Well, there are a couple of problems with trying to use metacritic to attach my claim.
Metacritic is an aggregated rating site. This means they pull in ratings from many places and put it all together with their magic formula's to determine the final score. This means metacritic is not a valid measure of reviews of actual players because it also pulls in the reviews of the gaming journalism sites we're referring to.
71% and 80% are considered very very poor ratings, so even if you try to claim they weight the user ratings more (they probably do) they scored very badly.
http://kotaku.com/metacritic-matters-how-review-scores-hurt-video-games-472462218
Last night, Obsidian's Chris Avellone tweeted an interesting detail about his roleplaying game Fallout: New Vegas.
"[Fallout: New Vegas] was a straight payment, no royalties," he said in response to a fan question about the game's financial success. "Only a bonus if we got an 85+ on Metacritic, which we didn't."
And the story is that the bonus was worth at least $1 million.
Also, more importantly, who cares if she did or didn't have sex with the reviewer. He never reviewed her game. So she was not sleeping with him in an attempt to get a better review score.
He didn't explicitly review her game, but he did write about her game, which is publicity for her. And he did so WITHOUT being forthcoming about his relationship (and it's not the only time he's done that, after gamergate started many people investigated and caught him doing it several times).
And your article is not the only thing he wrote about that involved her, in fact I've read that article before and didn't realize it was written by him. There's one other article I know for sure he was talking about her game without explicitly reviewing it.
Ultimately, the issue isn't that they were sleeping together. The issue is that he was talking about her game and wasn't forthright about the relationship. I don't think anyone would've had a major issue if he had said something along the lines of "Just an FYI, I'm involved with the developer of game X so I'm probably a bit biased, but I really think this is a great game and here's why...".
But he didn't do that. That's where it becomes unethical.
Judges are required to recuse themselves when there's a conflict of interest. It's unethical not to. Judges are held to a higher standard than gaming journalists for very good reasons, but that doesn't mean we shouldn't expect (or want or strive for) that sort of ethical behavior in the journalists we trust when making decisions on where to spend our money.
The topic is what controversial opinions do you hold. I told my opinion. You are the one who are coming in and proving my point.
Sorry, no, I'm going to hold your ear to the fire here.
You claimed that people are shitty to you whenever you bring this topic up, I pointed out that the only one being shitty in this conversation was you. And you never denied it because you know you started this conversation off in a very shitty manner, but didn't get responded to in kind.
You KNOW that's true, so you're trying to defend yourself by claiming it was just an opinion. That wasn't the point. It isn't why I brought it up, just give that point up. Maybe apologize? edit your original post so it's a bit more mild? Where do you think these "shitty converstations" start? What if I had responded in kind, do you think we'd still be having a relatively polite conversation about it?
I'm a little curious. Gamergate stuff aside, do you think there is a problem with sexism in the gaming community? Because that is what my anger is about.
No. I think these companies appeal to their target demographic and it's why gamergate never succeeded (and never will).
Young teenage boys are horny little shits (I used to be one) and watching that one horrific character from FFXV is actually titillating to them (I forget her name, the trucker chick. I called her tits mcgee). I made fun of the character as I thought she was outlandish. Or Fiore Brunelli from the newest Star Ocean game. I just could not take her seriously as "one of the world’s leading signeturgists".
I don't play the likes of CoD or Battlefield because I cut my teeth on Unreal Tournament and think the idea of levels or leveling up is bullshit in a multiplayer FPS.
I often find myself not able to get into JRPG's, even though I love the genre, because I can no longer identify with the drama riddled kids who are the usual protagonist for the games.
But I also realize I'm not their demographic. It doesn't mean these companies hate old people, it just means they target young people.
If women want to start being targeted for these games, they need to start playing them. When the Wii came out and pubstomped all the other consoles, everyone realized that hey, you know, going for the casual market is pretty darned profitable.
Women need to do the same thing.
Because the way these groups go about doing it, by injecting a trans character into a game just to force it down people's throat, isn't the way to do it. I absolutely adored Kaine in Nier, she was easily my favorite character and that didn't change when I found out she was trans. I didn't find that out until I read about it later because I've have a habit of not replaying games. But it made her even more interesting and caused me to put Nier BACK into my backlog of games to play because I'd like to experience the full story.
But that's a well written character with a phenomenal voice actor that happens to be trans. This is different from walking up to a character and having them almost immediately informing you that they're gay/trans/whathaveyou. I don't want it forced down my throat, especially after all the bullshit with gamergate.
And I think most gamers are like me in that respect. They ultimately don't care as long as the game is entertaining and the stories/characters are interesting. But when people's agendas start showing up in the games over and over, it gets old. And it actively makes the game less.