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Monday, November 25, 2024
Brecht's Solution
In 1953 there was an uprising in East Germany, which was violently suppressed with the help of Soviet tanks. Bertolt Brecht wrote a satirical poem about it, The Solution. It suggested to "dissolve the people and elect another". We must be at Marx's second repetition of history as farce, as the last US election has led to widespread criticism of the electorate by the left. If the people don't vote Democrat, then the people must be wrong. But that sort of criticism isn't limited to politics. It is also very present in gaming.
For example a developer of the failed first-person shooter Concord called his customers "a bunch of talentless freaks hating on it". It has become increasingly common for triple A games to have an embargo on content creators, and even on user reviews, so that on launch day only glowing reviews from friendly press is available. Compare the following two recent role-playing games: Dragon Age: The Veilguard has an 82 critics score on Metacritic, but only a 38 on customer reviews; Drova - Forsaken Kin has as 79 critics score, but a 89 on customer reviews. Developers always claim bad customer reviews are from "trolls" or "haters", but the big gaps between critics reviews and customer reviews happen exclusively for games with huge marketing budgets. On Veilguard, IGN bridged the gap by first releasing a glowing 9 out of 10 review, and then posting a second article, not marked as a review and with no review score, that listed everything they thought was wrong with the game and wasn't mentioned in the "review". Sales numbers tend to reflect customer review scores, not because the "trolls and haters" have an outsized influence, but because that is how good a game really is.
I think what we are seeing here, both in politics and gaming, is an elite that created their own echo chamber bubble with the help of the internet. When an election or game release forces the issue out of the bubble and into the general population, the reception comes as a surprise, as the bubble previously protected the elite from any real feedback. The current trend on left-leaning social media communities is cancelling the part of their families who voted Republican for Thanksgiving and Christmas holiday celebrations. People want back into their comfortable bubble, where everybody agrees with them. Why would Democrats want to engage with the wider population, listen to what people really thought about the previous administration, and spend the next 4 years improving their program to be more attractive next time, when instead they could just retreat for 4 years into their echo chambers and mutually stroke their moral superiority? Why would game developers want to go through the hassle of open beta testing and listening to actual player feedback, when it is so much more comfortable to listen only to the handful of "games journalists" that they paid to tell them how great they are?
The electorate is never wrong. The customer is never wrong. Dear Elite: If your intimate conviction that your political program is superior, that your game is superior, doesn't survive the contact with reality when stepping out of the bubble, you can't change reality. You don't get to dissolve the electorate or customer base. You should have stepped out of your bubble earlier, and seeked honest feedback, to change your product before it was too late.
- posted by Tobold @ 10:18 AM Permanent Link
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You know how people on the left make fun of Trump and say he surrounds himself with yes men and sycophants? (True by the way)
Well the DNC does the same thing and it's the reason Biden stayed in the race so long and why Kamala Harris campaigned the way she did.
There are reports coming out about how people in Bidens camp knew his polling was atrocious but refused to accept reality and kept telling him his chances were better then they were.
They also refused to acknowledge how bad average Americans felt about the economy because all the traditional metrics say our economy doing great. They are indeed in such a bubble they can't fathom why the average American would think the economy is bad when all the traditional stats say it's good.
But it's obvious why they don't understand. It's not like any if them are living paycheck to paycheck and struggling when their rent goes up 75% over 4 years.
Now I don't think the other side can truly relate either but they at the very least acknowledged a problem even if their solutions are nonsense.
Well the DNC does the same thing and it's the reason Biden stayed in the race so long and why Kamala Harris campaigned the way she did.
There are reports coming out about how people in Bidens camp knew his polling was atrocious but refused to accept reality and kept telling him his chances were better then they were.
They also refused to acknowledge how bad average Americans felt about the economy because all the traditional metrics say our economy doing great. They are indeed in such a bubble they can't fathom why the average American would think the economy is bad when all the traditional stats say it's good.
But it's obvious why they don't understand. It's not like any if them are living paycheck to paycheck and struggling when their rent goes up 75% over 4 years.
Now I don't think the other side can truly relate either but they at the very least acknowledged a problem even if their solutions are nonsense.
It's "if you have nothing nice to say, say nothing" taken to the extreme.
Sure, you have to present critique in a civil manner, but I always disliked the notion of suppressing even the idea of that something might not just be sunshine and rainbows.
Sure, you have to present critique in a civil manner, but I always disliked the notion of suppressing even the idea of that something might not just be sunshine and rainbows.
I don't think the comparison between democracy and game criticism is valid. Democracy by definition is intended to ensure that the views of a small number of elites do not take precedence over those of the wider majority. On the other hand the whole point of having professional game criticism is that we hope that a small group of
professional gamers (an elite if you will) will hopefully give a more knowledgeable view than some random gamer. It doesn't always work and you could argue that the advent of mass polling and social media has rendered professional reviewers unnecessary. I think they still have a role however particularly in the early period after a games release. Early public reviews of games tend to be skewed by those with an axe to grind so you have to take them with a pinch of salt.
professional gamers (an elite if you will) will hopefully give a more knowledgeable view than some random gamer. It doesn't always work and you could argue that the advent of mass polling and social media has rendered professional reviewers unnecessary. I think they still have a role however particularly in the early period after a games release. Early public reviews of games tend to be skewed by those with an axe to grind so you have to take them with a pinch of salt.
# posted by 
: 26/11/24 08:10
: 26/11/24 08:10
I would disagree with this view of game criticism. Ultimately, the purpose of making a video game is to sell the largest possible number of copies of that game. Which requires mass appeal, not a high opinion of a small elite. The “game journalist” might theoretically be more knowledgable, but he might also be financially dependent on the game publisher, and thus not trustworthy. The random gamer, who bought the game himself, has no financial incentive to lie, although he might have other biases. I most trust the random streamer, because I see the game played live, which gives me a lot more information than a second-hand opinion.
I think I made a previous comment about people not wanting to talk to those with differing views. I think that's the crux of the issue. If you don't feel that someone that thinks different then you is worth talking to then you'll never understand how they came to those views. There was a saying about walking a mile in someone's else's shoes, which meant to try and see things from the other person's perspective. I never hear that saying anymore and I rarely see it practiced, however that's precisely what I think we need right now.
The saying goes that you should walk a mile in someone else’s shoes, because then when he finds out you stole his shoes, you’re a mile away, and he has problems following you in his socks. :)
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