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Great Gamers Not Always the Best Reviewers

Posted by Zonk on from the explaining-my-crappyness dept.

An editorial posted on The Adrenaline Vault posits that talented gamers are not always the best reviewers because of the necessity for those with elite skills to care as much as they do about their performance. The best reviewers, on the other hand, are generally somewhat detached from the subject material. From the article: "Spending 50 hours playing an offering when you are focused exclusively on trying to win certainly would yield very different insights than spending the same 50 hours trying to evaluate the title's strengths and weaknesses to help inform the general public about purchasing decisions." Kyle Orland's Video Game Ombudsman has further analysis on this subject.

4 of 54 comments (clear)

  1. movie reviews by musikit · · Score: 3, Interesting

    couldn't the same be said for movie reviews?

    i mean ebert and ropurt (sp) may not be the movie critic world after all.

    video games are after all entertainment. so maybe reviews should be changed from

    1.graphics
    2.sound
    3.difficulty

    to
    1. replay value
    2. entertainment value
    3. difficulty

    maybe then we'll see that game reviews that give very entertaining but only worth playing once instead of these graphics and sounds are ultra-leet

  2. Unless you too are a good gamer... by vhold · · Score: 1, Interesting

    I'm pretty good at games, so when I read a review by a seasoned gamer, I can more or less relate to their concepts of challenging, frustrating, repetitive, etc.

  3. Re:They are good, just for die hard gamers is all. by blahplusplus · · Score: 2, Interesting

    I disagree somewhat, There are good and bad gamers in both the casual and hardcore market. In the hardcore you have a small section of them that loves really boring repetitive grindy shit but I'd say the are in the minority since judging by game sales most hardcore gamers only buy the best of the best games. In fact I'd venture to say that hardcore gamers with years of video game playing experience are more critical of games because they have a huge library of experiences to compare it the latest games to previous offerings over the years in terms of fun.

  4. RTFA by happyemoticon · · Score: 2, Interesting

    The article's not focused on communication and writing skills, but rather how a particular gamer's perspective. That is, the perspective with which an elite gamer looks upon a game does not predict its enjoyment for your average gamer.

    I'd describe myself as a casual to avid gamer, but I never saw the fuss about Quake 3, for example. It felt plastic. I've always been a fan of Unreal (original and tournament - 2004, which is traditionally poo-pooed on by the hardcore gamers.

    I despute your point for the most part, certainly with respect to gamers. It's a false analogy because a champion football player does so by getting his head knocked around on a daily basis, where being a champion gamer has at least something to do with mental effort, at least in the ideal situation. I know lots of really good gamers who are very well spoken. I do not take this to a representative sample, though.