Competition Creates Better Games is Baloney

[Jump]

Just because game reviews are the only quantifiable source to use for something like this, does not mean that you can draw such clear cut conclusions from them.

[Crimsontide27]

Considering the fact that even here at Operation Sports you cant get an unbiased review by the moderaters / staff writers should end all theory that you should use reviewers scores in any form of statistical gathering.

Its been stated before that people here at this site had rated Madden ( insert year ) higher than they should have , but feel the need to continue to giver higher scores for the ( insert year after ) Madden.

Reviewers on sites such as these are not a good judge of a game since there is usually an agenda behind them.

Take a random sample of 100 people from this site to review this game and it wouldnt even come close to a 7. Yet somehow those that do the reviews on this site and others are somehow " more credible" than those that actually play the game.

As far as competition... If Sega had never decided to challenge the Nintendo...we would all still playing a Nintendo. Sega came out with the Genesis....forcing Nintendo to come out with the SNES.... SNES and the Genesis were doing great but Sega came out with the Sega CD and Nintendo was working on their CD system ( eventually the PS1 ) ....

So now the Playstation comes out and destroys all....then Sega releases the Dreamcast.......until MS jumps in and releases the Xbox.... The 360 comes out and forces Sony to have the PS3 ready...etc...etc...etc...etc

To say that competition has nothing to do with the quality or the lack of quality in titles is absurd. Competition keeps everything moving, wether your head is buried in a sandbox or not.

This is the most ridiculous article I have ever read on this board. Since you dont believe competition makes games better, I suggest you head right on back to playing video games pre-atari, pre- odyesse, pre-colecovison and waste your time and effort reviewing those games.

[phant030]

Quote: Originally Posted by phant030

I most certainly agree with this. There are tons of shooters. Tons of racing games. Tons of rpg's that are str8 garbage. Competition really pushed those games to greatness. Even sports games like Sony's NBA, 2k's MLB , Even Live for the past few years, have had stiff competition and weren't pushed above average games. So why was Live 07 atrocious? There just wasn't any competition for it. lol The games are just like sports teams. It takes money; organizational leadership; great strategy and game planning ; developmental talent, skills, and tools; and even heart. If the tools are there but the time frame to implement the necessary changes aren't there....Or if the direction isn't the best...no tools or resources or licenses can help...U can only create/develop to the best of ur ability and see how the end product is recieved. Competition may push improvement...but doesn't create improvement. In fact, it can push u into regression. Or even complacency. Forcing take unecessary changes, chances, and unfortunately mistakes. Or doing just enough to surpass miniscul competition. Improving just enought to be better than...u make a D, ill make a D+.... Competition isnt the end all of improvement or greatness..sure it can help...but the final determation is the abilities of the team, its direction for a title..implementation of new features...enhancement of the existing...and basically..what they want out of a title...if the artist is satisfied with his creation...no competition can force him to edit his piece.

I agree with you Chris. This a post I made a while back in a Madden Thread. Fits here too.

[wurstman3000]

Quote: Originally Posted by Jump

Just because game reviews are the only quantifiable source to use for something like this, does not mean that you can draw such clear cut conclusions from them.

Agree.
And about the scores: The main problem is that the context of giving review scores is nearly totally neglected: There is no unified standard on all sites. Most compare relatively with what's on the market (either a specific genre, sports or games on a whole; mostly a mix of those) at the reviews time. Most great games I remember liking playing are really only great still in memory - if played today, they wouldn't score that high anymore - A lower score today can be given to a game, which is better than a back then higher scored game, but be better. Otherwise, many games would get scores near 100% by now, only to indicate them being better than past iterations - year after year a little step. Granted, some exceptions would be there.

This is the second article within a few days (the other being the ill-informed piece about NHL 2K10) of which I wonder, how it made it to OS.

[CreatineKasey]

It's tough, because what we want and what other gamers want are two different things. We want realism, some people want the arcade feel. We automatically assume our viewpoint is correct, but really neither is as they are merely opinions. This ties in to the game reviews. The reviewers probably aren't hardcore football fans like we are, so they want other things in a game. So, for our standards it is hard to accept those game reviews. Honestly, I don't think they are reviewing the game for our market, as we probably know more about the game before they even get an advance copy. We want different things, that's just it.

In defense of the exclusive license: It allowed EA's developers to come here and interact in detail with the realism community and really get a feel of exactly what we want. That helped us tremendously. There were so many things that I wanted and mentioned that got into Madden 10, and I'm just absolutely loving this game. They created it just how I wanted them to, and I can accredit much of that to the interaction with our community. They couldn't do that if 2k was competing with them.

In defense of competition, I do think that the games can reach different parts of the market. For example I feel APF 2k8 was the most realistic football gameplay ever made. Madden 08 still annihilated it. Does that make me wrong for liking it? No. I'm just part of a different area of the market. I feel like everyone's wants can be better addressed with competition in games as developers will skew their game towards one area of consumers therefore getting the most sales out of that area and garnering their approval.

Those are just some random comments, not really defending either side. I'd still choose competition over no competition though if I had the choice.

[spursfan]

To clarify what most of these companies seem to care about is money. I seem to remember the then ceo being quoted in egm saying "that 2k could give away its football game for free with a ham sandwich for free and they still would outsell them". 2k and Take Two promtly released the game for 19.99, and people finally gave the game a try. Months later ea locks up and exclusive with the nlf, ncaa, and the arena league, essistenly shutting 2k out of the video game football business. The only reason ea did all this because 2k finally cut into their profits, Ea could no longer wait to drop the price on madden till after the super bowl. They had to cut the price to keep up the sales momentum. I remember some of my hardcore maddenhead friends finally giving 2k a try. The look on their faces and their lame excuses for not likeing it. It wasn't as good as madden in the eyes of most football heads, but they weren't very far off. I loved both games for what they were good at. 2k had great presentation, and I loved the "feel" of the game. Madden was a bit more strategic because you had to do the work, the wouldn't do it for you. I loved the owner mode, hit stick and playmaker. If I could just take what I liked out of each game. Man, I'm thinking about getting that madden back, still have 3k5.

[Terrell28]

Ya 2K baseball theory was off cause of this reason MLB the Show is a PS3 only title and 2K9 baseball is all that you can have for the xbox how is that competition? If there were two baseball games out for the xbox then right on but the rest of ya theory kinda works but I must say 2K hockey was better than NHL in 2007 then NHL got they title back is that a coincidence?

[Shinyhubcaps]

The problem with review scores is that each is compared to its competitor. For example, Madden scores have risen because they are being compared to previous iterations. NBA Live scores have been inconsistent because they're being compared to NBA 2K AND previous iterations. To say that these are apples-to-apples comparisons is not correct; the fact of the matter is that competition-less games are scored differently than games with competition.

It's like teams in Major League Baseball. At some point, the Pirates realize that they are a distant 6th place in baseball's only 6-team division. The other 5 teams, when healthy, are all concentrated atop the standings, but Pittsburgh is way back. So what do they do? They sell off all of their Major League talent for prospects. Naturally, as they can't expect to make great strides with their new prospects, they develop them at the expense of future poor seasons.

The same is true for video game developers. If a company has a bad game one year (compared to another), they have to either go back to basics (which results in fewer new features, a perceived lack of improvement, and a lower score) or add new features atop a cracked foundation (which nets a lower score for obvious reasons).

Everything about economics tells us that competition is good. Otherwise, you're like me, paying way too much for spotty internet and cable.