I read half of the article and when it said more and more of the same I skipped to the end to get the summary. And I don’t think that expecting negativity not to be lazy — to at least explain why it is plausible — leads so smarm. It rather leads to making it more likely that criticism is noticed that can help improve the status quo. Because that’s the non-lazy criticism, and it will then stand out.
If that non-lazy criticism is embedded in a sea of lazy criticism, it is far more likely to be missed, because those who could learn from it have already started to dismiss anything negative ten (20/100/1000/…) comments earlier; that’s how they could keep going in such an environment.
It's an interesting article I think. No, I don't I don't encouraging critics to do their best work is smarm. But you constructed one extreme - lazy negativity - I invoked its polar opposite. Partially because I don't think there is that much lezy negativity on this forum. It's a matter of taste, smarm offends me in a way that relentless negativity does not.
And because I do think that smarm ruled some of the larger outlets for some time
Yep, Astarian's voice acting is great. Do we really need 10 appreciation posts a day make that point?
At this point any critique is largely moot. People are speaking out to be heard, not because they think they can improve the game. EA is over, no DLCs are planned, the devs have told us that the game is finished -- we're just helping to write the obituary.
