Star Fox Designer Says No to Wii Version

dartmonkey said:
So because a game sells well that means it wasn\'t criticised by people who bought it?

While the terms and breakdown differ from site to site, these are the general strokes that hardcore gamers and the gaming press look at to determine the quality of any given title. To Microsoft, and Sony, and other developers, that value canvas is everything. Graphics and sound, concept, and time define the box within which classic game companies must develop their content.

The Larger Picture

For Nintendo\'s titles, however, that\'s only part of the picture. While they also incorporate Graphics, Concept, and Playtime into their development, the importance of these values is purposely reduced. According to their strategy, Nintendo has added two new values which were never present in games before. The purpose of these values is to attract new customers who wouldn\'t be playing games otherwise.

The first broad value is Accessability. While this value may have had glimpses in some reviews of the past, calling out games that were \"easy to learn but hard to master\", Nintendo has taken the term to a whole new level. Its products strip away the years of gameplay experience required by most titles and instead provide an interface that everyone from little Timmy to Grandma can jump into. This is done by more than just the Wii Remote, but is also reinforced by simplified game design, positive encouragement, and familiar content such as real life sports or activities that any player would already understand.

The second new value is Peripheral Benefit, or the idea that the player will actually enrich their life via playing the game. Thought possibly more perceived than factual, players of Nintendo\'s games desire more than entertainment. They want to engage in media that better their health, their skills, their talents, and their lives.

To consumers who would certainly not call themselves gamers, Nintendo\'s mid-scoring games are, in fact, the only games that attract them.

These two values are at the heart of Nintendo\'s breakaway software success. But because these are disruptive values that are not within the traditional games industry, they do not show up on Metacritic when they are first released. The gaming press does not have accessability or peripheral benefit on their radar. Thus, when we look at the Metacritic scores of Nintendo\'s products of this type, they are inaccurate to assess the perceived quality of the title. When Metacritic looks at Big Brain Academy, it scores low, because it is low on the traditional values of the games industry. But when non-gamers look at the same title, they see a product of great quality.

Note that not all of Nintendo\'s successful titles appeal to accessibility and peripheral benefit. Super Mario Galaxy makes no attempt at enriching the player\'s life beyond entertainment, nor does Donkey Kong Barrel Blast, which scored a dismal 46 on Metacritic. However, these titles still benefit from the incredible momentum and brand recognition that comes from their other titles.

\"I should point out this isn\'t a game.\"

The quote above, taken from IGN\'s an review of Personal Trainer: Cooking, is exemplary of the changes that are occuring behind the most popular review sites and magazines. Reviewers whose evaluations end up on Metacritic look at games from the traditional view and by traditional values. They aren\'t yet trained to understand or even recognize the two new values that Nintendo\'s titles introduce. Asking a game journalist to review Personal Trainer: Cooking or Wii Fit is like asking a movie critic to review a Tae-Bo exercise video. Imagine the review: \"There\'s no plot or character development.\" \"The camera work and cinematography is shoddy.\" \"The setting and the stage is inadequate.\" They will be completely missing the point.

However, this will not be the case forever. As Nintendo and other companies continue to cash in on games that score high with peripheral benefit and accessibility, Metacritic will calibrate itself to accomodate these new values and, in time, adopt the values that Nintendo has created. When games with these new values were originally released, Metacritic reviewers had no frame of reference, and so, not knowing what to do, they assumed that it must be average. No matter how good the game is, since the gaming press was incapable of understanding the new values, they gave it an average review in the 60\'s range.

. Asking a game journalist to review Personal Trainer: Cooking or Wii Fit is like asking a movie critic to review a Tae-Bo exercise video. Imagine the review: \"There\'s no plot or character development.\" \"The camera work and cinematography is shoddy.\" \"The setting and the stage is inadequate.\" They will be completely missing the point.

RATGUOF said:And statistically how much of these fans exist? Because they sound like a very few. And if I look back at TP\'s Reception I find mostly good reviews & it sold well too.

Robertd1138 said:
The fans who complain aren't the same ones who review the games. Also, the fans who complained still bought the game.

I think this is also an example of the silent majority. The extremist are always the ones who talk. The guys who think the game is so amazing that they crapped their pants shout it from the roof tops. The guys who think that the game sucked filled up the message boards with rants. The other 95% of people played the game, enjoyed it, and silently sold it on eBay 6 months later.

(sorry, when I posted this I didn't realize these comments ere 3 pages long).

knighty said:
I've never understood the animosity towards Krystal. Why do you guys hate her?

knighty said:
Well I suppose if you know the history it kinda sucks. Since Krystal was of course a cat and Nintendo decided to turn her into the love interest but I don't see any reason to hate her more than Slippy

knighty said:
Most of the stuff that comes up is just....terrible <_<

knighty said:
Me too

knighty said:
You\'re REALLY never seen any pics? Google brah.

Actually google sucks for things like this. Most of the stuff that comes up is just....terrible <_<