Operation Sports Forums - View Single Post - Competition Creates Better Games is Baloney

sambowie · 08-28-2009, 02:16 PM

Way to go Chris! You figured it out!! You set up your own criteria to determine whether competition helps make better games, applied that criteria to unscientific numerical data, and then you DISCOVERED competition makes no difference. Period. No more discussion.

The fact that you set a few arbitrary parameters and found them not to be met in answering a question does not equal, as you say, "truth." It wouldn't have mattered if you used different factors or even more factors. At the end of the day, the answer you arrived at is only an opinion supported by data and nothing more. To pass this article off as debunking an "urban myth" and putting the "theory to bed once and forever" is not only WRONG but extremely arrogant.

The only data you use to arrive at your answer are metacritic scores - that's it. But we all know the flaws of not only that site, but of reviews in general. Most game reviewers spend only a limited amount of time with these games and they are usually susceptible to hype and a gaming company's influence. And nobody does this better than EA. For Madden, the story was "This is the best one ever" and "this is a true next-gen experience." So after months of buildup and hype, and with the game looking reasonably polished from a distance, of course the reviews were positive.

But what reviews don't account for is how the game is perceived after an extended period of time, which is when the true merit of a game is realized. So let's look at Madden now - more and more you are hearing complaints about the game and it's gradually building into a chorus that this is the same broke-*** football game with a couple of new features. Does anyone here after spending almost a month with the game really believe that the game deserves an almost 9 rating? I don't think so. But this is the problem with reviews and Metacritic - reviews do not reflect the true merit of the game - only the gaming community.

The only thing I know is that the last good Madden game in my opinion, and in a lot of other people's opinions, was 2005, the same year NFL 2K5 came out. So there is a valid argument that will survive your your article despite your belief that you put the theory to rest. Maybe Madden would have be the same even if 2K was making NFL games. Maybe it would be better, who knows? It's all SPECULATION.

The only thing that is not speculation is the fact that this article does nothing to dispel the notion that competition in sports gaming makes games better.

08-28-2009, 02:16 PM	#18
sambowie Rookie OVR: 13 Join Date: Aug 2009 Blog Entries: 6	Way to go Chris! You figured it out!! You set up your own criteria to determine whether competition helps make better games, applied that criteria to unscientific numerical data, and then you DISCOVERED competition makes no difference. Period. No more discussion. The fact that you set a few arbitrary parameters and found them not to be met in answering a question does not equal, as you say, "truth." It wouldn't have mattered if you used different factors or even more factors. At the end of the day, the answer you arrived at is only an opinion supported by data and nothing more. To pass this article off as debunking an "urban myth" and putting the "theory to bed once and forever" is not only WRONG but extremely arrogant. The only data you use to arrive at your answer are metacritic scores - that's it. But we all know the flaws of not only that site, but of reviews in general. Most game reviewers spend only a limited amount of time with these games and they are usually susceptible to hype and a gaming company's influence. And nobody does this better than EA. For Madden, the story was "This is the best one ever" and "this is a true next-gen experience." So after months of buildup and hype, and with the game looking reasonably polished from a distance, of course the reviews were positive. But what reviews don't account for is how the game is perceived after an extended period of time, which is when the true merit of a game is realized. So let's look at Madden now - more and more you are hearing complaints about the game and it's gradually building into a chorus that this is the same broke-*** football game with a couple of new features. Does anyone here after spending almost a month with the game really believe that the game deserves an almost 9 rating? I don't think so. But this is the problem with reviews and Metacritic - reviews do not reflect the true merit of the game - only the gaming community. The only thing I know is that the last good Madden game in my opinion, and in a lot of other people's opinions, was 2005, the same year NFL 2K5 came out. So there is a valid argument that will survive your your article despite your belief that you put the theory to rest. Maybe Madden would have be the same even if 2K was making NFL games. Maybe it would be better, who knows? It's all SPECULATION. The only thing that is not speculation is the fact that this article does nothing to dispel the notion that competition in sports gaming makes games better.