Larian boss and CEO Swen Vincke has managed to spark another gaming debate through posts on social media. It was only last month we were talking about the studio's takes on AI usage, and now Vincke is back with a take on video game criticism.
After the launch of Highguard led to many knee-jerk reactions and a lot of critiques being thrown at the game just for the sake of it, Vincke took to Twitter/X to raise his problems with people "shitting on things others have created."
"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," he wrote. Vincke then went on to suggest a Metacritic-style system of reviewing game journalists/reviewers. This post was deleted, but the thread around it was left up.
"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."
Vincke explained his point very well, and isn't just trying to clap back at reviewers who are overly negative. The system he proposed could be a decent idea, as it could help readers filter out reviewers they like to read from. However, there's also a strong potential for such a system to be abused, with people review-bombing reviewers that don't support their favourite games.
In the days following the post, Vincke has made a lengthy tweet further clarifying his position. It seems he didn't want to criticise critics, but instead wanted to make it clear once more that people work on these games so many love to tear down. People who dedicate years to a craft, only in the hopes they can give someone a good way to spend their free time.
