As if there was any question before this article that game journalism was a pathetic joke and review scores were bought and sold.

I remember back in the mid 1990s when 80% game score meant that the game was GOOD, and 90% or above meant it was a classic. Now we have like 10 all-time classic games a month according to review scores.

The media industry term for this is "payola" and it's seen as scandalous.

Some are going out of their way to make it look as though he's the bad guy. You don't have to agree with him, but some of the comments on here are like the crap on political shows.

They get accused of having their reviews bought. They claim their jobs where tough, and he was calling them out on it. He only brought up soldiers and other dangerous jobs to show why their defense was BS. He wasn't claiming only they could judge games.

^Don't bother Lord, some people will hate Malstrom no matter what, its because he's right and they just don't like it.

It's not the hate. It's that they can't even admit he's right about this thing, and twisting his words. The article from Kotaku is pathetic enough on its own.

I agree with this. I remember when things got rated down heavily because they were just another "DOOM clone" or "Diablo clones" or "XXXXXX clone." Now it seems that you can release nearly the same game on the same engine with the same gameplay with a handful of new additions and still get perfect scores, when back in the day it would have been an automatic 7 and THEN they start taking off points for actual flaws.

@Lord

Well of course they won't admit it, it would be proving that reviews are horribly flawed (even Gerstmann in the article is like it would be better for people to wait for the community feedback than the reviews), and so many people on forums are so quick to use reviews to justify their reasons, admitting that reviews are pretty much bought would undermine all those justifications.

The comparison is a bit over the top. But gamejournalism is definitely a strange or useless profession.

I think that all his points are valid, even though he didn't voice them in the most adequate fashion.

It's true that most of the review system nowadays is indeed broken, as most games aren't even reviewed for their merits, but rather on personal expectations and the level of global expectancy surrounding them. That's why people should always take reviews with a grain of salt, and not jump to conclusions about the qualities and merits of a game before at least trying it out.

The main issue that arises with this is that, while most people like to throw around review scores as the ultimate measure of how good a game is, you just cannot isolate that group of people from those who do not, since they are found everywhere and in every console or PC camp.

I find it funny that Gerstmann is featured in the article expressing his view. He should know full well the corruption of both review sites and game companies after his rather chaotic and mysterious loss of a job at Gamespot.
This pampering of the reviewers is not a good thing for sure, it does spark quite a conflict of interest but some of the examples are very silly (ragging on them because he doesn't like them makes it seem a tad childish, especially comparing them to soldiers is outright strange).

^Well the comparison to soldiers is because one of the guys whines about how reviewing games in a nice hotel room is hard