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How would you describe a new game in a single sentence that accurately conveyed the gameplay and feel? Especially for a game like palworld where most people will have the wrong initial impression. Especially even a genre like “survival” is so broad these days.
It’s not like games media is the only type that does this. And people do this constantly with each other to establish basis.
Conversational language should inherently be different than journalistic prose. It was considered good form (really necessary form) for the vast majority of my life to fully define any non-ubiquitous terms in the text before using them. It only seems recently to me, and especially in games journalism, that they’ve decided to eschew the defining part of the process and just give the reference undefined.
Like it’s okay, useful even, to say things like “Like ARK, Palworld utilizes X mechanic to achieve Y by doing Z.” That’s a great way to use a touchpoint for increased clarity to readers! But to just say “Palworld’s combat is ARK-like,” without defining what ARK-like is, is lazy and unhelpful to anyone outside the know already.
I really dislike the term “Soulslike” for a similar reason. Most “Soulslike” games have almost nothing in common with “Dark Souls,” but they’ve latched onto one defining characteristic (tough boss fights) and ran with it, instead of using three words, “hard boss fights.”
How would you describe a new game in a single sentence that accurately conveyed the gameplay and feel? Especially for a game like palworld where most people will have the wrong initial impression. Especially even a genre like “survival” is so broad these days.
It’s not like games media is the only type that does this. And people do this constantly with each other to establish basis.
Conversational language should inherently be different than journalistic prose. It was considered good form (really necessary form) for the vast majority of my life to fully define any non-ubiquitous terms in the text before using them. It only seems recently to me, and especially in games journalism, that they’ve decided to eschew the defining part of the process and just give the reference undefined.
Like it’s okay, useful even, to say things like “Like ARK, Palworld utilizes X mechanic to achieve Y by doing Z.” That’s a great way to use a touchpoint for increased clarity to readers! But to just say “Palworld’s combat is ARK-like,” without defining what ARK-like is, is lazy and unhelpful to anyone outside the know already.
Exactly.
I really dislike the term “Soulslike” for a similar reason. Most “Soulslike” games have almost nothing in common with “Dark Souls,” but they’ve latched onto one defining characteristic (tough boss fights) and ran with it, instead of using three words, “hard boss fights.”