FOMO vs. Criticism
The narrow window for anything to be relevant and talked about in this age means that criticism of media suffers.
The upcoming release of Cyberpunk 2077 is weighing heavily on my mind as it rapidly approaches. With it, I saw some speculation that games journalists were crunching (much like CDPR were, for months on end; a complete failure of project management)[1] to get reviews done in time for the review embargo lifting. Criticism, done well, isn’t a small feat, and review embargos are often a nightmare. There are a handful of reasons for that, to put it mildly. Let’s dig in.
To start, we need to look at the big picture: the culture in which we live.
A study from the University of Denmark which was published in April 2019, referencing Twitter data from 2012 through 2016 among other data sets suggested that “the accelerating ups and downs of popular content are driven by increasing production and consumption of content, resulting in a more rapid exhaustion of limited attention resources.”[2] The study looked at Twitter hashtags as part of their data set, finding that over the course of 4 years, the speed at which the top 50, globally visible hashtags peaked and then dropped off was significantly faster. The study notes that this is not a phenomenon unique to Twitter. [2]
Faced with a culture that is moving ever faster, media criticism stares down the barrel of a harsh reality: there is a specific window in which media criticism is going to be given the time of day.
This is a problem that’s amplified by the model which the free internet operates on: advertising. It’s the primary source of income for most major outlets, and ad revenue is driven by clicks. That means if you want to make money by publishing criticism, you publish your writing in that window or you starve, potentially literally.
Now, let’s throw game developers and publishers into the mix. As part of providing early access to video games to critics, critics will often need to sign an embargo agreement. In this agreement, critics are typically given a date which their criticism cannot be published before, which often serves as the exact release time for their writing. The time between being given the review copy and the embargo date is, to my knowledge, often fairly short; games are often being actively worked on and patched right up to launch day. On top of that developers or publishers can choose to restrict what’s talked about in the game.
As you can see, we now have a bit of a hellish cocktail on our hands: a limited window where criticism will be desired, a tight turnaround to get the criticism done, a requirement to get clicks for ad money in order to make the criticism sustainable in a capitalist nightmare, and possible restrictions on what can be talked about as part of the criticism.
The end result of this is that all criticism which exists within the window where criticism is most desired has a strong chance to be both rushed and restricted. In a world where clicks can mean survival for critics and the sites which host them, there is little choice to play by the rules that have been set out in front of you. Your follow-up criticism is almost inevitably doomed to never hit the same level of interest as the thing you post during the ever narrowing window where games discourse happens. Media criticism is then faced with a reality which I believe is dictated in part by a fear of missing out. FOMO is a powerful social force, and missing out on the opportunity to be part of the conversation is something that there is pressure to avoid. In fact, I spent far more time and effort getting this piece out right now because of this.
I believe that the end result of this culture of FOMO is a tremendous loss for criticism, particularly for consumers. It means that reviews can be forced, through one means or another, to skip over issues that readers may find useful to know about. Maybe the time constraints you’re under to get the review out in the release — and therefore discourse — window mean that you skip over some narrative content that would completely shift how you think about the game. Maybe you reach that point, but you can’t talk about it at all because you signed an embargo agreement. Let’s not forget what gets dropped on the cutting room floor to make for a review that more people will read too: things like labor and development issues seem to be first on the chopping block, which is something I consider irresponsible to not talk about if I am aware of it.
These are hypotheticals, of course; I do not have definitive proof of this happening. The potential for it exists, however, and is a concern to me.
The narrow window for games discourse can also mean an incomplete picture of a game, especially as time passes. Consider No Man’s Sky, for example: it currently sits with an average score on Metacritic of 66[3, 4, Note 1]. No Man’s Sky was, beyond any doubt, a very flawed but unique game at launch. It was also a game where the developers, Hello Games, had their studio flood in the process of development, saying that “Everything in the office has pretty much been lost”[5]. I was not able to find a launch review from a major outlet which talked about this issue. [6,7,8, Note 2]
No Man’s Sky has evolved radically since then, with far more updates which add major content since even the Beyond update, the last update which several major outlets covered with a critical review. That game’s story is not done yet, but because that window for critical discussion of that game has passed, it won’t be written about and closely examined in nearly the same way by any major outlet.
Now, for some unfortunate pessimism: I don’t see a way of fixing this problem. Not entirely, at least.
The part that we can fix — the nightmare capitalist part — isn’t going away for now, but it has the potential to. It’s a long term goal. The part we can’t fix, at least not in any way I can imagine right now, is the speed at which our social culture will continue to move. The window for criticism to be part of the discussion about a piece of media will always be tight, and getting tighter if trends continue as they are. It’s a systemic issue.
Fortunately, even when systemic issues exist, individuals have the power to go against the grain and do something different, even if it comes with some cost. So, I’d like to make a small, two part personal commitment about my writing on games.
- I will not accept any review copies which come with the condition that I cannot talk about a part of the game or events which occur after a specific point as part of my criticism.
- I will not accept any review copies which require that a written piece be published by a certain date. If I believe that good criticism takes time, I should ensure that I take my time, make sure I don’t burn out, and keep my thoughts are in order. Publishing well outside the release window for games means that I may well be kneecapping myself in terms of audience and opportunities, but if it means I’m more satisfied with what I put out there, I think that’s the right thing to do.
In making that commitment, I also need to acknowledge that I am in an incredibly fortunate situation that allows me to make this sort of commitment. Not everyone in the games criticism space can commit to what I am doing for one reason or another, and usually that reason can be boiled down to a single word: survival. People of color are hit especially hard by that, as are other trans and queer critics. I don’t begrudge or blame any individual who has to play by the rules of the system we exist in right now.
I just want to do something different. I have the ability to do so; why not commit to it?
If you like my commitment to a different approach to games reviews and criticism, and enjoyed this piece, please consider supporting it through my Patreon and Ko-fi, and consider following me on Twitter to find out when I’m streaming, what I’m writing, and keep up. Patreon and Ko-fi both act as tip jars which support writing, streams, work with the OBS Project, and more.
References
[1] Cyberpunk 2077 has involved months of crunch, despite past promises: https://www.polygon.com/2020/12/4/21575914/cyberpunk-2077-release-crunch-labor-delays-cd-projekt-red (Accessed 08/12/2020 at 4:50am NZT)
[2] Lorenz-Spreen, P., Mønsted, B.M., Hövel, P. et al. Accelerating dynamics of collective attention. Nat Commun 10, 1759 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-019-09311-w
[3] No Man’s Sky for Playstation 4 — Metacritic: https://www.metacritic.com/game/playstation-4/no-mans-sky (Accessed 08/12/2020 at 3:30am NZT)
[4] No Man’s Sky for PC — Metacritic: https://www.metacritic.com/game/pc/no-mans-sky (Accessed 08/12/2020 at 3:31am NZT)
[5] No Man’s Sky studio flooded on Christmas Eve (update): https://www.polygon.com/2013/12/25/5243182/hello-games-studio-flooded-on-christmas-eve (Accessed 08/12/2020 at 4:15am NZT)
[6] No Man’s Sky Review — Giant Bomb: https://www.giantbomb.com/reviews/no-mans-sky-review/1900-748/ (Accessed 08/12/2020 at 4:10am NZT)
[7] No Man’s Sky Review — IGN: https://www.ign.com/articles/2016/08/16/no-mans-sky-review (Accessed 08/12/2020 at 4:10am NZT)
[8] No Man’s Sky Review — Gamespot: https://www.gamespot.com/reviews/no-mans-sky-review/1900-6416492/ (Accessed 08/12/2020 at 4:10am NZT)
Footnotes
[Note 1] The average here is calculated by adding the total critic score for the launch (PlayStation 4 and PC) versions of the game, and dividing it by two. User score is not considered as part of this calculation.
[Note 2] While I accessed far more reviews than the three I referenced, I don’t want to bog down the references with a ton of links to reviews. I would recommend investigating more sites if you’re interested in taking the verification of this claim to the extreme.
