Fallout designer Tim Cain thinks influencers have changed how people make and play games

[Fatboi1]

If a nazi misinformation specialist owns and controls the platform. Why would you think the platform holds anything of value?

You got it.

 

[Phantum]

All I do is watch quick videos of actual gameplay, not some neckbeard talking and giving his opinion.

 

[duckbutta]

I filter out games by my interests first and foremost, then high scores confirms that this is probably a great game and then I buy most likely. If I'm so-so on a game, but then I see the scores are low then I will probably pass on the title. If I don't care about the game, but then see the scores are very high I might try to broaden my horizon and see what the hype is about. I've bought games with low metacritic scores and vice versa. Metacritic is just for discussion, not the final criterion for my purchasing habits.

There's no one single method to buying games for me at least. Back in the days I'd just read EGM previews and see pictures and/or play demos to discern what I want. I never bought games based on what friends were playing. My friends all had different taste. Some of us just played mostly fighters, some racing, some sports etc. I was into everything. I do not care or follow any gaming influencers. I've never went out and bought/skipped a game because a single person on a stream said "This game sucks/is hot!".

So you won't take the opinion of actual people you know, your friends, about a game but you will take the opinion of people who give a game a high score for any number of reasons that don't have anything to do with it being a good game or not?

I could never go by the rating system of a game cause some people are paid to give it a good rating, some people are paid to give it a bad rating, some people are only giving it a good or bad rating to try and get a click or a follow.

A high score doesn't confirm anything to me cause I don't see how you can have any faith in that score being legit.

I don't see how you can say you don't follow gaming influencers. Who do you think is giving those ratings that you go look at? That's like me saying "I don't follow the NFL" but then making it a point to watch the Dallas Cowboys play every Sunday.

 

[MeachTheMonster]

I don't see how you can say you don't follow gaming influencers. Who do you think is giving those ratings that you go look at? That's like me saying "I don't follow the NFL" but then making it a point to watch the Dallas Cowboys play every Sunday.

This is the disconnect.

Same dudes will say “resetera some fakkits” or such n such influencer is full of shyt.

But then run on here posting metacritic scores as if those same “fakkits” and influencers aren’t the ones setting the scores

 

[Rayzah]

You really see it when you see shyt like EA / Respawn being gaslit into making a single-player campaign for BF6 by influencers who probably cant name 3 characters from all the BF campaigns combined in history.

Same with shyt like Elden Ring where people who never played a single Souls game bought the game to feel included in the conversation, and critics who didn't even beat the game gave it perfect scores for the same reason.

Exactly. I was watching the ER hype like I know damn well that many people are not good enough to play that game. It seems like people use it as validation that they are a real gamer. I be like you mean to tell me no one with a YouTube channel just doesn’t like that style of game or felt it wasn’t for them?

I think BG3 is 10/10 but if you told me I’m not into CRPG and that level of strategy I would be like I get it. But nowadays everyone has to like and dislike the same things and try to make some type of general consensus. Why can YouTubers just be honest? I’m sure there is a lane for honesty

I dont follow any big gaming YouTubers because they all say the same shyt

 

[Rayzah]

I’m glad people didn’t let gaming media talk them out of Crimson Desert.

A lot of those early takes were lukewarm because of bugs and story issues, which is fair—but they rarely emphasize the most important part: whether the game is actually fun to play. A game can have flaws and still be enjoyable, and that gets lost in how reviews are framed.

What’s worse is once those reviews are out, they just sit there. If the devs fix the issues quickly, most outlets don’t update their reviews, so anyone checking later is getting an outdated version of the game. At that point it’s not even accurate anymore.


But they still use those early impressions to shape the narrative—“it had a rough launch so it can’t be top-tier,” even if the current version is much better.


And a lot of people just run with that. They trust the outlets, follow the consensus, and don’t revisit the game for themselves. It’s easier to align with the popular take than form your own opinion.


That’s really the issue—reviews aren’t just about informing people anymore, they shape the conversation early and then rarely get corrected.

People don’t play games anymore—they follow the verdict.

 

[The Mad Titan]

@The Mad Titan do that shyt all the time too.

I don’t.

I’ve been asking all yall to stop for years.

There's a method to my madness

Like the DRM thread? Like the one @The Mad Titan started with random stans on twitter right? Y'all all do it, stop trying to turn this into a "ya'll!" thing. It's a broader discussion happening. "Gamers" outsource their thinking to talking heads on whatever platform you are on e.g. Twitch, Twitter, forums etc.

Ehhh who else would be finding out about DRM changes besides randoms when it comes to both Nintendo and Sony?! Let's be honest they aren't very transparent with changes... Especially ones that can be taken negatively.

Also I only post the the "other side of the news" here when there seems to be a influx of "concerned threads" about platforms that aren't PlayStation.

 

[MeachTheMonster]

I’m glad people didn’t let gaming media talk them out of Crimson Desert.

A lot of those early takes were lukewarm because of bugs and story issues, which is fair—but they rarely emphasize the most important part: whether the game is actually fun to play. A game can have flaws and still be enjoyable, and that gets lost in how reviews are framed.

What’s worse is once those reviews are out, they just sit there. If the devs fix the issues quickly, most outlets don’t update their reviews, so anyone checking later is getting an outdated version of the game. At that point it’s not even accurate anymore.


But they still use those early impressions to shape the narrative—“it had a rough launch so it can’t be top-tier,” even if the current version is much better.


And a lot of people just run with that. They trust the outlets, follow the consensus, and don’t revisit the game for themselves. It’s easier to align with the popular take than form your own opinion.


That’s really the issue—reviews aren’t just about informing people anymore, they shape the conversation early and then rarely get corrected.

People don’t play games anymore—they follow the verdict.

That’s the other part of it. Games that have built in fan bases or huge marketing budgets are at an inherent advantage when it comes to review scores.

A game like crimson desert was starting from scratch so any little criticism gets magnified. They didn’t have th marketing budget or relationships to fly a bunch of influencers out to talk about their game.

Now GTA6 is gonna come out and GTA games are always a bit janky at first but that stuff isn’t gonna matter because the game already has built in fambase and an unlimited marketing budget.

 

[Fatboi1]

So you won't take the opinion of actual people you know, your friends, about a game but you will take the opinion of people who give a game a high score for any number of reasons that don't have anything to do with it being a good game or not?

So can you point out to where in my post did I say I will take the opinion of a reviewer and not that of people I know?

There's no one single method to buying games for me at least. Back in the days I'd just read EGM previews and see pictures and/or play demos to discern what I want. I never bought games based on what friends were playing. My friends all had different taste. Some of us just played mostly fighters, some racing, some sports etc. I was into everything. I do not care or follow any gaming influencers. I've never went out and bought/skipped a game because a single person on a stream said "This game sucks/is hot!".

I see a game, looks interesting to me then it's on my watchlist. If it gets high scores then it's like hmm must be really good. If it gets lower scores then I'll probably still buy it if I was already interested in it. Case in point I bought Lost Soul Aside because I thought it looked decent from videos. The game comes out and I played it and it was fukking ass. Reviews confirmed it was fukking ass as well.

I could never go by the rating system of a game cause some people are paid to give it a good rating, some people are paid to give it a bad rating, some people are only giving it a good or bad rating to try and get a click or a follow.

This is just nonsense. You know damn well some of the very best games of all time also have very high critic scores. Y'all just don't like when a game is panned and it's something you like so you end up coming up with conspiracy theories about how they were paid to give certain games bad scores. It falls apart when you look at it critically. Why do some "SONY" games get bad scores despite the theory that they were supposedly paid to inflate the score?

No game is here ever seen as truly ass and not good. There's outliers of people who'll say something is wack but these games for example are universally regarded as classics. Nobody will be like "Man Halo: CE is trash, that's really a 4/10 game!"

A high score doesn't confirm anything to me cause I don't see how you can have any faith in that score being legit.

I don't buy or get interested in a game ONLY because of a high score.
I also want to have somewhat of personal interests in it. Is that so complicated? Baldur's Gate 3 scored very high yet I don't care about it.

I don't see how you can say you don't follow gaming influencers. Who do you think is giving those ratings that you go look at? That's like me saying "I don't follow the NFL" but then making it a point to watch the Dallas Cowboys play every Sunday.

This is a stupid analogy nikka. Why the hell would I say I don't watch football... but then watch football? This would be like me saying "I don't follow gaming tech breakdowns" but then make it a point to watch every tech breakdown by Digital foundry. I don't watch gaming influencers meaning I don't watch or follow a specific content creator or "gamer influencer" online. Saying "who do you think is giving those ratings you look at" is surface level thinking. Just because something is rated low/high doesn't mean YOU will like it/dislike it. This is the part that trips y'all up. Y'all take reviews as a final judgement for whether you should enjoy a game.

 

[MeachTheMonster]

@Th3Birdman spoke on this too on his youtube channel.

 

[GambinoMakeItWork]

Y'all just don't like when a game is panned and it's something you like so you end up coming up with conspiracy theories about how they were paid to give certain games bad scores. It falls apart when you look at it critically. Why do some "SONY" games get bad scores despite the theory that they were supposedly paid to inflate the score?

yep, what they're doing essentially is reserving the right to invalidate a game's critical acclaim depending on what it is/who made it


the idea that the average gamer who plays a game to completion can't come to their own conclusion afterwards is comical and cynical

nobody is forcing themselves through 100 hours of Elden Ring if they didn't actually enjoy it

just because their opinion and the reviews align, that doesn't make it some grand conspiracy

Occam's razor, maybe it actually was a great game

 

[Gizmo_Duck]

What does maximilliondood think?

 

[The Mad Titan]

What does maximilliondood think?

He could have told you that Sony purchasing Evo was a bad thing.

 

[Fatboi1]

yep, what they're doing essentially is reserving the right to invalidate a game's critical acclaim depending on what it is/who made it


the idea that the average gamer who plays a game to completion can't come to their own conclusion afterwards is comical and cynical

nobody is forcing themselves through 100 hours of Elden Ring if they didn't actually enjoy it

just because their opinion and the reviews align, that doesn't make it some grand conspiracy

Occam's razor, maybe it actually was a great game

I put 100 hours into Rebirth because a Eurogamer cac said the game is nice.
Reviews high for non Sony game-Game is legit, they cooked, finally a good game.
Reviews low for Sony game-Game is confirmed ass, cac tweets about game galore, Sony is doomed, Xbox tweet about new t shirts releasing.






Sony game gets good reviews-

 

[Rekkapryde]

All I do is watch quick videos of actual gameplay, not some neckbeard talking and giving his opinion.

you'd think this is common sense, but then you see how easily grifters gain an audience playing on people's insecurities/agendas/hate and flat out stupidity