I have lost faith in the crediblity of reviewers

[Picko]

Garcian Smith said:

Picko said:

 

The key to reviews is the audience. Who are they writing for? If the horror movie buff has an audience that only loves horror movies then there is nothing wrong with reviewing The Godfather on the basis of whether it was scary or not.

Game sites are mainly viewed by the so-called "hardcore" audience, why would they tailor their reviews for people not reading their site? It wouldn't make sense. It is therefore perfectly reasonable for a site like IGN to review casual games poorly if they are not the type of games that appeals to their audience and given that the idea of a review is to tell their audience whether a game is worth buying this is exactly the way it should be reviewed.

If you want to know how well a really casual game caters for a casual audience, then you read or watch something that appeals to that same audience. They will give you the type of review you're looking for.

Reviews are ultimately about catering towards an audience and it's surprising that no one seems to get this (and provides yet another reason why aggregating reviews is stupid but that's another point for an entirely different argument). Although I will admit that its amazing that no one has come up with a review site for casual gamers (perhaps there just isn't the audience?).

 

 

I disagree. They should be reviewing every game the way that it was meant to be reviewed, or not at all. If gaming sites want to review "casual games," they either need to hire some "casual gamers" as reviewers or just stop reviewing anything but the latest flavor-of-the-month FPS.

But then, perhaps I'm expecting a bit too much by demanding any sort of intellectual rigor from the gaming press. In fact, I know I am.

 

 

So they should intentionally misinform their audience? Great business move. A review is meant to tell someone whether a game is worth buying, that is its only goal. If only "hardcore" gamers read my reviews, then targeting my review towards "casual" gamers is providing misinformation or performing my service poorly.

The only logical way to review things is to cater towards your audience. The gamers who read these sites and obsess over reviews are not the ones who typically play highly casual games, it makes no business sense at all to cater for an audience that is never likely to look at your site.

While it might be a good idea for an IGN to have a casual gamers network, that still wouldn't stop the main site crushing games that don't appeal to their audience. And really it is unfair to expect anything else, they are a business after all.

But all of this is largely irrelevant as many sites are often very generous with reviewing casual titles, perhaps Wii Music got bad reviews because it's well ... bad.