The Pointlessness of Current Videogame Journalism

Anonymous Coward writes "TG Daily has its weekly videogaming column up, and this week the author is attacking what he terms The Pointlessness of Current Videogame Journalism. From the article: '...the formulaic, child-minded writing-for-the-lowest-common-marketing-denominator style that encapsulates 99% of the mainstream videogame press is a load of crap ... Rather than being critics who add to the industry as film and music journalists arguably did back in the heady days of the 50's - 70's... videogame journalists are mere extensions of the marketing machine, pushing even the most mediocre of games into a good light with the public in previews and then trashing them for sport to see how many good puns can be dredged out of the 500 words which the author really doesn't want to have to write.'"

Comments

Real Gamers have known this for years

[Anonymous Coward]

I see this every time I dare to glimpse at the gaming press. The absolute worst of the worst are the TV shows, like GamerTV, Gamesville, and that old one with the woman with the weird hair. Here's the recipe: too many futuristic "swooshing" animations, episodes repeated ad-infinitum no matter how old they become, review after review of Yet Another 3D Platformer 4, and a clichéd, useless "We give it... 3 out of 5!"-type section.

You will almost never see a game like N, or Uplink reviewed, because they aren't backed by the big cartels like EA, whose latest player name update to FIFA will doubtlessly turn out to be a "worthy addition to this legendary series".

Re:Halo 2

[ProudClod]

I can speak with first-hand experience on this matter. The contents of this post come from my experience as Sub Editor at Gamers Europe when Halo 2 was released.

The problem is that the first wave of reviews - the most important in terms of ensuring people believe the hype - are from publications/websites that received preferential treatment in the form of early code. In addition, the publishers embargo all reviews until a certain date, forcing all outlets to generally release their reviews at the same time unless they want to appear to be "beaten to the scoop". This also prevents would-be-critics (or at least unimaginative ones) from seeing

At Gamers Europe, we received some of the first batch of code. This came as something of a shock, as it was generally only the conglomerate-owned big guns (IGN, Gamespot etc.) who had this privilege. However, thanks to our links with Microsoft Ireland, we were included too - so we sent our man Piaras to review the game, and he and I made sure that we too were ready to go live by the embargo date. So that night, along with all the other sites posting their 9+/10 reviews, we released our review - a large volume of copy, tinged with disappointment that whilst the game was a decent FPS, it didn't scrape the heights of its predecessor. This was topped with a score of 8.0/10 - we only reviewed the single player campaign as the European Live servers weren't yet up; I'm still perplexed as to how other sites were able to test the game online...

Anyway, the fanboys went absolutely batshit (the writer received at least one death threat), Microsoft were not best pleased (but to their credit, have continued to send us code - the relationship we have remains essentially unchanged), and by the end of the day we found ourselves as the only review of Halo 2 online that offered any criticism.

So in short: there was no pay off that we observed - there was a launch party a few days after the reviews went live that journos were invited to, but this is pretty standard with big titles, and doesn't amount to a substantial bribe - nevertheless, given the difference between our views and that of every other publication, our man in attendance found it quite an uncomfortable experience.

What there was, was a co-ordinated schedule for reviewing the game, effectively set by the publisher. All the big, important reviews were concentrated into a single blast of hype a few days before the launch date, with no opinion seeping out beforehand. Looking at the first day sales figures, and your own conceptions of how the game was critically received, you can draw your own conclusions as to the effect that had on the gamebuying public.

[Apologies for the slight incoherence of this post - I'm currently feeling a little out of practice!]

Thank goodness someone said it.

[cgenman]

As a person who earns his living making video games, video game reviewing has always been a sore spot.

We read all of the reviews. All of them. IGN, Gamespot, Famitsu, Edge, Joystick101, The Atlanta Herald... you name it we've read it. This is where we get our impresson of people's impression of the game. This is where we get fodder to make alterations to future games. And you know what, it's disheartening when nearly every review gets at least one thing factually wrong. It's disheartening when the reviewer clearly hasn't played more than 15 minutes into the game that you just spend 16 months creating. And it's disheartening when the reviewer keeps talking about boobies and poop and fart jokes like he was a 12 year old on the playground.

One of the most insightful pieces I've read talked about how Half-Life 2 used darkness to symbolize safety and bright, light areas as a sign of danger. But this was Game Developer magazine talking about art direction, not a reviewer talking about the game itself. Maybe it is too much to ask for a reviewer to take as in-depth a look at a game as a developer would, but there is direction to be had here. Compare and contrast with other titles, plot developments, gameplay structures, etc. Give insight into what the developers were trying to achieve and what they created. Put the game into context. Even Ebert will delve a little bit into the movie school theory behind the movies.

Even as simple sources of opinions, reviewers frequently fall down. Afraid of "offending" any publishers, they don't say anything negative about certain titles. Afraid of stepping out of line, they keep their scores in line with everyone else's. I saw a review the other day that said "X may very well be the best game available on the PS2." He then gave it a 70%, same as everyone else.

There is a lot of room for innovation and insight in video game reviews. Hopefully somebody will pick up that opportunity and run with it.