http://www.gamrreview.com/article/89106/reviewing-reviewers-are-game-critics-fairer-than-movie-critics/

This is something I wrote up recently, I'd love to get some conversation going about it.  

But aren't pretty much all movie reviews only about the story. The acting and sometimes special effects are mentioned but the story is always the most important part. If you want a better comparison between game and movie reviews you should compare them to more technical reviews of movies. For example the blu-ray reviews. www.blu-ray.com
If games were mainly rated on their subject matter or narrative the scores would be very different.

Both have their flaws. Game reviews are influenced by hype. Some games hardly get any reviews while others are flaunted around everywhere regardless of their actual quality. The same with movies, the Oscars etc always seem questionable to me. In the end the scale used on IMDB is a lot more useful then the scale used for rating games.

The wrong reviewers rating games for kids happens a lot too btw.

I have been thinking about game reviewing for a while now, and I believe there is one major difference between video game reviews and movie reviews.

Video games have addictive qualities to them. It's true. Some are designed to have them from the start, some happen by accident. If someone has their brain wired for a specific form of action reward they will probably tend to enjoy one game over another.

The main reason I think this is that I am a very casual gamer. I tend to enjoy almost every game I play. It's very difficult to understand many of the negative reviews many games receive, as well as the hate many games receive.

J. Sterling says hi... :p

sorry dood, tried to read your article, but its too massive of a wall of text for me as it hurtz my eyes.

I think that game reviewers are fairer because they have to spend a pretty good time with the game and actually beat it where as movie reviewers only have to watch a movie once before they can review it.

The matter of game reviewers being more attached leads to a double-edged sword, one in which fairness is slighted because the reviewers are too invested in the series they're investigating, and while game reviewers can run some of the spectrum, rarely do they do all of it, and when you put them outside their comfort zone they become just as subjective as their film counterparts when placed outside of their respective comfort-zones

I think it's interesting that game reviews are so important and will actually stop people from buying games. Movie reviews on the other hand no one really cares about. People will think it got good reviews or not but never run around touting a movie has an 87 on metacritic. I think movie reviews are fairer because no one cares. When a good movie gets a bad score people understand it's an opinion. When a good game gets a bad score people freak out and all of a sudden everyone rushes to the site.

Chris Hu said: I think that game reviewers are fairer because they have to spend a pretty good time with the game and actually beat it where as movie reviewers only have to watch a movie once before they can review it.

However there is the fact that many reviewers will play the games on the easiest setting and a lot of them admitted to playing games with a fixed timeline (not saying that a review needs to do everything in a game ) that can affect the reviewers mood thus affecting the games score. I remember that fat guy at ign gave Yukaza 4 a 6 and he was sick at the time but he had a deadline and so was forced to play and complete the game on speed run.

Actually, IMO, Movie reviews are less biased when compared to Game reviews hence movie reviews are fairer. Its easier for game reviewers to have a preferred platform, like.... one dood on gameReview... not gonna say who.