are previews, not reviews. A preview, by definition, is supposed to be on the positive side, and lean towards optimism. The game isn't finished, and the entire idea is about showing what the game has to offer. When the review comes, that's the time when it's ability to deliver on those promises is judged.

They were copying Metroid Prime's solution to puzzle problems (switch vision modes to reveal hidden paths) but did not make it useless for everything else. So instead of Prime's x-ray mode that made it nearly impossible to do actual fighting or navigation outside of specific contexts, you have batvision which just makes everything easier and ruins the ambience. Durr?

Well, I think the idea was not specifically to ape Metroid, but to play up Batman's detective skills by allowing you to look around for clues. Dark and Shadowy may be good ambience, but it sucks for actually seeing things. I haven't played it, so I can't tell how well it pulls that off.