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mornelithe on 21 October 2014
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Burek said:
mornelithe said:
Burek said:
I will accept your arguments on biased reviewers. I still think that objectivity can be reached even by non-fans of the genre, but certainly some people can use their bias towards bad purposes.

But as I said earlier, we will be much wiser come Monday, and find out if this person had an agenda.

I think that CAN be true, absolutely, but I think the behavior of games reviewers should give us all pause before thinking that's what's happening.  We have way too many examples of people letting their pre-conceived biases, effect their review scores.  They should be reviewing their game, and I don't think it's a good sign when going into it, they openly admit a bias against a genre.  Doesn't instill a great deal of confidence in me, that they aren't thinking about that bias throughout the entire review process.

It's also something that separates actual journalists from games reviewers.  Most reviewers have not gone through anything remotely close to the level of education/training that a true journalist does.  That education can often help them separate their biases, from the conclusions they draw.

It is true. It is becoming a problem of journalism in general, because, just as NBA and MLB expansions dilluted the talent on teams, the unprecedented expansion of journalism from a few newspapers, magazines and networks into a Milky Way of internet portals and youtube channels has brought into spotlight thousands of usually complete functional illiterates which present themselves as "journalists".

A decade ago, we had 5 gaming magazines, and you could have taken their review to the bank 99 out of 100 times. Today, we have about 80 reviews tallied by Metacritic, along with dozens of video reviews, twitch reviews etc...

You just cannot trust any single one. I don't read or watch reviews for over 2 years. I decided for myself after a period of information gathering. And so far I have made almost no mistakes when choising games to play, and know that I would have missed some very enjoyable games had I listened to reviews.

This is the understanding, I think, the millenials and the newer generation of gamer's needs to come to.  I prefer watching dev diaries, and unfiltered gameplay videos over any reviews these days.  Part of that is also that I don't feel there's really any reviewer out there with my specific tastes.  Now, I'm not slamming the younger generation, because quite frankly, I too trusted reviewers far more when I was younger.  But, as I got older and it was easier for me to pick out shady behavior (or it's simply become more widely reported on), my views about reviews in general have changed, dramatically.  I think one of the worst facets of gaming over the past 10+ years, is the reliance and trust, that metacritic illicits from people.