#start throwing formulas in the mix and i'm lost

[quiisquiliae]

Do I love me a good excel sheet? Absolutely. Do I have any idea how the fuck to do more than make one for basic data entry? Absolutely the fuck not.

[utilitycaster]

@rowzeoli replied to your post “@rowzeoli replied to your post “Do you think part...”:

There's a lot to tackle on this so I'll do my best to cover it all! So I totally get where you're coming from and to be fair yes there are some things in old articles that I don't agree with any more in deeming people having done things "first" which is part of the issue of not having a collective historical memory around actual play as it moves so quickly. Most of the issue isn't that readership is down it's that AI and venture capitalism is destroying journalism

​

Hey, sorry for taking a bit to respond; it's been a hectic week and I wanted to give it some thought and time.

I'll start off with the good: I really do, again, appreciate you engaging here, and on the strength of that alone I am going to at least give Rascal's free articles a good solid chance for a while; I have been, admittedly, tarring it with the brush of a lot of frustrations (see below) and I know it's relatively new and still finding its place and should get a bit more of my patience. I also should note that while your article did hit on a lot of the patterns that have turned me - and no small amount of others - off of a lot of AP/TTRPG journalism it is by no means the worst example. The things you credited Burrow's End for are, admittedly, more obscure single-episode events within a huge body of work. Or in other words: there are bylines in the space that make me go "oh this is going to be bad" and yours is not one of them.

With that said: I'm sorry, but Polygon's bias is not a matter of time crunch or lack of funding. There is no way that a time crunch or lack of funding would consistently, over years (this was already word on the street at latest when EXU Calamity came out almost 2 years ago) result in a message of "D20 can do no wrong, and Critical Role rarely does right." If it were throwing out harsh criticism or glowing praise for a wide variety of shows, sure, that seems like it could come from not having a lot of time...but this goes beyond coincidence. It's a reputation that long precedes your entry into the field. As some others in the replies have noted, I might have written the most about it on Tumblr, but it's at this point not an uncommon observation. This also isn't an issue for other publications in a similar "nerd stuff" space - there's plenty of articles on, say, Dicebreaker or Comicbook.com that I don't care for, either because I disagree with the opinion or I think the analysis isn't really worthwhile, but those tend to at least have a mix of positive and critical articles about most shows. When I said you could treat Polygon articles like Madlibs, I meant it. And so I think it's great that you are no longer chasing "groundbreaking", for example, is not a solid ground for an article, but this also is showing me that even relatively new journalists are, very early on, starting with this exact formula. In some ways, that's more damning.

I do also want to add that I'm again, sympathetic to the lack of resources and to coming into a field with passionate and nitpicky fans who have been here for years. Not knowing about a single Critical Role one-shot from 2018 is something that I'd have been much more lenient about if it weren't hitting those repetitive notes of "D20 is great/this thing is groundbreaking/look at the production values." But the other article I posted, also from Polygon but not written by you, is, to be honest, pretty inexcusable. I get there's a lot of lost institutional memory...but either being unaware of, or ignoring the fact that there are a huge number of long-running actual play podcasts that play longform campaigns? That's pretty much on par, in terms of whether your audience trusts you, of the New York Times international news desk not being able to locate Russia on a map (though obviously with far less serious real-world ramifications). (The fact that this was written by a prominent actual play scholar meanwhile is like, I don't know, Neil DeGrasse Tyson not knowing how gravity works, but that's a separate topic).

And again, I get these are your colleagues. I have the luxury of being able to run my mouth without putting my livelihood at stake, and that's not true for people within the industry. I do not expect you to say anything ill about them, nor would I judge any specific individual for getting published in Polygon since I get that people are pitching to a number of sites so that they can get paid! But when I say "Polygon's AP/TTRPG coverage is at needs-a-change-of-leadership levels of bad" I am not alone in this, and it's something that has probably been true for easily 3+ years if not longer. Because it's one of the more prominent publications in the space (ironically, due to Justin McElroy of TAZ being a founder, and the fact that its videogame division is quite good and has had some viral videos, it had enviable name recognition among AP fans that it's only squandered since) it really is at a point where hitting that same formula in any AP journalism - claiming everything is groundbreaking, putting an emphasis on high production values, D20 good and CR bad - makes fans go "oh, more of this bullshit." I don't want to say you can't talk about these things - I definitely do not want to say that you cannot criticize Critical Role - but that specific well is has been poisoned for a long time. If someone hits these points it feels, whether or not it is true, that they're trying to be provocative by going against popular fan opinion, but are simultaneously just saying the same thing we've seen a million times before.

I believe wholeheartedly that from your perspective the competition is AI - and I don't want AI articles either. On the other hand, in terms of what I think fans who are in my position are turning to, it's not AI articles (I'm certainly not). If I want analysis, I'm probably, at this point, going to social media; I am not the only person who writes longform meta or analysis for fun, and I'll seek others who do out. I'm not personally a video essay person, but plenty are, and that's out there too. I'm not going there for reporting on news (I think the Dnd Shorts OGL debacle made it clear that actual journalists are very necessary) but yeah, if I want criticism or analysis? I'm going there instead, especially since there often is that missing institutional memory. If I do want journalism, at this point, some of the bigger shows are getting writeups in less niche publications, particularly Critical Role and D20, as is news of more major tabletop games. It's infrequent and it doesn't highlight indie works, but it tends to be, if nothing else, lacking in major errors or obvious bias. If I want to hear from cast members, at least four of the shows I watch or listen to have regular talkback shows, and Dropout regularly talks to AP/TTRPG figures on Adventuring Academy, and a lot of those shows take viewer questions. Which, again, probably not heartening to hear the competition is even tighter, but I guess my point is I hope it's possible, even with very limited resources, to move away from the above "novelty and production values above all" pattern because even that would do a lot of needed work to rebuild reader trust - and I'm going to be checking out Rascal in the hopes that it can.

[sepublic]

Again, what frustrates me about Federation Force's mech gimmick is that it's rendered useless by scaling up every enemy as well. What's the point of saying you're using a mech, if you don't feel like you're using one; You're still the same size as enemies. Hell, even the environment is scaled up, and I'm talking about manmade structures! The doors are conveniently your size, as are railings, various devices, etc.

It just utterly breaks the illusion of being in a giant mech; You can only really tell because of the cutscenes where the mechs are actually contrasted with the pilots, and that one level where you're forced to leave your mech and sneak around those giant pirates as a normal-sized human. That IS good, but it's just one level!

And again, why is every door sized up??? Like from an in-universe perspective, the amplification beam made an entire army of pirates gigantic, so they probably needed tech and architecture to accommodate this new size. But from an artistic perspective, it just makes the whole mech angle even more pointless, especially when the mechs look like regular humans in armor; Their proportions match the human pilots, so for most people who only know Federation Force by a glance and osmosis, they probably don't even realize it's a mech game! I was one of those people for a while!!!

Even the Metroids, one of the series' most iconic and recurring enemies, the titular mascot, for whom we DO have a consistent understanding of relative scale... is also sized up, instead of being used as a reference point. It's one thing to have a new alien enemy be conveniently gigantic from the start, but the pre-existing Metroids being made that way just feels like you couldn't be bothered to consider how being in a big mech would change the way you interact with the Metroid universe, compared to how Samus would; Especially when your arsenal and gameplay mimics Samus'.

There's no art direction, is what I'm saying; The environments, the enemies, they aren't designed around the idea that you're in a giant robot. It's just another regular environment. One of the things I remember learning about VFX is that adding more details can help create the illusion of something being bigger, because it has more space for more detail, that sort of thing. But this is a game on the 3DS, plus it's a simplified chibi art style that throws off the proportions in general.

It'd have been cool if there were a lot of small doors and hallways that you couldn't access because you're too big; Imagine levels in buildings being designed around the idea that you're navigating giant hangars and all that. The immersion is lost if every room is conveniently enormous for these mechs. The doors themselves could’ve been different from the typical ones in Metroid, for example they’re clearly gateways, to differentiate them from smaller barrier-operated doors. Sometimes you just create doors by smashing through walls because you're a giant mech!!!

It's lazy. It's half-assed. There's no thought put into it; It’s generic. The mech aspect of the game feels tacked on, last-second, like the mechs were supposed to be regular-sized humans in special armor, but someone felt like there needed to be some gimmick to make the game seem more interesting. So they threw in some cutscenes with smaller human models, and one level where you have to sneak around the bigger pirates. But everything else fails to reflect the idea. Why.

The art direction could've been so fun, the gameplay could've revolved around your titanic size, and maybe synergize mech gameplay with gameplay as just a regular pilot who can get out and back in whenever you please. And that could play into the larger teamwork aspect, you could make puzzles based on your pilot having to leave the mech! But noooooooooooo! I was ambivalent towards Federation Force until I found out the player characters are supposed to be mechs, and now I'm pissed. You could've had a really fun concept to mix up the Metroid formula and stand out from other games, make this spin-off take advantage of and embrace that it's so unusual. BUT YA DIDN'T. Metroid Prime Pinball is unironically more creative and thought out around its core gimmick than this.