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[Closed] FuwaReviews Writers


solidbatman

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Hello all. Today, I am once again opening up applications to join the FuwaReviews team! Our numbers are a little small right now, and with the increasing number of releases, we need to bolster the ranks a little bit. Right now, I have two slots open, with one of those slots being a specialized slot for the Reviews team. The specialized reviewer will mostly be handling otome and/or yaoi games (NTY for example). To apply for a spot, PM me any of your reviews, or a link to one of your reviews. Make sure to read a review or two from our team to get an idea of how we review games, and the style of our reviews. We are looking for someone willing to adapt to our style of avoiding spoilers as much as possible, being clear and concise, and not sugar coating what we think of any particular game. So things like individual route reviews, showing a strong bias against a genre because it goes against your tastes, and super wordy reviews are a no-no. 

We have very few requirements for members of the reviews team. The biggest one is that I ask all reviewers to write at least one review a month. If a product key is provided by a company, that review is to take priority over all other reviews, and I expect the review out in a timely manner. Thank you for reading, and I look forward to seeing some of your work everyone :) 

1. Filled

2. Open (Otome and or BL Reviewer)

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Why not just use some of the many reviews from the forum itself?Some of them are really good, is it really better to give a link to another blog rather than to use a review from a user of the forum itself? I will never understand the policy of fuwa regarding this but oh well I don't make the rules :shrug:

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1 hour ago, Deep Blue said:

Why not just use some of the many reviews from the forum itself?Some of them are really good, is it really better to give a link to another blog rather than to use a review from a user of the forum itself? I will never understand the policy of fuwa regarding this but oh well I don't make the rules :shrug:

As SolidBatman mentioned, the reviews are to have a particular style and obey certain parameters.
"Make sure to read a review or two from our team to get an idea of how we review games, and the style of our reviews. We are looking for someone willing to adapt to our style of avoiding spoilers as much as possible, being clear and concise, and not sugar coating what we think of any particular game. So things like individual route reviews, showing a strong bias against a genre because it goes against your tastes, and super wordy reviews are a no-no.  "

 

And besides, some of the people who make reviews are offered a position on the team, presuming their style isn't entirely different from what the reviews team is looking for.

I'll have you pardon me in case I missed your point, I might not be fully awake currently.

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1 hour ago, Deep Blue said:

Why not just use some of the many reviews from the forum itself?Some of them are really good, is it really better to give a link to another blog rather than to use a review from a user of the forum itself? I will never understand the policy of fuwa regarding this but oh well I don't make the rules :shrug:

I'd rather get people who are interested in joining the team, and willing to follow the style, and deadlines we have. So, thats why I have them come to me instead. 

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1 hour ago, Tiagofvarela said:

As SolidBatman mentioned, the reviews are to have a particular style and obey certain parameters.
"Make sure to read a review or two from our team to get an idea of how we review games, and the style of our reviews. We are looking for someone willing to adapt to our style of avoiding spoilers as much as possible, being clear and concise, and not sugar coating what we think of any particular game. So things like individual route reviews, showing a strong bias against a genre because it goes against your tastes, and super wordy reviews are a no-no.  "

 

And besides, some of the people who make reviews are offered a position on the team, presuming their style isn't entirely different from what the reviews team is looking for.

I'll have you pardon me in case I missed your point, I might not be fully awake currently.

*avoiding spoilers
*being clear and concise
*not sugar coating what we think of any particular game
-We have very few requirements for members of the reviews team. 

I dont see those requirements excluding many reviews.

34 minutes ago, solidbatman said:

I'd rather get people who are interested in joining the team, and willing to follow the style, and deadlines we have. So, thats why I have them come to me instead. 

That makes a bit more sense, specially the deadlines requirement. 

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11 hours ago, solidbatman said:

 ...showing a strong bias against a genre because it goes against your tastes... are a no-no. 

Was this law intact when you reviewed Little Busters? :makina: /jk

And while most of your requirements are understandable, I do have to ask if you consider having a numerical score as part of the Divine Fuwa Style that must be followed. I personally heavily dislike those, as they're often inaccurate and misleading, and imo take away the value of the review itself. A number simply can not summarize an experience. People who actually read the review don't need a number to increase their understanding of the reviewer's opinion, so all it does is give the lazy a usually inaccurate image of the reviewer's opinion. Your own Little Buster's review is probably the best example, the people who were angry at it were only angry at the numerical score and not what you actually wrote, which was p fine. If I were to write a review, I'd like to have the option to not mislead the reader and oversimplify my experience.

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16 minutes ago, babiker said:

Was this law intact when you reviewed Little Busters? :makina: /jk

Well, to be fair Bats is pretty spot on with Little Busters. A lot of people say "slice of life is a legitimate genre" to explain away the long scenes of nothingness, and sure slice of life IS a legitimate genre. Except Little Busters isn't a slice of life story, rather it has a plot and a story with segments of slice of life within that story. Those segments were so long, and so little actually happened, they detracted heavily from the story, something which wouldn't happen if the entire thing was slice of life.

And this leads straight into the main problem with Little Busters - it's written poorly. There are some serious problems with the Little Busters story. Everywhere. In most routes. And Bats goes into a fair few of those. And because a visual novel is a novel first and foremost (that is, the main purpose of the piece of software is to tell a story) those problems significantly detract from the experience.

A lot of Key fans will rush to the defence of LB saying stuff like 'I enjoyed it', 'that was harsh' whatever else, blah blah. None of this addresses the issue that the VN has problems and Bats' score and review is a fair one. Despite what Key fans say (heh)

So Nyah :P 

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19 minutes ago, Rooke said:

Well, to be fair Bats is pretty spot on with Little Busters. A lot of people say "slice of life is a legitimate genre" to explain away the long scenes of nothingness, and sure slice of life IS a legitimate genre. Except Little Busters isn't a slice of life story, rather it has a plot and a story with segments of slice of life within that story. Those segments were so long, and so little actually happened, they detracted heavily from the story, something which wouldn't happen if the entire thing was slice of life.

And this leads straight into the main problem with Little Busters - it's written poorly. There are some serious problems with the Little Busters story. Everywhere. In most routes. And Bats goes into a fair few of those. And because a visual novel is a novel first and foremost (that is, the main purpose of the piece of software is to tell a story) those problems significantly detract from the experience.

A lot of Key fans will rush to the defence of LB saying stuff like 'I enjoyed it', 'that was harsh' whatever else, blah blah. None of this addresses the issue that the VN has problems and Bats' score and review is a fair one. Despite what Key fans say (heh)

So Nyah :P 

 

46 minutes ago, babiker said:

Your own Little Buster's review is probably the best example, the people who were angry at it were only angry at the numerical score and not what you actually wrote, which was p fine.

Nyah :P

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@babiker I agree with your opinion in regard of numerical score, and I think numerical scoring for VN was kind of hard to use. But I also understand solidbatman opinion on Little Busters though (Although the score made it infamous anyway, but I think his opinion that he dislike sudden progress of Little Busters story without foreshadowing, and some section were drag on were understandable). If you ask my opinion, I think Key fans who posted at solidbatman forum was far more annoying at solidbatman Little Busters forum than solidbatman himself, although his reaction didn't help at all though (I was snapped back at his forum there iirc, let's not remember it anymore). Well, enough of my opinion about solidbatman Little Busters review, and as for matter of fact, I think Little Busters is simply divisive one, as likely as many popular work. On one side, we got people who willing to ignore the weakness in writing and another side will not ignore any weakness in writing like solidbatman. Just like any work, really. 

Well, good luck to solidbatman here, because if you want to read my review, it'll probably filled with seiyuu info, my word is usually in Engrish, and it'll be wordy since I'd usually confused with what I want to wrote in usual my long forum post, so I think I'm not qualified for review writer here.

PS - Since recently solidbatman like to review short VN, guess long VN like Little Busters was not fit for his reading anymore (I understand though since some real life issue could take away enjoyment from read VN). Just my opinion here, okay.

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1 hour ago, Valmore said:

So basically give a spoiler-free, objective, concise overall review of the title in question without pulling punches?

I'm sure I could do it. I've just never done it. But I could.

No such thing as an objective review. Let me give you a ... heh, example. A person with shit taste will obviously review shit practices highly, whereas a person with elite taste will revie... 0.0 

*Quickly withdraws from thread*

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We don't expect you to be purely objective. It helps to be able to look at all of the qualities of any given game and to give it its dues where it deserves it, even if you don't like it. Or to be able to dissect the flaws in games you love. But ultimately, reviews are based on your personal opinions, and at least going by what Ryechu always told me, we actually prefer it if your own personal opinions and feelings on a game take the highest priority in your evaluation, as long as you justify it. That's how the GGN games got such high scores and Little Busters got such a low score.

Ikikoi is a VN that is widely panned by the community. "Ikikoi is the greatest VN ever made, screw the haters," or something to that effect stretched out to 1000+ words, isn't particularly informative or interesting to read. "Ikikoi is a great game despite its flaws, here are its flaws and why I don't mind them, and here's why I especially love this game" is something we'd be interested in posting. "Ikikoi isn't even flawed, but misunderstood, allow me to explain that what people see as flaws are actually strengths for this brilliant masterpiece." You're some unholy abomination but fine, you can write that, too! If you like Ikikoi but your review is "Ikikoi is a bad game because of all of these flaws, I liked it but all of these qualities only make it a 4/10 game, objectively speaking," then that's just boring in my eyes. I personally don't want to see anything like that.

Anyways, I hope that paragraph of nonsense makes sense. SolidBatman can feel free to tell me if I'm way off base here. I wasn't ever really briefed very thoroughly on the guidelines, however. I was just sort of brought in and started doing my thing, and apparently that's what they wanted? I don't really know what bats means when he says overly wordy for example. 

edit: And when we say "don't pull any punches" we mean "don't water down your words in fear of hurting people's feelings," not "tear into every game." 

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For the time being, numerical scores are not going away. If people want, I'd be more than happy to open a suggestion thread to discuss our various practices. This thread, however, is not the place to do it so I ask that those who have suggestions for the direction of FuwaReviews refrain from filling this thread with them, and either PM me, or let me know to open a suggestion thread. Thanks. 

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6 hours ago, Decay said:

We don't expect you to be purely objective. It helps to be able to look at all of the qualities of any given game and to give it its dues where it deserves it, even if you don't like it. Or to be able to dissect the flaws in games you love. But ultimately, reviews are based on your personal opinions, and at least going by what Ryechu always told me, we actually prefer it if your own personal opinions and feelings on a game take the highest priority in your evaluation, as long as you justify it. That's how the GGN games got such high scores and Little Busters got such a low score.

Ikikoi is a VN that is widely panned by the community. "Ikikoi is the greatest VN ever made, screw the haters," or something to that effect stretched out to 1000+ words, isn't particularly informative or interesting to read. "Ikikoi is a great game despite its flaws, here are its flaws and why I don't mind them, and here's why I especially love this game" is something we'd be interested in posting. "Ikikoi isn't even flawed, but misunderstood, allow me to explain that what people see as flaws are actually strengths for this brilliant masterpiece." You're some unholy abomination but fine, you can write that, too! If you like Ikikoi but your review is "Ikikoi is a bad game because of all of these flaws, I liked it but all of these qualities only make it a 4/10 game, objectively speaking," then that's just boring in my eyes. I personally don't want to see anything like that.

Anyways, I hope that paragraph of nonsense makes sense. SolidBatman can feel free to tell me if I'm way off base here. I wasn't ever really briefed very thoroughly on the guidelines, however. I was just sort of brought in and started doing my thing, and apparently that's what they wanted? I don't really know what bats means when he says overly wordy for example. 

edit: And when we say "don't pull any punches" we mean "don't water down your words in fear of hurting people's feelings," not "tear into every game." 

Challenge accepted. If a slot is still open, I'll put something together today and send it. It'll likely be of what I just finished which won't be the most current game out there, but it'll be something.

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16 hours ago, babiker said:

And while most of your requirements are understandable, I do have to ask if you consider having a numerical score as part of the Divine Fuwa Style that must be followed.

The truth is, we put numerical score because it maximizes the amount of salt produced by our reviews. Aside from the few people that are actually really mad that we use numerical scores (they're a great source of fine-grained salt), a lot of people wouldn't bother to read the review anyway and just look at the score. We can make all those people mad too, isn't that great?

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