Post

I remember when Gamespot gave RE6 a 4,5 and people kept complaining about it for years. It literally even became a gag on Gamespot videos. That all of then had a commentary about the 4,5 score

3.5/10

God I miss Arcades.

genuinely what the fuck happened to this dude in the past few months???

Now you're both on trouble.

Once I heard they replaced music in DeS I knew I would never play it.

Giving a 6.5 to Armored Core 6 got me dozens of death threats and hundreds of threatening comments. It is ridiculous to think critics aren't constant targets of anger and derision.

And youve just proved him right by being a toxic moron, well done.

Anyone remember that time gamers literally tried to kill a critic because she said "hey CD Projekt Red, maybe do something about the epilepsy triggering pattern in Cyberpunk"

I think there are very few individuals who have built such a huge cache of goodwill, only to push it all over a cliff almost immediately. C'mon Sven, it's not too late to shut your fucking mouth.

Never forget youtu.be/Ch1KQPrJlNc?...

That doesn't really sound like a good thing, either. I think neither of you should have had to go through that.

We had a senior dev on a project once give a short talk about how to handle death threats about the video game we were making. Video games!

Objective scoring and subjective ratings are completely different things. A grading system with a minimum threshold for certification isn't "really stupid." Objectively, a doctor that only knows 64% of essential material shouldn't be a doctor.

I remember EGM (not the best example but still) always had a little blurb in their reviews section that essentially read "reminder that this isn't like your school grades, and a 5/10 means a game is perfectly average, not bad not great"

No it's just a regular school and regular classes. Anything below 70 is an F.

That does make some things click into place

The more I think about it the more I believe review scores are just bad. They're incredibly reductive and invite direct comparison which creates nonsense scenarios. You can't derive a number from feelings or impressions. Not to mention the number itself doesn't even mean the same thing to everyone.

7/10 almost always means average in every review context. Think of it this way: if a game is only doing half of the things it should be doing, how is that average? On average, things should be GOOD. 7/10 is an average score but average doesn't mean meh. On average things tend to be good.

With hundreds of games released every day on steam, the actual average game is really, really bad. Anything remotely playable clears "significantly above average"

It’s doesn’t help that the median for an average game has gone up ALOT in 20 years, I don’t remember the last time I played a 5/10 that wasnt a steam sale gamble it’s just not something that really happens anymore

And it's also not true mostly. Those people send death threats to everyone.

For all the effort they want to put into making a meta metacritic, they could simply... Have an opinion about a game and not care about the metacritic score...

So weird coming from someone who’s had one of the biggest games ever in the last 10 years

It's wild how far Swen has fallen in just a couple of months after being the golden boy for years. So many horrible bad takes in such quick succession is impressive.

“You’d fold” Jesus Christ you talk about video games on webcam you big fuckin baby. Bro thinks he’s a war hero of the gamer wars. You’ve had one of the easiest careers in all of human history holy fuck lmaooo. “I served 2 tours at gamespot and cbsi” type shit. “Shitty emails” lmaooo

Swen sounds like an idiot.

Try engaging with what he actually said. The context of that screenshot is completely removed after all. It was part of a string of tweets saying he doesn't like when people shit on creators in the "form" of criticism.

I remember a comment reading something along the lines of, “Your father is a race traitor” in the comments section of a news story. I was like, “Bro, I’m a Game Informer intern.” And dang right he was!

I give him six days.

Both calling him Dummy and giving him six months are pure kindness, and presumably it would be lost on him.

I remember the outrage when a Gamespot reviewer gave Cyberpunk 2077 a 7/10 before it launched. I saw very few apologies when those people got to actually play the game for themselves

Jeff Gerstmann threat level: Still

God if only the website name “meta critic” wasn’t already taken, we could really get this going. Ah well.

i see more and more insane takes from this man, such a shame

Dude got so high on his own farts after all the praise BG3 got that he can't deal with the fact people are criticising him now.

The great balancer is the Edge 6/10 meme, whereby all games that receive this illustrious score by hook or by crook are revered classics.

Damn can we stop to do nazi-network screenshots reaction already? 😉

It was fun when one of the sites I did work for switched from the 10-point scale to letter grades and nobody understood fuckin any of it. You would assume most people reading a game review online would have spent at least some time in a school, but maybe not!

has swen not been introduced to the concept that reviews are not *for* the creators but for other people looking to buy the thing being reviewed?

It's such a weird circular logic too, like who then reviews the reviewers of the reviewers? It's just a shallow plea for more kid gloves from a guy who's seemingly either mad about a buncha 6/7s from over a decade ago, or from the only "red" review they ever got back in the 90s from some magazine

Yes! That's who I'm thinking of.

They know, they just don't wanna feel bad about all the death threats they've sent.

Social media addict. Its like Nick Colandra at second wind. He literally almost lost his job, in a group of people who worship him, because he just couldn't stop posting.

Rate My GamePro

You act like Game developers don't get those emails too Jeff, stop acting like a child and bring a more reasonable argument.

we should do this with CEOs and deduct hundred dollars from their bank account with every bad review

I once put an extra letter into a word and was called a failure of humanity.

If only there was a way for people who threaten to kill people for liking "woke" games to have their horrible, hateful voices heard.

I got one where someone dreamed I was being tortured. You have to laugh sometimes, or you'd only cry.

Mygod this man is on a mission. Just waiting for him to defend 90 dollar games.

You know, fair enough, I just knew that Thomas Mahler has a waaaay worse history of saying horrible things and abusing his employees.

Sven is right. Reviewers are just clickbaiters nowadays. Their reviews should be audience scored. It's also true for steam reviews etc. read why people down vote games ..it's crazy. It's your job to deal with those emails while avoiding spewing trash for clicks.

I got threats over a 9/10 once, including one that included my address back in the day, and that was BEFORE I came out as trans. And does he not know all the other publishers have spent decades withholding ad campaigns and pre-release copies when they want to be petty like this? Is he new here?

I wrote you one of those in 1998 for giving Metal Gear Solid "only" an 8.5. You wrote me back and were more patient with me than I deserved.

This guy got rid of the AI and thinks that's enough to bring people back to buy the next game, but wait till he learns how people feel about knowing they're gonna support whiny baby CEOs

While I disagree, I think Jeff mentioned somewhere that total score was calculated using some formula, and not a result of an author just giving it out, saying that he, himself, would've scored it lower. That'd be really funny.

He's acting like critics don't like his games.

Also reviewers aren’t harsh enough imo. Games rarely get scathing reviews

Six months is generous

A while ago I peaked at the Gamespot thread where people were discussing the TP review. A lot of people concluding that there must be a conspiracy between you and "Micro$oft" because you gave Gears of War a higher score. Thankfully, it produced one of the funniest comments I've seen in my life.

Swen's sentiment is one you share privately with fellow devs in the bar, a polite commiseration between creators, not something you actually believe and post in public

He went black pfp after a day of being made fun of for being an AI guy for two days I think if he had to deal with gamejourno replies I genuinely think he’d kill himself

Thinking about the critic that got harassed after giving Cyberpunk a 7....... and then gamers found out the pc launch was a buggy fuckfest, the console launch being bad enough Sony offered refunds

Not only had. I got a fun bug where suddenly instead of sound I got crackling static, googled it. "Yeah, the game can do that. Uh, bit of a bother." No shit? A bug that unless you turn off the sound is game-breaking is a bit of a bother?

Or a company getting you fired for a review like happened to someone...

The moment you call Vincke a "dummy", you not only prove him right across the board, but you demonstrate that "decades of shitty emails" have taught you nothing.

I guess even the "good" studios have leaders who are only there to steal money and embarrass the company.

Is this guy trying to speedrun getting rid of all the good will he got? success really rots your brain it seems