https://www.cybersport.ru/games/articles/povestochka-proplachennye-obzory-i-krakh-sistemy-ocenok-kak-the-last-of-us-part-ii-i-cyberpunk-2077-povliyali- na-industriyu-igr

Player error

The word of the year, according to the Merriam-Webster dictionary, was “pandemic”, but if the compilers chose key concepts specifically for the gaming industry, in 2023, among them, there would certainly be “tolerance”, “leftists”, “values” and “agenda “Is an extremely convenient concept that includes just about everything that traditional gamers don’t like. Previously, reviews from the press did not enjoy great respect among players (see the picture below), and with the release of Last of Us Part II in the community, they started a full-scale war with supposedly corrupt specialized publications. The most eloquent evidence of the scale of the split is the fact that they tried to arrange their own “gamergate” on the topic even in Russia – unfortunately, we cannot attach a link to this initiative, since its authors used profanity to describe the game journalists.

We will have time to discuss the “agenda”, but for now let’s touch directly on the point system. The root of the problem here is the discrepancy between the internal ratings given to the game by the reviewer and each individual gamer. Complete agreement on both sides of the barricades is a rare situation, and if you start listening to individual voices, then it is completely impossible, because dissenting people, as you know, are always somewhere nearby.

Now there is a great temptation to declare, they say, here it is, the truth – speaks through the lips of simple hard workers, but in reality this is just a simple rhetorical trap. No matter how hard you chalk up the journalists, the collective position of the gaming community is also unlikely to overlap with yours in everything. There is no need to go far for an example, here are the ten best games in history based on average user ratings:

• GrimGrimoire (PS2);
• Diaries of a Spaceport Janitor (PC);
• Tengami (Wii U);
• Rochard (PS3);
• Ghost Trick: Phantom Detective (DS);
• Z.H.P. Unlosing Ranger vs Darkdeath Evilman (PSP);
• Metal Torrent (DS);
• After Burner Climax (X360);
• Superliminal (XOne);
• Crystar (PS4).

By the way, three lines below is Ghost of Tsushima, which, thanks to the first gaming front (opened in June 2023) is now ahead of not only TLoU2, but also Half-Life 2, Warcraft III: The Frozen Throne, Portal, Silent Hill 2 and others game “imperishable”. And you fought for this?

Biased journalists

But let’s temporarily forget Tsushima and talk about the collection itself. I really don’t like it. If you share my indignation, then welcome – now we are game dissidents, opposing both journalists and the people. Who would have thought, but quite recently they swore in the comments! And since we are now on the same side, I will tell you my secret: I don’t really like The Last of Us Part II, and if I had to make my personal top of the ten best games, then Neil Druckmann’s magnum opus would hardly whether hit.

But it would definitely include Bloodborne, Metal Gear Solid 3, the first Max Payne, Grim Fandango, Gothic II, TES IV: Oblivion, Mafia and Inside. Calling the eight was pretty simple: they come to mind first when I wonder what games really left a mark on my life. Problems begin further – how do I get at least those eight games in the fucking rankings? Am I ready to say that Grim Fandango is better than Max Payne? Or that Bloodborne is less valuable than the legendary Gothic? What coefficient should the graphics receive when scoring, and what should be the plot component? How can we take into account the difference in the age of the games in the resulting formula?

There are, of course, no answers to these questions, since criticizing games is just as ungrateful as evaluating films, books, music albums or paintings by great artists. Art resonates with each of us in different ways, and that is why today it is so diverse: once I tried in vain to feel awe, standing, surrounded by a crowd of gasping Japanese, in the Louvre in front of the La Gioconda, and half an hour later I lost myself by drowning in Van Gogh’s Starry Night. And in the same way (albeit much longer) I fought over everyone’s beloved God of War only to get to the credits without a shadow of emotion and, reconciled, return to Bloodborne again.

Video games are the youngest, but also the most complex of all fields of art. It combines all aspects from more traditional forms at once, and therefore most local works can be disassembled in dozens, hundreds of different ways. Forget about graphics or plot – here, for example, the material on architectural solutions in Control, but here is an article about how the mechanics of movement in games can be made fun. Well, my bachelor’s degree was about how H.F. Lovecraft’s literary techniques are transformed as they adapt to video game realities. Spoiler alert: They break. And therefore, if one day a game about Cthulhu comes out, which really takes care of the original source, I’ll probably put it 10/10 – I just can’t help but put it.

It turns out that I am biased – but this is the main plot twist: objective reviews of games simply cannot be. The quality of the graphics, the depth of the plot and the fun of the gameplay are abstract concepts, the perception of which by each of us in one way or another will differ depending on the individual experience. There is no scale on which to place Hades, Gothic II and Dark Souls, defining the strongest of them in the plot or gameplay aspects. Only the technical condition of the title can be objectively evaluated. Cyberpunk 2077, for example, is frankly a curve! But this is already a discussion of the game as a piece of code – and hardly anyone strives for such a game discourse.

And games are also interactive and therefore offer each consumer a virtually unique experience that will not be available to others. It’s not just about open-world RPGs that let everyone create their own adventure. Even spinal platformers and meat shooters give players a certain amount of freedom as they progress through: will you read the notes or not, will you use the curve but the existing stealth mechanics, will you try to figure out the references scattered throughout the levels? All this invariably leaves its mark on our perception, and therefore the same game can be very different in the eyes of every gamer.

“Agenda”

One might argue that the industry has been around for many years, so why has the valuation dispute only started so actively now? The reason for the conflict, of course, was The Last of Us Part II, in the assessment of which the positions of journalists and ordinary gamers diverged more than ever before. However, the reasons here, it seems to me, are deeper – the audience’s dissatisfaction with the rating system has been accumulating for quite a long time, because the meme about “imported suitcases” has been for many years.

Ironically, the second scandalous game of this year, Cyberpunk 2077, is perhaps the most eloquent proof that suitcases, in general, do not run around the industry. The developers explained one of the transfers of the game by the desire to get the highest possible score on Metacritic – above 90. And, probably, this is why the company ended up being extremely selective when sending copies of the game. Many publications received the keys at the last minute, unable to publish the review on time, while the rest were given access to Cyberpunk 2077 for PC – still buggy, but significantly more playable than the console version. Such precautions would hardly make sense if the publisher had a real influence on the scores given in the press.

Be that as it may, in the assessment of Cyberpunk 2077 and TLoU2, journalists and gamers did not agree. There is a whole carriage of potential reasons for such discrepancies. You can turn up your nose and say that game journalists know more about the industry and simply have a broader gaming outlook. One might suspect that reviewers are fawning at developers and publishers. We can say that the “leftists” have taken over the industry and are actively promoting their values. Or, in principle, it is possible to assume that all the publications at once agreed to troll the players, setting provocative points.

It is pointless to argue about this, because everyone will still have their own opinion. For me, the only curious mystery in this whole story is the issue of the notorious “agenda”, which for some reason suited most of the journalists, but knocked the players out of their peace of mind. Of course, this is still a dispute about the colors of markers, but such a unity between the members of the two “opposing” positions is not very clear to me.

Perhaps the point here is that journalists still sign their materials and broadcast them to a wide audience. It’s not about editorial restrictions, but rather internal self-censorship. For example, stand-up comedians encounter it, who, even turning to provocative humor, still make appropriate disclaimers before performances, reminding them that everything said in the video is a joke that has no purpose of offending anyone.

In addition, the majority of the creative professions tend to be truly liberal on social issues. There are many prerequisites for this, which would probably be superfluous to analyze in such a narrowly focused article. But it is possible that the “agenda” has really leaked! On the other hand, the players also contributed to bringing the situation to a critical point. A snowball of discontent clearly caught those who were just standing nearby on the way – even catastrophically bad games do not have such a number of negative assessments.

In fact, there is only one conclusion. The situation with Cyberpunk 2077 and The Last of Us Part II put gamers and reviewers in opposing positions, although in reality we have a common enemy – the rating system itself, which for the most part has outlived itself. Reviews are needed in order to share opinions about games – to provoke discussions and help each other to look at each individual work from new perspectives. It’s fair to say that content about the main games of 2023 rarely coped with this function.

Unresolved crisis

The existing rating system lost all meaning when games began to grow into narrative and turn from simple “electronic entertainment” into works of art, the creation of which sometimes takes more money than the production of other Hollywood films. Let’s go back to the 00s or even 90s and take a look at the most beloved games in the community of those times. The intro of the original Resident Evil is hard to watch with a serious face today:

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