Giant Bomb Bomb-All

GOTY discussion spoilers in case you care:

Spoiler:

Abby's, and to a lesser extent Vinny's, arguments in favor of Dream Daddy were impressive because they managed to sway Jeff, who played it and didn't like it, and someone else who I can't remember over to putting it on the list. That's how it should go. You personally may not like a thing, but you can be convinced if someone else in the group makes a good argument for it.

Dan obviously doesn't subscribe to that. That'd be one thing if you make a strong counter argument. Dan being Dan, that obviously didn't happen, and his argument came down to "I thought it was dumb and I haven't played any other dating sims, but I assume it doesn't do anything different, which is somehow a metric now, so this shouldn't be on the list. Reading words is hard why can't I skip them and punch some dudes?"

Yeah Dan can get annoying at time I don't think he should really say anything if he can't add anything constructive to the argument. I hate walking simulators with a passion but I'm not gonna sit there and just say they're bad because I don't like them.

GB's approach to GOTY is always interesting and frustrating. I like that it's not just a straight-up vote, and appreciate that pushing for a consensus sometimes allows for the passion of one or two people to be enough to get a game on the list, but the downside of this is that if someone is going to be particularly stubborn about their pick (e.g. Brad with Destiny 2) or if there is relatively equal support for a handful of choices (e.g. the 2-4 places in "Best Surprise") the determining factor seems to be who is the most stubborn/who is quickest to say "fine, drop my thing so we can move on." I always found the way Patrick talked about GB GOTY stuff (cackling about some imagined Machiavellian strategies of back-stabbing and vote-swapping) to be really off-putting. I like a good debate, but a good debate does not include people repeating the same arguments ad nauseam, or threatening to make everyone stay all night. Especially as the staff expands, I think it would be wise of them to set a time limit on this stuff--allow enough time to discuss every game, let everyone make their arguments, and if they still can't come to a consensus then put it to a vote or even just say Jeff's the EIC and he gets to make the call (based on his sense of the staff's view, not his own preference). I doubt they'll ever do that, but man, when they just go in circles for hours on end about the same arguments--especially when it's not even for the winner of a category--I start to wonder what I'm getting out of listening to this.

mrlogical wrote:

I start to wonder what I'm getting out of listening to this.

The correct answer is "26 hours closer to death."

Abby argued from a personal POV the entire time which is problematic from a rhetoric standpoint. She starts a lot of her statements with "I feel", "I think" and "I [verb]", which inherently makes it sound like what she's talking about is applicable to herself, but not others.

There's a subtle difference between:
"I had a lot of fun. I enjoyed the music. I engaged with the mechanics"
and
"The game was a lot of fun, had good music and engaging mechanics."

The former is a passive opinion stating ones experience. The latter is an active argument stating the "objective" merits of that experience.

Incidentally, this passive style of debate is more widespread among women than men (according to rhetoric professors I've taken courses with / books on presence/speech delivery, it's an issue of society conditioning women to bias towards politeness). I think most of the GB guys recognize this and actively worked to engage with Abby's intent rather than her delivery.

Dan (much as I love him) did not.

Rhetoric is a fascinating art. I wish schools still taught it as part of core curriculum.

Grubber788 wrote:

There's a subtle difference between:
"I had a lot of fun. I enjoyed the music. I engaged with the mechanics"
and
"The game was a lot of fun, had good music and engaging mechanics."

The former is a passive opinion stating ones experience. The latter is an active argument stating the "objective" merits of that experience.

The thing is, those first statements are true. There is no "objectively" fun game.

Valmorian wrote:
Grubber788 wrote:

There's a subtle difference between:
"I had a lot of fun. I enjoyed the music. I engaged with the mechanics"
and
"The game was a lot of fun, had good music and engaging mechanics."

The former is a passive opinion stating ones experience. The latter is an active argument stating the "objective" merits of that experience.

The thing is, those first statements are true. There is no "objectively" fun game.

There is also no objective person, which applies both ways. My antipathy for Dan's whole shtick certainly colored how I receive what he's saying even when I agree, and him saying "BotW is a masterpiece" is colored by him using the same word for Mario Parties 1-9.

Don't forget that he really loves Mario Sunshine.

And he picks popcorn containers out of the trash to scam free refills.

He's entertaining, but I'd be fine if his vote wasn't counted for GotY.

Abby definitely resorted to the "it was very fun to me" kind of statements a bit too often, I agree, but I think it's because she's not used to defending her subjective tastes as much as everyone else is. I think by the end she was learning from Vinny and Alex how to give specific examples to describe why something works well for you, and hopefully she will be able to punch harder next year.

SpacePPoliceman wrote:

There is also no objective person, which applies both ways.

Huh? All I'm saying that that the value in any piece of entertainment is going to be subjective, so the sooner people stop being obsessed with the "objective" viewpoint when talking about things like "fun" and "engaging" the better.

Valmorian wrote:
SpacePPoliceman wrote:

There is also no objective person, which applies both ways.

Huh? All I'm saying that that the value in any piece of entertainment is going to be subjective, so the sooner people stop being obsessed with the "objective" viewpoint when talking about things like "fun" and "engaging" the better.

I'm agreeing with you, and adding a furthermore. Fun is subjective and people, even using the language of objectivity, are too. Abby saying "I thought this was fun" carries more weight with me than Dan saying "This was fun" because I respect Abby's opinion more.

SpacePPoliceman wrote:

I'm agreeing with you, and adding a furthermore. Fun is subjective and people, even using the language of objectivity, are too. Abby saying "I thought this was fun" carries more weight with me than Dan saying "This was fun" because I respect Abby's opinion more.

Ah.. Yeah, Dan frustrates me, but I'm glad he's on the podcast because he makes a good foil and adds needed conflict.

Valmorian wrote:
Grubber788 wrote:

There's a subtle difference between:
"I had a lot of fun. I enjoyed the music. I engaged with the mechanics"
and
"The game was a lot of fun, had good music and engaging mechanics."

The former is a passive opinion stating ones experience. The latter is an active argument stating the "objective" merits of that experience.

The thing is, those first statements are true. There is no "objectively" fun game.

Hence "objective" in quotes. As I said, the distinction is subtle, but not immaterial. Both statements are truth, but they are nuanced.

kuddles wrote:

Abby definitely resorted to the "it was very fun to me" kind of statements a bit too often, I agree, but I think it's because she's not used to defending her subjective tastes as much as everyone else is. I think by the end she was learning from Vinny and Alex how to give specific examples to describe why something works well for you, and hopefully she will be able to punch harder next year.

I agree. I work in consulting and have to coach our young associates on how to present in front of clients. Abby's got a lot of enthusiasm for sharing and defending her opinions. She just needs a little practice. But for someone so (relatively) inexperienced, she's killing it.

Grubber788 wrote:

Hence "objective" in quotes. As I said, the distinction is subtle, but not immaterial. Both statements are truth, but they are nuanced.

The "nuance" there is navel-gazing. A reasonable person should understand that those are the same statements, but that the second set is made without the admission of subjectivity.

Valmorian wrote:
Grubber788 wrote:

Hence "objective" in quotes. As I said, the distinction is subtle, but not immaterial. Both statements are truth, but they are nuanced.

The "nuance" there is navel-gazing. A reasonable person should understand that those are the same statements, but that the second set is made without the admission of subjectivity.

Grubber788 wrote:

I think most of the GB guys recognize this and actively worked to engage with Abby's intent rather than her delivery.

Dan (much as I love him) did not.

Some people are bad at that sort of reasoning. Persuasion is a valuable skill precisely because people are unreasonable. If they weren't, I wouldn't have a job!

kuddles wrote:

Abby definitely resorted to the "it was very fun to me" kind of statements a bit too often, I agree, but I think it's because she's not used to defending her subjective tastes as much as everyone else is. I think by the end she was learning from Vinny and Alex how to give specific examples to describe why something works well for you, and hopefully she will be able to punch harder next year.

I agree with this 100%, and I think that's the biggest reason why it rubbed me the wrong way. She's new, and she's learning. I wish I didn't hold that against her in the overall GotY podcasts, but I do. If that's my fault, then so be it - I simply thought she was the weakest link, especially after hearing "it's a very fun game and very cool" for 26 hours. She'll get better. Hell, I used to think Drew was boring until he finally spoke up more.

(To be fair, Dan was the next weakest link this year, but I do feel he had some good arguments outside of the "I didn't play the game so it's obviously the worst and stupid and dumb and lame" schtick that got old awhile ago).

When you're trying to sway people to your side who may not have liked or played a game, "I liked X" really has to be accompanied with "...because." The because is the heart of a strong argument, and it's also the heart of a good game review. I think what we're seeing is Abby's lack of experience in that space. It's a skill, she'll learn, and I think she's starting from a strong place. Dan will probably never stop being this though.

Made it through to the end, and I think I figured out what was bugging me.

Abby (and I really like Abby a lot) seemed to spend most of her time in the GOTY segment arguing against Nier and for Cuphead. Like, her main goal seemed to be moving Nier down on the list, and getting Cuphead to the top. The problem was that she never really built a strong case for Cuphead aside from "it was really fun, it was a tight, complete package." She said "let's move Cuphead up" a LOT, but never gave any further justification for it. She also constantly said "let's move Nier down" but without any solid reasons. That's mostly because she only played a quarter or less of it, which is fair. Except that the other people gave counter arguments, and at one point Jeff said "Yeah, I stopped exactly where you did for about a month, then came back and thought it was one of the best games of the year." Her argument that it asked way too much of the player kind of falls apart a bit when Cuphead is one of those games with a really high difficulty bar and also asks a lot of the player.

So I think the root of my frustration is that by the time you've narrowed the list down to the top 10 and are just debating positioning, everyone has to kind of agree that these games are all good, and the arguments should be "in a pool of very good games, these are the things I think this game does better", not "I hated this game, and it doesn't deserve to be higher." I think either Dan or Jeff even said "Look, I played game X, I didn't like it, but I think the arguments presented in favor of it have convinced me it belongs where it does." We needed more of that kind of thinking this year.

Yeah, I thought her gunning for Nier was a bit odd in light of how passionate Alex was for the game.

But then again she did note 2B's pandering upskirt sexualization, poor level design, empty overworld, drab color palette, last-gen graphics fidelity, unappealing soundtrack and more as dings against the game. So in that light I can understand why a complete package like Cuphead would be more appealing to her.

I just felt bad 'cause Alex was so passionate about the game on a personal level. I mean at that point, what does the specific order of 2-10 even matter?

I was right there with Alex. Nobody was arguing that the things Abby mentioned as negatives were negatives. They definitely said the sexualization was problematic, though they also pointed out that the game at least attempted to justify that. There is a case to be made that the graphical fidelity was a function of budget and that they attempted to work with it as much as they could. I've got no argument for the invisible walls, because they bugged me too, and she's just insane about the soundtrack.

What it came down to with Nier is the emotional connection. That won't hit everyone, and I think it hit me and Alex more than most. The problem is that she kept saying things weren't there, except they were, she just didn't get far enough to find them. The counter she had was that it's asking too much to have to play more than eight hours to find stuff. My rebuttal was that if you know a game is long, you can't expect it to give you everything it has in the first 1/4, especially if it's doing a setup/turnabout thing. I'd counter her by saying that I'm bouncing off Cuphead because it requires that the player repeat every stage a LOT, and I don't like that, so it's bad.

Having never touched either, Cuphead leads with its best quality. I can look at it, having never played it, and know that it's something special.

You show me Nier, and it tells me nothing about why I should give a crap about it. And you tell me that it wants eight hours of my life that I'll never get back before I get to the parts that will tell me whether I should give a crap about it or not, and I do not want to give it those eight hours.

It's not the player's job to give a long game a long time to prove itself. It's a long game's job to entice a player to give it their time. If it doesn't, that's a HUGE flaw.

But that's subjective. I had a desire to go back to Nier pretty much throughout, even when individual sections were annoying me. With Cuphead, I played through the first handful of stages two weeks ago, and I know I should go back to it, but I have no real desire to.

Some books/movies/games are harder to appreciate than others. That can be a stumbling block, but I don't think it should be an inherent flaw.

A lot of GB liked Cuphead. A lot of GB liked Nier. Alex was far more passionate about Nier than anyone else was about Cuphead. Seemed like a simple and obvious conclusion of who should end up ahead on this mostly arbitrary and meaningless list.

I dunno. I didn't find Abby's attack on Nier any different from Jeff with the Breath of the Wild, for example. If people are arguing how high to put a game on a top ten list, especially as the "best game of the year" and that game didn't resonate at all, you're going to feel aggressive. I mean, I have felt really exhausted listening to podcasts in previous years where they spend several hours arguing about the top 3 in a GOTY list and I personally didn't enjoy playing 2 of them. Having a website you work for give "#1 of the year" to something you were ambivalent about is going to feel distasteful

hbi2k wrote:

You show me Nier, and it tells me nothing about why I should give a crap about it. And you tell me that it wants eight hours of my life that I'll never get back before I get to the parts that will tell me whether I should give a crap about it or not, and I do not want to give it those eight hours.

Yeah, that's why I empathised with her complaints. If a game doesn't grab me at all, telling me "it gets good after a few hours" is already a turn-off, let alone "it gets good the 2nd time you complete it."

Chaz wrote:

But that's subjective.

So is literally everything under discussion.

So, I kinda bowed out of talking about the GOTY podcasts after saying I enjoyed them immensely. I don't really see the need to nitpick about people's opinions. That's always been what the show has been about. People just throwing out opinions and hot takes to rile up the podcasters and listeners. It's all good fun. Somehow they always end up in a place I find satisfying even though it never agrees with my favorites.

All that said, there has been some NieR Automata talk on this last page. As someone who unabashedly loved it, I do find the complaints about the shortcomings to miss the whole point of that game. It objectively will be an extremely influential game, just like Breath of the Wild over the next couple decades. Its influence will be on how you can use game narrative and the game medium to tell a story that's unlike anything else movies and video games have done up until now. Unfortunately, Alex didn't really harp on that point. NieR: Automata is the antithesis of Naughty Dog game narrative. You look at how many developers put it in their top 10 lists, and it's apparent how it's a game that people who are just immersed in video games will obsess over because it does so many unique and original things that haven't been done before in just such a way.

Unfortunately, to get to the point where you realize that means you have to look past a few shortcomings that aren't game-breaking, thankfully, and you have to dump a dumptruck's worth of your life hours into the game which is a lot to ask of anyone.

Sidenote: The game's horniness and objectification is a very interesting subject to tackle. Honestly? The game wouldn't have done nearly, nearly as well and gained the foothold when it came out earlier this year. That said, it does objectify 2B and A2 as Abby pointed out and it made her uncomfortable and didn't feel right to her at all even though she seems to be very comfortable with all that in games and media. I put a fair amount of thought into it, and I actually think it handles things pretty well and doesn't get into the realm of objectification for objectification's sake. It's commenting on objectification and also commenting on the fact that human's are generally objectively horny beings. So, there's that in case anyone was interested. This should probably all be in the NieR thread. Oh well.

Maybe also for the Nier thread, but it's an experience that stands out regardless. Abby raised the issues of Nier's objectifying, but having not played it (though the general passion, despite this issue and others highlighted have made me think I should give it a gander) I had no real context. Not long after I'm browsing a site that has a Nier article with an animated gif of the lead standing. It was an article with a pretty innocuous thesis about, like, level design or something similar. And yet. And yet there was still some manner of wind blast in the skirt area that resulted in a full bore panty shot. Now, I still want to check the game out and tuff, I'd esteem your cred at the "mad" level, so if you say there's commentary to that, I buy it. Still, it was a "Oh. Oh, okay, yeah" moment.

Well, the game forces you to self destruct a woman to get her skirt off, so yeah, I think that's commentary on objectification. I think arguing that Yoko Taro and the devs are just a bit too horny is also a valid argument, though.

The bleeped out word that can be taken as

Spoiler:

f*ck or kill

is another fascination of mine.

Saying something is a commentary on objectification does sound like having having your cake and eating it too. Also, it falls kind of flat when the actual creator says stuff that suggests he did it because he's a pervert, not to make a statement.