Topic: Ideas for the site

Two things:

1) I wanted to use the contact form to let you know a new user/publisher appears to have made an account to make an advert post for their game, and they don't appear to be an approved/identified dev/publisher account.
https://www.nintendolife.com/forums/news/shardpunk_is_out_now...

2) When I open the contact page, it shows me as logged out even though I am logged in. I don't know if this is a bug? (firefox, pc)

@antdickens

@WoomyNNYes topic has been removed, contact form seems OK here, is it still happening? If so, are you able to check the javascript console for an error message?

@antdickens Contact form is working now.

@antdickens There was problem with the Contact form? I sent a form yesterday I think, did the staff get it?

@Zuljaras can't see any logs of you using the contact form since last year.

@antdickens That is weird. I used it last week because of removed comments and I got the message that it was sent successfully.

I will send it again now.

Update: Done. And I got the success message again. I filled in under Moderation/User Accounts/Bans.

@Zuljaras got it, and replied!

@antdickens Thank you!

@antdickens Um... I was trying to write a post, and when I picked "post reply," it didn't work at all. I'll try to post here to see if it does it again.

Edit: OK, I tried again and it actually worked this time. (It was a post I was trying to write in the movie thread.) That was weird... sorry for the trouble.

@eminence_grise PJ left his full-time role back in February; however, he is still part of our freelance pool, so you will see him contributing, mainly reviews, here on NL.

Something that I think a few people have mentioned in review comments and has been bothering me for a while: when you review a Switch 2 Edition of a game that's already been reviewed on Switch 1, would it be possible to add a second score box to the review and game page - one score for just the upgrade pack and one for the Switch 2 version of the game as a whole? The way it's done now is inconsistent: if there's already a review of the Switch 1 version then the review is just for the upgrade pack, but if the game is being reviewed first or exclusively on Switch 2 (e.g. Metroid Prime 4), the score is for the game itself, even if there is also an upgrade path available.

So if you were looking through the review scores for Switch 2 games on here, you'd get the impression that Breath of the Wild is only an 8/10 game and that Pokemon Legends Z-A (also a Switch 2 Edition, but the review score is for the full game) is better than Animal Crossing New Horizons and Super Mario Bros Wonder! I know this problem is pretty much solved by reading the actual reviews rather than just the scores (the BotW S2E review in particular explains the policy for these reviews), but I still think it would be useful and clearer to have two scores.

@Dogorilla flagging this with @dartmonkey who may be able to give some thoughts.

Totally hear where you are coming from; bottom line there is no perfect method to suit everyone.

I would say, though, that the majority of our readers are people who would likely have played the Switch 1 version of a game, therefore, reviewing the "value" of an upgraded version of the game feels like the priority. But it certainly complicates things when it comes to "I've not played, which should I get?".

I'd say something like Metroid 4 is an outlier, as it was a dual release. We'll always prioritise the game on the newer system when it comes to a dual release (I think?) as we think majority of users will be buying it on the new(er) system.

@antdickens Agreed that it makes sense for the reviews to focus on the upgrades in those cases. I just think that having two scores would cover all bases, especially over time as Switch 2 becomes the dominant system and more newcomers will be buying games for it. Of course you can always link to the original Switch 1 review, and anyone who makes purchasing decisions just based on the score without reading the review has only themselves to blame, but as I say it just feels a bit inconsistent in terms of what the scores actually mean at the moment.

@Dogorilla Yeah, I take your point and the outliers poke at my OCD! We discussed our approach a lot in the weeks/months leading up to S2 launch. In the cases of Z-A and MP4, we did mini reviews of the S1 versions, so that context is there.

As Ant says, the vast majority of NL readers will have played, say, BOTW or ACNH already, so reviewing totally fresh makes little sense, especially when the OG review is sitting right there, prominently flagged. If someone's just after the best-performing version of a game they've never played before and money is no object, the NS2 versions are 100% the way to play, which will be obvious to anyone who reads the text or even just glances at the Joys/Cons bullets for quick-fire context.

I'm not opposed to highlighting the other version's score more prominently, but I feel our approach is the most sensible for an inherently untidy cross-gen situation. As you say, ultimately nobody should be basing a purchase solely on a number.

@dartmonkey That makes sense, the reviews themselves are the main thing! But having thought about this some more (I do have a life, I promise), it also affects user ratings, which don't come with written context. If you look at the ratings spread for ACNH's Switch 2 edition from the poll article, the most common score is 10, followed by 7, and there's a not-insignificant number of 4s and 5s. I think it's likely that most of the 10s are from people rating the full game, and the lower numbers from people rating the upgrade pack. It's not the most pressing issue in the world, but if you're collecting opinion data then ideally the respondents should all have the same understanding of what they're giving an opinion on!

I suppose one possible solution would be to treat upgrade packs like DLC in the game database, so each upgrade pack has its own game page separate from the Switch 2 Edition itself. Then the reviews could be associated with whichever page they're relevant to, and users could rate the upgrade pack independently from the full Switch 2 game. Maybe this is overcomplicating things, but to me it seems like a good way of making the scores more consistent and comparable.

@Dogorilla It's caused weirdness on metacritic too.

Wonder is an evergreen game so eventually the switch 2 version will likely effectively be a 'new' game to millions of people and that target group may look at aggregates and think the game is less good than it is. Nintendo Life isn't the only group rating based on the DLC rather than the full game but the majority of reviewers seem to be rating it as one package so the scores have a funny distribution mixing up both review methods.

On the plus side, seeing Nintendo Life give the lowest rating on metacritic to a Mario game at least fights the narrative that the site has a Nintendo bias in rating games 😆

That is funny to see, and it's also interesting to look through the review snippets on Metacritic where even some of the 90-100 scoring reviews are saying the new content is inessential or overpriced. My favourite is the Screen Rant one, where the Metacritic summary is just "Super Mario Bros. Wonder is still worth playing."

@Dogorilla I am a fan of Arlo's review — basically he praised it unconditionally while also mentioning that it's 100% totally skippable. And he closed out the review with something along the lines of "So, is it worth it? I dunno man!"

Ever since the Metro 2039 reveal, an ad for the game gets paired with turning the site into dark mode. Any chance of bringing back light mode?

I'm more shocked it goes live on every site, even the ones with nothing to do with the game.

Then again, the site is as happy at the moment. I love opening on mobile and almost clicking a link before an ad spawns in and punts everything down the page. Good method for getting them revenue clicks I guess.