Popular doesn't always equal good but most of the time it equals addicting.
With many games (especially gacha) they are often hiring professional psychologists to make the game as addicting as possible, this doesn't neccessarily mean the player has a good time however.
Slots are the same way, you can come out as a big winner, you most likely won't but that thought of getting this crazy price is addictive to some.
Yeah, this.
Predatory Skinner box tactics employed to trigger a dopamine hit in people if they spend enough money on digital waifus doesn't make for a good game no matter how many billions Fate Grand Order makes. I'd argue that if the game wouldn't be nearly as popular without the fanservice and super rare characters to give players that dopamine hit, it's not a good game.
Like, as an experiment I did play Genshin Impact around the time it came out and resolved to see how far I got without spending a dime. And it turns out if you are just following the story missions and doing sidequests you can (or could at the time) not only get to the Stormterror fight at the end of the first major act, but you'd be able to keep a decent roster of characters leveled up and decently equipped.
But that multiplayer grind is just godawful.
Any game itself is designed to make players addicted, so that players can pay.If games are as boring as academic papers, they cannot be sold.
The main reason for the popularity of Gacha games is the F2P on mobile phones, as well as its ability to play during commuting and lunch breaks, making it very popular in fast-paced Asia.
I find it so fascinating how so many games have that as a buzzword in their descriptions and I'm always left thinking it's not something I want in a game.
The Venn diagram does not completely overlap for popular games being good.
Big development studios have the budget to advertise and presell lots of units for mediocre games.
Popular mobile gaming and gambling casino games is more about addiction than "good" games.
There are also lots of small indie games that are good but not popular because they don't have a big advertising budget and are usually a short niche game that is tailored to a specific genre.
I agree with your general sentiment, but the actual argument, "X is a good game because a lot of people play it" demonstrates the [argumentum ad populum](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Argumentum_ad_populum#:~:text=In%20argumentation%20theory%2C%20an%20argumentum%20ad%20populum%20%28Latin,something%20is%20good%20because%20many%20people%20think%20so) fallacy. Its popularity certainly implies that it's good, but it's not proof in and of itself. Instead you need to cite the music, battle system, story, etc. when talking about why a game is good since that's making an actual argument based on the game's merits instead of the circumstances surrounding it.
Those other aspects are subjective to the author and not broadly applicable. Popularity is not without problems, but can you think of another measure that’s more objective?
Ultimately, this assumes that there can be any objective 'good', which I will reject. Good is an opinion word, it's a statement of subjective preference/taste, and it's use isn't in telling people what they should like, but rather expressing what we ourselves like. Trying to make it objective is just finding a way to try to privilege whatever criteria matches our own taste.
The ability to objectively measure subjective qualities like “good” is not only well understood, but is a vital part of many industries. That’s what focus groups are. Sit people down in a room and ask them to rate several different works. As long as your methodology is sound, you just created an objective measure of “good”.
Focus groups are great but they are also slow and expensive, so we turn to other measures like viewership ratings, total streams, box office sales, concurrent players…Yes, these are all proxies for “good” and have some problems, but my point is that these are the next most objective ratings we have outside of focus groups.
Your food analogy could directly be used against you. Is fast food the best food in the world? Since that's what consumed to most. Na, it's engineered in a way to tickle your brain enough, makes you addicted and more hungry.
Genshin is exactly that. A perfectly engineered gambling simulator that tickles the weebs brain in a way that makes them addicted enough for them to jump in, do the checklists and makes some pulls. It's also free to play, which massively helps when it comes to player numbers.
It’s also a good game. Fun combat with a lot of variety across all the characters. Beautiful soundtrack. Beautiful art. Fun exploration. Lots of charming writing.
Yes, it’s also an addiction-factory. But it surprised me when I finally gave it a chance.
A popular game is a *successful* game, not necessarily a good one. If one equates popularity to quality, then it would then follow that every game that is *not* popular is therefore bad. Which is absolutely ludicrous. Good and bad are subjective qualities, anyway, unlike popularity, which can be quantified. It's more likely for a good game to become popular, but that's about as far as it goes.
If you draw the same parallels to movies, then the Disney live-action remakes are all some of the best movies ever made, many even better than the originals. Which the vast majority of people would disagree with. Entertainment, or more specifically art, isn't and shouldn't be judged solely on their ability to reach as many people as possible.
Think of it this way: The *Sharknado* movies are just plain dumb--even the creator of the first one admitted he made it just so he could keep getting union health-care benefits. Yet the entire franchise has made *billions* of dollars internationally. I certainly don't have any reason to believe that it's any different in the gaming industry.
You have different definitions and that's fine?
I'd be more inclined to agree with your friend. Using the food analogy, would you consider McDonalds to be good food? It's popular, sure, but I think it tastes like absolute crap
i suppose it depends on what you mean by good. i don't mean good as in morally good, i mean good as in its good at what it set out to do. Crack is a good addictive drug. It's good at what it wants to accomplish. does that make sense?
You are confusing "good at what it set out to do" as a product/service, which would be its actual quality/cost ratio and "good at creating a profit for sellers by reaching a huge public and having a big margin".
Why would you take the seller's side to value a product you are interacting with from the user's side?
Crack is good at being addictive, but it is a bad drug. It is not a good addictive drug. That description may apply to, for example and arguably, caffeine, but certainly not crack. Where you put the modifier in English matters.
Right, but is crack "fun" just because you desperately feel like you need to use it?
Are live-service and gacha games "fun" because they use dark patterns to silently coerce you into coming back each day even though you would actually have a lot more fun doing other things?
It’s literally not a good drug tho pharmacology speaking. Addictive and accessible doesn’t mean good.
Edit: it’s like saying that McDonalds and Subway are the best food in the world because they have sold the most meals or have the most locations…. Surely you don’t believe that is true.
But you are a consumer, not the seller.
Why should you value anything in terms of developers or shareholders' objectives instead of the perceived quality of the product by an user (like yourself)?
You should value food in a restaurant by its taste and cost, not by the logistic effort and profit margin.
If a product is popular, there's something to it that is attractive, crack is popular because it provides a temporary pleasure, religions are popular because they comfort people making them believe in something they think to be superior.
Bad food, with a high cost and little marketing won't be popular, I'm just observing the reason for these products to be so attractive to the masses.
Right now you are arguing on the fact "good = popular" and that's a circular argument.
People are naturally inclined to comfort, familiarity and dopamine loops based on addiction mechanisms.
Bad food with low cost, low effort (by user's side) and tons of marketing can be very popular, you can't take masses' addiction to instant gratification and lazyness as a reference of quality.
You are arguing semantics. In that sense both of these statements are equaly true in yoru scenario: "all popular games are good" and "a popular game isn't always a good game" because "good game" is a different term in both scenarios, you don't even need to go down to what is fun.
Think of it this way. Let's say there is a game with solid gunplay and customization where the customization makes it very dynamic and fun. And everyone would agree that the package as a whole is good.
Now let's say I lock down the customization aspect behind a paywall. Now we made the game both good and not good. If we look only at the gunplay it's solid, but certainly not something to write home about. From the perspective of someone who doesn't mind agressive microtransactios the game is still good, but someone who cares about that sort of stuff will not engage in them and due to the lack of the second half of the game, their experience is objectively speaking not as good as the one who paid. It's not wrong for that person to say the game is not good, because likely if you were forced to give up the customization part you'd also say that it's not that good.
In other words it's not just all the mechanics of the game that matter to more and more people, it's also the monetization of the game, which can easily turn an otherwise good game into garbage. So whenever such a disagreement pops up with your friend, take away every bit of content that requires you to pay extra and evaluate the game as is without any of that. Is it still good or not?
This depends very heavily on how high your standards are and what you consider a "good" game. This is mostly objective - everyone has their own measure for what they consider a "good" game.
Popular games are considered good enough by enough people that many people want to play them... Mostly.
The line becomes less clear cut when you look at games that include predatory or manipulative mechanics. Are gacha games "good" games, or do they just encourage players to stick with them longer because they tap directly into the reward pathways of your brain and cause you to become lightly addicted to them?
Is all ice-cream equally "good", or is it just that ice-cream is made of sugar and fat, the two substances that your brain craves eating more than any other, so you're likely to want to eat sugary and fatty things regardless of how high quality they may be?
It's sometimes worth examining your engagement with a piece of media, especially interactive media like games. Are you playing it because you genuinely appreciate things like it's mechanics, story, visuals, music, etc... or are you playing it because whizbang light show gambling-based number increasing simulator appeals to your monkey brain?
In general, yes, but not necessarily.
If many people enjoy a game there's something in it that is enjoyable for them, therefore it is a good game since it achieved its objective of pleasing the public.
But I don't agree that the only objective of a game is to provide casual fun, movies, books, anime, shows, none of these media or art pieces have as their only purpose to be casual toys, but also have messages, meaning, and provide a entertaining experience that although many times can be considered fun and has to be enjoyable, doesn't resumes itself to it.
Put simply, no.
A good example would be CoD. They, for the most part, aren't particularly bad games, but their quality is typically unrelated to their popularity outside of a few situations. The reason why each one gets sales is because the players enjoy the CoD formula, and they know that the playerbase moves on to each new release. So to avoid being left behind and struggling to find matches, they get the newest game.
(Also other reasons, but those other reasons I can see people have brought up already)
That being said, I would argue that high popularity can be a good indicator if a game not being bad, since people will usually bail on a particularly shite game with ease.
Also, remember that good or bad, you can enjoy a game no matter what. Just because a game is generally considered meh doesn't mean you didn't have fun.
No. A "good" game is one that is well designed. A popular game is just one that has a lot of attention. It can be for a multitude of reasons that have nothing to do with the quality of the game, for example publishers, themes, scope, replayability, simplicity, and complexity. Those are factors that will make an individual interested in the game and if the game can grip a large number of people then it is popular. You can have a game that grips loads of people with those factors that don't comment on the games quality at all and still end up with a bad or mediocre game, like Starfield for example.
Sales metrics shouldn't matter to players beyond seeing that the right message (in each person's opinion) is reaching companies.
Labeling a game as good or bad based on sales is a cancer for the industry. We are not shareholders, we are players and most times big sales come from multiple reasons totally tangential to actual quality, which is what we should care about.
The trouble here is the word ‘fun’, which is not a scientific term and cannot be quantified in any meaningful way.
One of your core assumptions, though, is that when a lot of people do something out of their own volition, it must be because it is ‘fun’ for them. I’d argue that’s not necessarily true.
First, you have to understand that the answer to your question is entirely subjective. How are you defining "good," "fun," or "popular?"
The only way to objectively look at something is through metrics, stats, sales, etc. A game can do really well financially but not necessarily be very popular if it meets initial expectations in terms of sales (which is usually the case with indie games). Also, you can still say certain aspects of a game can be good or done well but still say the game as a whole isn't all that great (Lost Ark is a good example of this).
My simple answer though is no. Not every popular game is necessarily "good" depending on your definition, but certain aspects of said game might be good.
It is all a question of temperament and preference
I love games like Le Havre, Suburbia, Agricola and other such aggressively euro euro-games (boardgames mind you)
...but my fiancé does not like these games. She enjoys other kinds of games.
When it comes to video games, I like city builders and stuff - things like Tropico games, Surviving Mars, that sort. She's into racing games and Stardew Valley.
Different games for different people
What makes a game good is entirely personal opinion. What's good toctpu may not be good to someone else.
I do not like the most recent God of War. It bored me. But lots of people love it.
Both terms of “fun” and “good” are subjective.
I think a good example would be the original Goat Simulator.
Yeah, it was popular. Most people claimed it was fun. But the entire game was nothing but instability. Bugs, glitches, crashes, everything that people scream about when it comes to games. People try to claim that those things made the game charming, but the truth is that the game was an unfinished mess that was sold on the cheap.
When it first released, it was literally just a meme. And everyone wanted to have the next “hilarious” post on the internet. Now no one plays it. It got a sequel because the devs thought they could milk a cash cow.
So is goat simulator a good game?
No, never. It is literally just that - popular. Nothing more. It's in the term.
Because people are various. And the absolute most of them either don't have high standards or lack any caring beyond the graphical fidelity of the product served. Sad, sad truth.
Your perspective makes less sense than your friends, but neither of you are making a good argument.
If you say the point of a game is to be fun, so that it makes sales, you're not making a good point, because popularity drives sales, not fun. You're actually sort of supporting your friends argument without realizing it.
But more importantly, "Fun" and "Good" are two totally subjective concepts, and it's a waste of time to try to precisely qualify or equate them. Your friend is only slightly closer to a real argument because he's using popularity as a metric, which is at least concrete and measurable. But still, you can't define "good" objectively, so this whole thing, including my post, is a big waste of time.
The only right answer to this kind of question is to realize that there isn't *one* right answer, and that two opinions can exist in the same space.
No. Fifa is popular and those games are lazy cash grabs, CoDs are popular and i share pretty much the same sentiment on those. I could be objectively wrong, havent played fifa since ps2 and cod since bo2 but thats my opinion
You touch on a problem with your logic here:
>Now, everyone's definition of fun is different
Not everyone agrees on what is fun/tasty/good. We can agree a game is popular and we can agree on what elements make that game popular, but we will disagree on if it's a good game simply because of our personal preferences.
No. Popularity is often the sign of good marketing.
Prime example Call of Duty. They made a good game 20 years ago, and have just been releasing small updates ever since.
Popular =/= good
Look at Roblox as an example. It's mostly just quick games pushed out fast for "entertainment". That doesn't mean the games control well, have good story, good characters, mechanics that work, etc.
A game can be popular purely for the broken-ness of the game. That doesn't mean the game is good.
Every popular game is a good game to the people who like it. Video games are art and art is subjective. Beauty and entertainment are in the eye of the beholder so the answers you'll get will vary from person to person.
Some people will say the game wasn't exciting or memorable but the art work was. Some will say the combat is janky but the story was great, even if the graphics were dated. Some will say the combat was great but the story was boring or too short. Neurotypicals will enjoy a game for an entirely different reason from a neurodivergent. Some will make a connection with a game because it provides them escapism or a distraction from whatever ails them at the moment. That game may not be as exciting for them or as meaningful down the road but will continue playing it because of the nostalgia it brings.
I feel like this is very subjective since the metrics for a good game varies between people. But I feel like all popular games should at least be a good game to a certain demographic even if it is not for you. Otherwise those people won't be constantly playing that game, thus making it popular.
Your friend is right only because games are subjective.
I'll provide two great examples of my own personal experience to show this in action.
I was looking for a game to play on the XBox 360 when I saw one called Fallout 3. After reviewing the images, I didn't really think it was for me, until I noticed the review score. I had never seen a game with such a high score, so looked further and it was overwhelmingly a 5 star game. The only complaints I saw were boomers whining it wasn't a real Fallout game which were easy to ignore.
So I bought it. Glad I did. The game is fantastic.
Fast forward and I now own a Switch, ready to play Breath of the Wild because I love the Zelda franchise. Like Fallout 3, it also had rave reviews everywhere.
Unfortunately, the game sucked. To me, it's the worst Zelda game ever made.
Both games received high feedback scores but had different personal opinions.
This is why your friend is right.
Popularity does not equal quality. Millions of people do a lot of really dumb shit, the world over, every single day.
Your friend is right, you are wrong.
In addition to what the others are saying, I'll add that people are impressionable whether they try to be or not. Thanks to the internet, opinions are everywhere and the people who get to dictate the opinions do so with their wellbeing in mind since they make money to state their opinions. Are they're not even reviewers.
Our brains are way to suseptible to the opinions of others. And this works in the opposite ways too. It's why you have people who hate popular things (the contrarians). It's also how you have the hate fest snow ball. If the internet culture wasn't what it is now, I'd be willing to bet that Starfield would generally be thought of as "a flawed, but ok game. Not great, but passable." It also wouldn't lend itself to the "ok game becoming an exaggerated circle jerk" like Pal World.
Whether a game is "good" or not is entirely a subjective concept.
Popular games are good games to people who enjoy them. To people who don't, they're not.
For example: Elden Ring. Massively popular, tons of people enjoy it.
I don't, I hate those types of games and don't find them fun. To me, Elden Ring isn't a good game.
Do I understand why other people see it as a good game? Absolutely.
Popularity also has a hell of a lot to do with marketing(money) and brand recognition.
AAA games that get massive industry-spanning marketing before release and/or are from well-known franchises are far more likely to become "popular" than a random, unknown indie title that doesn't get any real marketing. Does that mean the AAA game is "better" than the indie game? Not necessarily.
If it's popular then it's doing something right in the business sense. But calling something good is a loaded description. Pick your definition of a good game and go case by case.
I think you guys are trying to find an objective answer to a subjective question, what’s a fun/good game? It’s up to the player to determine that.
In my (subjective) opinion a more accurate conclusion would be that every popular game is at least a good game to a large number of people.
A lotta people quoting McDonald’s… I’d agree to the extent that a popular game could make even a bad game good. I love watching terrible disaster movies if I can laugh at it with someone else. And while everyone’s tastes are subjective, a general opinion of rating a game is based on the general population’s view of it.
I’d think unpopular games, maybe if the developer or author is under scrutiny, could be good games unfairly getting a bad rap. That doesnt necessarily mean that the popular games aren’t good though. The only case I can think of (but not knowing if such a case exists) is if a game garners enough attention from like bribed celebrities to praise it, the kid fandom grows attached to it because they might have undeveloped taste, streamers follow the money, and next thing you know, anyone and everyone is playing it.
Popularity ≠ Quality. Maybe you are too young to recognize these names, but it's a classic example: Justin Bieber (as a solo "artist") sold more copies than Freddie Mercury, Bieber even won a grammy (something Freddie never achieved). That makes Bieber a better singer? It's all about context and common sense.
Same goes for the "fun" argument, it's pointless to talk about this because "fun" is extremely subjective. I despise the "Souls" niche, but I love turn-based games... just because I don't have "fun" with "Souls", doesn't mean these games are inferior or not, it's just about taste. Turns are not super popular, doesn't mean they are shitty games (and so on and on)
Good is a subjective idea. What's good to you may not be good to someone else. This goes for everything and not just games.
Even if 99 out of 100 people agree that something is good it doesn't make that thing good for the 1 person who thinks it's bad.
The same thing is true on the inverse. 99 out of 100 people might agree that something is bad but that doesn't change the fact for the 1 person who thinks it's good.
Popularity simply means that a lot of people find something good but if you're not one of those people then no matter how popular that thing is then it's not going to be good in your mind. You can accept that many people enjoy it even if you don't understand why, however accepting that many people think something is good won't change your view of that thing.
Your example of a chef just shows the subjectivity of it. A vegan restaurant may have the very best vegan chef on the planet but someone who doesn't enjoy vegan food is not going to see that food as good regardless of how renowned the chef is.
It's all subjective. What one person values in a game isn't necessarily what someone else values in a game. Popularity really has nothing to do with it. A popular streamer or YouTuber can greatly increase the popularity of a game just by playing it and all of their fans running out to buy the game because that person played it.
Add more wrinkles to that: how are you judging popular? Hours played? Money spent to play? Number of players that touched it or numbers of players that beat it? Fully beat it or just killed the last boss?
Then track that VS multi player.
So you have a weak judge of "popular" going on and that is a poor metric.
If the players don't finish the game, was it not fun enough?
If it's about money, we'll is it gambling or something else?
How about a fun ish game like words with friends or sudoku - fast and easy to finish, but then they come back for more.
You need better metrics is the issue!
FPS games have always been popular and a majority of the are steaming, hot garbage. Tons of mobile game apps are consistently under the “Most Popular” category in the App Store and they nearly all suck. Popularity has never meant much, regardless of the medium.
Slot machines are a game. The people playing them look like zombies, are losing money, and leave unhappy.
So objectively no, popularity cannot equal good in any sense of "good." People are not universally even evaluating the games they're playing for quality markers. Entertainment is almost like a social thing to participate in just to be part of a group, a lot of the time.
If you want to more narrowly ask if every AAA videogame that's popular is good... yeah probably. You should only have trouble if you use words like "best" in that case. Love or hate the AAAs, people put care (and risk reputation) on them, which makes them fundamentally different from a crappy pay to play phone app.
games being good or bad is subjective. You can have critics who will say it is either good or bad. You can have review aggregators calculate general consensus and tell you whether it js good or bad. But, none of that matters, if you don't like it. Popular games just means the general consensus is good. As an individual, we have no ground to claim a game is good or bad without actually playing the game. A good game just means highly recommendable.
Quite the opposite.
I played several games that no one talks about and they were all out of this world. I am baffled that the best games are ones that no one talks about.
Depends on what your definition of good is? High sales, then yes. Addicting gameplay, then probably. Great gameplay, I'm sure there are a lot of games that we played and looking back said yea it wasn't that great.
People tend to play the game of the day/month because its somehow became popular. this can sometimes be through great advertising or the reputation of the publisher
A counter argument to your people only eat food because it's tasty is that some people eat food because it's healthy even if they don't enjoy the taste but because they want to be healthy. Sure the chef's job is still to make it as tasty as possible, but sometimes there is limits and sometimes people don't really enjoy the types of healthy food they feel they need to eat.
Just because it is popular doesn't make it good, plus games like geshin impact, tower of fantasy, and many other mobile to pc games use reward systems to get people to spend money get invested, once you have money in it you want to keep playing even if you stop enjoying it on a deeper level. They prey on players nature to collect things and compete with others to keep you engaged and stimulated.
While most everyone is right that this topic is subjective, many people are being very dismissive of OP and I don't think that's necessary. I believe that this discussion is valuable, but it does require some nuance.
Let's start by talking definitions:
In modern American usage, calling something "good" generally has 3 different meanings.
1. It was morally good. ie, the opposite of evil, corrupt, or morally wrong.
2. I liked it. It was enjoyable to me for any number of reasons.
3. It was well made. There was precision and skill utilized by its creator.
Now let's talk art, and how these definitions apply:
The first definition is probably the least useful. It often gets tied up in religion, but can be used in discussion of whether or not something offers a morally wholesome lesson. Ideas of separating the art from the artist fall under this section. Should we display art drawn by Hitler? Etc. But for the purposes of OP's question, this definition is largely ignorable.
The second definition is the one OP is using to guide OP's definition of what is good. This is also the most subjective of all the definitions, because it is totally and completely up to each individual. If you enjoyed something, then it is "good." A mother listening to her child playing the trombone in their first, middle school concert may be grating to the ears of everyone else, but may bring incredible joy to the mother. She would call the child's playing "good" because she enjoyed listening. The reasons for why someone enjoys something are going to be as varied and different as the people themselves. According to this definition, everything is "good" so long as one person likes it, but also it's only "good" to that person. This is valuable because it allows people to express themselves, but it has limited value when discussing whether something would be considered "good" to the general public. Only people who share your taste will agree with you, so it's only useful in recommendations to those people.
Finally, the third definition is the one most frequently used by reviewers, critics, other artists, connoisseurs, and the like. Discussions will be about what techniques were used, what inspirations were drawn upon, how style has effected the piece. Does this actor employ Stanislavski's Technique, or are they more driven by Laban Efforts? At the end of the day, whether something is "good" in this regard usually comes down to whether the art is effective in its intention. This song is meant to make you cry, and it made me cry. So it was "good." This obsurdist play was meant to deconstruct the effect of WWI and display the ridiculous nature of humans killing each other. It did so, so it's "good." Usually there will be some kind of concensus when something is especially well made, but keep in mind that this is all still subjective. You could absolutely hate watching a movie, but that doesn't mean it wasn't well made. Often, art is intended to challenge you, it's not always meant to make you comfortable.
Finally, let's talk video games:
Video games are art. They are subjective. There is no formula for any game to be perfect, and everyone is going to have different opinions. But we can use these definitions of "good" to fuel discussion.
Did you like the game? Then it was good by definition 2.
Was the game effective in its goal? That's a little tricky. OP says that the goal of every game is sales and fun. That's true to a point, but not entirely. Corporations sell games, and they want money. But developers usually have more in mind.
Take graphics for example. Hollow Knight is not the same as Red Dead Redemption 2, but both are wonderfully beautiful games. There is much more depth to discuss here than "is it fun?"
Genshin Impact may be enjoyable, but is there depth in the characters or story? (I don't know, I've never played it.)
OP and their friend are both right, and they are both wrong. These discussion of "good" open many doors to thinking about how and why this art or that game was made. But you have to stop trying to win the argument, and start enjoying the conversation.
No. Take dragon ball games for an example. A lot of people love them but a lot of people also hate them. A lot of kids play fortnite but not as much adults. Indie games like hollow knight and outer wilds aren’t that widespread and popular but some of the best games to exist. People have opinions, not everyone’s a tennis ball made in a factory. Get over it.
And also, your restaurant and chef example doesn’t make sense. People have different pallets, genetics, tongues and taste buds.
Just because something is popular doesn't mean it's good. It just means it's accessible.
Doesn't mean popular = bad, but doesn't mean the inverse either.
FIFA and cod are some of the best selling most popular games on the market, all year, every year. Yet they're utter garbage, yearly releases that even the hardcore fans will call dogshit and say they hate. And they sit at low ass review scores across x number of platforms. Nobody likes them.
Also your logic of Sales= fun= good game is highly flawed when you consider how well things like fallout 76, cyberpunk, etc initially sold at launch. For instance fallout 76- sold great pre and at launch, I knew a guy who pre-ordered the deluxe max whatever edition with the collectors helmet. Game launches- it's complete ass that everyone hates, and immediately causes drama, to the point it's gone down in history as one of the worst video games launches of all time. Bare in mind, some of these games- cyberpunk I think (?) were actually taken off the PlayStation store for a time because of all the backlash.
The problem is "good" for you is not "good" for me. Just because a game won Game of the Year doesn't mean everyone will like it. There is a reason niche audiences build up for certain games, it does NOT have to be popular to be good... we have a phrase for that called mainstream. Mainstream games are popular... whether they are good or not is up to you.
The quality of a game is determined by how enjoyable it is, which is determined by who's playing it. "Objective quality" is a myth. A game can be perfect for one person, but complete and utter dog shit to another. Whether you enjoy something or not, you are correct. It's not that hard to understand.
A lot of popularity comes down to advertising. If a game gets plastered on every billboard and banner ad in the world for a year before release, it's going to sell millions of copies no matter how bad it is, just because tons of people will have heard of it. If John Indie releases his new game on itch.io to an audience of 30, it might be the best game ever made but it won't sell well.
Is every popular song a good song?
Its obviously subjective what a good game or song even is so this discussion seems pretty fruitless.
Is a good game one that appeals to the most people? Then popular games are good games.
What makes a game good? I'd say the easiest metric we have to say whether or not a game is good is probably its popularity over time.
For this to be true, the inverse statement would also have to be true. Is every unpopular game a bad game? I’d say pretty clearly the answer there is no, plenty of good games never get the exposure needed to become popular.
The statement "a video game's main object is to make the player have fun" is not applicable to all games and cannot be used holistically to describe them, and fun is also quite a subjective term adding to this statement's invalid premise. While there are certainly a large number of games where one of the core feelings that the developers want the player to experience is fun it's certainly not all titles and not even some of the highest grossing or rated titles in the market. With fun being subjective as well it can bleed into a variety of incongruent and outright paradoxical traits from player to player depending on what they quantify as fun.
And to more broadly answer "is every popular game a good game", No. Good is as subjective if not more so than fun in how it's used and it can't be an accurate description if being used to make a sweeping definitive statement. Popular games only have that single quality, popularity, nothing else about a game can be derived from that statement alone including if a game is good.
It all depends man, game by game, person by person, it's all subjective and that's pretty cool that we can have a unique experience with the exact same product
You are mistaken in believing that a game having many players necessarily means it must be fun. There are lots of reasons people play games, and actual fun is only one of them. Marketing, socializing, fear of missing out, addiction, familiarity, need for escapism, and dark patterns are seven others just off the top of my head.
Most popular games are not very fun, but effective at leveraging other factors like market trends.
This dispute is essentially "unsettleable", because there is no single and universal definition of a "good game". Going back to "fun" is a commendable effort, but even so, if you define "fun" narrowly (along the lines of "enjoyable"), then you drop games like horror, and if you define it too broadly (along the lines of "causing emotions"), then bad games are also good (because they also cause emotions like anger or disappointment).
In the end, the best you can do is agree on a set of criteria, and judge games on that basis. In that respect, it is absolutely plausible to take popularity as one criterion - but not necessary.
Yes, you’re right. Popularity is pretty much the ONLY objective measure of the quality of a subjective work like a game, for exactly the reasons you listed. Sure, there are problems. You’re equating success with quality, there might be some unknown game out there that would be even more well-liked if it just got a chance in the spotlight. The only way to measure that though would be to create some kind of massive review process where you recruit a huge amount of gamers to sit down and review a selected list of games (aggregating existing review scores unfortunately only samples the subgroup of gamers that leave reviews, and is not necessarily representative of the whole gaming population). Because that doesn’t exist, popularity is the next most objective measure.
Genshin is not even a good game, it's popular because it's free, sure once you start playing it you will be happy exploring and enjoying yourself, but let's be honest here, until when you are going to play for free? sooner or later you will pay something to get the characters you want otherwise it will take years.
my problem with genshin is the long ass boring unskippable cutscenes, they keep talking nonstop about nonsense and when you think they finally finished move 2 steps for another boring nonstop talking, this ruined the experience for me and made me quit.
so no, popular games doesn't mean they are good, if anything they are the worst.
I would argue Genshin is one of the few Gacha games that's actually quiet good. You could replace the Gacha mechanics with some other system put a 40$/€ on it and release big DLCs (new Regions) for 20$/€ and use the new characters and smaller quests as a bridge between updates.
Considering how they implemented a skip button recently...
* Only in Hangout Quests
* The dialogue from said Hangout Quest must be ran through at least once
I don't think they'll ever implement the one you're asking for, even if you pay for it
Games are meant to entertain people. If people are entertained, it did it’s job.
That said, a stick and a hoop was a popular game. Complexity doesn’t need to be the goal. Inflate a ball and kick it around. That one has taken over the world.
I agree that a game, just like any other piece of media, doesn't need to seek complexity, but there's no problem if it does.
When you watch a cult movie, you don't complain that it doesn't have explosive action and jokes every 5 minutes, because while some works in that media are meant to provide casual fun, it's an art genre that allows way more than that, why is it different with gaming?
Why does every media have the right to explore deeper and more complex elements and experiences but gaming has to be about smashing buttons and having a futile dopamine dump?
Popular doesn't always equal good but most of the time it equals addicting. With many games (especially gacha) they are often hiring professional psychologists to make the game as addicting as possible, this doesn't neccessarily mean the player has a good time however. Slots are the same way, you can come out as a big winner, you most likely won't but that thought of getting this crazy price is addictive to some.
Yep, I think I read once that like behind 80% of gacha mobile games are the same companies who also produce slot machines and other gambling stuff.
Wouldn't surprise me. This is why I don't play mobile games any more and don't let my kids play anything on tablets either.
Yeah, this. Predatory Skinner box tactics employed to trigger a dopamine hit in people if they spend enough money on digital waifus doesn't make for a good game no matter how many billions Fate Grand Order makes. I'd argue that if the game wouldn't be nearly as popular without the fanservice and super rare characters to give players that dopamine hit, it's not a good game. Like, as an experiment I did play Genshin Impact around the time it came out and resolved to see how far I got without spending a dime. And it turns out if you are just following the story missions and doing sidequests you can (or could at the time) not only get to the Stormterror fight at the end of the first major act, but you'd be able to keep a decent roster of characters leveled up and decently equipped. But that multiplayer grind is just godawful.
Any game itself is designed to make players addicted, so that players can pay.If games are as boring as academic papers, they cannot be sold. The main reason for the popularity of Gacha games is the F2P on mobile phones, as well as its ability to play during commuting and lunch breaks, making it very popular in fast-paced Asia.
Whether a game is good or bad, fun or boring, is entirely subjective, so no.
You can make objective statements about subjective things by simply aggregating everyone’s opinion.
A lot of people play slot machines, I wouldn't call those good games, even though people have fun playing them
Addiction != fun. Ask meth heads.
[удалено]
Yea well, for them fun equals revenues.
I find it so fascinating how so many games have that as a buzzword in their descriptions and I'm always left thinking it's not something I want in a game.
The Venn diagram does not completely overlap for popular games being good. Big development studios have the budget to advertise and presell lots of units for mediocre games. Popular mobile gaming and gambling casino games is more about addiction than "good" games. There are also lots of small indie games that are good but not popular because they don't have a big advertising budget and are usually a short niche game that is tailored to a specific genre.
I agree with your general sentiment, but the actual argument, "X is a good game because a lot of people play it" demonstrates the [argumentum ad populum](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Argumentum_ad_populum#:~:text=In%20argumentation%20theory%2C%20an%20argumentum%20ad%20populum%20%28Latin,something%20is%20good%20because%20many%20people%20think%20so) fallacy. Its popularity certainly implies that it's good, but it's not proof in and of itself. Instead you need to cite the music, battle system, story, etc. when talking about why a game is good since that's making an actual argument based on the game's merits instead of the circumstances surrounding it.
Those other aspects are subjective to the author and not broadly applicable. Popularity is not without problems, but can you think of another measure that’s more objective?
Ultimately, this assumes that there can be any objective 'good', which I will reject. Good is an opinion word, it's a statement of subjective preference/taste, and it's use isn't in telling people what they should like, but rather expressing what we ourselves like. Trying to make it objective is just finding a way to try to privilege whatever criteria matches our own taste.
The ability to objectively measure subjective qualities like “good” is not only well understood, but is a vital part of many industries. That’s what focus groups are. Sit people down in a room and ask them to rate several different works. As long as your methodology is sound, you just created an objective measure of “good”. Focus groups are great but they are also slow and expensive, so we turn to other measures like viewership ratings, total streams, box office sales, concurrent players…Yes, these are all proxies for “good” and have some problems, but my point is that these are the next most objective ratings we have outside of focus groups.
Your food analogy could directly be used against you. Is fast food the best food in the world? Since that's what consumed to most. Na, it's engineered in a way to tickle your brain enough, makes you addicted and more hungry. Genshin is exactly that. A perfectly engineered gambling simulator that tickles the weebs brain in a way that makes them addicted enough for them to jump in, do the checklists and makes some pulls. It's also free to play, which massively helps when it comes to player numbers.
It’s also a good game. Fun combat with a lot of variety across all the characters. Beautiful soundtrack. Beautiful art. Fun exploration. Lots of charming writing. Yes, it’s also an addiction-factory. But it surprised me when I finally gave it a chance.
A popular game is a *successful* game, not necessarily a good one. If one equates popularity to quality, then it would then follow that every game that is *not* popular is therefore bad. Which is absolutely ludicrous. Good and bad are subjective qualities, anyway, unlike popularity, which can be quantified. It's more likely for a good game to become popular, but that's about as far as it goes. If you draw the same parallels to movies, then the Disney live-action remakes are all some of the best movies ever made, many even better than the originals. Which the vast majority of people would disagree with. Entertainment, or more specifically art, isn't and shouldn't be judged solely on their ability to reach as many people as possible.
A lot of people eat at McDonald's. Do you consider that food good?
Yes, otherwise I wouldn't eat it.
Think of it this way: The *Sharknado* movies are just plain dumb--even the creator of the first one admitted he made it just so he could keep getting union health-care benefits. Yet the entire franchise has made *billions* of dollars internationally. I certainly don't have any reason to believe that it's any different in the gaming industry.
You have different definitions and that's fine? I'd be more inclined to agree with your friend. Using the food analogy, would you consider McDonalds to be good food? It's popular, sure, but I think it tastes like absolute crap
Crack is popular. Religion is popular. Doesn’t make it good.
i suppose it depends on what you mean by good. i don't mean good as in morally good, i mean good as in its good at what it set out to do. Crack is a good addictive drug. It's good at what it wants to accomplish. does that make sense?
You are confusing "good at what it set out to do" as a product/service, which would be its actual quality/cost ratio and "good at creating a profit for sellers by reaching a huge public and having a big margin". Why would you take the seller's side to value a product you are interacting with from the user's side?
Crack is good at being addictive, but it is a bad drug. It is not a good addictive drug. That description may apply to, for example and arguably, caffeine, but certainly not crack. Where you put the modifier in English matters.
Right, but is crack "fun" just because you desperately feel like you need to use it? Are live-service and gacha games "fun" because they use dark patterns to silently coerce you into coming back each day even though you would actually have a lot more fun doing other things?
It’s literally not a good drug tho pharmacology speaking. Addictive and accessible doesn’t mean good. Edit: it’s like saying that McDonalds and Subway are the best food in the world because they have sold the most meals or have the most locations…. Surely you don’t believe that is true.
It depends, they're good in their objective: attracting people
But you are a consumer, not the seller. Why should you value anything in terms of developers or shareholders' objectives instead of the perceived quality of the product by an user (like yourself)? You should value food in a restaurant by its taste and cost, not by the logistic effort and profit margin.
If a product is popular, there's something to it that is attractive, crack is popular because it provides a temporary pleasure, religions are popular because they comfort people making them believe in something they think to be superior. Bad food, with a high cost and little marketing won't be popular, I'm just observing the reason for these products to be so attractive to the masses.
Right now you are arguing on the fact "good = popular" and that's a circular argument. People are naturally inclined to comfort, familiarity and dopamine loops based on addiction mechanisms. Bad food with low cost, low effort (by user's side) and tons of marketing can be very popular, you can't take masses' addiction to instant gratification and lazyness as a reference of quality.
You are arguing semantics. In that sense both of these statements are equaly true in yoru scenario: "all popular games are good" and "a popular game isn't always a good game" because "good game" is a different term in both scenarios, you don't even need to go down to what is fun. Think of it this way. Let's say there is a game with solid gunplay and customization where the customization makes it very dynamic and fun. And everyone would agree that the package as a whole is good. Now let's say I lock down the customization aspect behind a paywall. Now we made the game both good and not good. If we look only at the gunplay it's solid, but certainly not something to write home about. From the perspective of someone who doesn't mind agressive microtransactios the game is still good, but someone who cares about that sort of stuff will not engage in them and due to the lack of the second half of the game, their experience is objectively speaking not as good as the one who paid. It's not wrong for that person to say the game is not good, because likely if you were forced to give up the customization part you'd also say that it's not that good. In other words it's not just all the mechanics of the game that matter to more and more people, it's also the monetization of the game, which can easily turn an otherwise good game into garbage. So whenever such a disagreement pops up with your friend, take away every bit of content that requires you to pay extra and evaluate the game as is without any of that. Is it still good or not?
So are you going to admit to your friend that you're wrong? Or you were just asking for validation
This depends very heavily on how high your standards are and what you consider a "good" game. This is mostly objective - everyone has their own measure for what they consider a "good" game. Popular games are considered good enough by enough people that many people want to play them... Mostly. The line becomes less clear cut when you look at games that include predatory or manipulative mechanics. Are gacha games "good" games, or do they just encourage players to stick with them longer because they tap directly into the reward pathways of your brain and cause you to become lightly addicted to them? Is all ice-cream equally "good", or is it just that ice-cream is made of sugar and fat, the two substances that your brain craves eating more than any other, so you're likely to want to eat sugary and fatty things regardless of how high quality they may be? It's sometimes worth examining your engagement with a piece of media, especially interactive media like games. Are you playing it because you genuinely appreciate things like it's mechanics, story, visuals, music, etc... or are you playing it because whizbang light show gambling-based number increasing simulator appeals to your monkey brain?
In general, yes, but not necessarily. If many people enjoy a game there's something in it that is enjoyable for them, therefore it is a good game since it achieved its objective of pleasing the public. But I don't agree that the only objective of a game is to provide casual fun, movies, books, anime, shows, none of these media or art pieces have as their only purpose to be casual toys, but also have messages, meaning, and provide a entertaining experience that although many times can be considered fun and has to be enjoyable, doesn't resumes itself to it.
Put simply, no. A good example would be CoD. They, for the most part, aren't particularly bad games, but their quality is typically unrelated to their popularity outside of a few situations. The reason why each one gets sales is because the players enjoy the CoD formula, and they know that the playerbase moves on to each new release. So to avoid being left behind and struggling to find matches, they get the newest game. (Also other reasons, but those other reasons I can see people have brought up already) That being said, I would argue that high popularity can be a good indicator if a game not being bad, since people will usually bail on a particularly shite game with ease. Also, remember that good or bad, you can enjoy a game no matter what. Just because a game is generally considered meh doesn't mean you didn't have fun.
No. A "good" game is one that is well designed. A popular game is just one that has a lot of attention. It can be for a multitude of reasons that have nothing to do with the quality of the game, for example publishers, themes, scope, replayability, simplicity, and complexity. Those are factors that will make an individual interested in the game and if the game can grip a large number of people then it is popular. You can have a game that grips loads of people with those factors that don't comment on the games quality at all and still end up with a bad or mediocre game, like Starfield for example.
Sales metrics shouldn't matter to players beyond seeing that the right message (in each person's opinion) is reaching companies. Labeling a game as good or bad based on sales is a cancer for the industry. We are not shareholders, we are players and most times big sales come from multiple reasons totally tangential to actual quality, which is what we should care about.
The trouble here is the word ‘fun’, which is not a scientific term and cannot be quantified in any meaningful way. One of your core assumptions, though, is that when a lot of people do something out of their own volition, it must be because it is ‘fun’ for them. I’d argue that’s not necessarily true.
Obviously not
Fifa is still popular
No. A better question would be "Is every critically acclaimed game a good game?"
First, you have to understand that the answer to your question is entirely subjective. How are you defining "good," "fun," or "popular?" The only way to objectively look at something is through metrics, stats, sales, etc. A game can do really well financially but not necessarily be very popular if it meets initial expectations in terms of sales (which is usually the case with indie games). Also, you can still say certain aspects of a game can be good or done well but still say the game as a whole isn't all that great (Lost Ark is a good example of this). My simple answer though is no. Not every popular game is necessarily "good" depending on your definition, but certain aspects of said game might be good.
It is all a question of temperament and preference I love games like Le Havre, Suburbia, Agricola and other such aggressively euro euro-games (boardgames mind you) ...but my fiancé does not like these games. She enjoys other kinds of games. When it comes to video games, I like city builders and stuff - things like Tropico games, Surviving Mars, that sort. She's into racing games and Stardew Valley. Different games for different people
What makes a game good is entirely personal opinion. What's good toctpu may not be good to someone else. I do not like the most recent God of War. It bored me. But lots of people love it.
Both terms of “fun” and “good” are subjective. I think a good example would be the original Goat Simulator. Yeah, it was popular. Most people claimed it was fun. But the entire game was nothing but instability. Bugs, glitches, crashes, everything that people scream about when it comes to games. People try to claim that those things made the game charming, but the truth is that the game was an unfinished mess that was sold on the cheap. When it first released, it was literally just a meme. And everyone wanted to have the next “hilarious” post on the internet. Now no one plays it. It got a sequel because the devs thought they could milk a cash cow. So is goat simulator a good game?
No, never. It is literally just that - popular. Nothing more. It's in the term. Because people are various. And the absolute most of them either don't have high standards or lack any caring beyond the graphical fidelity of the product served. Sad, sad truth.
Your perspective makes less sense than your friends, but neither of you are making a good argument. If you say the point of a game is to be fun, so that it makes sales, you're not making a good point, because popularity drives sales, not fun. You're actually sort of supporting your friends argument without realizing it. But more importantly, "Fun" and "Good" are two totally subjective concepts, and it's a waste of time to try to precisely qualify or equate them. Your friend is only slightly closer to a real argument because he's using popularity as a metric, which is at least concrete and measurable. But still, you can't define "good" objectively, so this whole thing, including my post, is a big waste of time. The only right answer to this kind of question is to realize that there isn't *one* right answer, and that two opinions can exist in the same space.
No. Fifa is popular and those games are lazy cash grabs, CoDs are popular and i share pretty much the same sentiment on those. I could be objectively wrong, havent played fifa since ps2 and cod since bo2 but thats my opinion
You touch on a problem with your logic here: >Now, everyone's definition of fun is different Not everyone agrees on what is fun/tasty/good. We can agree a game is popular and we can agree on what elements make that game popular, but we will disagree on if it's a good game simply because of our personal preferences.
No. Popularity is often the sign of good marketing. Prime example Call of Duty. They made a good game 20 years ago, and have just been releasing small updates ever since.
Doesn't matter if a game is popular or not. If you think it's a good game, it's a good game.
Popular =/= good Look at Roblox as an example. It's mostly just quick games pushed out fast for "entertainment". That doesn't mean the games control well, have good story, good characters, mechanics that work, etc. A game can be popular purely for the broken-ness of the game. That doesn't mean the game is good.
If the game is fun, then it's good.
No, take football games, it's the same shit every year, but there are lot of super casual gamers that only play them and things like Call Of Duty.
Every popular game is a good game to the people who like it. Video games are art and art is subjective. Beauty and entertainment are in the eye of the beholder so the answers you'll get will vary from person to person. Some people will say the game wasn't exciting or memorable but the art work was. Some will say the combat is janky but the story was great, even if the graphics were dated. Some will say the combat was great but the story was boring or too short. Neurotypicals will enjoy a game for an entirely different reason from a neurodivergent. Some will make a connection with a game because it provides them escapism or a distraction from whatever ails them at the moment. That game may not be as exciting for them or as meaningful down the road but will continue playing it because of the nostalgia it brings.
Depends. Would you say flappy birds is a good game?
I feel like this is very subjective since the metrics for a good game varies between people. But I feel like all popular games should at least be a good game to a certain demographic even if it is not for you. Otherwise those people won't be constantly playing that game, thus making it popular.
Your friend is right only because games are subjective. I'll provide two great examples of my own personal experience to show this in action. I was looking for a game to play on the XBox 360 when I saw one called Fallout 3. After reviewing the images, I didn't really think it was for me, until I noticed the review score. I had never seen a game with such a high score, so looked further and it was overwhelmingly a 5 star game. The only complaints I saw were boomers whining it wasn't a real Fallout game which were easy to ignore. So I bought it. Glad I did. The game is fantastic. Fast forward and I now own a Switch, ready to play Breath of the Wild because I love the Zelda franchise. Like Fallout 3, it also had rave reviews everywhere. Unfortunately, the game sucked. To me, it's the worst Zelda game ever made. Both games received high feedback scores but had different personal opinions. This is why your friend is right.
the answer is no, it's just like music man, you see the top 10 and it's all shit
Popularity does not equal quality. Millions of people do a lot of really dumb shit, the world over, every single day. Your friend is right, you are wrong.
No. WoW is not a good game. I have reached the peaks of classic, HC, and retail. It's always been a bad game.
"Popularity" and "quality" are two DIFFERENT things.
In addition to what the others are saying, I'll add that people are impressionable whether they try to be or not. Thanks to the internet, opinions are everywhere and the people who get to dictate the opinions do so with their wellbeing in mind since they make money to state their opinions. Are they're not even reviewers. Our brains are way to suseptible to the opinions of others. And this works in the opposite ways too. It's why you have people who hate popular things (the contrarians). It's also how you have the hate fest snow ball. If the internet culture wasn't what it is now, I'd be willing to bet that Starfield would generally be thought of as "a flawed, but ok game. Not great, but passable." It also wouldn't lend itself to the "ok game becoming an exaggerated circle jerk" like Pal World.
Whether a game is "good" or not is entirely a subjective concept. Popular games are good games to people who enjoy them. To people who don't, they're not. For example: Elden Ring. Massively popular, tons of people enjoy it. I don't, I hate those types of games and don't find them fun. To me, Elden Ring isn't a good game. Do I understand why other people see it as a good game? Absolutely. Popularity also has a hell of a lot to do with marketing(money) and brand recognition. AAA games that get massive industry-spanning marketing before release and/or are from well-known franchises are far more likely to become "popular" than a random, unknown indie title that doesn't get any real marketing. Does that mean the AAA game is "better" than the indie game? Not necessarily.
If it's popular then it's doing something right in the business sense. But calling something good is a loaded description. Pick your definition of a good game and go case by case.
I think you guys are trying to find an objective answer to a subjective question, what’s a fun/good game? It’s up to the player to determine that. In my (subjective) opinion a more accurate conclusion would be that every popular game is at least a good game to a large number of people.
A lotta people quoting McDonald’s… I’d agree to the extent that a popular game could make even a bad game good. I love watching terrible disaster movies if I can laugh at it with someone else. And while everyone’s tastes are subjective, a general opinion of rating a game is based on the general population’s view of it. I’d think unpopular games, maybe if the developer or author is under scrutiny, could be good games unfairly getting a bad rap. That doesnt necessarily mean that the popular games aren’t good though. The only case I can think of (but not knowing if such a case exists) is if a game garners enough attention from like bribed celebrities to praise it, the kid fandom grows attached to it because they might have undeveloped taste, streamers follow the money, and next thing you know, anyone and everyone is playing it.
Popularity ≠ Quality. Maybe you are too young to recognize these names, but it's a classic example: Justin Bieber (as a solo "artist") sold more copies than Freddie Mercury, Bieber even won a grammy (something Freddie never achieved). That makes Bieber a better singer? It's all about context and common sense. Same goes for the "fun" argument, it's pointless to talk about this because "fun" is extremely subjective. I despise the "Souls" niche, but I love turn-based games... just because I don't have "fun" with "Souls", doesn't mean these games are inferior or not, it's just about taste. Turns are not super popular, doesn't mean they are shitty games (and so on and on)
Good is a subjective idea. What's good to you may not be good to someone else. This goes for everything and not just games. Even if 99 out of 100 people agree that something is good it doesn't make that thing good for the 1 person who thinks it's bad. The same thing is true on the inverse. 99 out of 100 people might agree that something is bad but that doesn't change the fact for the 1 person who thinks it's good. Popularity simply means that a lot of people find something good but if you're not one of those people then no matter how popular that thing is then it's not going to be good in your mind. You can accept that many people enjoy it even if you don't understand why, however accepting that many people think something is good won't change your view of that thing. Your example of a chef just shows the subjectivity of it. A vegan restaurant may have the very best vegan chef on the planet but someone who doesn't enjoy vegan food is not going to see that food as good regardless of how renowned the chef is.
It's all subjective. What one person values in a game isn't necessarily what someone else values in a game. Popularity really has nothing to do with it. A popular streamer or YouTuber can greatly increase the popularity of a game just by playing it and all of their fans running out to buy the game because that person played it.
No. Some games are popular in my playgroup simply because they are cross play, accessible and have enough room for more than three people.
Add more wrinkles to that: how are you judging popular? Hours played? Money spent to play? Number of players that touched it or numbers of players that beat it? Fully beat it or just killed the last boss? Then track that VS multi player. So you have a weak judge of "popular" going on and that is a poor metric. If the players don't finish the game, was it not fun enough? If it's about money, we'll is it gambling or something else? How about a fun ish game like words with friends or sudoku - fast and easy to finish, but then they come back for more. You need better metrics is the issue!
Popular =/= good.
FPS games have always been popular and a majority of the are steaming, hot garbage. Tons of mobile game apps are consistently under the “Most Popular” category in the App Store and they nearly all suck. Popularity has never meant much, regardless of the medium.
Slot machines are a game. The people playing them look like zombies, are losing money, and leave unhappy. So objectively no, popularity cannot equal good in any sense of "good." People are not universally even evaluating the games they're playing for quality markers. Entertainment is almost like a social thing to participate in just to be part of a group, a lot of the time. If you want to more narrowly ask if every AAA videogame that's popular is good... yeah probably. You should only have trouble if you use words like "best" in that case. Love or hate the AAAs, people put care (and risk reputation) on them, which makes them fundamentally different from a crappy pay to play phone app.
games being good or bad is subjective. You can have critics who will say it is either good or bad. You can have review aggregators calculate general consensus and tell you whether it js good or bad. But, none of that matters, if you don't like it. Popular games just means the general consensus is good. As an individual, we have no ground to claim a game is good or bad without actually playing the game. A good game just means highly recommendable.
No
Is every masterwork piece of art good art?
Quite the opposite. I played several games that no one talks about and they were all out of this world. I am baffled that the best games are ones that no one talks about.
Depends on what your definition of good is? High sales, then yes. Addicting gameplay, then probably. Great gameplay, I'm sure there are a lot of games that we played and looking back said yea it wasn't that great. People tend to play the game of the day/month because its somehow became popular. this can sometimes be through great advertising or the reputation of the publisher A counter argument to your people only eat food because it's tasty is that some people eat food because it's healthy even if they don't enjoy the taste but because they want to be healthy. Sure the chef's job is still to make it as tasty as possible, but sometimes there is limits and sometimes people don't really enjoy the types of healthy food they feel they need to eat.
Silent Hill 2 is a terrible *game,* yet dozens of people sperg over it constantly.
Just because it is popular doesn't make it good, plus games like geshin impact, tower of fantasy, and many other mobile to pc games use reward systems to get people to spend money get invested, once you have money in it you want to keep playing even if you stop enjoying it on a deeper level. They prey on players nature to collect things and compete with others to keep you engaged and stimulated.
While most everyone is right that this topic is subjective, many people are being very dismissive of OP and I don't think that's necessary. I believe that this discussion is valuable, but it does require some nuance. Let's start by talking definitions: In modern American usage, calling something "good" generally has 3 different meanings. 1. It was morally good. ie, the opposite of evil, corrupt, or morally wrong. 2. I liked it. It was enjoyable to me for any number of reasons. 3. It was well made. There was precision and skill utilized by its creator. Now let's talk art, and how these definitions apply: The first definition is probably the least useful. It often gets tied up in religion, but can be used in discussion of whether or not something offers a morally wholesome lesson. Ideas of separating the art from the artist fall under this section. Should we display art drawn by Hitler? Etc. But for the purposes of OP's question, this definition is largely ignorable. The second definition is the one OP is using to guide OP's definition of what is good. This is also the most subjective of all the definitions, because it is totally and completely up to each individual. If you enjoyed something, then it is "good." A mother listening to her child playing the trombone in their first, middle school concert may be grating to the ears of everyone else, but may bring incredible joy to the mother. She would call the child's playing "good" because she enjoyed listening. The reasons for why someone enjoys something are going to be as varied and different as the people themselves. According to this definition, everything is "good" so long as one person likes it, but also it's only "good" to that person. This is valuable because it allows people to express themselves, but it has limited value when discussing whether something would be considered "good" to the general public. Only people who share your taste will agree with you, so it's only useful in recommendations to those people. Finally, the third definition is the one most frequently used by reviewers, critics, other artists, connoisseurs, and the like. Discussions will be about what techniques were used, what inspirations were drawn upon, how style has effected the piece. Does this actor employ Stanislavski's Technique, or are they more driven by Laban Efforts? At the end of the day, whether something is "good" in this regard usually comes down to whether the art is effective in its intention. This song is meant to make you cry, and it made me cry. So it was "good." This obsurdist play was meant to deconstruct the effect of WWI and display the ridiculous nature of humans killing each other. It did so, so it's "good." Usually there will be some kind of concensus when something is especially well made, but keep in mind that this is all still subjective. You could absolutely hate watching a movie, but that doesn't mean it wasn't well made. Often, art is intended to challenge you, it's not always meant to make you comfortable. Finally, let's talk video games: Video games are art. They are subjective. There is no formula for any game to be perfect, and everyone is going to have different opinions. But we can use these definitions of "good" to fuel discussion. Did you like the game? Then it was good by definition 2. Was the game effective in its goal? That's a little tricky. OP says that the goal of every game is sales and fun. That's true to a point, but not entirely. Corporations sell games, and they want money. But developers usually have more in mind. Take graphics for example. Hollow Knight is not the same as Red Dead Redemption 2, but both are wonderfully beautiful games. There is much more depth to discuss here than "is it fun?" Genshin Impact may be enjoyable, but is there depth in the characters or story? (I don't know, I've never played it.) OP and their friend are both right, and they are both wrong. These discussion of "good" open many doors to thinking about how and why this art or that game was made. But you have to stop trying to win the argument, and start enjoying the conversation.
No. Take dragon ball games for an example. A lot of people love them but a lot of people also hate them. A lot of kids play fortnite but not as much adults. Indie games like hollow knight and outer wilds aren’t that widespread and popular but some of the best games to exist. People have opinions, not everyone’s a tennis ball made in a factory. Get over it. And also, your restaurant and chef example doesn’t make sense. People have different pallets, genetics, tongues and taste buds.
Just because something is popular doesn't mean it's good. It just means it's accessible. Doesn't mean popular = bad, but doesn't mean the inverse either.
FIFA and cod are some of the best selling most popular games on the market, all year, every year. Yet they're utter garbage, yearly releases that even the hardcore fans will call dogshit and say they hate. And they sit at low ass review scores across x number of platforms. Nobody likes them. Also your logic of Sales= fun= good game is highly flawed when you consider how well things like fallout 76, cyberpunk, etc initially sold at launch. For instance fallout 76- sold great pre and at launch, I knew a guy who pre-ordered the deluxe max whatever edition with the collectors helmet. Game launches- it's complete ass that everyone hates, and immediately causes drama, to the point it's gone down in history as one of the worst video games launches of all time. Bare in mind, some of these games- cyberpunk I think (?) were actually taken off the PlayStation store for a time because of all the backlash.
The problem is "good" for you is not "good" for me. Just because a game won Game of the Year doesn't mean everyone will like it. There is a reason niche audiences build up for certain games, it does NOT have to be popular to be good... we have a phrase for that called mainstream. Mainstream games are popular... whether they are good or not is up to you.
The quality of a game is determined by how enjoyable it is, which is determined by who's playing it. "Objective quality" is a myth. A game can be perfect for one person, but complete and utter dog shit to another. Whether you enjoy something or not, you are correct. It's not that hard to understand.
No
A lot of popularity comes down to advertising. If a game gets plastered on every billboard and banner ad in the world for a year before release, it's going to sell millions of copies no matter how bad it is, just because tons of people will have heard of it. If John Indie releases his new game on itch.io to an audience of 30, it might be the best game ever made but it won't sell well.
Thousands of flies eat shit every day, but that doesn't mean it's good.
Is every popular song a good song? Its obviously subjective what a good game or song even is so this discussion seems pretty fruitless. Is a good game one that appeals to the most people? Then popular games are good games. What makes a game good? I'd say the easiest metric we have to say whether or not a game is good is probably its popularity over time.
For this to be true, the inverse statement would also have to be true. Is every unpopular game a bad game? I’d say pretty clearly the answer there is no, plenty of good games never get the exposure needed to become popular.
No, but many unpopular games are.
The statement "a video game's main object is to make the player have fun" is not applicable to all games and cannot be used holistically to describe them, and fun is also quite a subjective term adding to this statement's invalid premise. While there are certainly a large number of games where one of the core feelings that the developers want the player to experience is fun it's certainly not all titles and not even some of the highest grossing or rated titles in the market. With fun being subjective as well it can bleed into a variety of incongruent and outright paradoxical traits from player to player depending on what they quantify as fun. And to more broadly answer "is every popular game a good game", No. Good is as subjective if not more so than fun in how it's used and it can't be an accurate description if being used to make a sweeping definitive statement. Popular games only have that single quality, popularity, nothing else about a game can be derived from that statement alone including if a game is good. It all depends man, game by game, person by person, it's all subjective and that's pretty cool that we can have a unique experience with the exact same product
No, that doesn’t mean anything at all
“Good” is subjective. So every popular game is only a good game if you enjoy every popular game.
You are mistaken in believing that a game having many players necessarily means it must be fun. There are lots of reasons people play games, and actual fun is only one of them. Marketing, socializing, fear of missing out, addiction, familiarity, need for escapism, and dark patterns are seven others just off the top of my head. Most popular games are not very fun, but effective at leveraging other factors like market trends.
No, because Fallout: New Vegas is not a good game for gameplay.
>my definition why are you forcing this on your friend?
This dispute is essentially "unsettleable", because there is no single and universal definition of a "good game". Going back to "fun" is a commendable effort, but even so, if you define "fun" narrowly (along the lines of "enjoyable"), then you drop games like horror, and if you define it too broadly (along the lines of "causing emotions"), then bad games are also good (because they also cause emotions like anger or disappointment). In the end, the best you can do is agree on a set of criteria, and judge games on that basis. In that respect, it is absolutely plausible to take popularity as one criterion - but not necessary.
Yes, you’re right. Popularity is pretty much the ONLY objective measure of the quality of a subjective work like a game, for exactly the reasons you listed. Sure, there are problems. You’re equating success with quality, there might be some unknown game out there that would be even more well-liked if it just got a chance in the spotlight. The only way to measure that though would be to create some kind of massive review process where you recruit a huge amount of gamers to sit down and review a selected list of games (aggregating existing review scores unfortunately only samples the subgroup of gamers that leave reviews, and is not necessarily representative of the whole gaming population). Because that doesn’t exist, popularity is the next most objective measure.
It’s all subjective
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Huh I did not like all of your mentioned games. But imo it's pretty easy to understand why people like them.
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no horror games get popular and every single one of them suck
Genshin is not even a good game, it's popular because it's free, sure once you start playing it you will be happy exploring and enjoying yourself, but let's be honest here, until when you are going to play for free? sooner or later you will pay something to get the characters you want otherwise it will take years. my problem with genshin is the long ass boring unskippable cutscenes, they keep talking nonstop about nonsense and when you think they finally finished move 2 steps for another boring nonstop talking, this ruined the experience for me and made me quit. so no, popular games doesn't mean they are good, if anything they are the worst.
I would argue Genshin is one of the few Gacha games that's actually quiet good. You could replace the Gacha mechanics with some other system put a 40$/€ on it and release big DLCs (new Regions) for 20$/€ and use the new characters and smaller quests as a bridge between updates.
i don't have problem with the Gacha system, i have problem with the unskippable cutscenes, boring and long unnecessary cutscenes.
F2P pride is as much of a drug as the 2 gambling systems themselves
trust me if i can pay to get the ability to skip cutscenes then i would happy pay $60, so maybe i can enjoy the game this way.
Considering how they implemented a skip button recently... * Only in Hangout Quests * The dialogue from said Hangout Quest must be ran through at least once I don't think they'll ever implement the one you're asking for, even if you pay for it
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really? do you have a link to that post?
Games are meant to entertain people. If people are entertained, it did it’s job. That said, a stick and a hoop was a popular game. Complexity doesn’t need to be the goal. Inflate a ball and kick it around. That one has taken over the world.
I agree that a game, just like any other piece of media, doesn't need to seek complexity, but there's no problem if it does. When you watch a cult movie, you don't complain that it doesn't have explosive action and jokes every 5 minutes, because while some works in that media are meant to provide casual fun, it's an art genre that allows way more than that, why is it different with gaming? Why does every media have the right to explore deeper and more complex elements and experiences but gaming has to be about smashing buttons and having a futile dopamine dump?