Why do games nowadays have to be categorized either really good or really horrible?

Submitted by mega_lova_nia t3_127hgg1 in gaming

I've played cyberpunk 2077, I'm currently trying out watchdogs legion. Both games are considered bad or disappointing by the whole community, but in my opinion, it's not really that bad. This does make me wonder however, why do every game need to be considered either really good or really bad? They somehow can't be mediocre because it would just be considered bad by the community anyways. People have called valhalla a bad game and yet it still raked tons in sales proving that perhaps the community is wrong after all and that the masses do like the game, it's just that it's mediocre. Why is that?

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eddyak t1_jee5ntj wrote

Clicks. Ragebaiting. Hype.

"Game X is quite good, but has flaws." Review has some fairly reasonable points, and gives a balanced review.

"GAMERS ARE HATING GAME X, HERE'S WHY." Review consists of out of context bullshit written specifically to get people angry at the game, at the reviewer, or at the state of society.

Second one gets clicks, because we're stupid.

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Obsidiath t1_jeev8rc wrote

And if it isn't clickbait, it's pure pandering to keep the publishers happy (and the review copies coming).

Either you're blindingly positive, or absurdly negative. Commercially, you just won't do well as a reviewer if you're more nuanced in your opinion.

Also, because AAA games cost you anything between 70 to 150 dollars for the full experience, I feel they get judged more harshly, and rightly so. Indies don't get the same level of divisive criticism. Costs don't often reflect quality in the AAA market.

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Chocolatemilkdog0120 t1_jeehkuv wrote

I pre ordered cyberpunk. I gave it a chance. Fuck that game and fuck every developer that thought it was okay to release. I hope they are unemployed. I didn’t need “click rage” to decide it was trash. It was trash!

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evilkitten03 t1_jeendcp wrote

you are blaming the wrong people here, I blame the higher ups from CD Project for not only firing most skilled staff who did Witcher 3 but also hire people who has barely any experince and throw them to the deep end which doesn't help with the marketing department just overhyping the game.

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thewalkindude t1_jeerzu6 wrote

The big problem with Cyberpunk is that it was forced out before it was in decent shape, and also forced onto older consoles that couldn't handle it.

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evilkitten03 t1_jefaqg8 wrote

Wasn't it originally supposed to be on PS3/Xbox 360 but due to the development hell it was then for mostly Xbox Series X and PS5? I remember watching one of the What Happened video and it said something like that..

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combustabill t1_jeei0sk wrote

For this the problem developers releasing games that weren't ready. I bought the game a year later for 20 bucks and am enjoying it. My rule is never purchase anything when it comes out and never at full price.

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GPUmaniac t1_jee4yek wrote

min maxing is the meta. in games and opinions

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gothpunkboy89 t1_jee4zhb wrote

Because most people only operate on extremes. At least on social media platforms

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Lyceus_ t1_jee64wl wrote

This is true in social media. In real life most people are much less radical.

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AerusFlameweaver t1_jeeqhlm wrote

People are easily radicalized, but social media expedites the process. It has to do with how we’re hardwired to deal with opinions we don’t like.

Let’s say your views of a game are on a 0-100 spectrum. A 0 means you despise the game and a 100 means you think it’s perfect. Let’s say you’re naturally sitting around 40, net negative with some nuanced criticism but a considerable bit of praise.

The way we work, if you’re exposed to someone with, let’s say, a 60 viewpoint, you’ll find yourself pretty similar and might actually leave the interaction somewhere around 45. If instead you are exposed to someone with a 100 viewpoint, you view them so far off that it further entrenches you into your position. You may leave that interaction with a 30 viewpoint.

Social media rapidly expedites these interactions and determinations, and people rapidly push to the extremes. We do it in “real life” too, just at a slower more refined pace.

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patlight1 t1_jee6k4r wrote

I even think that most people dont actually have The opinion they represent online.

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Generic_Username28 t1_jeea3qa wrote

Polarizing opinions online drive higher engagement. Higher engagement means more ad revenue.

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TangyMaster t1_jee5gt8 wrote

Its because its a disapointment. Cyberpunk was so hyped and for a mediocre game to come out afterwards made ppl put it in trash category

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Manjorno316 t1_jee82kn wrote

I think people are just spoiled. If something isn't a perfect 10/10 to them then it fucking sucked and was a waste of time. No in between.

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JohnLocke815 t1_jeeb27g wrote

Yep, the rating scale is so fucked.

Like people say Gotham knights was a huge critical failure. Based on scores (which I think are pointless but so many people still follow) it's got mostly 6s and 7s.

To me a 6 or 7 is a decent to good game. On a scale of 1 to 10, middle is 5, meaning a 5 would be an average game, making a 6 or 7 above average.

But for some reason a 7 is somehow considered a bad score. I've seen people saying they won't play anything less than an 8.

People are missing out on some fun stuff because of that. Hell, people are missing out on fun stuff because of reviews, period. Really wish more people would learn to think for themselves. Say way too many comments saying stuff like "this game looks so good and I was so hyped, but reviews haven't been great". Who cares? If you think it looks fun give it a try. There's so many games/movies/books/shows I love they have shit reviews, and so many I hate they have great reviews.

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Nightsheade t1_jeeiine wrote

Depends on your perspective, really. If you believe in the idea that game developers generally don't want to spend all their time and energy consciously releasing a product that they know is horrible, you end up mostly with a bunch of games (that were popular enough for reviewers to consider scoring for clicks) that score around 6 through 10.

When we're talking about products that take hours to process and are generally more expensive to consume than other mediums like movies and books, a 6/10 game is just gonna seem less appealing at a glance than one that's at least 8/10. This isn't to say that people should avoid the 6 or 7s as generally, that's also a score given to relatively niche games without broad audience appeal.

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A1sauc3d t1_jee65ej wrote

Games are complicated products. One part of a specific game can be really good while other parts of that same game are really bad. So even labeling something “mediocre” is reductive. I haven’t played all the games you are talking about, but for cyberpunk they hyped it up to be far more than it was, and they released a severely buggy product at launch. So people were rightfully pissed. Since then it’s received a lot of patches and now people enjoy the game much more.

So not meeting expectations is a big part of it. If everyone is expecting 9/10 experience and you deliver a 6/10 with a bunch of bugs, they are gonna be more upset than if they were expecting a 6 out of 10 and that’s what they got.

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PantsOnHead88 t1_jeelm83 wrote

Strong opinions drive interaction. Driving polarization is is monetarily beneficial.

A moderate viewpoint gets glossed over because it doesn’t stand out. It won’t drive views, revenue, interaction, responses, etc. It’s the extreme claims and views that bubble to the top of media and social media via algorithms designed to elicit response or interactivity.

Even if moderate views exist, they get suppressed. Then people also want response, so they skew what might otherwise be moderate opinions to be more aggressively polar in order to get that response. The polarization is mutually self-reinforcing as a result of existing algorithms.

It would take active algorithm design seeking to deemphasize extremes to attain anything else. This would naturally decrease user interaction (and thus $), so it’s unlikely.

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NoDuck1754 t1_jefavdj wrote

You're a clown if you think cyberpunk is considered a bad game. This post is ridiculous.

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Leather_head1 t1_jeg90vt wrote

Yh when it first came out it was considered terrible due to tons of bugs but now people r actually loving it and I have never heard someone call watchdog legion a bad game but a fun one

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SuperChickenLips t1_jee6dbv wrote

This is today's society, and I think advertising and social media are to blame. Advertising and social media sensationalise everything. Everything is the best ever in the world or the worst ever in the world. This makes people polarized. They can only either love something or hate it. Nothing is just ok anymore. This then leads to tribalism because you can't understand why someone loves something others hate, and people can't be ok with that.

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Mr_Nilsson-85 t1_jee6lwf wrote

Because it's so easy to hate things and to look at everything from a negative perspective today... "The game has this, and this and that, and that, but this little thing is negative, so yeah... The game sucks!"

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Tok3n- t1_jee6rze wrote

Almost every review that I’ve seen recently says that it was bad at launch, but it’s good now.

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Majestic-Iron7046 t1_jee8tuc wrote

I think that it's because people who just played a game and thought it was "just ok" won't feel the need to voice any opinion about it, leaving us with only good or bad opinions holders.

I mean, i kinda liked some games, like idk... Tomb Raider i guess? I don't know what i could say about it, t'was ok.

It doesn't sound as appealing as me saying GTA V single player was severely disappointing considering the massive steps made by other games of the same franchise.

Or that Metal Gear Solid V was one of the best games i played in the year it was released.

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InstructionLeading64 t1_jeebqox wrote

It's actually been studied and people that are more polarized on any topic are significantly more likely to post replies which makes sense because something you feel neutral about you just kinda shrug off like "What ever I don't care". It's kinda why there's no such thing politically as a radical centrist.

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DocDuBrane t1_jeed0xa wrote

The issue is really that there are so many games out there, there's no reason to play a mediocre one, so a B- game might as well be an F. Back in the day we would rent games for a weekend, and they would be awful, but we would keep at it because that's what we had. We would even re-rent awful games.

But now if you play a game that's only okay, why would you bother continuing? You can just ditch it, maybe even get a refund, and buy a game with better ratings. There's no shortage of those. So now there's far less reason to power through a game that's only okay.

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547610831 t1_jeegycl wrote

You're literally posting this on a social media site that works as an echo chamber. If 60% of people feel a certain way it means that opinion is 100% of what you sew because the other 40% will be down voted to the bottom (or even just banned on a lot of subs).

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QuintoBlanco t1_jeehg5w wrote

Context is important.

Some games are close to unplayable at launch, at least for some people. Some games have multiple game breaking bugs at launch, at least for some people.

Those games will likely be fixed within days or a couple of week, but if somebody pays full price for a game at launch, obviously they are going to be upset if the game is broken.

Some games repeat what other games have done before while offering a worse experience.

If I bought the patched version of such a game at a discount, my overall experience might be positive: but understandably, somebody who paid full-price and had issues with the game is going to be very unhappy.

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night-laughs t1_jeehukp wrote

Because people desire drama and feed off of it. Its not exciting if a game is just ok, or good.

But if a game is a “masterpiece” theres hype and excitement about it. If a game is deemed a complete trash, there’s hype about trashing the game.

In short, people seek fun and it doesn’t matter from which side of the spectrum they get their dopamine from, as long as its one of the two extremes.

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LillePipp t1_jeeiwri wrote

Well there are several reasons, the most prominent of which is probably engagement. Saying something is really bad or really good gets a lot more reactions out of people than saying “Eh, it’s okay”.

But it’s also dependent on what you choose to measure something against. It’s important to acknowledge our biases, and we all on some level measure things against the things we like. There are different factors that shape our expectations, such as these personal biases, but also out understandings of the industry, and game development.

For instance, Pokémon Scarlet and Violet are games that were poorly reviewed because of numerous glitches and bugs. They were, in every sense of the word, unfinished games, so when you look at the rest of the Switch library, which includes games like Breath of the Wild, Mario Odyssey, Super Smash Bros. Ultimate, Animal Crossing, Metroid Dread, etc., Scarlet and Violet look like extremely bad games.

But then you could also choose to measure Scarlet and Violet against the thousands of 2 dollar games you could find on Steam that were developed in like two weeks, and suddenly Scarlet and Violet look pretty decent.

So it depends on what you deem as a worthwhile measuring stick. In this case I’d say Scarlet and Violet are just flat out bad games, because of how poor it is in comparison to other AAA titles.

A lot of people are also pretty stubborn in their opinions, which in and of itself isn’t necessarily bad, but the willingness to engage with arguments is important. Cyberpunk 2077 is often seen as a bad game, because when it launched it was bad. It ran extremely poorly, and while it has been fixed now, a lot of people still cling to that first impression

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Zuam9 t1_jeelpme wrote

Because people are monkeys. The reviewer says it’s trash, everyone says it’s trash, reviewer says it’s good everyone says it’s good.

It sucks really because there are a lot of ok games out there that aren’t all that bad, they aren’t great games but they by no means deserve the rep they get as a bad game.

Just because a game lacks originality doesn’t make it a bad game, it makes it an unoriginal game but not bad. That game is probably still going to be fun regardless. Same with games that are overhyped before release, EG cyberpunk where the community get it into their head that the game will be something way bigger than it was ever actually going to be, the game was still decent, buggy as shit but still fun.

I also don’t like how a good game with decent developers who have had their hands forced by shareholders to add a battle pass, and yet the developers still somehow managed to push back just enough to make sure the battle pass was only cosmetic and not pay to win like the shareholders want, how does that great game get labeled as a bad game? The battle pass isn’t ideal, but if it’s only cosmetic and doesn’t harm your gameplay just don’t buy it. If it had game changing elements in the battle pass by all means don’t play the game those battle passes actually do make the game a bad game sadly.

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godly_goober t1_jeendtx wrote

Like others have said, mainly hype. There's I thing called "Hype Culture" - it's mainly a term used in the hypebeast community, but it works for this case. Pretty much people get their expectations too high and get really disappointed with a game, and that's fine to a degree, it's just when people get emotional is when the really angry reviews come in.

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GildedfryingPan t1_jeex233 wrote

Internet Humans have lost (perhaps never had) the ability to see nuance or middle ground. It's more important to be heard / seen than to be sensible.

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DirtyMoneyJesus t1_jeeylv4 wrote

Vocal minorities have larger platforms to voice their opinions than ever before

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A-r-c-a-n-e t1_jef5b8j wrote

ive never played watchdogs legion, but cyberpunk has somewhat redeemed itself, at least in my eyes, the launch was rough and rushed but now that most of the bugs are gone, its actual features, story, and gameplay can shine, i really loved the environments in that game, the whole setting was awesome, and even though it got 90 hours out of me on my first playthrough i kinda wish it was longer lol

some people just feel strongly i suppose about a lot of things, theres still a ton of people who are firm on cyberpunk being a shit game to this day purely cus of the terrible launch

i also think extremes draw attention, someone would be more interested in hearing why something is terrible or great rather than why its decent, people love drama, and a lot of people can capitalize off of that

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Fathoms77 t1_jefdlfi wrote

Because the interwebs thrives on extremes. Always has.

Everything is going to be exaggerated, so good games almost automatically become great and mediocre games become bad. Sometimes it takes a little while but it always seems inevitable. Nobody wants to talk about the average game very much but if you can get some extremely vocal people exaggerating how good or bad something is, that elicits plenty of response...and the tactic rarely fails.

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Extreme-Leadership78 t1_jefk84k wrote

People don't log onto their accounts and waste time to type out " You know what? The game was pretty ok."

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do-You-Like-Pasta t1_jefmdrx wrote

It's not just gaming, people in general seem a lot more decisive these days. It sort of boils down to a lot of people having the mindset of "If you don't agree with me 100%, you're wrong and you're against me and I don't like you, so pick a side"

Also, it's just easier to say "game bad, I'll play something good" than to get into a more nuanced conversation with random reditors you'll never talk to again

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SpazmusJackson t1_jegrnsz wrote

You’re either having fun or you’re not.

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superfastmarmot t1_jee6cnc wrote

Because npcs uses boolean logic. Nuance is complete above them. They only like or hate games.

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speedloafer t1_jeei4fj wrote

I think its just peoples expectations against the reality what is delivered.

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ButterscotchLow8950 t1_jee921c wrote

At least cyberpunk was ass at launch, they have since fixed it, but that doesn’t change that whole “first impression” on the gaming community.

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Doc_Skeef t1_jee5t7e wrote

Both those games were extra disappointing compared to the way that they were marketed before release. And people paid full price or more for preorders cause of the hype.

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Doc_Skeef t1_jeffs2e wrote

? There’s an upvoted comment above saying the same? Lol mediocrity seems like shit when you’re promised excellence?

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boersc t1_jeea6p1 wrote

Both are very bad. CP2077 because of all the continuous errors and bugs, even today. WD Legion because they chose to get rid of a main character and unhinges story. Both aren't mediocre.

Raking in money doesn't make it a good game.

I'd value Valhalla as mediocre. It's pretty, does a lot of things good, but it's repetitive and the gameplay has nothing to do with Assassin's Creed. It's not bad, but has very little going for it.

There are still plenty of mediocre games. I'm actually playing one right now, for testing purposes. It isn't very good, but you can't really fault it either.

Edit: It's also with movies and series. I just watched resident Evil (2022) and pretty much enjoyed it. Not stellar, but definitely entertaining. The reviews were all 5/5 or 1/5, no middle ground. I guess that's just public opinion. You don't get attention if you 'just like it somewhat'...

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