Of course the FF7 remake was too good to be true

As we all know, Square recently announced the remake to FF7 that we've all essentially been begging for since they trolled us with the Playstation 3 tech demo so many years ago. Director Tetsuya Nomura will be helming it and so far all we know about platforms is that it will be releasing on the Playstation 4. So far so good. But of course, Square wasted no time with destroying the hype, as immediately when asked about if the story will remain the same or feature new elements, Nomura responded, "We've announced an HD port version on the Playstation 4, and then we have the remake coming to PS4. You'll have this extremely, very, very pretty FFVII existing on the same plane. We feel that if that happens, it's like, why have the same exact game?" Yeah I dunno Nomura, it's almost like you're doing a remake and not an original game. And then when asked about if the gameplay would at least remain intact, Nomura again responds that there will be "dramatic changes" to the combat.

Oh for god sakes. YOU HAD ONE JOB SQUARE. ONE JOB. Just make a straight remake of FF7 with modern production values and that's it. Guaranteed dollar bills pouring in so fast that it would cave in through the rooftops. I mean it literally doesn't get any easier than that. But whatever, let's break this down for a moment. I love how he's treating this "HD" port as if it's already a sufficient alternative if you want to go back and relive the original game. No dude, the entire reason why fans were clamoring for a remake for so long was that we wanted to play the original game with better graphics, because the reality is, those chibi field models look like ass.

Seriously. What the hell am I looking at here?

It's not even that the game's graphics haven't aged well; the truth of the matter is those models always looked awful, even from day one. And that's the number one reason I hear that modern gamers tend to shy away from it. It just looks atrocious. That is to be more specific, the graphics are atrocious. The actual gameplay and story itself still holds up fantastically well. Many of the story's themes are still very relevant. There's no reason to change anything there. Has Square learned nothing from the success of Bravely Default? Square seems so scared that a traditional JRPG can't hold up in a modern market that it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. They try to make their JRPGs "streamlined" for the modern gamer so as to try and appeal to a broader audience, and then you get stuff like FFXIII that performs poorly with fans and critics, and then they turn around and conclude, "Clearly JRPGs can't survive in a modern market, we need to modernize it more." NO genius, it's precisely because you tried to deviate from the original formula too much and dumb the game down that it was poorly received. It's not because the traditional JRPG formula doesn't hold up. FFXIII didn't receive a lukewarm response because it was using an aging design formula that only appeals to a niche audience. It was panned because the story was flat, and there wasn't anything to do in the game except run in a straight line and fight; problems that don't exist in previous Final Fantasy games.

We already have examples of successful remakes from FF7's era. Ocarina of Time, Majora's Mask, and Star Fox 64 got some notable graphical overhauls on the 3DS while the gameplay remained almost identical with some slight tweaks. Pokemon X and Y have sold over 12 million copies, and their turn-based combat is more primitive than Final Fantasy's. So maybe it's about time Square takes a cue from Nintendo and have a little faith in their own products.

I'm not normally one to get worked up about changes to source material. I recognize that there are flaws in everything, and there's pretty much always room for improvement. But Final Fantasy VII already is a masterpiece, and it doesn't need much changing. The mini games were arguably the weakest part about the game, with many of them being too basic or gimmicky, and could certainly use some more polish. But Square has no business doing a complete overhaul of the combat, much less any other major aspect of the game.

I guess part of what irks me so much about this remake is that now the game will be introduced to a new generation of gamers, and much like Ocarina of Time and Majora's Mask before it, this remake could have served as a good introduction to some more classic games, which could motivate modern gamers to maybe explore some more classics that they might have missed out on. But now that there's going to be "dramatic changes", modern gamers aren't really getting a taste of gaming history. My worst fear ironically is that this new game might actually turn out great, but not a masterpiece. Because then the majority of gamers will flock to it and sacrifice quality gameplay in favor of shiny graphics because it's merely "good enough", while the original superior game is left in the dust, despite being the superior game, and newer generations will wonder why FF7 is viewed as such a classic.

Well, because you played the watered down botched version, not the iconic masterpiece that it's based on. At least we've still got those mods for the PC version to offer us what apparently Square cannot.

Square is really playing with fire here. They're messing with people's childhoods and taking a huge risk that they really don't have to. Let's not make the same mistake that Devil May Cry did where an unnecessary reinvention alienated its core fanbase and failed to pull in many newcomers either. Tweaks around the edges make sense, but this is supposed to be a remake; not a reboot, and certainly not a new original game either, so let's treat it like one. Hopefully some day Square will realize that if they just embraced their own culture, stopped trying to emulate the Call of Duties of the world, and made a game that is unapologetically a Japanese passion project that celebrates JRPGs, then they can reignite that old spark that once made FF7 so popular in the first place.

Does video game length matter?

Well the big discussion happening this week centers around Ready at Dawn's new Playstation-exclusive release, The Order 1886. It's been getting a lot of flack from critics for being dull and poorly-paced, while another debate is being had by players about the game's supposed short length. Some rumors have spread around that the game only clocks in at about 5 hours of content, and there is no multiplayer mode or additional content to keep you coming back. On the other hand, I've heard some counter-arguments that this is only true if you play through the game as fast as you can while skipping side quests and other additional content within the campaign, but regardless of the game's actual length, I think this is a good segue into a more general discussion about what should and shouldn't be an acceptable length for gameplay time.

I want to start off by saying though that overall I think too much emphasis is placed on game length nowadays; though it also doesn't help that there now exists exploitative DLC schemes that might have exacerbated this issue. In the old days, when a game was released, it was generally considered complete as-is. There was no Internet, no patches to fix bugs, and no DLC to expand the amount of content in the game, so developers couldn't just get away with cutting corners and fixing problems with their games months later down the road while charging you extra for it. Now it seems like everyone has to be on high alert about the amount of content they're getting because it is so easy for developers to just cut something out of the game that would have been in it at release if it weren't for the fact that they can now just cut it out instead and charge extra for it as DLC. As a quick aside, this is one of the reasons why I just hate the concept of DLC in general and I don't think it should exist as a content delivery method at all. If developers want to release more content for a game, it should come in the form of a worthwhile expansion pack that adds a significant amount of gameplay, like Blizzard Entertainment's expansion release paradigm.

But getting back to the topic at hand, when it comes right down to it, I would much rather pay $60 for a game that is a 5-hour blast to play as opposed to a 30-hour generally mediocre experience. Quality of content is far more important than quantity, but at the same time I would be lying if I said that quantity doesn't matter at all. At the end of the day, if a movie like Guardians of the Galaxy for example turned out to be only half an hour long and I went to the movie theater to watch it, I would come out of that theater feeling a bit cheated out of my money, as I'm sure many other people would. So length of content does matter, but I think there's a lot of factors we should consider before writing something off as too short. When it comes to video games in particular, one of the first things I consider is the genre. Video games unlike movies don't have a consistent standard where they almost all fall into a typical length of 1.5 hours to 2.5 hours regardless of genre. With video games the experience can range anywhere from 5 minutes to literally 200 hours of content. Simple puzzle-solving games meant to be played in short bursts like Tetris for example are only going to be 5 minutes on average, while an MMORPG like World of Warcraft can easily surpass 200 hours. It would be completely unreasonable to expect a game like Tetris to offer the same amount of content as World of Warcraft; the genre just doesn't lend itself to offering that much to the player.

But with that being said, this is also where pricing should come into play. Since Tetris is such a short game, it would also be unreasonable to charge the same $60 price tag as a full-fledged AAA title. So as long as developers are properly scaling their prices to the experience you're getting, it's OK to trim the length. As another example, Metal Gear Solid V: Ground Zeroes was priced cheaper at launch than a typical AAA game despite offering AAA production values because the campaign only clocked in at around roughly 2 hours. This makes sense given that you're getting less content than normal for a game of that particular genre. But at some point there is a cutoff for me that usually falls at around 4-5 hours of gameplay, and at that point the amount of content in proportion to the price tag starts to matter far less than the quality of content. Zone of the Enders: The 2nd Runner is a mecha action game that I'd say probably only clocks in around 4 hours, but in that 4 hours you will experience some of the most intense and satisfying mecha combat ever, along with an interesting story that has a large sweeping scope and climactic conclusion. By the time I got to the end of the game, even though I knew it was short, I didn't feel cheated out of my money in the slightest, even though the game was given a full AAA price tag at the time. When it comes right down to it, quality ultimately trumps quantity. So I think the issue is a bit more complicated than just boiling down to a simple price-per-hour formula.

However, I think experimenting with different price points is something that more developers should consider looking into, as there's technically no law that says your game must hit that $60 gold standard, and this could help alleviate problems with many modern games too. A common bad trend I've noticed with the industry is a formula where the game starts out very engaging and story-driven; the developers really try hard to suck you into it, but then after the first couple of hours or so, the gameplay quickly drops off a cliff and is padded out with tons of repetition; usually in the form of performing pointless mundane tasks or grinding out armies of baddies that you have to kill. Eventually the gameplay might start to pick up some steam again towards the end if you're lucky. But generally speaking, all this filler and padding adds up to greatly damaging the overall gameplay experience if it is overused enough, and in no franchise can I think of a better example of this than Assassin's Creed. This is particularly noticeable in the first game, where it starts off incredibly engaging and story-driven; full of mystery and intrigue, interesting characters, and well-paced gameplay, but then about a couple hours into the game the story just evaporates and it mostly leaves you to your own devices. All you can do is travel from city-to-city performing lots of mundane tasks for people around town until you acquire enough information to track your real assassination target. It's all very repetitious and predictable, and not particularly engaging. Because of this, the game really went from a day-one purchase to maybe a rental at best in terms of its value. And the franchise has never really been able to pull itself out of this rut. Even when the series was at its best in Assassin's Creed II, there was still a large segment throughout the middle of the game that eventually devolved into needless tedium. This was most likely done because there is an established precedent and expectation that these games must reach a certain amount of content length in order for the purchase to be "justified". But that's just it; how about instead of filling these games up with boring padding, just adjust the price tag according to the amount of worthwhile content in the game. Cut all the padding out of Assassin's Creed II and make it several hours shorter, but then charge $20-30 less for it. I think this would have been a much better alternative than what we got, and it would have been a stronger game for it. Adding content purely for the sake of having more content doesn't necessarily make a better game.

But jumping back to The Order 1886 for a moment, I think it's rather interesting that people are making a big deal out of this game's length in particular, as there's been plenty of single player games before it that offer similar amounts of content. I think perhaps what is going on is that people are mistaking lack of quality content for lack of quantity, because if the game were as consistently exciting as something like Zone of the Enders 2, I'm sure there would be a lot less complaint about the game's length. But who knows, I haven't actually had a chance to play the game yet myself.

So what do you think? Does game length matter? And if it does, how does it factor into your purchasing decisions? Leave a comment below with your thoughts.

Nintendo's new YouTube Creators Program: Still problematic

Nintendo just recently launched their new "Creators Program", which now allows YouTubers to share ad revenue with Nintendo. To quote directly from their website, "In the past, advertising proceeds that could be received for videos that included Nintendo-copyrighted content (such as gameplay videos) went to Nintendo, according to YouTube rules. Now, through this service, Nintendo will send you a share of these advertising proceeds for any YouTube videos or channels containing Nintendo-copyrighted content that you register."

Am I not merciful?

So first of all, you gotta love that sly wording in Nintendo's statement there. They make it sound as if it's because of YouTube's policies that they were just forced against their own will to take your money and pocket it for themselves. Poor Nintendo, we really feel for you. I know I just get filled with an overwhelming sense of sadness too whenever piles of money are funneled to my PayPal account for content that I didn't even create. Please Nintendo, you're not fooling anyone. We all know it was precisely because you went out of your way to demand that YouTube enforces strict copyright policies on your gameplay footage, which is why everyone keeps getting flagged for it. Your hands aren't tied; it's YouTube that is getting tied, and yet Nintendo is acting like they're offering this program out of the generosity of their hearts, as if no one else would be so considerate as to share ad revenue with content creators... except for Activision, Ubisoft, Sony, Microsoft, Valve, SEGA; hell, even EA. And mind you, all of these companies don't just share revenue, they give all of it to content creators, because these companies understand that YouTube videos already serve as a form of free advertisement for all their games.

This is what drives me nuts about this whole situation with Nintendo. What they're doing here is only hurting them by denying free advertisement for their games, and at a time when they so desperately need it. Angry Joe is a video game critic on YouTube with nearly two million subscribers. He's garnered most of his audience through reviewing games like Grand Theft Auto, Assassin's Creed, DragonAge, Titanfall, and essentially a whole lot of games that are very different in tone and feel from Nintendo's, so this is a potential new market of gamers for Nintendo to reach, but Joe also just recently picked up a Wii U and has expressed a lot of positive things about it, and yet unfortunately he can't really review any games for it because it will get flagged for copyrighted content. So because of Nintendo's YouTube copyright policy, they're actually denying exposure to a potentially whole new audience of over a million people that might have otherwise ignored their games. And that's the most frustrating thing about this; if Nintendo would just let YouTube critics do their job, they don't need all this censorship and control. They would get great glowing reviews on their games anyway. It's not like they need to be hiding opinions about Mario Kart 8 or Super Smash Brothers; pretty much everyone who's played these games will tell you that they've had a blast with them, so it just doesn't make sense that they're discouraging content creators from critiquing them.

Then again, Mario does have a hobby of coin collection.

Even putting aside now that they're at least offering some revenue sharing instead of none, there's still a lot wrong with Nintendo's new policies. First, it's an opt-in program that you have to sign up for before the revenue can apply, and this comes with its own set of rules and caveats too, including stipulations like needing to wait for approval on each video even after you've already signed up for the program. For reviews, this can be especially crippling because many critics aim to have them out before game releases, which is when they can expect to get the most traffic on their viewership. Not to mention that this sets an incredibly bad precedent where Nintendo has free rein to disapprove whatever videos they personally don't like, which could easily result in abuses like denying approval of game reviews simply because they don't agree with the critic's score or opinion.

On top of this, the whole program has potential to get much more insidious, and this partially gets into why I've always had problems with Steam even in spite of all its love and success. I know I'm the bad guy for always hating on Steam, but this is the double-edged sword that is part of how capitalism works. When a company proves that a certain market is viable, you can bet other companies will follow suit, which is why we've now seen the rise of DRM clients like Origin, Uplay, and Battle.net. Valve proved that Steam could work, and now we have a slew of copy-cats each with their own annoying platform that you have to install and load up on your machine every time you want to play a different game. It's annoying, and we shouldn't have to tolerate it. But much like how DRM clients have taken over the PC gaming scene, you can bet that once these other companies see that what Nintendo is doing is actually successful, then they're going to want a slice of that money pie too, and you can expect that you'll find yourself having to sign up for and agree to all sorts of varying different terms and rules from a bunch of different companies every time you want to post gameplay footage of any game on YouTube. This would of course become a figurative paperwork nightmare for the Let's Play scene, so let's just hope this program doesn't succeed.

Now some defenders have argued that they can see why game companies might feel entitled to this money at least for certain games like perhaps RPGs that are heavily story-driven, or a game like Metal Gear Solid where there are long cutscenes and cinematics that make up a large part of the game. I am not in this camp however. As far as I'm concerned, Nintendo is not entitled to this ad revenue at all. It doesn't matter what kind of game we're talking about here. If your gameplay is so poor that someone would go out of their way to only watch videos of it on YouTube to the point that they no longer feel compelled to buy the game, then that's a fundamental problem with your game design, not YouTube content creators. Mass Effect is a story-driven game. I could have just gone on YouTube and watched someone else play it, but I didn't, because it turns out the game is actually fun to play too, and I would only be robbing myself of the full experience if I had skipped out on it. Furthermore, the idea that watching someone else play a video game constitutes as copyright infringement is as silly as suggesting that it should be copyright infringement to showcase your movie collection in spite of not actually showing the video content itself; only the physical DVDs. Watching a game just isn't the same as playing it, and they can't be equivocated. So I'm sorry, but I'm not giving Nintendo a break here. Content creators put a lot of work into their videos outside of just including gameplay footage, and for most YouTubers, the main focus of the video isn't even the gameplay but their commentary over it, which brings me to my next point.

Still some other defenders say who are we to complain; YouTubers should get a real job, which really just exposes how bitter some people are that they couldn't make it doing something they enjoy. It's not the content creator's fault that you chose the profession that you did, and it's not like they didn't put any effort into reaching the status that they have either. Do people really know how hard it is to pick up subscribers? It's not like you can just up and release your first video one day and instantly expect to hit a million views. This rarely happens, and more often than not it can take years of dedication and hard work for someone to build up a subscriber-base to the point that they can actually depend on it for their livelihood. Even for videos as simple as the commentaries I do, between writing the script for them, recording the gameplay footage, recording my voice commentary, designing the graphics for them, editing the footage together in Adobe Premiere, and rendering the video out in Adobe Media Encoder, you're easily looking at 5-10 hours of work for about 5-10 minutes of footage. It's not as simple as it looks, and why shouldn't people be allowed to work jobs that they also happen to enjoy? This is no different from people who make a living off of any other entertainment medium. YouTube has opened up a whole new marketplace of entertainment that has created lots of new jobs for people, many of whom previously had no other reasonable way of earning a living like boogie2988 for example, and I personally think that's fantastic, not something that should be frowned upon.

I want to go on record though and emphasize that while I do find this whole Creators Program petty and stupid on the part of Nintendo, I certainly don't hate them overall as a company, and this is one of the most irritating things about whenever I have to do commentaries like this, because Nintendo already gets such undeserved hate as it is, and the hecklers always take opportunities like this to try and spell doom and gloom for Nintendo, as if this is the last nail in the coffin for them; their glory days have long gone by and they're out of touch with the industry. Never mind that just last generation the Wii outsold both its competitors by over 20 million units, never mind that the 3DS is currently far outselling the PS Vita, never mind that they're now the only company of the Big Three that offers free online play, never mind that they just came out with several critically acclaimed titles that all worked on release; the Nintendo hate wagon prefers to ignore all of this and pretend like Nintendo is somehow going the way of SEGA. The reality is though, Nintendo isn't going anywhere soon, and they've otherwise done a good job with a lot of other things, so let's ground our criticisms with some proper perspective. There's no question that what Nintendo is doing here is bad, but I'm criticizing Nintendo right now because I want them to succeed as a company, not because I want them to fail. Make the right choice, Nintendo. YouTube videos can be free advertisement for your games, and letting content creators post gameplay unrestricted will make your fanbase happier too.

SOE releases free-to-play game for $20

Sony Online Entertainment just recently launched an early access version of their upcoming online zombie survival game, H1Z1. The game obviously takes inspiration from titles like DayZ and WarZ, attempting to create a persistent online world in a zombie apocalypse setting, which is something I'm personally totally OK with, as the original concept behind DayZ is great but has still never really been perfected yet, so I'm all for bringing more competition into this genre until somebody gets it right. Zombie settings in video games of course are hardly something new, but the way in which DayZ brought it to life was really unique because players would actually have to scavenge for food and supplies to survive, and when you die, there is a real sense of permanence to it because you lose all your gear, so getting into a shootout with other players or being chased down by zombies would create some incredibly tense and fun moments.

But of course, Sony only saw dollar signs and had to fuck everything up. Now how did they manage to do this you might ask? Well, H1Z1 is supposed to be a free-to-play game that would be supported through microtransactions. OK, fair enough. Lots of free-to-play games use this model. They gotta make money through it somehow, so as long as it's not pay-to-win, it's all fine, right? Well not really, because even though the game is supposedly "free-to-play", this early access version actually costs $20 upfront. $20 for an incomplete free-to-play game! You can't actually start playing the game until you pay $20. Since when did a free-to-play game cost money upfront?! Is this seriously what the industry has come to at this point? We've gone from developers cutting content out of the game and making us pay separately for day one DLC or disc-locked DLC, to releasing buggy incomplete games that serve as unofficial public beta tests until the developers can patch them up months later, to now just straight up openly telling players "Yeah, we know the game is incomplete, but we're going to release it anyway AND make you pay for it even though it's supposed to be free-to-play." Brilliant Sony! Just brilliant.

Brilliant!

So this just in guys, I guess World of Warcraft is "free-to-play" now! Let's all head on over to WoW, because it's only $15 a month, and after that for the next 30 days, the game is "free-to-play"! Isn't free-to-play just great guys? No, no. Just stop it. You don't just get to change the definition of free-to-play to whatever the hell you want so you can use it as a friendly buzzword to lure in more players. Your game isn't free-to-play if you have to pay $20 for it.

But OK, let's just backtrack a little bit and try to give SOE the benefit of the doubt here. This is after all supposed to be the early access version of the game, and when H1Z1 actually goes live with its full game release, they will probably make it be free-to-play then. But that still doesn't make any sense. Because typically the way the early access model is supposed to work--at least if you're following a good early access model like Minecraft--is that you pay less for supporting the game early into its development because you're technically getting an incomplete product, so it's a reward to dedicated fans who supported it early on that they get to have the game at a cheaper price, and as time goes on with the game's development, the pricing gets more expensive towards its release date. Here they have it completely backwards. You're paying $20 for a game that will eventually just be free-to-play anyway. You don't save any money, and you don't even get a complete game.

But then again, let's still try to give Sony the benefit of the doubt. Maybe they're having trouble getting funding for the game, so this early access model that they're using is their answer to that, but that just raises more questions. Have we forgotten who is producing this title? Sony Online Entertainment. This is not some fresh upstart indie developer hurting for cash. This is a long-established tried-and-true big game publisher. What the hell do they need funding for? So their CEO can make a swimming pool out of dollar bills? They're not an indie developer. They're not struggling for money. Why is Sony even using the early access model in any form? Is this some hugely risky never-been-done-before project? "I don't know guys, the zombie apocalypse setting has never been done before. I've never seen zombies in video games; we're taking a pretty big risk here." Yeah, I'm sure that's what went down when Sony was contemplating development of this game. They have absolutely no reason to be doing this. You have the money, so fund your own damn game Sony, and release it when it's actually ready. Early access is a model that should be used for indie developers looking to seek extra funding to finish development, not big-name publishers that already have the means and resources available to fund their projects.

But OK again, I'm still trying to give Sony the benefit of the doubt here. It does say on their Steam page that they're trying to be as transparent with the game's development as possible, so part of achieving this level of transparency that they're seeking involves getting player feedback in the middle of development so that they can make improvements based on what the players want. OK, that's a noble goal. That's respectable. But then why do you still charge $20?! You don't need to charge $20 if you're just looking for player input with your game. In fact you'd probably get more player input if the game were actually free. It doesn't matter what angle you come at this from. Sony has no excuse for charging $20 for early access.

But it gets worse. So on top of the fact that you have to pay $20 for an incomplete game that is supposed to be free-to-play, from what I hear, it turns out that the microtransaction model is in fact pay-to-win after all, as players who fork over the extra cash get huge advantages over players that don't, and it's practically a necessity to get by in the game. So even after you pay your initial $20, you're still stuck needing to keep paying more in order to accomplish anything in the game. Bravo Sony, you've really set a new standard that even EA would be jealous of.

Yep, better skip this game.

This is really sad and stupid because if Sony would just put their due diligence into properly funding and developing the game, the concept behind it is actually really solid, and it would easily sell and make plenty of money for them without pissing off their customers. This isn't even a controversial or ground-breaking new concept that players might avoid because it's just too strange and unique. This is zombie survival; zombies are one of the most common overused video game tropes in the world. DayZ has already proven to be quite profitable even in its incomplete form. All Sony had to do was just polish it up and offer us a more complete game, and they would effortlessly beat even DayZ's sales figures. There's no need for all this early access and pay-to-win nonsense.

Is Nintendo handling Amiibos right?

What to do about Nintendo's Amiibos? For those who don't know, Amiibos are basically little figurines of Nintendo characters which you can buy and then use to interact with games on the Wii U. It's an obvious ripoff of Disney's Infinity franchise, though I don't necessarily care about that. Sony tried to copy off of Smash Bros too and quite frankly I'm all for having more fighting games in that unique style, so I didn't fault Sony for doing that either.

Nooooooooooooo!

To be honest though, I never really liked the idea of Amiibos. It comes off as gimmicky and is ripe for abuse as a glorified locked content method. From the perspective of physically enhancing the gameplay, you can't really do much with the Amiibos beyond just slapping them on your controller and watching them transfer data, and from the perspective of virtually enhancing the gameplay, it comes off as just a way to lock content behind an arbitrary pay wall. I just don't see how it makes things more fun in any way meaningfully. The only reason I would find Amiibos worth the investment is not really for anything related to gaming, but because it would be cool to have little statuettes to decorate my room with. I would be much more inclined to be on board with these figures if they were just marketed as collectables and room decorations.

In spite of all this though, I have to say that if Nintendo absolutely must follow through with these figurines, they are otherwise handling them reasonably. The in-game enhancements so far have been minimalistic and don't make you feel like you're losing out on a huge chunk of content. Some critics have expressed disappointment that the Amiibos don't offer enough in-game content, but the way I see it, this is actually a good thing, because the more content that is locked behind an Amiibo, the more it feels like Nintendo is bullying consumers into buying them. It's the equivalent of day one or disc-locked DLC basically.

So as long as you buy these figurines with a collectable mindset and aren't expecting much out of them, I think the purchase is justified. Nintendo has been treading a fine line between harmless gimmick and marketing abuse, but thankfully so far they have been remaining steady and fair with the Amiibos. That could easily change in the future though.

Has Microsoft done enough to revive the Xbox One?

I found out an interesting statistic the other day regarding the current-gen console war. Of the three competing systems, the PS4 had the highest number of 80+ rated Metacritic scores, sitting at 51 games. The Wii U surprisingly comes in at a close second with 45 games, and even more surprising, the Xbox One ranks third with only 26 games; that's a full 19 games behind its next nearest competitor. While conventional wisdom of the industry seems intent on deeming the Wii U irrelevant, these stats by no means reflect a terrible position for the Wii U to be in considering how much it gets labeled a system with no games. Of course, Metacritic scores certainly aren't the end-all-be-all way to judge a console, but with Microsoft trailing so far behind here, I thought all this might be a good lead in to the big question of the day: has Microsoft done enough to revive the Xbox One?

Don't worry Phil, your luck can still turn around.

We know at the time of the system's announcement, Microsoft quickly fell into some very hot water for their terrible online DRM policy, which they have obviously since removed. And with Phil Spencer taking over the Xbox Division of Microsoft, they have also made great strides in making the cost of the console more competitive with the PS4 by ditching the Kinect 2.0 requirement. Phil has generally kept it real with consumers and has been handling the Xbox Division with a level of honesty and integrity that is a huge breath of fresh air compared to where they started. But even so, where does this leave the current state of the console?

Well, the Xbox One is still relatively the same price as the PS4, but with a slightly weaker hardware set and arguably not as strong of a game library overall. That still doesn't look very convincing to consumers who might be considering Microsoft's system over Sony's. Combine that with the bitter taste that many gamers still have left in their mouths from the whole DRM debacle, and that's all the incentive players need to still go with the PS4. Simply undoing bad decisions isn't enough for the Xbox One because that only puts it on roughly the same level as the PS4 but with a bad aftertaste to it; it doesn't suddenly make the Xbox One the more attractive console. So is there anything more Microsoft can do to make themselves more competitive against Sony? I think there is.

Of course, the obvious thing they could do is get more exclusives, and not just half-baked timed exclusives that will eventually release on other consoles or PC like they've been doing, but strong first party exclusives that would offer amazing experiences you could only get on their console. However, this is a more long-term goal that would not be able to produce immediate results like they need right now. So what could Microsoft still do to seal the deal with consumers right now?

Get rid of online fees. Make multiplayer on Xbox Live free. Seriously, I'm not joking. This has been a longstanding pet peeve of mine that has soured my view of Microsoft even before all the DRM nonsense. It is my perspective that console gamers were exploited during the launch of Xbox Live for the original Xbox system. They were largely unaware that PC gaming had been providing free online multiplayer long before, and it was a perfectly sustainable model without needing to put a large chunk of content behind a pay wall. This is just straightforward ripping off the consumer, and I never excused Sony for doing it either when they changed their PlayStation Network policy with the PS4. This is all the more reason why now is the best time for Microsoft to do this, because if they could drive home the point in their marketing that they now offer free online multiplayer, they would finally have enough of an edge to legitimately say they are more pro-consumer than Sony at this point. Make no mistake about this, the last generation lasted about 7 years, so that's literally a hidden extra cost of $350 that they are just sapping out of you for no justifiable reason.

Now I've been told numerous excuses over the years for why these fees are necessary, but I'm not convinced any of them hold water. The infrastructure that Xbox Live provides is really not that much different from Steam. Steam provides a built-in friends list, voice chat, and text chat, which you can use across all your games without needing to minimize them, and you can even add non-Steam games to your library so you can utilize these features. PC games which use the very same matchmaking lobby setup as many console games still manage to provide a free online experience. "But Steam makes its money back through game sales!" they say. Yeah, so does Microsoft. They have the Xbox Live Arcade, plus a portion of every physical game sale goes to Microsoft's pocketbook too. If they're still really bleeding money for some odd reason, there's always the option to include reasonably placed ads to help fund the network without charging the consumer. There is just no reason that Xbox Live fees should exist.

There is however the important factor to consider that despite the PlayStation 3 offering free multiplayer last generation, it didn't help with the initial sales of the platform. The PS3 did very much struggle out of the gate to gain widespread market penetration during its early years. But we should consider some other key factors which might have hampered this. For one, Sony didn't really market this advantage very well. I can't recall any commercials which explicitly pointed out how their network was free but Microsoft's wasn't. Furthermore, the PS3 was priced significantly higher than the Xbox 360 at launch, with the cheapest model reaching $500, a full $100 more expensive than the Xbox 360's premium model. With the PS3 being so expensive, the price difference between their networks could be seen as negligible in the bigger picture. However, look what happened when the PS3 finally began to drop in price. The PS3 has now surpassed the Xbox 360 in lifetime global sales. But now let's consider the current situation. The Xbox One and PS4 are fairly evenly priced, and with the added bonus of free online multiplayer, that could easily be enough to make a real difference in sales this time.

Xbox Live is the one barrier that could easily sway me in favor of the Xbox One over the PS4, and I would be willing to wager that with the right marketing behind it, other consumers would agree as well. Now more than ever is the best time for Microsoft to finally reverse a longstanding bad policy that would not only set them right with me, but would also finally offer a real competitive edge over the PS4.

Objective ratings don't exist

I am a frequenter of the anime database website MyAnimeList, and through this website I've come to recognize a lot of strange OCD-like quirks about the anime community; from its obsession with adherence to source material to its insistence on defining anime by country of origin. While I would love to pick apart many of these views, today I will be addressing a commonly misunderstood subject that even many outside of the anime community get wrong: objectivity and its relationship to reviews. I've seen the topic crop up on MAL numerous times, so I feel motivated to address the issue in full. Brace yourself now because this is going to be an incredibly lengthy post, but if you're a novice looking to delve into the world of media criticism, I highly recommend that you stick with it because I'm sure you'll probably learn a lot from this.

An "objective" critic.

The most critical problem at the heart of this topic is that people attempt to separate quality (as some kind of objective measurement) from their personal enjoyment, not realizing that they are actually referring to the same thing. By any meaningful definition of these terms, saying that a show is "good" is essentially the same as saying that you liked it. Before I make my case for this though, I should be clear with my definitions and what is actually meant by "objectivity", as much of this issue often boils down to semantic misunderstandings.

Objective - (of a person or their judgment) not influenced by personal feelings or opinions in considering and representing facts.
Example of an objective statement: This anime's action scene was animated at full 24 frames per second.

Subjective - based on or influenced by personal feelings, tastes, or opinions.
Example of a subjective statement: This anime's action scene was really good because it was rendered at full 24 frames per second.

Notice that objective statements tend to be necessarily descriptive, as they merely describe an object or event as opposed to evaluating it, while subjective statements tend to be more qualitative; communicating to the listener how good or bad the writer personally found the material to be. Now as I mentioned previously, at the heart of this issue is the notion that people believe you can separate this qualitative measurement from subjectivity and somehow arrive at an objective (factual) measurement of quality. However, what they are most often really doing is conflating consensus opinion with objective facts, because even if everyone agrees on a particular judgment of a show, this still doesn't make the judgment in question objective; it just means that everyone happens to agree upon it. Take for example that a long time ago, it was the consensus belief that we live in a geocentric universe; that is to say we live in a universe where the Earth is at the center of all celestial bodies. We now obviously know this to be false, but more importantly it was also *always* false and at no point did reality change simply because a lot of people believed differently. Collective belief at no point turns into fact just because enough people can be persuaded to agree on something.

In the realm of art and entertainment media, qualitative statements are necessarily subjective because you cannot entirely remove one's personal biases from an evaluation of quality. I used the animation framerate example above because it is a great illustration of this point. Most people would consider an action scene rendered at 24 frames per second to be pretty visually impressive, but someone could still legitimately object and say that the action scene wasn't good because the choreography was lackluster, or the artwork was otherwise low-detail. Even if we restrict ourselves to solely evaluating the framerate of the scene and nothing else, someone might still object and say that 24 frames per second is outdated and looks bad, and the only way they can watch shows now is using smart TVs that can convert the video to 48 FPS using frame interpolation, or even using special computer software to achieve as high as 60 FPS. And relative to a 60 FPS standard, 24 frames per second would certainly pale in comparison as lackluster, but that's just it; even if we try to define a standard that is otherwise completely internally consistent with its measurements, the decision itself to accept that standard is still based on subjective opinion. Yes, 24 frames per second would "objectively" evaluate poorly against a 60 FPS standard, but maybe someone doesn't care about 60 FPS and views it as excessive, so they don't accept that standard in the first place. Maybe they would draw the line somewhere well below that, or maybe they actually prefer less frames. Maybe framerate doesn't even factor into their opinion at all so long as the majority of animations reach some moderately passable threshold, and the rest is just superficial icing on the cake. As I write this, there are film critics who staunchly dislike HFR (High Frame Rate, 48 FPS) film and prefer the standard, 24 FPS. They believe the higher framerate actually makes the film look worse, as if the motion is sped up and unnatural. One would think that more frames = smoother animation = superior animation, yet this is clearly not the case for them. Understand that when someone derives a feeling of pleasure from a particular action scene while citing the fact that it was animated at 24 frames per second as a justification for it, someone else could take that very same fact and have a completely opposite emotional response to it, and neither person would be technically incorrect for doing so. Either way, there isn't a wrong answer here because ultimately what standard someone decides on is a matter of opinion. And you know what? That's OK.

Well excuse me princess.

Just because quality is all a matter of opinion doesn't mean the conversation ends there. It seems as if many people fear the idea of admitting that their opinions are in fact "only" opinions and not facts; as if to make such an admission is to concede that all of their statements have now automatically lost all their value. That's just not the case. As I've mentioned previously, it turns out many people already share the same tastes on a variety of different subjects. Take the framerate example again; the vast majority of people would consider 24 FPS to be a high quality standard relative to the animation industry, so we can use this as a baseline to make a case for justifying our opinions and gain common ground with people from there. And if you can relate to other people's opinions, then their opinions can start to hold value for you. Even in cases where opinions disagree, this can often lead to more fruitful discussion because you might just gain insights and see something from a different perspective that you never noticed before. Many may find it hard to believe, but yes, people do actually change their opinions all the time; mine have certainly changed in the past as a result of seeing things from a different perspective. On the Internet, that may be hard to see because people have egos that they often choose to hide behind, but nonetheless it does happen, and I would wager beneath all the ego-stroking that goes on in a lot of arguments, almost everyone ends up reflecting at least a little bit after a heated debate.

So don't be afraid to admit that you have an opinion. Embrace it. Improve upon it. It's funny that people think the conversation often ends at, "Well that's just your opinion," because the reality is opinions are far more malleable than facts. Facts generally don't change, but opinions do, so make your case for your opinion. You might just find that you can change a few minds.

There is another problem I've encountered more recently though. There appears to be a second camp of critics that acknowledge their reviews are a matter of opinion, yet they still insist that it is useful to separate their personal opinion on some level from the score, which is problematic again for a number of reasons. To give an example, one critic made a statement to the effect of, "I thought Trigun was boring, but I gave it an 8/10." This score is perplexing because it seems to contradict the statement that precedes it.

As an anime belonging to the action genre, Trigun's goal is to entertain a particular audience that it might appeal to. If you are not entertained by it, then that should reflect in your score. At this point however, critics of this particular variety will usually point out that they're not rating based on enjoyment. The question then becomes though: what is even the utility of such a score? What usefulness does it serve if it no longer reflects the reason why people would be interested in watching the show in the first place? By basing a score on values that may drastically differ from your actual enjoyment of the anime, you effectively make your score incomprehensible to grasp to the average reader, since for all we know, an 8/10 could still mean it's bad to you, or a 3/10 could still be fun to watch. Who knows? I could understand if this were a documentary film that perhaps it would make more sense to base the score on how effectively it informs the viewer on some pressing social issue rather than strictly its entertainment value, but we are already working off of the foundation that this is an entertainment-based medium and therefore it should be judged on its entertainment value accordingly. Trigun is not a documentary. It is an action anime. Whatever ideas it brings to the table are only relevant insofar as they add to the entertainment value of the show.

The justification I've been presented with as to why these scores are useful is because they supposedly promote discussion and communal worth by separating "feelings" from the score and establishing a common shared standard. The biggest fault with this reasoning though lies in the suggestion that it is practical to remove one's "feelings" from the score. Since entertainment value is pretty much entirely subjectively determined (for reasons which I have already covered above), it is therefore inherently rooted in a person's feelings, so attempting to separate your feelings from the score effectively defeats its purpose in the first place, since the score no longer reflects its actual entertainment value but instead some arbitrarily-defined criteria.

Let's make something clear here: Nobody just likes stuff because they like stuff. There are always reasons behind it, even if viewers are poor at or completely incapable of expressing their reasoning. All opinions and/or feelings about a particular piece of media are rooted in facts about it on some level. That is, considerations like animation, plot, and voice acting are all what contribute to enjoyment; they are more or less inseparable from it. Some people are more lax at judging these criteria, and others are more critical, but exactly no one just likes something based on some nebulous visceral feeling they had about it which is completely removed from any actual facts about the media. The feelings we experience while watching a show are directly linked to the events occurring within it. So when critics say they are trying to separate their "feelings" from the score, I can only conclude that what they're really saying is that they are trying to separate the reasons why they like the series from liking it itself, which is a completely nonsensical notion. As I mentioned, these things are inseparable. You cannot like something when you take away the reasons for liking it, and likewise you cannot have reasons behind liking something if you don't actually like it. It is simply a self-defeating exercise to try and separate enjoyment from quality.

When a critic makes a statement like "I didn't like Trigun but I recognize that it's a good anime," what they are actually saying is that they recognize why other people might like this series, but they personally didn't. Make no mistake however that none of those reasons why others might have liked Trigun have anything to do with objectivity. These are just a collection of reasons that many people have come to agree upon as to why they like it, and the critic has grown a keen eye to recognizing these key elements in the narrative. When a critic can't reconcile their personal feelings with the consensus, this is where confusion often occurs, causing them to feel like they aren't justified in their own opinion. But failure to properly articulate why you might like a particular series in spite of others' hatred toward it or vice versa doesn't mean your opinion isn't justified; just that you may not be good at articulating why you feel the way that you do about the media.

In fact, it's perfectly reasonable to even recognize that one series has more flaws than another, while still coming to the conclusion that the former is better than the latter. This is because a good critic will recognize that scores don't start at a 10/10 by default and then get points deducted as mistakes are accumulated. Rather, they start with no score at all and earn/lose points as the story progresses, and sometimes the emotional and dramatic heights that the narrative reaches can counteract the mistakes that might be made along the way, so while one piece of media might suffer from fewer technical flaws compared to another example, it could still be considered inferior overall to its competitor simply because it doesn't hit its notes as high. You could write some very sophisticated and nuanced dialogue for example, but if you don't find a way to weave it into a narrative that makes it engaging to watch, then it still merely amounts to boredom and doesn't entitle you to being ranked above something like the Transformers movies just because it is more nuanced. At the end of the day, Michael Bay can still be more entertaining than you. Scenarios like this can sometimes be the catalyst for the previously-mentioned confusions. Certain critics might like something of less depth and therefore take their personal embarrassment of their taste to mean that they are objectively incorrect in their opinions. But they are not. Depth can certainly be a factor in determining quality, but it doesn't have to be the deciding factor.

Let's examine a previously-discussed point again; this time from another angle. "Objective" scores are useful because they supposedly promote discussion and communal worth by establishing a common shared standard. For starters, I don't see why this same goal of "discussion and communal worth" can't simply be accomplished by having a conversation like I already described earlier, wherein critics might agree on some things and disagree on others, but more importantly, what this really seems to be doing again is attempting to conceive of another consensus-based score and trying to pass it off as more "legitimate" or "credible" than other subjective scores because of it. In reality, it is just as opinionated as any other score, it's just that the author is trading some of his opinions and biases for the opinions and biases of others, or even worse, he is trading his opinions for an arbitrary standard that neither reflects the views of others nor his own. You don't arrive at a more credible or useful score just because you can recognize that your opinion might be more niche than others and compensate for that in the score accordingly. And to be certain, this is what the aforementioned critic was doing, because remember, he said, "I thought Trigun was boring, but I gave it an 8/10," which implies one of two possibilities: either he personally was not very entertained by it, but he put his personal opinions aside anyway for what he perceives the consensus to view as more valuable, or even though he didn't like it, he's basing the score on some arbitrary merits that don't necessarily reflect anyone's opinions (and let's not forget that he already conceded his scores don't reflect any kind of factual measurement of quality either). In the latter case, this renders the score completely useless, because at the end of the day, if the merit in question doesn't contribute to your enjoyment, and it wouldn't necessarily for anyone else either, then what is the value in acknowledging it and incorporating it into the score in the first place? Who even cares?

The audience response to your arbitrary score is in.

As for the former case, it's at least slightly more respectable, but why bother when we already have much more useful tools at our disposal for gauging the consensus view? MAL already has a system for automatically calculating the average aggregate score of an anime. Similarly, other websites like Metacritic do the same for other forms of media like movies and video games. So riddle me this: How should I interpret your apparently consensus-based score in cases where it doesn't actually mesh with the consensus? Since your score is only an approximation of what you think the consensus values and therefore can be prone to inaccuracies, why should I trust your score over what the actual consensus reads? The answer of course is that I shouldn't. In fact, it's a complete waste of time when I can just go straight to the more reliable source. Another irony of this whole approach is that by attempting to adjust your score to account for the consensus, you help throw the actual consensus calculations off. If everyone was busy trying to guess what the consensus thinks with their scores instead of leaving that type of measurement to the actual consensus calculations, you end up with one giant fabricated bubble where no one knows how each other really feels because everyone is trying to reflect what they think other people think rather than what they actually think. Just sit and think about that one for a while if you have to.

Let's take another step back though and examine scoring systems based on technical merits. The irony of a technical scoring system is that in its attempts to aim for more consistency, it makes things more inconsistent. Take for example a typical "divide and average" system that will usually be broken up into various sub-scores like art, sound, story, and characters, and then these scores are averaged together to get the final score. The first problem with this that many critics don't often consider is that different aspects should be weighted differently depending on the genre and premise of the show. As an example, art and animation might frequently weigh heavier into the score for an action series as opposed to a slice of life series. Since action choreography and visuals can often make or break a good action scene, the artwork becomes much more integral to the score than it normally would in a different genre. Whereas a slice of life series can get away with less while not detracting from the plot, an action series would suffer significantly more in contrast. Often times shows just don't all fit neatly into the same criteria and have to be judged differently according to their strengths. Yet, our previously described scoring system does not account for this. Instead, it treats all values equally regardless of circumstances. This can result in complications like one anime rating slightly higher than another despite that the critic may actually view the lower rated series as superior.

One of the most egregious examples I've seen of this type of scoring system is from a critic by the name of "roriconfan". One of his criteria for rating the story is "plausibility", of which he awarded 0 out of 2 points to Attack on Titan in his review for the anime. Obviously though, we know that Attack on Titan's premise isn't plausible; the author assumes that a certain level of suspension of disbelief should be considered as a given when delving into it, and the lack of realism in this respect should not by itself automatically detract from the entertainment value of the series. This is the problem the more specific you get with your sub-scores though; many of them just simply don't apply to the quality of every show. Plausibility might be relevant to consider for shows that are aiming for a greater sense of realism, but this is certainly not one of those cases. We're talking about giant zombie-like monstrosities devouring humans for pleasure here. In any case, as can hopefully be seen here, the more specific that technical scores get, the further away they get from actually accurately reflecting a show's entertainment value.

Now, some critics are smart enough to recognize these faults in an averaged system, so they attempt to account for it by adding an additional sub-score like "enjoyment" or "tilt" to balance things out, and while this is a nice improvement, I think in many cases a single additional sub-score may not be able to weight the overall score enough in the desired direction. In still some other scoring systems, these sub-scores are not factored into the overall score at all, which then sort of begs the question, do we really need to know these sub-scores when the overall score can ignore them anyway? It would seem that the overall score is all that really matters at that point, and the sub-scores merely become superfluous details.

But most of all regarding technical scoring systems is that you still don't really avoid the influence of pure subjectivity in the score no matter how much you may try to put everything into neatly concise measurements. While some measurements like framerate are easy enough to precisely quantify and rank, when you get into measurements like narrative quality, the waters become much murkier. Sure we can to some degree go down a checklist like whether a particular story adheres to traditional hallmarks of storytelling prose, such as a typical exposition setup, rising action, climax, and then falling action, and we can take into account variables like how many plot holes there might be or how many of the show's themes introduced are brought full circle, but even when a show may contain all of these storytelling elements while keeping plot holes on the down low, there is still a whole slew of subtle nuances that can derail the execution, which simply can't all be accounted for in neat little measurements, and ultimately whether one finds the execution satisfactory or not can very much boil down to raw personal preference. And similarly, the reverse can happen where an anime may not even adhere to traditional storytelling prose at all and still be received as a critical success. Hayao Miyazaki is one such director that I can recall achieving this with his movie entitled "My Neighbor Totoro", which has virtually no rising action, no conflict, and little exposition throughout at least 80% of the movie, and yet it is regarded as a masterpiece by many. Are technical rating systems really equipped to deal with anomalies like this? I would be willing to wager that at least some critics have to break their scoring systems in order to justify some of their scores when they adhere to strict standards like this. This is why as a general side note, I think it's a lot simpler and more practical when writing a review to just give a singular straightforward rating based on your overall response to the media, and as a further aside, critics should stop trying to shy away from acknowledging their feelings in their reviews. Entertainment should be attempting to invoke an emotional response from the viewer; it should emotionally resonate with its audience. Attempting to remove feelings from that equation with cold detached numbers in their place undermines the great majority of what entertainment is all about.

Still, some critics continually insist on some vague notion of "greatness" that is somehow separate from one's personal feelings. Let's examine some more arguments from another critic to see where the semantic confusion lies:

"I think you can admire something without liking it. I don't think it's particularly impossible to fathom the possibility of someone who acknowledges something's greatness but disregards it due to personal preferences."

In reality, this critic is actually making one of several possible conflations. What might be more accurate and consistent to say is that it's possible to admire a certain quality about something while still disliking it as a whole, or you can dislike a certain aspect about something while liking it as a whole. You can also like one aspect while disliking another, or you can acknowledge something's "greatness" relative to a consensus but not your own opinion. But to say that you can simultaneously think something is "good" and yet dislike it at the same time is a contradiction of terms. This is only possible when we're no longer strictly talking within the context of art and entertainment-based mediums. And as we're about to see, when we look at some examples that this critic gives in support of his statements, these types of conflations appear to hold true. Let's examine one of his examples.

"For instance, I think Djokovic is a magnificent tennis player, but I hate his play. I find it boring, uninspired, and lacks the finesse of the masters before him. That doesn't stop me from thinking he's a great player though."

As we see here, our critic is actually talking about two separate aspects of Djokovic while conflating them as the same thing. On the one hand he is evaluating Djokovic's skill as a player, while on the other he is judging Djokovic's entertainment value. Taking this context into consideration, it is not an equivalent analogy to strictly evaluating entertainment like a movie or anime.

In sports, there are clear predefined goals that are universally established as the rules of play from the outset. Since these rules define the sport, we can use them as universal standards for judging players, and thus objectively evaluate their skills against other players to a degree. If one player can score more points than another while they are playing against each other for example, this is a clear objective standard from which we can use to evaluate their skill. However, all of this is only made possible because there exists a predefined standard. The teams must score against each other and those with the highest scores always win. No team can simply disagree and declare themselves the victor when they scored less points. When it comes to entertainment in contrast, no such standard exists. One's entertainment value is necessarily mind-dependent; that is, the enjoyment one gets out of something is determined by his or her own personal thoughts, which can fluctuate from person-to-person, and therefore by definition makes it subjective. How much enjoyment one gets out of a particular piece of entertainment is not bound by any externally-imposed rules.

By essentially saying, "I think Djokovic is a good player, but I dislike him," our critic is not actually talking about the same thing throughout the entire statement; it's just easy to get lost in the semantics due to the ambiguities in the language. Again, the first part of this statement is evaluating Djokovic's skill as a player, while the second is evaluating his entertainment value. If we strip the first part away from the statement until we are only left with "I dislike Djokovic," we now have a fair analogy, because we are now strictly talking about the entertainment value of something (or in this case, someone). Remember, since entertainment mediums like anime do not possess any inherent "rules" for enjoyment, there exists no objective "skill" level to measure against. There is only one's subjective opinion about it. The important point of contrast to note here is that this particular statement only works in its own specific context. If we re-worded the statement to say, "I think Trigun is a good anime, but I dislike it," the statement becomes a contradiction, because now we are talking about the same thing in both parts of the statement but describing conflicting reactions to it. In both parts of the statement we are talking about the entertainment value of the product, but acting as if there exists an objective standard to measure against as well as another subjective one when no such dichotomy exists like there was in the previous statement. There is only the subjective measurement of entertainment value.

With all this in mind, we can finally conclude that what our guinea pig critic is actually doing here is admiring one aspect of Djokovic's character (his skill as a player), while disliking another (his entertainment value), but in neither case is he having a positive and negative response to the same thing at the same time. And furthermore, there exists no equivalent objective standard for measuring the "greatness" of an entertainment-based medium versus the skill level of a tennis player, as one is the measurement of entertainment value while the other is a measurement of how well a player can adhere to the predefined rules and goals of the sport. Let's move on to deconstructing his final statements:

"I'd like to stress the inherent difference between base preferences and substantive criticism. I may write off Homer's 'Iliad' and the 'Odyssey' as works I don't enjoy, but that's because I'm not a classicist, and not because I can come up with any substantive criticism on why Homer's works are bad."

And herein we reveal the heart of the problem: what he categorizes separately as "base preferences" and "substantive criticism" are really one and the same. What this is doing again is in some way covertly trying to dismiss some opinions as less legitimate than others when all that's really being argued is an appeal to popularity (IE, comparing people's personal preferences against that pesky consensus we've been talking about). Just because Homer's works might adhere to certain standards of narrative prose that many people have come to collectively agree upon as marks of quality does not make criticisms based around these attributes more "objective", or in his words more "substantive". It just means that more people are likely to agree with your preferences when you make appeals to these particular points rather than appealing to one that might be more niche like your preferred character traits in a protagonist. The reason these standards developed in the first place was because people collectively found that they tend to make media more appealing, but even so, they are not set in stone in the same way as the rules in a game of tennis, which again we can clearly see this demonstrated by the way critics have responded to My Neighbor Totoro. And I would say the only reason our example critic lacks any meaningful criticism against the Iliad and Odyssey in this case is not because the reasons he dislikes them are invalid in any sense, but because they are vague and inadequately described, which as I already covered earlier, is more a problem of failure to communicate rather than those reasons not actually existing. Recall what I said earlier regarding feelings not just existing in a vacuum independent of reasons behind them.

Whatever the case with our critic's possible confusions, I think it should also briefly be noted that to have a positive response to a particular work is to like it on some level, whether it be minor or major, simple or complex of an emotion. To simplify enjoyment down to only a rudimentary emotion equivalent to the kind of shallow pleasure you get from masturbation I think is too narrow and restrictive of a definition. Critics often tend to agree that deeper narratives are better because depth can make things more enjoyable, and the process of thinking critically from a piece of work can frequently provide a strange and unique form of pleasure unto itself. When you rate based on "enjoyment only", that doesn't have to mean you're only looking at it surface-deep, or just saying you liked something without really having a reason why. Aspects like plot, character development, animation, etc. all directly contribute to enjoyment. They are inseparable from it. The whole reason we rate based on these elements is because succeeding at them makes the story more enjoyable. If a character is poorly-developed, then this will impact your entertainment value negatively. If an action scene is slickly-choreographed, then your enjoyment will be impacted positively. If the quality of these attributes didn't actually impact anyone's enjoyment at all, then would anyone care what score you slap on them? Of course not. What we find likable about a particular plot, character, or art design is nonetheless subjective though, and attempting to treat that as if it isn't subjective is dishonest.

What people should really be asking for instead of "objective" "unbiased" reviews is that critics should provide justifications and reasons in support of their opinions, which is much more accurate to say and doesn't muddy the waters with terms that people don't really understand. Obviously when someone says "Trigun sucks because I didn't like it," this isn't very helpful, but not because their opinion is "biased" or isn't "objective"; it's because their opinion is vague and lacking reasons in support of it, and whether you may disagree with those reasons, that doesn't necessarily mean their opinion is illegitimate. If you really want "objective" reviews though, you can always get a taste of what to expect from Jim Sterling's "unbiased" review of Final Fantasy XIII.

The constant struggle and balancing act that I see many critics going through between what they call "quality versus enjoyment" is in actuality a struggle between their desire to have their opinion validated by others versus their desire to express their own true opinion. In essence, they want the score to be representative of how they feel about the media but at the same time they want it to be recognized as fair and legitimate by their peers. But in sacrificing part of your opinion in your score for what you think the consensus values more, you do not arrive at a more objective or unbiased score. You merely arrive at a score that more people will likely agree on. But popularity should never be mistaken for quality, and by attempting to remove your own feelings from the score, you are missing a fundamental point of what entertainment is all about.

Even if you still maintain that basing your score on consensus opinion has some kind of value or utility, does this really eliminate enjoyment from the equation? The reality is no, it still doesn't. All you've done is attempt to eliminate your personal enjoyment from the equation, but you're still evaluating based on standards that ultimately the consensus has deemed as enjoyable.

In the end, consensus or "objective" scores are impractical because they neither reflect any kind of factual measurement of the show's quality nor the author's true opinion on the show; it's just a nebulous mixture of partly the author's opinion combined with an approximation of what they think the consensus would/should be, which is itself also just an opinionated estimate. Ultimately if you're going to admit that your score is a reflection of opinion, I don't know why you wouldn't just fully embrace your own opinion. It's a lot easier to gauge how a particular show really is when critics are being upfront and honest about their opinions and not trying to kowtow to what they think other people have to say about the show. There is certainly plenty of discussion to be had about art and entertainment media even when people don't precisely agree on the standards of why they like it. Let's be clear here though: I'm not trying to force my opinions on anyone here. It's actually quite the opposite. I'm just pointing out what is really being said when people talk about objectivity, and what I'm actually advocating for is more diversity of opinion. I just want people to be honest about their own damn opinions. Stop obscuring your true opinion out of some concern for what other people might think, and embrace plurality of opinion in media. No score is "objective" and that is perfectly OK.

4/8/2015 Footnote: After analyzing this subject in more detail I realized that while my overall conclusions are still correct, some of my underlying reasoning building up to them was flawed and I might have been previously misinterpreting the views of certain critics quoted in this article, so I have now gone back and completely rewritten several paragraphs to (hopefully) remedy these errors and better clarify my points. I may also continue to make adjustments as I review this article again, since this can get to be a complicated subject and I want to eliminate as much ambiguity as I can.