Edge Magazine - Publishers Overrating The Importance Of Reviews

Way I look at it is this: Transformers 1 and *especially* 2, each of which is amongst the worst movies of their year, are proof that people really have no desire for quality, substance or enlightenment. Mindlessness and proper hype rules.

I rather tend to agree - for movies.

Games are a little bit different, though, I guess.

And meanwhile transformers … Isn't that mainly about cars ? ;) And what about the Pixar movie "Cars", then ? ;)
 
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Nah, the tendency is identical - with the difference being the price of the product and the "social" aspects of the movie experience.

People (in general) don't go to Transformers to actually experience a piece of art worth any kind of significant value. They go as a social experience, to have fun, and all kinds of things that aren't really related to the content of the experience - as in the script or the acting. Sure, the explosions are cool - and obviously the effects are something you can appreciate - but you're not really engaged and that's OK.

Where as gaming, in general, is still mostly a private more demanding experience, and the price is significantly higher. So you can't consider it a trivial expense to the same extent.

But the tendency is the same, because people don't think in terms of principle and they don't really care what the far-reaching effect is of supporting mass market speculation and overt greed.

But that's just MY opinion, and doesn't reflect any kind of objective truth. Unless I'm right, of course.
 
D'artagnan - I would say that the Halo franchise, Madden, and Modern Warfare 2 all point to the social experience of gaming becoming more important ...
 
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The buying public as a whole has little use for reviews because the buying public as a whole is utterly ambivalent about quality. This is no less true for games than it is for everything else. Take a look at rottentomatoes.com, and see the utter disconnect between box office gross and quality of film in this week's top 5 ticket sellers (% are of positive reviews from critics):

29% Twilight Saga: New Moon $42.9M
74% The Blind Side $40.1M
37% 2012 $17.7M
06% Old Dogs $16.9M
55% Disney's A Christmas C… $15.8M

Then go ahead and consider what kind of sales are racked up by places like McDonald's, and how a food enthusiast or food critic might rate the fare there. The bottom line is that quality has practically nothing (if not utterly nothing) to do with sales.

I don't think that's a good thing, but there it is. Who cares why people buy crap that sucks? They just do. So game reviews, people like us appreciate what you're doing really we do. And that and $2.39 will buy you a medium cup of coffee.
 
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I compare Transformers movies with Diablo games. No thinking, no depth, just zombie playing/watching waiting for the next explosion/phat lewt.
 
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I compare Transformers movies with Diablo games. No thinking, no depth, just zombie playing/watching waiting for the next explosion/phat lewt.

Yeah, but that's because you don't understand the games.

Transformers you don't need to understand, to see that it's all about the money ;)
 
I know - it is just part of the move to a more widespread acceptance of casual gaming as hardcore.

Well, I wouldn't know. I have no problem with the casual market myself, and I realise that the needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few. Actually, that's very fair.

I don't have to enjoy the thought of it, though - and as such I don't. But it would be selfish of me to expect anything different.

That said, I think there's a big difference between Transformers and something like Call of Duty - because whilst the cinematic aspects are similar, there's still the core gameplay to consider. Something which doesn't easily translate in the comparison between game and movie, but I'd certainly claim that there's something about the shooter gameplay of CoD that takes it to another level than Transformers in terms of product quality. But it's hard to say, because the technical aspects of Transformers are quite fantastic in and of themselves.

So, maybe the comparison is not possible to make directly.
 
I don't think it is impossible - because there is a blend of inherent quality (story, dialogue, setting, execution, etc), and technical details (graphics, etc) in each. Transformers is like that old Doom3 tech demo that leaked - it looks absolutely wonderful and is a great, well, tech demo of what ILM can do. However, aside from that it is worse than things like Ubersoldier or You Are Empty - terrible writing, terrible story, abysmal acting, and so on.
 
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