Its pretty simple. On this generation journalists started reviewing tech instead of reviewing pieces of entertainment.
They no longer review games and therefore their opinions are biased and have origin on other sources.
The actual Metacritic debacles are efforts by the players to counter the bias that has been born in the industry, because they no longer mimic their views.
| adriane23 said: Inconsistencies between review scores and the reviewers own words. Inconsistencies/Hypocrisy when reviewers review similar games that have similar faults and/or qualities. Lack of journalistic integrity (Putting personal opinions about genres and the nationality of the game developers). Lack of maturity (A lot of game journalists are just too sensitive). |
Wonderful. You hit everything I was gonna say. The 3rd and 2nd are what REALLY get underneath my skin. To me a combination of the 2nd and 3rd are my biggest problems.
Veknoid_Outcast said:
I agree with most of what you wrote, but could you clarify the section in bold? |
Go read the Double Dragons: Neon review from IGN. Worst case of this to go un noticed
Veknoid_Outcast said:
I agree with most of what you wrote, but could you clarify the section in bold? |
Like when gaming reviewers state that they don't like a certain genre (JRPGs, Hack & Slash, Fighting, Beat Em Ups, etc) and still review a game in said genre.
Example: http://www.ign.com/articles/2012/09/11/double-dragon-neon-review
The reviewer obviously didn't care for old arcade beat em up games, and his review reflects that. People can't change what they like and don't like, but being objective means putting your personal opinons aside and giving an unbiased analysis.
I am the Playstation Avenger.
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85,518 
adriane23 said:
Example: http://www.ign.com/articles/2012/09/11/double-dragon-neon-review The reviewer obviously didn't care for old arcade beat em up games, and his review reflects that. People can't change what they like and don't like, but being objective means putting your personal opinons aside and giving an unbiased analysis. |
The point is well taken. But I disagree about setting aside personal opinions. I think we seek out reviews for the expert opinion of the reviewer. Every critic has standards and priorities when it comes to movies, music, or video games in this case, and these should be on full display in a review. If a critic put aside his personal opinions, he's not really a critic anymore.
I see what you and Xxain are saying with this Double Dragon review, but I think that's more a matter of taste than professionalism. A critic can have bad taste and still be a competent, professional reviewer.
The gaming journalists are almost all fanboys and frequently present a biased, yet barely researched article, or one using only a superficial analysis if at all.
Lack of sexual life.
Veknoid_Outcast said:
The point is well taken. But I disagree about setting aside personal opinions. I think we seek out reviews for the expert opinion of the reviewer. Every critic has standards and priorities when it comes to movies, music, or video games in this case, and these should be on full display in a review. If a critic put aside his personal opinions, he's not really a critic anymore. I see what you and Xxain are saying with this Double Dragon review, but I think that's more a matter of taste than professionalism. A critic can have bad taste and still be a competent, professional reviewer. |
If a critic puts aside his personal opinions to critique something, he's the definition of a critic.
If I didn't like FPS games and reviewed Halo 4, I can't be taken seriously if I bash it for being in first person. As a professional, I should only critique it for what it's trying to accomplish, and how it stacks up against its contemporaries in its genre.
I am the Playstation Avenger.
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| Akvod said:
Question 1: What do you guys think are the sources for the increasing distrust of video game journalists? Post anything, external environment, specific events, etc. Question 2 (Optional): Do you guys think the distrust is justified? Question 3 (Optional): What can game journalists do to regain that trust?
For me, there's a couple of thing: 1. 2007 recession: Caused society in general to become more distrustful of institutions. Capitalism, corporations, government, etc. I believe that it's important to look at the video game industry in this same context. Even if it's unjustified to say that game companies are more greedy this generation than the last, the environment and context could make people perceive that companies are. 2. Maturity of the internet/social media: Sites like YouTube have matured to the point where you have many, many commentators of some form on video games and the industry. So all points have views, especially strong ones, have gotten a bigger platform than before. Whereas pre-current generation you may have only watched IGN video reviews and maybe posted on message board, you have YouTube channels with huge followings as well as many independent blogs/sites. 3. Inflation of game review scores(?)/PERCEIVED inflation: I don't have any data on this, and I'll actually really appreciate it if someone could either link me to an article that did research on this, or can do research by themselves. It's a bid hard to prove this too, because you can argue that the quality of games increased. But I think most of us can agree that there's been a sentiment that game scores were inflated. For me, the turning point was IGN (and other's) review of GTA IV. 4. PERCEIVED decrease in quality/creativity in games: Again, hard to prove this, but I think that the perception's pretty prevalent. It really doesn't help game journalists for a game like Call of Duty to come out annually, and for there to be high review scores given to them (whether it's legitimate or not). Number 2 (internet) especially makes this worse, because strong negative opinions have a much bigger impact now. 5. Maturity of video game industry/Increased advertising spending/sophistication(?): Again, bit ambiguous. I'm not sure if it's correct to say that the game industry wasn't "mature" last gen (or flip side, is it mature now?), and I don't have data on advertising (I'm sure the absolute number went up though, forgetting percentage of sales or something). I think we could agree that again, many people PERCEIVE that the game industry has become over commercialized. People may perceive that they've been bombarded more with advertisements, when you have things like social media essentially being a means for advertising. 6. Scandals: 2 big things really stand out in my mind. 1) Jeff Gerstmann's firing over K&L:
2) Geoff Keighley photo (whether or not you think the backlash was justified, it's a pretty powerful and simple picture):
Another one is Eurogamer firing a journalist: http://www.forbes.com/sites/erikkain/2012/10/31/eurogamer-confirms-journalist-lauren-wainwright-threatened-legal-action/ 7. Console wars: I put this last. I think it may have laid a bit of a foundation (remember when we accused M$ and $ony of bribing review sites?) for creating an atmosphere of distrust (at least in this case, against the other console maker, its players, review sites, and developers that made exclusives).
Putting it together, I think there's 2 main drivers: 1) Distrust of external things creating distrust for game journalists. People are becoming more distrustful of corporations, greed. If people also distrust game COMPANIES, and people ASSOCIATE them with game JOURNALISTS, then yeah the things people attribute to game companies will come over to game journalists. So things like the perceived lack of quality in games, commercialization, console wars, etc, people are going to associate these things with the journalists, if they associate journalists with game companies. Imagine almost like a mental map where you have all the negative things with companies, and then a line attaching to journalists.
2) Game journalists have lost their integrity to some degree. Again, who knows how much is true, but there must be some truth to claims of corruption. You also have a bunch of scandals that have occured.
Is it justified? I think that it is. Ultimately, it's not really a matter of game journalists are really being bought out or not, but the perception that they are. I feel like they haven't really made a strong effort on their part to disprove the accusations and to regain the consumer's trusts. What can they do? I think Adam Sessler's taking the first step by really acknowledging the perception, and then committing himself to at least understanding it. I think that one thing game journalists should do is always have some kind of "devil's advocate" for reviews, sort of like the old show Judgement Day on G4TV. Always have someone give another take or spin on a news, game, etc. In a way, they can do better justice to games and news by highlighting the good and bad, rather than either have all positive or just neutral reporting. Adding personalized commentary is also a way to gain readers. To me, game journalists might have the exclusive access to reviews, but that's pretty much it. News gets distributed quickly through a bunch of sites. Rather than letting YouTube personalities or independent blogs win over readers by giving their own commentary/opinion on the industry, they should do it themselves. |
Can't see the geoff pic
http://gamrconnect.vgchartz.com/profile/92109/nintendopie/ Nintendopie Was obviously right and I was obviously wrong. I will forever be a lesser being than them. (6/16/13)
The problem is many fold and goes in numerous directions, really.
First, there's exclusive games. A Playstation, Nintendo or MS affiliated magazine is ALWAYS going to offer up a good review to the console that it's on. If the other reviews are middling or low, who do you believe on whether the game is actually good or not when the spin is in full swing?
Second, corporate money. The bigger the site, the more money they need coming in to be able to keep their lights on. The examples in the OP are a great example of what happens when a reviewer doesn't toe the company line when money is on the line.
Third, debacles like 2K, Gearbox and Duke Nukem Forever. Their PR guys openly stated, with some amount of anger, that the groups who were giving DNF bad reviews were risking their future opportunities for review copies of games. It's one of those dirty little secrets that people expect and reduces honesty in the reviewers.
Fourth, reviewer opinion and mismatched genre preference. Rol just stated previously that someone who does not like a specific type of game should not be doing the reviewing. The problem with that is one has no idea if the guy who's giving out the assignments knows or even gives a shit about who is reviewing what. Thus, you could have an overly negative review. On the other hand, someone who likes the genre excessively might ignore the faults and prop up the game all the same. To put it bluntly, reviewers are damned if they do, damned if they don't because you can't completely trust opinions of people who may be either pissy about the genre or are wearing rose coloured glasses.
Fifth, fanboyism. Even critics can be fanboys and it makes it extremely difficult to get an accurate portrayal out of them when they're reviewing a game series that, say, they grew up with and refuse to say anything bad about. You can usually tell which critics these are by the absolutely fawning way things are alluded to in the game by the reviewer.
I'm sure there are even more points than this, but what it amounts to is a cluster of crap that, together, ends up making the entire review industry totally unreliable. The only way you can actually form a reasonable opinion about the game by reviewers these days is if you cross reference all of the reviews and see which things are mentioned amongst them all (bad FPS, lag, bad graphics, etc). Otherwise, they don't do much for people. This is why things like Metacritic, which is okay and kind of useful, shouldn't really be used as an overly important gauge (especially by companies).
Basically? I suppose the problem with game 'journalism' is one indelible fact: there is no such thing as an unbiased opinion in an industry where emotions run as high as they do in gaming and where money often comes from the pocketbooks of the companies that you may just review a bad game for.
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