Baldur's Gate 3 studio boss calls out "hurtful", "personal" videogame reviewers – "sometimes I think it'd be a good idea for critics to be scored, Metacritic-style"

Fresh from the trenches of the Divinity generative AI debate, Larian CEO Swen Vincke has taken to the Twitterverse with some moderately spicy thoughts on video game critics and reviewers. Broadly, he feels that we need to work harder to be “critical” without being “hurtful”. He also suggests that the industry could do with a Metacritic-style system for evaluating and scoring reviewers, to “encourage a bit more restraint”, so that “sensitive” creatives don’t “lose their idealism and love of players.”

Picture me over here, huffing and snorting like a bull eyeing the red-trousered bottom of an atypically fleshy matador browsing the inside of a just-opened china shop. By gawd! A chance to pontificate about my own navel, while bagging a Baldur’s Gate 3 headline in the bargain. I have some notes on Vincke’s notes, but before I start throwing my toys around, maybe read the Xitter thread in full, from late last night on the 27th. For those who do not partake of Musky products, here’s a transcript:

I don’t like people shitting on things others have created. Putting something out into the world makes you vulnerable, and that alone deserves respect, even if you dislike the creation. It’s easy to destroy things, it’s a lot harder to build them. The best critics understand this. Even when they’re being critical, they do their best not to be hurtful.

Sometimes I think it’d be a good idea for critics to be scored, Metacritic-style, based on how others evaluate their criticism. I like to imagine it would encourage a bit more restraint. The harsh words do real damage. You shouldn’t have to grow callus on your soul just because you want to publish something.

There’s plenty of games I genuinely don’t like playing and there are many I know are made for the wrong reasons. However – it’s incredibly rare for one to be made without there being someone behind it that truly cared about what they were making, putting a part of themselves in it.

One of the best reviewers I ever knew refused to review games he considered failures. He believed that developers deserved the chance to try again. He knew that every failed attempt could be what enabled the next great one.

I know this because I was one of those developers that failed. And he only told me many years later.

So yeah – be nice to people that create things is what I’m trying to say. You need them.

And yes – I get that if people are charging money, you want to know if it’s good or not. But reviewers can just say – I didn’t enjoy it or I don’t think it’s well made or I don’t think it’s worth the money they are charging. That’s enough. No need to get personal for the sake of some likes.

Or headlines if you’re press.

Going to step down from my soapbox now. It’s been on my mind for a while and just opening my feed today just pushed it all to the surface.

Think of the time you had to recite something in front of the class and how nervous you were. And how much any negative comment hurt.

Be nice to one another, be nice to the people creating stuff to entertain you. Treat them like you would like to be treated if you made something.

Consider it a strategic investment in the quality of your future entertainment. You won’t regret it.

Following responses to his thread, Vincke wrote a postscript spelling out that devs shouldn’t indulge in personal attacks either, nor should they “milk players who love their game”. Rather, “what I’m trying to say is that most creative souls are sensitive souls and those sensitive souls are the ones that care the most.

“When they check out because they can’t handle the vitriol, we all lose because what’s left are those that don’t care,” he went on. “The effect the words have on those sensitive souls may not be underestimated. You don’t want them to lose their idealism and love of players.” Vincke suggests that “not playing the games is probably the best [way]” to reproach developers “that don’t respect players”.

I’ll keep my own thoughts brief-ish. I have some sympathy for the idea that critics should avoid personal attacks, inasmuch as there is a tendency with videogames to hang the work of many on the antics of just one, prominent figure, which means that both feats of collaboration and wider, structural problems may go overlooked. You could argue that making it personal also feeds an online culture of dogpiling individuals, and especially marginalised people who make for ‘easier’ scapegoats.

Still, it’s utterly ambiguous here where Vincke is drawing the line between “critical” and “hurtful” or “personal”. And in any case, it can be appropriate to direct some outright vitriol at the people making a game, inasmuch as art expresses the values of its creators. You don’t get a pass for making poison just because you poured your heart into it. Sometimes, utter scorn is justifiable. If Vincke is serious about this conversation, I would encourage him to actually cite some reviews, games and game developers and discuss the finer workings.

I also have some sympathy for the idea that people trying to make art deserve a break, inasmuch as “creative” work under capitalism is often disparaged for being economically unproductive and “frivolous”. But I think the making of art or other “creative” work is mythologised to the point that it encourages people to see any critique as an assault on their very being – and the conceit of artmaking as inherently brave, valuable and worth nurturing may be wielded to silence those who challenge the mantra that the creation of another product is an automatic good.

That fucking restaurant reviewer from Ratatouille is wrong, in other words. One of criticism’s most valuable functions – just as valuable as “discovering and defending the new” – is simply to say no in the face of structural pressure to rubber-stamp the next round of releases. This does actually have its risks: I’ve received plenty of death threats for scoring things 8/10 or lower, and in a media sphere that depends on traffic volume, there is continual ambient goading to approve of, or at least acknowledge games that already have some kind of mass following.

Some quick closing notes: a lot of the toxicity and personality politics of online criticism reflects the workings of particular communication platforms, like Twitter, which reward dunking and hot takes. The idea that a reviewer should avoid commenting on something they consider a failure is ridiculous, on paper. If you’re that reviewer, I’d like to read a defence of your decision not to write about Vincke’s prior project. Oh, and as it happens, there are some halfway ‘official’ systems for evaluating and scoring critics. Go look up Rock Paper Shotgun’s TrustPilot page, if you can bear it.