hxczuner said:
With all due respect, you just identified a major problem here on the internet: The difference between bias and a passionate opinion. Most people don't know what bias truly means.
Anywho, I would agree with you to a certain extent, but a truly objective review is impossible (another fallacy of the internet realm). People cry for objectivity but I promise you won't like it if you see it. Games are just that, games. They're fun and we're passionate about them. The developers are passionate about making them. So why should reviewers bottle that same passion? It's ok for a reviewer to gush over a fantastic game (Outland, for example is absolutely brilliant and everyone should play it right now) but if a reviewer displays that same passion in a negative fashion they're biased, mean, and unnecessarily brutal. I just don't believe that anything should be sugarcoated...ever.(I don't write the way some others do, and I most likely wouldn't produce anything in line with these, but I don't have a problem with it.) Our "journalistic responsibility" is not to the developer, or the publisher, or the families of either, it's to the reader. If we feel a reader should avoid any contact with a game at all costs, it's our job to say so. You don't read our reviews to see whether or not we think the developer tried really hard. Is it harsh, possibly. But it's not wrong. |
I'm sorry I was using bias as an example but that wasn't the pinnacle of my argument. I don't like 1Up because in the past they have been extremely biased against Nintendo. Their reviewer called the GameCube a little childs play thing and then mocked its appearance on G4Tech. Then another reviewer said Miyamoto was a whack job. If a journalistic organization expresses such a hatred for a company such as Nintendo how can you take their reviews seriously? That's what I meant by bias.
What I was trying to get at is the offensive content. A reviewer and journalists job is to report about the product to the consumer. To do so respectfully and objectively. What some of these reviewers did was completely uncalled for attacking the publisher and developer directly in your article is going over the line.
Its okay to be passionate about reviews I have been very passionate in my reviews as well. But a journalist should always act professionally and they shouldn't cross the line. I mean attacking the developer directly and calling their product a steaming pile of shit essentially, its just not cool.
So if I was a publisher or PR company and I saw a journalist attacking my companies integrity and unfairly attacking my product. I would defiantly re-consider sending them a review copy in the future. If I saw many reviewers all attacking me and my company I would vocalize my discontent public ally, maybe in a more tactful manor but I would still say something.
In journalism class when I was taught to review products I was taught that professionalism and tact were very important. That a journalist is to remain impartial and unbiased. The reviewers job is to provide a quality review to advise the consumer on which products to use or try out, without drawing emotions and personal vendetta's into the issue. I have a negative bias against a company and showed it my review once, I went a little over board. My teacher pulled me aside and read my review to me and pointed out that I over stepped the line and reported poorly. I got an F on that review and had to improve in the future reviews.
Fact is their are ways of expressing discontent with products without insulting the developer. Instead of calling the game a pile of shit, you could comment more specifically about what you didn't like. You could say the game felt out dated and old that the game was not up to the higher standards of our current generation. Several ways to be passionate without insulting the developer.
Review copies are a privilege and developers should send them out to journalists who write good reviews. Do they have to rank your product high, no way but if the journalist goes to far, then giving a different journalist a review copy next time is not really a bad thing. Journalists need to act like journalists.
-JC7
"In God We Trust - In Games We Play " - Joel Reimer