Quoting: Purple Library GuyYou talk as if professional reviews are much better. There are some good professional reviewers, but lots of them are no better than the average "user review"--a bit longer, is all.

No. It's a massive difference. Period. If you read serious (commercial) gaming sites witha real editor and run like a serious traditional media house, their reviews holds a standard far, faaaaaar above 98% of absolutely everything you read from amateurs on Steam, Amazon, Metacritic and a gazillion webshops with a "community".

Writing, and reviewing is a craft, just like any other craft. It requires something. Practise. Understanding. Insight. An editor. Directions. Professionalism. A structure, and above all an ability to view something as objectively as can be, and as nuanced as required.

Sure, there's bad apples everywhere, and mistakes are done by everyone. But we gotta get AWAY with the attitude that "anyone can do anything". We live in an age where there seem to be an opinion that anyone can be a news reporter, scientist, journalist, reviewer, we don't need any particular insights at all. No, quite the contrary, even! So they seem to think.

/rant off for now. I'm sure this topic will return again. And again. And... :)

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Vector 36 - now there's a title that's passed under my radar. Looks awesome!
Added to wishlist.

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So, just like Enemy Within, this content now finally makes the game how it should have been released from day one.

I'm sorry but I can't help but rant about that. The first Xcom too felt a bit empty compared to when the last bits in the puzzle got in place with "Enemy Within". Why? Because it to me became pretty apparent that much of the content had been chopped out of the original release to be able to charge for the game a second time.

Still gonna buy it though, because it happens to be one of the best strategy franchises on the market for me right now.
I do it cause the game is so good, I don't like supporting the practise though. :(

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Quoting: EikeMost users are totally able to judge if they had fun, and what I want of a game is fun.

Usually if one read a review it is to determine if the game is something for themselves, not if the writer had fun or not. A professional reviewer writes for the reader, not themselves. A review (in the true sense of the word) will give you enough context to figure that out - an amateur text usually do not.

User "reviews" are usually just a description on how they perceived the game. Furthermore you don't even know if the writer has understood the genre at all, nor if they have the proper experience to have anything related to compare with.

Quoting: EikeThe only problem left is judging if their fun will be my fun, too.

Exactly. That is the problem. And with that problem, it renders the chatter they call "user reviews" pretty much worthless.

Quoting: EikeWhen I want deeper information, I read game magazines.

And that is a suggestion I fully support!

(edits: Typos, typos. Always typos.)

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I long for the day when the world no longer put way, way waaaaay too much value into "user reviews". Most regular users are unable to consider anything obectively, nor do they have proper ability to put things into context and weight the various elements of the game.
Thats why they have only implemented a "thumb up / down", cause in case of most users asking for anything more nuanced than that is too far fetched.

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I'd also like to add there obviously is a huge difference between a delay and a cancellation. A delay is perfectly fine, I'm fully aware that we with our two percents are not a top priority. No objections.
It's just... Lately it seems delays has just been an introductory stage towards cancellation. :(

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Quoting: KimyrielleI don't think we're going to see a Linux AAA MMO anytime soon.

Well, there are some titles on Windows, like that South Korean title I can't recall the name of now, but generally I very much agree that there's not much AAA mmos in the horizon regardless of genre.

I guess Star Citizen qualifies as some sort of mmo... That's one title I am very doubtful CAN be as great as their plans indicate it to be, but IF that happens... Oh man.

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Quoting: liamdaweWell, to help with this we have a new Delayed tag to look over, I've added a bunch in: https://www.gamingonlinux.com/articles/category/Delayed

Great! Would be totally cool to regularly geek out with stats like what we talk about here. :D

But there's one problem with using tags as a source for data - there can be (and often are) several articles about that same delay or release. So we still need to count manually, but now we at least got the tags to help sorting.

I really do think there's a higher ratio of delays VS new games this year, compared to before. I'll see if I can find the time to sit down and start counting some evening soon. :)

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Quoting: liamdaweSince February this year, I've written around ten delays and/or cancelled Linux games (give or take a couple). One of which is now out (Cossacks 3), put that up against the amount of titles that have actually released and the number is pretty miniscule overall. Take into account I've written 242 articles since the start of August alone, you can see how tiny the number of delays actually are.

The total number of articles does not really matter in this context but let's look at what we have:
We got ten delays and cancellations. Now, how many new games of significance did we learn about in that same time span?

And then, what are those same two numbers for the same time span last year? That's numbers that would tell us something about the state of things.

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Quoting: liamdaweDelays happen. I don't suddenly think less of Linux gaming as a whole because a few titles are having issues. We still get tons of great stuff.

If only it was a "few" I'd not complain at all, Liam. But I do think that over the last few months we've heard more about delays and cancellations than new titles of any significant magnitude popping up in the horizon (except for rather forgettable "indie" titles). I just feel it's a trend in the making here, and I do not like it one bit.

I have no stats to back it up and I'd love to be proven wrong, but such is my impression. And my impression is that we could use a boost of some kind now, to maintain what little momentum we did have.

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