magerette
Hedgewitch
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This little article, entitled Casual Gamers don't care about bad reviews, at bit-tech.net examines one of our most discussed subjects, game reviewing, from a little different perspective:
More information.
The full interview at Next Gen is available here, and goes on to say:Casual games tend not to get very good reviews from many of the big-hitters - that's a pretty well established fact. However, casual games also sell really well (much better than critically acclaimed classics like Beyond Good and Evil). Can you see the conundrum developing here?
Apparently, EA has the answer. President of Casual Games Kathy Vrabeck told Next-Gen just why she doesn't really care about game reviews anymore. Gee, thanks Kathy.
"I get less concerned about game reviews because the casual gamers don't read any of those things...It's a little bit amusing, in that it's people reviewing games against measures that are important to core gamers yet are not important to casual gamers," said Kathy.
There’s a long-running and rather pointless debate about the correlation between videogame reviews and sales. The fact is that they do and they don’t matter. It all depends.
Reviews are more likely to impact sales for a hardcore strategy title, for instance, as the genre’s audience is inherently more dedicated to gaming and is more susceptible to falling under the hypnotic spell of critics' comments, which help validate a purchase.
The average buyer of Take-Two’s dismally-reviewed $40 Carnival Games for Wii, however, isn’t going to be visiting Metacritic to find out if the Dunk Tank mini-game compares favorably against the aiming mechanics of Metroid Prime 3: Corruption....
...While Vrabeck calls the supposed mismatch of traditional consumer gaming sites and casual games “amusing,” in the same breath she admits that casual game reviews are “a huge issue in the press and in the industry.” So, to an extent anyhow, specialist reviews really do matter to EA Casual. And as the casual division inherently needs to be everything to everyone, whether they be middle-aged women, older men, kids, teens and ‘tweens, finding review venues “appropriate” for the target audience isn’t an easy task...
...Game critics, who are experts if only for the fact that many have played perhaps hundreds of games, will still insist though, shovelware is shovelware is shovelware, no matter who the intended audience may be.
But perhaps the execs leading EA Casual have a point, that—here it comes—specialist press outlets are playing casual games wrong.
Well, at least they're playing casual games from the perspective of a core gamer who’s seen it all, instead of a mass market Joe....
“As a game for grown-ups, it's true that [Carnival Games] is a ‘throwaway,’ but as a game to play with your family, it's a blast,” [Bill] Harris[ of Dubious Quality] said....
More information.
- Joined
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