Famitsu Sucks
Posted on Wednesday, November 23 @ 11:18:37 Eastern by Heath_Hindman
Whenever a Japanese game has a high anticipation level, Western gamers can't wait to cite the high Famitsu score. There's a problem with this, however, and I'll show it to you with the Science Maths.
The Mystical Appeal of Japan
Constantly, game news hubs are hit with posts about Famitsu's review scores which don't contain a single quote, just a number. There are a few reasons for this, the first and most obvious being a lack of understanding of Japanese. The person making the post on his lame website can't translate the review, but hey, the modern gamer has proven that the text of a review matters far less than the number at the end, right? So skip it altogether.
Keepin' the Bar Low
You need not speak any Japanese, however, to look at the magazine itself and note the brevity of the reviews, often being only 3 or 4 sentences; their biographies next to their names are actually longer than the reviews they're presenting. That means if you did translate the reviews, it would actually look worse, because it would bring to light the fact that they are incredibly short and vague. Back in high school, Mrs. Snyder required five sentences per paragraph and a range of 5-10 paragraphs for most writing assignments. Famitsu's reviews are actually held to a much lighter standard than a 10th grader's book report? Apparently so.
Imagine an English-speaking website doing this regularly, making a "review" out of a mere three extremely vague sentences and a number. "The graphics are great and I love the characters! So much action, so cool, sugeeeee! 9/10." Wow, thanks for the insight. I now have a deep understanding of...well, nothing, really.
Take the above hypothetical a step further, with the author of such a review posting his work on other websites. Forum members would laugh it off, N4G members would (appropriately) flag it as "Lame", Wikipedia would question the merits of the source, and the editors of aggregate sites such as GameRankings or Metacritic would dismiss the material in seconds. Yet with Famitsu, there's such a magical appeal about it, that it's given the green light to break all the rules and spit in the face of common sense.
Even in Japan, There are Only 24 Hours in a Day
Consider this as well, the magazine has a stable of reviewers who are reviewing upwards of five games each for the week in question. Those four scores that make up the magazine's out-of-40 score are from people who are reviewing a bunch of games each. While they don't always appear in back to back issues, you see most faces recurring regularly. Let me tell you from experience, reviewing games with a strict deadline is not as easy as it might seem, even when it's your full-time job.
So now imagine that you don't just have to review one game, but six of them. And within two weeks of that, you've got five more on your plate. On behalf of all of us who have ever reviewed games and taken our work seriously, let me say: holy shit.
Whether or not you're in the camp that feels a game should be beaten before it's reviewed, you've got to realize that schedule makes it nearly impossible to really delve very deeply into many of the games a Famitsu reviewer is tasked with evaluating. Whatever your feelings on that point of game reviews, it's certainly worth note that some games, if only for story, need to be given more time than others.
Despite mentioning a higher-than-usual amount of repetition in their review comments, Famitsu granted PSP shitfest .hack//Link a 32/40. That's a 50-hour game at the very least, and the people who reviewed it also had to deal with Keroro RPG, Pokemon Ranger DS, Armored Core: Last Raven Portable, and The Eye of Judgement in the same issue. You know damn well that .hack//Link wasn't played very long. I, on the other hand, completed it, and by the end, I was practically suicidal.
Funny, I even mentioned within the review that my early impressions were much better than my final opinion, as I declared:
As of 5 hours, .hack//Link was a good game. After 12 hours, it was a so-so game. After 20 hours, it was a half-decent game for diehard .hack fans, but irrelevant to anyone else. After 30 hours, it became torture. At the end of a 50-hour completion run, it now literally turns my stomach to imagine picking this game up again.
I'm guessing Famitsu's crew bailed out before their hour counts hit double digits, due to their visible time constraints and high scoring of a game they admit didn't really pull them in.
Financial Motivation
When Famitsu scores a game high (which is almost always), lots of game shops around Japan will post its review page next to the box on the shelves -- you know, to help the store sell games. The more people buy those games, the bigger Famitsu's potential audience for all the strategy guides the company puts out, to say nothing of the increased exposure by having your product advertised right alongside all the hottest games.
Science, Math, Charts
Let's conclude with some research. Now, I'm as aware as anyone that there is a lot of inflation in game review scores and that the problem is far from being limited to Famitsu, but just because a lot of people are doing something doesn't suddenly make it okay. People love to rave when something gets into the mid 30's or above in Famitsu, as if that means something. You need to realize just how often that happens and take into account that a 36/40 in Famitsu only really represents a score a scant few ticks from the magazine's average score of about 31.
I am sitting next to a stack of eight Famitsu magazines. It's math time. These magazines are a random sampling of the vast piles of shit in my closet and have dates from this month, earlier this year, and even a few from 2010. I have all kinds of Famitsus and Dengekis from the last few years laying around, so I grabbed this pile and looked at all of the 71 reviews from the eight magazines. The scores add up for 2190 points, for an average of 30.85. There are far more games that score in the 30's than there are the 20's, teens, and singles, combined here. In fact, the bottom half of the scale sits literally unused across this entire sampling.
In the most recent issue I have, there are 15 reviews, and the lowest score given is a 26/40. Yeah. They reviewed 15 games, and the worst one -- the absolute lowest in a pile of 15 games -- is a 6.5/10. In the 71 reviews contained within the magazines, the lowest review score I found was a 21/40, and this number only showed up one singular time with no 22's or 23's hanging around. Twenty-one is the new loneliest number. The game that got this low mark wasn't exactly anticipated, either, it was blatant Nintendogs ripoff Dog School Lovely Puppy by Industry heavy hitter Starfish SD. Ah yes, I'm sure the "Pet Communication" genre usually demands so much more.
Why Review Content is Important
Look, I can understand a review outlet dishing out high scores to the majority of highly anticipated titles. But to see all four reviewers assigned to a given game rank each and every game with a decent ad budget among the top tier so consistently is insane. Humans react differently to games the same way we react differently to music, movies, and books. Believe it or not, there are people out there who dislike Gran Turismo 5; there are people who despise Call of Duty; there are plenty of real, reasonable, fine human beings who just can't get into Uncharted or Assassin's Creed the way some other people can; and seemingly half the Final Fantasy fan base hated both Final Fantasy XII and Final Fantasy XIII (which were awarded 40/40 and 39/40, respectively). If you're giving every single highly touted game a high mark, and doing so while listing incredibly short, vague reasoning bordering on guesswork, then your reviews are essentially rendered meaningless. You've got four people, and all of them pretty much agree on virtually every game they review? I've had a hard time getting four people to agree what color the sky is.
I can do that without even playing most games. Watch this. "Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 brings all the action the series has become famous for. If you loved MW2, this game is for you, 33/40". Or, "The vast amount of content and engrossing world make Skyrim a must-play title of the highest order. This isn't just a game, it's an experience, 39/40". I've never even played those games, but my comments are the exact same type that Famitsu cranks out for every game that buys a significant amount of ad space, and right about in the score wheelhouse. But if you pressed me for more comments about the game or to talk in more detail about why I felt that way? I couldn't do it, or I'd start saying some stuff that would soon be proven untrue, just like what happen to Electronic Theatre when they basically made up a review of Final Fantasy XIII, the link to which is now dead due to its high bullshit content. "...Attainment of new milestones in creating believable virtual societies" indeed, ha.
Seriously, one Famitsu guy's review of Kingdom Hearts: Birth by Sleep was "I love that all of the characters have different styles and commands. When I use them they are different. The boss battles were so great". Exactly how useful is such a review? That little, tiny amount of information is not too hard to just make up without having played the game. Is there much value to a review that tells no more than what a writer could easily make up without even touching a game?
Famitsu is a fine magazine overall, but its reviews don't deserve the amount of hype they somehow garner. Their reviewers are not given enough time to really sink their teeth into the stacks of games they're called upon to review, the text is so short and vague that you could write a similar review without even playing the game in question, the review scale is yet another victim of score inflation, and the magazine is obviously motivated financially to give high marks to big-budget games and studios. That's why Famitsu sucks.
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I never really cared about Famitsu, this just made me care even less. Good read!
But yeah, Famitsu's always been a load of crap. I remember people were using it to defend FFXII and XIII when they came out and I was like "Guys, Square could take a dump on a blue ray and Famitsu would give it 34/40."
Kept reading and it turned into doubt "Hmm I would swear Nick was the one who reviewed Skyrim, why is he saying he didn't play it? this is pretty weird WAIT the writer's Heath! The Prinny the Prinny! now it makes sense".
Anyway, I can just say Bravo! Grandioso! Magnífico! and wish you would do this research to other popular review sites too, I think it would be interesting. We already have this and GR's data from a blogger whose name I can't recall (sorry) to use in benchmarking.
The reviews are really in-depth and the score is left up to whoever plays the game.
Japanese media sell own soul for Cash.
I am ashamed as a Japanese.
At this rate it would extinct the Japanese game culture.
Read the next-to-last paragraph as well, about the KH:BbS review. Short is short, my friend. It's the universal language.
*Gang sign*
Oh and for those keeping score at home, the meaning of the JP part I posted was basically like, "Since I understand Japanese pretty well, I already know that."
But the point the poster tries to make is not even close to applicable. Kanji can sometimes convey a whole word with just one symbol, but you're not gonna take an English paragraph and scrunch it into 2 sentences. Not happening.
Furthermore, these are GAME reviews we're talking about, so there is plenty of hiragana and a TON of Katakana used in these. For example "Birthy by Sleep" is not written in 3 simple letters, but rather "ba-a-su, ba-i su-ri-i-pu." "Character" is not just one symbol, but "Ki-ya-ri-ku-ta-a."
So if you want to talk about something irrelevant, it's actually the assumed counter-point of the above comment, rather than the legitimate point made in the article.
As you may know, people refers to Famitsu reviews because they actually are the first ones to get their hands on the games (jp ones at least)
Thing is, this is Japan. They won't "goty" this or "shitty" that, they won't "utterly trash" or "totally awesome" you.
Japanese people use sticks to eat; we use forks. In the same way, they don't expect the same comments from a professionnal as we do. Plain writing "this game is shitty" would be considered utterly unprofessional, and insulting toward ppl who actually enjoyed the game.
JP players also don't expect the same things towards a game. Your example of "several disney characters" it's actually important for jp fans to be confirmed that many characters are available.
I hope somewhere in Japan a writer made an article regarding how stupid gaijin reviews sounds with their ridiculous amount of superlatives.
As you may know, people refers to Famitsu reviews because they actually are the first ones to get their hands on the games (jp ones at least)
Thing is, this is Japan. They won't "goty" this or "shitty" that, they won't "utterly trash" or "totally awesome" you.
Japanese people use sticks to eat; we use forks. In the same way, they don't expect the same comments from a professionnal as we do. Plain writing "this game is shitty" would be considered utterly unprofessional, and insulting toward ppl who actually enjoyed the game.
JP players also don't expect the same things towards a game. Your example of "several disney characters" it's actually important for jp fans to be confirmed that many characters are available.
I hope somewhere in Japan a writer made an article regarding how stupid gaijin reviews sounds with their ridiculous amount of superlatives.
There's a lot of disbelief that foreigners take Famitsu seriously.
alfalfalfa [dot] com/archives/4891853.html
I can't convince myself that the writer is true posting a picture where he gives Famitsu a finger!?
Remember when a Bioware employee posted a review on Metacritic? That was a big scandal, and it should have been. Manipulating reviews is deceitful, irresponsible and scummy. You're basically lying to your customers and telling them to buy an inferior product because you've either been paid off or are simply too fearful that the product's manufacturer will squash you like a bug. Either way, that's morally wrong no matter what culture you're from.
The press has a responsibility to be honest with the public, whether they're political correspondents or video game reviewers. Anything less is inexcusable.
aya dot shii dot org
GanXingba:
Actually, they don't receive any pressure or indication on how to write their reviews. I remember having a breakfast with a JP game producer ; he was stressed by the fact that his new game received "mixed reviews". He actually got a 31/40, wich is great. But he then explained me that what matter's not the score, but the "Silver, Gold, Platinum" award you get when you're >30 >32 >35 points, that's the only thing the sales teams are gonna look at. And they ranted "stop making shitty games that can only get silver". He was stressed by reviews. Therefore, publishers don't control them.
1) As I said in my previous post, Japan is a country where you hardly can criticize a work in public. Even if you have everyone hating with a passion on japanese blogs and forum, you won't actually have someone saying "this is crap" on air or in other professional medias. I remember when a comedian said to a Jpop singer "that girl is like, a total rip-off of you!"; he had to appear in a press conference where he made public apologize for "all the trouble". Of course, everyone in Japan thinks that Kuraki Mai was a ripoff of Utada Hikaru, you can shout it on the boards as a fan, but you can't say it when you're a pro.
2) You would argue that Famitsu Cross reviews get higher and higher. That's right, but that's also right for a lot of US based reviews. Nowadays, you can consider a game getting a score below 8 being mediocre~crap. That's the same with famitsu, so why bother saying they're lying, since every major game media in the US is doing the same anyway.
I remember how people were pissed off when Uncharted3 got an 8.5 out of 10; it is a great score, but they couldn't stand it having less than 9...
GanXingba:
Actually, they don't receive any pressure or indication on how to write their reviews. I remember having a breakfast with a JP game producer ; he was stressed by the fact that his new game received "mixed reviews". He actually got a 31/40, wich is great. But he then explained me that what matter's not the score, but the "Silver, Gold, Platinum" award you get when you're >30 >32 >35 points, that's the only thing the sales teams are gonna look at. And they ranted "stop making shitty games that can only get silver". He was stressed by reviews. Therefore, publishers don't control them.
1) As I said in my previous post, Japan is a country where you hardly can criticize a work in public. Even if you have everyone hating with a passion on japanese blogs and forum, you won't actually have someone saying "this is crap" on air or in other professional medias. I remember when a comedian said to a Jpop singer "that girl is like, a total rip-off of you!"; he had to appear in a press conference where he made public apologize for "all the trouble". Of course, everyone in Japan thinks that Kuraki Mai was a ripoff of Utada Hikaru, you can shout it on the boards as a fan, but you can't say it when you're a pro.
2) You would argue that Famitsu Cross reviews get higher and higher. That's right, but that's also right for a lot of US based reviews. Nowadays, you can consider a game getting a score below 8 being mediocre~crap. That's the same with famitsu, so why bother saying they're lying, since every major game media in the US is doing the same anyway.
I remember how people were pissed off when Uncharted3 got an 8.5 out of 10; it is a great score, but they couldn't stand it having less than 9...
Now, to your other points:
1) No one is asking for them to say “It’s crap.” You’re the only one who is saying that. What everyone else is requesting is reviews that are longer than three to four sentences that actually discuss the game in detail. Reviews do not have to be mocking to be in depth and negative. Many people make them that way for the sake of entertainment, but it is hardly a requirement. You’re arguing a point that is totally irrelevant.
2) Once again, you’re creating a straw man argument by refuting a point that no one ever made. I even said earlier in the comment thread that I didn’t entirely trust Game Informer’s reviews for the same reason, and everyone knows that IGN’s scores are inflated.
This is not me saying the US media is better than Japan’s. I don’t really think anyone is saying that. This is me saying that Famitsu – this one magazine specifically – is full of it and its reviews are never to be trusted.
Even if JP games aren't shining as much as they were on PS-Era, Famitsu is still the best-selling game magazine in the world (300~500k / week) therefore, they receive their games very early, and are the first one to reviews, making them famous among players from all the world.
What's bothering me with the kind of article here is:
1) Mocking them today as their articles/reviews aren't accurate or how their articles are too gentle is like pointing the country's culture. Watch Lost In Translation again, it's a country where they eat with sticks, they're on the other side of the planet so their habits are not ours. Pointing Famitsu is like having afghan women criticizing Vogue for being too superficial.
2) Pointing the obvious "Famitsu (=Japan) is weird" is a very lazy form of game writing. A lot of people around the world already pointed out how their text weren't matching Us and Eu readers expectations. It's good to joke about it on Twitter, but a full-lenght article? Recently, a lot of US-based game writers love to point out Famitsu or J-RPG "fallacies". We were already doing that back then in the 90es, it's time to write something else than easy puns. If you want to mock Aerith death, use Rage Comics generators.
P.S.: Skyrim got 40/40 last week. I see a lot of people criticizing the high score given here, though the game seems to have very high praises around the world. Famitsu aren't allowed to give high scores, whatever the game?
Just because I dislike Famitsu does not mean I dislike Japan or Japanese culture.
Honestly, it seems to me that you think that just because we dislike Famitsu, we dislike Japan and Japanese culture. That’s absurd. Final Fantasy VII and Chrono Trigger are two of my favorite games of all time. I think Akira Kurosawa is one of the most brilliant artistic minds of the modern era, and I’m a big ol’ anime nerd that grew up watching DBZ. So stop creating straw man arguments and if you take nothing away from this, understand the following:
This is an article about one Japanese magazine, Famitsu, and its lack of honesty and quality in its reviewed, which are falsely looked to for guidance. It is not a judgment on Japan, Japanese culture, or Japanese gaming. It is also not an attack on you personally or your right to have an opinion.
You may respond if you like, but based on the pattern here, I believe further participation on my part will simply result in a circular discussion that goes nowhere, so this will be my last response. Have a pleasant day.
The point is that people need to stop fapping over high Famitsu scores because they are meaningless. I cited the reasons why :)
I am aware that it apples to many outlets and I even said as much within the piece.
If you attach other meanings and insert things unsaid, then that's your problem, son. Cheers~
Even if JP games aren't shining as much as they were on PS-Era, Famitsu is still the best-selling game magazine in the world (300~500k / week) therefore, they receive their games very early, and are the first one to reviews, making them famous among players from all the world.
What's bothering me with the kind of article here is:
1) Mocking them today as their articles/reviews aren't accurate or how their articles are too gentle is like pointing the country's culture. Watch Lost In Translation again, it's a country where they eat with sticks, they're on the other side of the planet so their habits are not ours. Pointing Famitsu is like having afghan women criticizing Vogue for being too superficial.
2) Pointing the obvious "Famitsu (=Japan) is weird" is a very lazy form of game writing. A lot of people around the world already pointed out how their text weren't matching Us and Eu readers expectations. It's good to joke about it on Twitter, but a full-lenght article? Recently, a lot of US-based game writers love to point out Famitsu or J-RPG "fallacies". We were already doing that back then in the 90es, it's time to write something else than easy puns. If you want to mock Aerith death, use Rage Comics generators.
P.S.: Skyrim got 40/40 last week. I see a lot of people criticizing the high score given here, though the game seems to have very high praises around the world. Famitsu aren't allowed to give high scores, whatever the game?
Game Revolution is dead.