Fluffyhotep
Watchdog
In my language quality assurance professionals make a distinction between 'technische kwaliteit' ('technical quality') and 'kwaliteitsbeleving' ('perception of the degree of quality').
The first applies to things like the product or service conforming to the specifications that were agreed upon or advertised by the producer, as well as being up to snuff compared to (if any) generally agreed upon minimal technical standards in that particular branch of industry or services. The product is either up to these standards or exceeds them, and is therefore a 'quality product', or it doesn't.
The second applies to how customers / users perceive the product; it's somewhat related to taste and is far more subjective (and in principle can be psychologically manipulated). A product can be up to snuff in terms of specs and industry standards, but still be seen as 'low quality' because the customer in question is unusually demanding (or was perhaps used to a similar product that far exceeded the norm in terms of 'technical quality').
A game like DA2, for instance, definitely has aspects that would score very low on ' technical quality' (for instance the fugly lo-poly NPC's and the low number of different environments) by 2011 CRPG standards. The angry reactions by disappointed players to the ' awful' Companion characters (Anders, Isabella, Fenris, take your pick) is more a matter of perception, because they aren't any worse in terms of voice acting or dialogue than characters from many other CRPG's.
Edit: Some furious posts while I was typing
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I think I'm mostly on D'Artagnan's side of the debate, as far as the perception by the 'consumer' is concerned. I would also argue that actually having some knowledge of some specific ' technical' aspects, whether that's writing, architecture or computer 3D graphics will probably heavily influence one's perception as well. That may come over or feel subjective, but probably has some ' objective' aspects as well. One possible example, for instance, would be stupid, obvious mistakes in a historical movie; an expert (or even an informed layman) would instantly recognise that the research / props department did a 'bad' job technically speaking, and that would negatively impact his/her perception of the movie.
The first applies to things like the product or service conforming to the specifications that were agreed upon or advertised by the producer, as well as being up to snuff compared to (if any) generally agreed upon minimal technical standards in that particular branch of industry or services. The product is either up to these standards or exceeds them, and is therefore a 'quality product', or it doesn't.
The second applies to how customers / users perceive the product; it's somewhat related to taste and is far more subjective (and in principle can be psychologically manipulated). A product can be up to snuff in terms of specs and industry standards, but still be seen as 'low quality' because the customer in question is unusually demanding (or was perhaps used to a similar product that far exceeded the norm in terms of 'technical quality').
A game like DA2, for instance, definitely has aspects that would score very low on ' technical quality' (for instance the fugly lo-poly NPC's and the low number of different environments) by 2011 CRPG standards. The angry reactions by disappointed players to the ' awful' Companion characters (Anders, Isabella, Fenris, take your pick) is more a matter of perception, because they aren't any worse in terms of voice acting or dialogue than characters from many other CRPG's.
Edit: Some furious posts while I was typing
.I think I'm mostly on D'Artagnan's side of the debate, as far as the perception by the 'consumer' is concerned. I would also argue that actually having some knowledge of some specific ' technical' aspects, whether that's writing, architecture or computer 3D graphics will probably heavily influence one's perception as well. That may come over or feel subjective, but probably has some ' objective' aspects as well. One possible example, for instance, would be stupid, obvious mistakes in a historical movie; an expert (or even an informed layman) would instantly recognise that the research / props department did a 'bad' job technically speaking, and that would negatively impact his/her perception of the movie.
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