This isn’t directly part of my series on why people who comment on reviews have me so baffled, [you can read part one here and part two here] but it does kind of directly follow along from that set of articles.  There’s a point in part one where I say the following:

“I am sort of atypical in reviewer-land in that I tend to write reviews based on the games I actually own.  In other words, I sit down, look through my library of stuff and decide “hey, I think I’d like to review the following, this week” but not every reviewer works this way and not every publication does things in this manner at all.”

And this is what I’d like to talk about – why I – specifically – only review games I own.

As a result of my particular perspective, there’s a whole raft of stuff that happens when someone gifts me a game and says, “I’d like you to review this, please.”  The first problem – for me, anyway, is an internal one.  Here they are, giving me a gift and they’re asking me to critique the gift.  What if I don’t like the gift?

One very important thing I got taught when growing up is:  “If someone gives you a gift and you don’t have anything nice to say about the gift then DON’T SAY ANYTHING.”  And this – of course – plays into my mindset when people pass on review copies.

So, I feel kind of obligated to say nice things about those games.  I expect that I’m not exactly alone, here.

There are all kinds of other weird obligations going on in the background, of course.  You have to review the game – usually – before a specific date.  And that just makes me feel pressured.  As in:  now it’s a race to get to some point in the game where I can legitimately talk about it.  And that’s not how I want to play games.  I want to take my time and see the sights.  I want to experiment a little, [if the game allows that] most importantly, though, I want to do the game justice.  And – personally – rushing a game experience doesn’t do it justice.

I don’t really want to get mixed up in all that.  It just leads to sometimes-terrible things.  For example:  the publisher of the game loses its mind completely and you get a situation like you did in 2007 with GameSpot where Jeff Gerstmann gave Kane and Lynch:  Dead Men a “Fair” rating and the publisher got him fired.

Typically, I want to be able to say what I want to say without fear of reprisal.  After all, a review is meant to be honest.  If I can’t be honest, what’s the point?

But before we talk about that, let’s talk about the kinds of game I really like:  I did a lot of game-playing in the 80’s and 90’s.  Back then, there weren’t really “shooters” – particularly not on PC.  On PC you generally had three broad channels for games.  The first big channel was adventure games.  Adventure games are typically cerebral challenges where you solve puzzles to get to a specific point.  The second big genre was strategy and RPG games [I’m going to lump them together here, briefly, because they were both very mathsy in that era] – generally, here, you took a party/army of people and destroyed some evil.  Finally, there were simulation games.  Games where you could fly a plane, or a chopper or the like.  These had HUGE manuals, because there was a lot going on under the hood.  There was no such thing as a “casual simulation game” in the 80’s and 90’s.

My point is:  these are all slow games.  And I ended up liking those the best.  That is:  My bias is against twitch gaming.  If – for example – Nintendo came along and said – “hey, we’d like you to review the latest Mario game” – I would either have to turn it down or – if I were at a publication where they told you “you must” I would then become obligated to review the game.

And guess what?  My bias would lead me to thinking “this is a terrible game” all the time I was playing it.  In fact, my bias would do several other things to warp the review:  I would be resentful.  I would not appreciate my employer foisting the game on me; I would probably get the logo of the publisher up on a dart board and throw darts at it every time I died in the game.  In short, I wouldn’t be a happy camper.  And you can bet that this will be reflected in my review.  Again.  It wouldn’t be honest.

So, bias can be helpful, but it can only be helpful if you’re not forced to review something that you don’t like.

Do I think everyone should do this?  No.  But!  I do think it is important to disclose that they have a review copy from a given source and that this is what they’re commenting on.  [Which – I’m glad to see – some publications are doing.]

As for me?  I will continue doing things my way because it makes the “most sense.”

Between this and the fact that Twitch.tv is arguably leading the pack with regards to game streaming has led the video behemoth to set up its own, dedicated “version” of YouTube especially for gaming.

This new portal will be called YouTube Gaming.

The other big change is that live broadcasts will not have to be scheduled anymore and can simply happen on the fly and as you’re ready to stream your gaming prowess to the world.

Most interesting, perhaps, is that games that have their own pages.  So, for example, if you wanted to watch just people playing and enjoying The Witcher 3, or if you were looking for different speedruns of The Legend of Zelda, you can now do that by finding that specific game and adding it to a “collection” of games that you regularly watch content of.

Naturally, all of this will come bundled with an application that you can put onto your ‘phone for quick and easy access.

This new “version” of YouTube is going to be rolled out during summer of this year [2015] with the United States being turned on first, followed by the United Kingdom.

Twitch’s response?

Here’s to a summer indoors, watching video games!

As more information about the Patch was being released one major question was still left unanswered. " Would there be flying in this expansion?"

After much consideration Blizzard Dev Ion Hazzikostas in an interview with Polygon announced,  "Having looked at how flying has played out in the old world in the last couple of expansions, we realized that while we were doing it out of this ingrained habit after we introduced flying in The Burning Crusade, it actually detracted from game play in a whole lot of ways, while there was certainly convenience in being able to completely explore the world in three dimensions, that also came at the expense of game-play like targeted exploration, like trying to figure out what's in that cave on top of a hill and how do I get up there."

The summary is a big fat whopping, "No."

This drove the community mad, forum posts from angry players started to pile up. Players were commenting on the amount of content they had already seen versus what they had now and could not see the same viewpoint. Mmo-champion which has been a website dedicated to major MMO's for years had its comments section on the initial news release flooded with negative comments from players who were just plain upset. Some stating that they never even left their new garrison because they couldn't fly.

Apparently this amount of backlash had not gone unnoticed. As of a more recent post to the Blizzard forums, Hazzikostas come forth saying that they will now be implementing flying. However, it's only for those who earn it.

By earning I mean, completing a series of achievements and grinding out reputations with in-game factions.

We covered the idea of “the reviewer not paying the game enough attention” as well as the idea that reviewers get paid to write reviews.  So let’s tackle some other things that people say that have me totally baffled.

The truth is: everyone is biased in some direction or another.  I’ve been mulling a lot about this idea lately, because I’ve been thinking I want to review things outside of my comfort zone, but the problem for me is that because those things are outside of my comfort zone, I’m probably never going to do them justice.

I’ve talked about this before, but I’m going to bring it up again:  I don’t like shooters ...of any kind.  My very biased and overly opinionated view of shooters is that they’re lowest common denominator games that are played by people with either too much testosterone or who are sadistic to the nth degree.  These people would probably have no trouble with selling their grandma for their next inhale of Call of Duty.  [or whatever’s current in shooter circles right now.]

Now, the truth of the matter’s probably wwwwaaaayyyy more benign.  Those guys who I just wrote off as lowest common denominator pond scum?  They probably buy their girlfriends great anniversary gifts and take long walks on the beach with their dogs reflecting on life, the universe and everything.

But from my biased perspective, all I see is a group of sweaty man-children screaming into microphones about how that guy who just killed them should die in a fire.

So, I could never review a shooter as a result.  And if I did review a shooter, you can imagine that I probably won’t give it terrifically high marks, EVEN IF it is the most innovative shooter, ever.

Bias is OK.  Bias means that the games I love, I really do love with all my heart and soul.  And I will review those games well, paying attention to every little thing – nitpicking them, even.  [I’ve certainly done this before:  I liked the idea of Rise of the Dragon a whole lot, but phooey, that timer!]

My point is, very often, once you “connect” with a reviewer, chances are you’re coming back to that reviewer for their writing [one would hope] but also because their bias – the games they like – meshes well with your own.

Bias is good.

The other big problem with review writing is that – very often – the editor will set a word cap on how much you may write.  If you were reading some of the old magazines in the 80’s or 90’s you would see everything from real short “micro reviews” all the way to six page mammoth spreads that detailed the game in great depth.

What I’m driving at is that UNLESS you were looking at the spread, you could count on having one thousand or so words to get your point across.  If it’s a big game like Skyrim, or even a little one like To The Moon [which is quite complex under the hood, for the story it’s telling and the themes it’s hinting at] as a reviewer, the problem becomes, “what do I talk about?” and inevitably, something slips through the cracks.

So, that mini game that you fell in love with while playing?  The reviewer might have had to skate over that because of the deadline.  Or when you found weapon x hidden in cave y and it changed the game for you?  Maybe the reviewer didn’t have time to go off the beaten path to do that.  Or maybe it was something smaller.  Like how the character jumped between platforms.  All of these things are small things that might have made a momentary impression, but in the grand scheme of things, the reviewer just forgot that particular instant.

Again, this is OK.  Usually, if it’s important enough, the reviewer will tell you about it in a sentence or so.

But do try and keep it civil.  This works best if we’re having a conversation where differences are expected, not a screaming match in which one side is absolutely right and the other is always wrong.

I try and write a review of a game every week.  [You can read my reviews here.  This link will take you off site and open in a new tab/window.] So, every weekend, I sit down and I go through my library of games and I try and think of something I want to experience.  Typically, these are older games, now – about the newest games I’ve tackled are “Wolf Among Us” and “Back To The Future,” both episodic Telltale releases.

But I’ve been reading reviews for a very long time now, and let me tell you:  people think all kinds of things about products, music, movies and books.

But gaming?  Gaming is in an odd place.  People don’t always like that someone will look into a game and critically dissect it to point out its faults or to praise it.  And this...it puzzles me.

Assuming the reviewer is doing their job correctly and assuming their observational skills are on point, they will make notes as they go about things they like and things they don’t like.  They will then take these notes and string them together to form a coherent “narrative” about their time with the product.

What you end up reading is that person’s narrative, their particular take on the game in question.

In large part, what you are reading is THEIR STATED OPINION on the matter.

One of these is someone saying in screamy capital letters that THEIR OPINION TROUNCES YOURS BECAUSE IT IS MORE RIGHT NEENER.

Here’s the thing, though:  Because a review is basically just a distilled opinion, it means that your opinion is often equally as valid.  And that’s quite healthy, but it’s only healthy if it’s done in a non-screamy way.  Remember, we’re all here to talk about the games, not get frustrated at one another because we hold opposing points of view.
(Interception by Dr. S: Opinions are never equally valid. Mine trumps everyone elses)Besides, if done in a non-screamy way, your opinion might very well change people’s perspectives on that particular game.  I am not – for example – a great fan of third or first person shooters at all.  [in fact, anyone who’s been following my writing or any length of time is probably aware that I think shooters are generally the dregs of gaming]  But I will – begrudgingly admit – that after having read about Portal, I was swayed in that one particular case.

The problem with MMORPG’s is time and scale.  For the most part, a MMORPG isn’t something you can sit down and beat in sixty hours or so [like a “good RPG”] and, consequently, this creates a writer’s dilemma:  at what point, exactly, do I put pen to paper?

Some would argue that if you don’t “have fun” in the first hour or two and you’ve seen most of the simpler systems and you don’t like those, then that’s enough to run with.  Others will argue that the only time you can write a review is if you’ve been in the trenches, playing the game and you record its state /just/ before it drops a new content patch and/or expansion.

The answer – for reviewers – is that they need to play enough of the game that they can discuss it in a reasonable manner.  This happens to be the case for other reasonably-sized games, too.  And for those of you keeping score at home, sometimes, that means playing for a week or two and then writing about that particular experience.  The land of reviews is vast, and there’s always something new you need to be tackling.

I am sort of atypical in reviewer-land in that I tend to write reviews based on the games I actually own.  In other words, I sit down, look through my library of stuff and decide “hey, I think I’d like to review the following, this week” but not every reviewer works this way and not every publication does things in this manner at all.

Typically, a games site [or magazine] gets what’s known as a “review copy” of a game from a publisher.  That publisher expects that you will review the game in good time. [Usually before the release window.]  Sometimes, they will place an embargo on when you may go public.  That is:  you may have your piece written well in advance, but you may only publish it on the day of release.

If all of this is “working as intended” then NO money should ever change hands at all [in this particular setup, anyway] – so, a good 99% of the time, if a publication has scruples, they will be getting a game, reviewing the game and publishing that review without “any interference” from either side.  The only point where money exchanges hands is where the publication [the games website] pays the reviewer for their review.

So a great deal of the time, this is just a knee-jerk statement from a person who’s read the review and doesn’t always agree with what’s being said.

NEON STRUCT is a first person stealth game with shades of Eldritch, Thief, and Deus Ex. These influences are just smaller parts of a whole. It's clear to see, NEON STRUCT stands on its own two legs. But enough sneaking around, here’s David Pittman in his own words:

TV: You just released your second game under the Minor Key banner, NEON STRUCT. Can you tell us what it brings to the table?

DP: NEON STRUCT is a political thriller stealth game. Set in a neon-and-concrete Brutalist world and loosely inspired by the modern surveillance state, it casts the player as agent Jillian Cleary, an ex-spy on the run from her former agency.

 TV: In what ways did real world events, such as Snowden, Manning, and Assange inform the gameplay and story?

DP: Edward Snowden and the NSA leaks were the initial spark for the concept of NEON STRUCT. I felt like there was a nice thematic and mechanical harmony in casting the player in the Edward Snowden role in a stealth game.
One of the primary characters has similar motivations to Assange, but otherwise, NEON STRUCT's fictional characters do not closely shadow any real persons.

TV: The soundtrack for the game features The Home Conversion.  There could have been a lot of stereotypical soundtracks for a game like this. What lead you to do something different with music in relation to the setting?

 DP: The Home Conversion's music was actually an early inspiration for the tone and feel of the game. When I heard their song "Cave Living", I envisioned a distinctive 1980s neon-lit world, which gradually developed into the style of NEON STRUCT's art.
So they were naturally my first choice for the game's soundtrack, and I was thrilled when they offered to not only provide their existing songs but write and record new material for the game.

TV: You mention the Brutalist choice of architecture in the art book. Can you tell us what lead you to that decision and how it fit the world you were building?

 DP: In the months immediately after Eldritch's release, before it was clear how successful that game would eventually be, my plan was to rapidly develop something new and different but using as much of the same engine and core technology as possible. I would have to continue using that game's voxel engine, but I wanted to avoid the Minecraft visual style this time around.
The solution I found was to emulate Brutalism, a style of architecture that was already known for its imposing blocky shapes and right angles. The fact that Brutalist buildings are also strongly associated with the Cold War era and that distinct kind of political fear made the choice even more appropriate for NEON STRUCT.

DP: I cut two levels during development. The first was a network of underground tunnels running from downtown Philadelphia to the outskirts of the city. (For those who have played NEON STRUCT, this level would have followed The Old Basilica.) It had sounded like an interesting space on paper: a crumbling maze of train tunnels and sewer lines, where fugitives from the surveillance state eked out an existence in ad hoc underground towns. But in game, it was dull, didn't advance the plot, and didn't feel "NEON STRUCT-y" enough.
The second level to be cut was an underwater train ride across the Atlantic. It never existed in the game in any form, and was cut because it was superfluous to the story and I wasn't sure a train could ever be a good space for stealth gameplay.TV: Can you tell us a little about how the art style came to be?

DP: Because of the size of the game, compared to its very small team, I needed to find clever ways to reduce the amount of work. I wanted to make something as low-fidelity as Eldritch, but without that game's Minecraft-ish style.
The thin, flat, faceless character design was primarily inspired by the style of Nigel Evan Dennis's graphic tribute to Game of Thrones, "Where Have All the Wildlings Gone?" (http://www.wherehaveallthewildlingsgone.com/)

TV: Your last game, Eldritch; didn’t have much dialog or as involved a story. Was writing for these characters daunting?

DP: After Eldritch, I began to worry that without the constant presence of my former coworkers in the AAA industry, my skillset would stagnate. So on NEON STRUCT, challenged myself to tackle certain kinds of work I hadn't done before. The first was stealth level design, and the second was writing dialogue. I gave it my best effort, but I also tried very hard to keep the dialogue minimal, so every line would tell the player something important about the game, the world, or a character.

DP: Diversity in the cast was one of my goals from the start. When I was developing the plot outline and the major characters, I tried to make sure that there was a good mix of genders, nationalities, and more. I also developed a random character generator for the AIs, so guards have a broad range of skin colors and a 50/50 chance of using either the men or women body/hair meshes.
One of the challenges for me was presenting non-male or non-white characters authentically. In certain cases, I consulted with people so I could learn more about the identities of the characters I was trying to write. For better or worse, I often wasn't able to make the story about those identities, and it is possible that the characters are a little interchangeable as a result. But I have tried to avoid stereotypes and to treat each character respectfully.

TV: Has having to be your own PR department and community manager without the insulation afforded by a large publisher been a blessing or a curse?

DP: After years in AAA games, I still find it refreshing that I can be so transparent about what I'm working on and why. I think it fosters a better relationship between developers and players (or developers and press) when we can speak directly and honestly with each other.

TV: What can we look forward to next from Minor Key?

DP: Our next planned title is Kyle's Gunmetal Arcadia, an NES-styled platformer roguelike set in a war-torn fantasy world. He is documenting its progress weekly at its devlog: http://gunmetalarcadia.com/wordpress/
And coming out very soon is a big update and relaunch for Super Win the Game, with new content, enhancements, and a lower price tag.

TV: My editor is Austrian and is curious about the German subtitle. What lead to that choice?

DP: In the very early days of NEON STRUCT, I wanted a non-English title that might evoke the globetrotting nature of the game. I tried the phrase "the eyes of the world" in a number of languages, and chose German because I liked the sound and because one of the later levels is set in Hamburg.

This week, I’d like to talk about the contrast – at least for me – with indie games.  I will [and have] paid full price for many an indie game and you know what?  Often, those indie games have rewarded me with far more interesting experiences than most regular AAA games have.

In years past, when the indie scene was also the shareware scene, it was easy-ish to make a demo, get it submitted to a shareware library and see how it did.  If it didn’t pan out, that was fine.  The world of shareware was such that you could always just put on a new name and try again with a different demo.

The internet has made that nigh-on impossible.  Some of this, of course, is bad, because we’ve seen people actively be pushed out of development as a result of perspectives they hold that aren’t related to gaming [or that are, but which are entirely just opinions.] So, in the modern era, your reputation as an indie studio matters.  Make a good game and that reputation will follow you all over the place.  Make a bad game and you’ll probably end up in some kind of trouble, because someone will rip you to shreds.

The matters.  Especially when the indie studios are often willing to talk back to their fan-base, something that an EA or an Activision basically refuse to do.

As an actual, bona fide indie, though, there are lots of things that you can try that an AAA would never bother with.  Do you want to make your game more story heavy and less fixated on mechanics?  You can do that.  Do you want to try different genre mash ups to see what sticks?  You can do that.  Do you want to go retro with your graphical style and make your game stand out that way?  You can do that.

By not having to walk the tight rope of being every game to every gamer, indie games have been able to champion ideas, graphical themes and styles and game play ideas that AAA developers would never bother touching.

Would I buy a game made by Yacht Club Games again?  Yes.  In a heart-beat.  They’ve proven that they can deliver quality and that they know their name counts for something.

The same is true of the more modern indie games I’ve bought.  Almost all of these have turned out far better than any of the more modern AAA releases I’ve even thought about picking up.

While this might be at least a little true, it is arguably also true about AAA games.  There is a lot of dreck out in AAA land.  Dreck that never gets tested properly.  Poor games that merely exist to sell you more of themselves.  Surprisingly awful games that have very little challenge, because they have to be everything to everyone.

Since that is the case – according to me, anyway – I will keep the indie games I love close at hand.  AAA development studios could certainly never pen a Primorida or a To The Moon, and I am grateful both of those games exist.