NOT SURE IF ANYONE'S NOTICED...

I agree they serve a different purpose, but they are still both valueable.

For a commercial game, a review tells you if it's worth your money when there's so many games out there. That's it.

For a free hobbyist game, it has more of a focus on who would enjoy it, and what can be improved, so they are catering to both audience and developer.
And also, if it's worth your time cause there's so many out there. (oh boy they are)

They are still important, because as libby mentioned, time is important.
And they are even more important for devs.

Yeah, I didn't really mean the review/game in question, but was saying it more as a general run-down (it's tricky with the many pages, isn't it?)
Also, that the reviewer usually (this site is a little bit of a special thing) is not trying to propose a specific way to fix or improve or otherwise. Early access and such things muddle it down, but that again falls under the "product in process specialty category"

And it's true, tho shortly before launch also means there is a lot already in place, and a deadline as well as promises looming, and so it is tricky to really adjust too much. Choosing what is easiest to fix and most important to do is key in such a case.
Either way, a review is still useful.

Well said. I agree 100%. Criticism can sting at lot and it can be very hard to accept, especially if you aren't used to it, but you can grow and learn so much by being able to take that criticism and improve with it.

The first thing I always have to tell myself is: if someone says something's wrong, don't freak out. It's not the end of the world. You need to maintain a clear head and be able to look at the issue as objectively as you can and see if you can fix it if it needs fixing. This may mean you have to come back to it later if you can't look at it objectively when you first get the feedback.

author=unity
Well said. I agree 100%. Criticism can sting at lot and it can be very hard to accept, especially if you aren't used to it, but you can grow and learn so much by being able to take that criticism and improve with it.

The first thing I always have to tell myself is: if someone says something's wrong, don't freak out. It's not the end of the world. You need to maintain a clear head and be able to look at the issue as objectively as you can and see if you can fix it if it needs fixing. This may mean you have to come back to it later if you can't look at it objectively when you first get the feedback.

I agree with you Uni. Criticism hurts, especially when it is something you put heart, soul, time and effort into. Hearing comments of constructive criticism can be hard to take and if you are looking at your game subjectively then you may miss what the players tell you which can lead to a game to falling short of its goal.

author=Corfaisus
The first half of page two of this thread is vomit. I think we're going about this all wrong. "If I just hammer home all the wrong this game does in my review, surely that will create a better game!" Uh... no? That's not your job and your actions can't result in that. The ones creating the game are responsible for doing so correctly. If you have bad team management that results in a sub-par project, that's where you need to work to improve. If opinions (or - God forbid - objective issues) pre-release aren't being heard, you've set your whole team up for failure.

Well, of course, you don't just point out every wrong thing in a game. The developer(s) need to know what they have done right as well.

author=pianotm
You don't seem to have a problem with the developer inserting herself in the critic's life.

I don't see how you're reaching this conclusion based on what I wrote. Let's not antagonize each other based on what the other "seems" to be doing.

author=pianotm
A review can't simply summarize because the reader can't use that information.

They absolutely can if the reader is reading to know more about the game before they buy it. Bullets on the back of the box are what the publisher wants you to see, the review tells you what's actually there.

Otherwise, people would just read reviews for confirmation bias.

author=pianotm
Yes, a review is supposed to summarize, but that's not it's objective. It's objective is to criticize. That's why people who write reviews are called CRITICS!

Once a story is told, it's much like the death of a person: their life is written in stone and you complaining about the ending won't serve any purpose. You don't critique the dead. Nobody lives to become the physical embodiment of the rules, so using their own lives to structure yours is illogical.

You don't move forward with something that's already done. If you wanted to move forward with anything, you'd do it before its concluded. In a way it's like a court trial, in that you only get one chance to force the matter. Once the gavel drops, it's over.

Become a tester.

We could always have Butters filter our social media and game pages for us :D

Just wait until he gets a load of the Steam community reviews :)
(No filter, just a lot of unbacked up negativity.)

Having seen the gameplay video, I can't say I'd disagree with the criticism. That tutorial section right at the beginning combined with the super cluttered UI is godawful. How did anyone working on that game think any of that was a good idea?

(For the positives, at least the art look nice.)

author=Liberty
Reviews are good for non-commercial games so people know whether or not they want to play a game that seems to be something they'd like but turns out not to be worth their time. Time is a finite source - there is no way to get more once it has been spent. It is the most precious thing we have and reading a review for 2 minutes to figure out that you don't want to play a 5 hour game because it has certain aspects of gameplay/story/character/graphics/etc that you don't like is pretty invaluable.

They are also invaluable assets for people who make games so that they can see how the game was received, if it hit the mark like they tried to (sometimes you aim for a type of feeling or aspect and it can be hard to see if you get it right just by playing it yourself. Does your message reach others? How would you know if people don't tell you?), if it works and the systems work together, whether there's unexpected aspects that you need to work on that you didn't think about. Creation is about growing and moving up, it's not about sitting on your thumbs and doing the same thing over and over. Part of learning how to grow (or that you need to grow and in what way) is revealed through others' thoughts on your games, hence reviews.

They are important for all types of media, commercial or non-commercial. :/

Perfectly fine. Just the thing to remember here is that mass market games like Chrono Trigger or Super Metroid were put through strict standards to create games that would be sold to the highest number of people with a minimum amount of alienation (that is, the game is intended to appeal to the average person). To be fair, this did filter out the garbage very effectively. But it also minimized the occurrence of masterpieces. It basically flattened the base.

Because we don't need to make money here, this means that while reviews should definitely be critical, games do not have to be mainstream. In fact, they very much shouldn't. They should be the games the person wants to make.

A masterpiece. What is it? It is not simply a game with good graphics, good music, and lots of characters. It is not even a well balanced game. In fact, this game is an example of a storytelling masterpiece, and it has absolutely zero gameplay. So what is a masterpiece? It is the medium as art, not as intended to make money. Something that the creator sinks time getting the scenes right, down to the seagull flying past. To producing beauty in art or story.

My concern when reviewing is filtering out all the outstanding works, simply to be rid of those outstandingly bad. Clearly there are some serious flaws of this game, and I would hardly call it a masterpiece (I honestly haven't gotten to play it but "crashed my computer" is pretty much it for any delusions of that), but I've seen enough of these reviews that I dislike the fact they compare the standards used for mainstream games. The point is we don't WANT mainstream games. We want the kind of game you make when you are free to make any kind of game you want.

author=Corfaisus
We here have this notion that our opinion matters and that it's our responsibility to throw reviews at people so that they can better themselves. No, this is the responsibility of the testers and the overall quality assurance team. It's not your responsibility to come into someone else's domain a month before their program is set for release and say "you have to change everything because I just now said so!" If you actually cared about making this project better, you would've signed on as a tester (or at the very least an idea guy), and if the person you want to help actually cared about your style of helping, they would've hired you on.

This. Part of the problem of a review is that you have a vision for a game. The reviewer just knows previous games they've reviewed, doesn't necessarily get either your sense of aesthetics, nor your sense of humor, nor what the game was trying to say.

So you, as the reviewed, MUST filter out what is valid criticism from the voices of unworthiness. The person's opinions from the actual things you need to genuinely fix.
You ask "what would be the harm? Shouldn't you be able to take all the criticism that comes your way?" No. What would be the harm is that sooner or later, it is not your game. They took it over. They made it their rubbish. And guess what? They're happy, right? No. You don't hear back from them after they've criticized your stuff. So you bend over backward, selling out, looking for their approval and all you get is an empty feeling. Until you realize your worst critic is you. After that, the only thing you need to do is test to make sure the game functions without bugs.

Anything that anyone ever does is open to criticism. Art in particular, almost demands criticism and observation because it invokes feeling and is fundamentally evocative. If you can't take or are opposed to criticism of various kinds and flavors, then you really don't have a real place in greater society, much less producing art for the public.

Seriously, stop being crybabies. I'm surprised I'm actually reading some of this stuff.