Does a player base know quality?

[Khuutra]

Esa-Petteri said:

Khuutra said:

Esa-Petteri said:

Yes they do, they know what their target audience wants. That is not some wii sports/music/carnival games stuff. :)

Writing to a target audience is not the aim of criticism - that's why I can't take most reviewers seriously. They have no backgrounds in critical analysis.

So.. who should they write to, soccer moms? Do you really think they read the reviews? They know what gamers want and review by those standards. Not the soccer mom standard for obvious reasons.

I'm so glad you asked.

You see, in criticism, you don't write for any particular audience at all, you write in order to contribute to the larger critical dialogue. This is how it works in literature reviews, music reviews, and to a lesser extent movie reviews (movie reviews have gotten a lot better in the past few decades, naturally) - you're not writing to an audience, you're writing for the sake of critical analysis in and of itself.

Reviews are never a "buy or don't buy" sort of thing. They discuss merits of a piece of work according to certain critical standards and then extrapolate from there.