It sits there on Metacritic's page like a baleful and accusing eye. It's the only one of its kind on that page, as of the time of this writing, a red square with a number "45" on it, and the name "Armchair Empire" next to that. It is the review I submitted for Diablo III. Right now, it's probably the most viewed page on our site. I remember the email that Jeff Nash sent me after the review went up while I was at E3. "Should be interesting to see how people react to the score. I suspect some hilarious comments will be forthcoming."
In this respect, our fearless leader was not wrong.
I've been accused of idiocy, cluelessness, blind hatred of Blizzard, and insanity. What is interesting, however, is that these comments have been in the minority. A rather small minority, at that. Meanwhile, the overwhelming majority of comments on the review have been along the lines of "Thank you! Finally, somebody's telling the truth!" While I'm understandably pleased to have people thank me for my work, I've also been slightly puzzled about the volume of it.
Over the course of a month, that one review is probably gaining at least as many hits as the main page of the site. And all because I didn't pull any punches about the singularly most anticipated title of the year. Not even Assassin's Creed III has as many people looking forward to it as there were people waiting for Diablo III. "Surely," I thought, "I can't really be the only dissenting voice on this thing, can I?"
As it turns out, I am.
I hadn't even looked at Metacritic until one of the commenters mentioned my review was the only one out of 80 (at that time) which wasn't categorized as either positive or neutral. A lot of the usual suspects like IGN and GameSpot were tossing out the happy high scores. There were several sites I'd visited infrequently which seemed to be scoring it unusually high, despite pointing out several of the same flaws that I'd noted in my review. What was the deal here? Were they really so enamored of the character models and slightly destructible environments that they couldn't see how fundamentally shallow and unsatisfying the gameplay was? I really have no answers, and no good way of obtaining them.
Those of us who review games might commiserate about bad games we've played and good games we've enjoyed when we run into each other at press events, but there seems to be a sort of gentleman's agreement that we don't knock each other's reviews in the press. Part of it is that we know our work is subjective; that there is literally no method of accounting for taste, and publicly denouncing other site's reviews isn't that much more evolved from schoolkids yelling, "You suck! No, you suck!"
Part of it is that, with the number of game sites out there and the global scope of the Internet, no one site can effectively engage in the sort of promotional efforts you find with other media outlets like newspapers, TV stations, or broadcast networks. Those of us who are purely online journalists, and specifically those who cover the games industry, have no equivalent like the Peabodys, the Emmys, or the Pulitzer to point to and say, "We rule!" Our content is the only thing we have going for us. Our names and reputations are not nearly as solid as Edward R. Murrow, Walter Cronkite, Dan Rather, Katie Couric, or Roger Ebert. The Internet is ultimately democratic. One day we're up, the next we're down.
What I found particularly interesting was that, while the critic sites seemed completely in agreement that Diablo III was a great game, the user reviews on Metacritic and elsewhere seemed to suggest the exact opposite.
There were some seriously pissed off game owners, and behind the anger was a strong current of something stronger than mere buyer's remorse, a sense that a lot of us had been wearing beer goggles for over a decade and they had finally come off. The horror. Dear God, the horror.
I've heard the argument that no game could have met the expectations that some fans had for Diablo III, a refrain very similar to what some people said about Duke Nukem Forever when it came out, and which I have a lot less sympathy for given the former game's rather public development process. I've heard the fanboys' shriek that the game is awesome and everybody who doesn't agree is a traitor to the cause of Blizzard. And yet, there's that lopsided disparity between good and bad user reviews.
It's the people who found the grind to be too naked, too obvious, and not nearly as much fun as they'd been promised. It's the people who see the gold farmers and cheaters despite being told that the persistent connection would eliminate those undesirables.
It's the players who wanted to play a good game and received something worth far less than the $60 they laid out for, their faith forsaken, their trust in Blizzard betrayed, and for what?
For "features" that they never use? For the dubious privilege of paying money for gear that they might just as easily grind for and maybe get the drop they need? I'm reminded of one of Al Pacino's last lines from The Insider. "What got broken here doesn't go back together." Whatever the intention might have been, good or ill, Blizzard broke faith with more players than they kept it with. And the players are pissed about it.
So why am I the only critic in the room calling Blizzard out for their failures? Despite some of the more creative conspiracy theories, there's not any sort of "payola" going around in the gaming press, least not from what I've been able to gather from shooting the breeze with other journalists at various events.
I can't chalk it up to ignorance or stupidity, since they did notice the same flaws I pointed out, and wrote about them.
It might be fear of offending the giants, lest they be excluded, but that doesn't make too much sense given that particularly large outfits like IGN could theoretically refocus their resources to a more investigative style journalism in the game space if the publishers stop being so chatty. At the very least, it wouldn't hurt their profit margins awfully much if they had to start buying games on launch day in order to start reviewing.
Maybe it's a mindset, the idea that big publishers deserve big scores because they are big. Or maybe it's my mindset, the idea that it's my duty to review the games and raise hell, which seems to be the problem. I don't claim to be infallible. Remember, I was excited about Star Wars: The Old Republic and that has fizzled out horribly despite a good launch. Not too dissimilar to Diablo III, if you want to think about it.
I won't claim that everything I say about games are right. I can only say that what I say about a game is my honest appraisal of the title at that moment. Would I have given Diablo III the score it got if I'd been invited by Blizzard to a press event being held for it? Maybe, maybe not. Might have been higher, might have been lower. Whatever might have been, I came to my conclusions, I gave my score, and it is notable only because it is singularly unique insofar as the critic reviews go. It is not wrong, merely different.
And so it goes. There are other games than these, and they need to be reviewed. I'm strangely thankful for everybody who has commented so far on the article, be it good, bad, or ugly. Whether or not you agree, I am gratified to know the players still give a damn about the games. Thank you.
- Axel Cushing
