As a future (read: aspiring) videogame reviewer myself, I wanted to thank all current and future comment contributors to this thread.
It is the duty of every publication to serve its audience. It's good journalism, and good business sense as well. Every person commenting here who cites a problem with current videogame reviews shows that there is a disconnect between that audience (you) and those publications, and I for one will not let that disconnect go unnoticed. I plan to improve the state of reviews, starting with my own and hopefully inspiring others by example.
Therefore, I've saved the current comments to this thread, and will return in one week to do so again, collecting more recent comments. I'll then integrate their ideas into my future reviews, to better serve you all.
IMHO, reviews serve an incredibly important purpose, that of informing consumers not as information-savvy as all you/. readers as to which games are worth the money and which should be best avoided. For those who have the time and interest to track new games as they are developed, they are perhaps not as important... but I for one will not purchase a game without reading the review of at least one reviewer I trust.
I won't claim to be a part of the games industry or have any experience whatsoever in detecting when review scores, cover space or whatnot has been influenced but:
It should be very very wrong when something like Game Informer's November (151) issue has such a blatently camoflauged piece of garbage like they do when advertising (Tom Clancy's Advanced Warfighter I think...). Not only was it in the same format and layout as a standard GI review (albeit with tiny disclaimers at the top of the page) but they placed it right at the beginning of the review section. EGM 195, as one reader submitted in a later Letter to the Editor, has a similar deal, only this time disguised as as a six-page feature article about America's Army - titled "From Combat to Console." What the hell is going on here?
While I too would love to hear which places Shoe has found out for sure house the harder-to-detect, more damaging bribery bullshit, I'd be quite happy just knowing that he stood up, that somebody in the industry gives a damn about ethics when it comes to gaming journalism. Whether or not he seemed to be unecessarily placing a halo over EGM, I'm glad he brought some of this out for the readers at least...
Regardless of the ethical question, and IMHO more importantly than the point Shoe brings up about Games Journalism being unrespected compared to its other reporting peers, one would think that those working at such publications have a love of good games... Giving crappy games better scores, more cover space and deceitful advertisments means MORE crappy games sell, developers see these crappy games selling, and thereby increase production of more half-assed sequels and the like to turn a quick profit... the quality of the titles available to us consumers takes a dive. Especially in the case of the uninformed parent issue, where Mom, Pop or Grandparent wants to get their child a decent game but can't see through bullshit like hidden advertisements and the like, I would think these tactics are a disservice to the industry.
I fully intend to work in this gaming journalism field when I finish my formal education, and if I find myself having to quit from a publication that puts money over ethics and a love of games, here's hoping there'll be a man like Shoe to hire me.
Slashdot Mirror
As a future (read: aspiring) videogame reviewer myself, I wanted to thank all current and future comment contributors to this thread. It is the duty of every publication to serve its audience. It's good journalism, and good business sense as well. Every person commenting here who cites a problem with current videogame reviews shows that there is a disconnect between that audience (you) and those publications, and I for one will not let that disconnect go unnoticed. I plan to improve the state of reviews, starting with my own and hopefully inspiring others by example. Therefore, I've saved the current comments to this thread, and will return in one week to do so again, collecting more recent comments. I'll then integrate their ideas into my future reviews, to better serve you all. IMHO, reviews serve an incredibly important purpose, that of informing consumers not as information-savvy as all you /. readers as to which games are worth the money and which should be best avoided. For those who have the time and interest to track new games as they are developed, they are perhaps not as important... but I for one will not purchase a game without reading the review of at least one reviewer I trust.
It should be very very wrong when something like Game Informer's November (151) issue has such a blatently camoflauged piece of garbage like they do when advertising (Tom Clancy's Advanced Warfighter I think...). Not only was it in the same format and layout as a standard GI review (albeit with tiny disclaimers at the top of the page) but they placed it right at the beginning of the review section. EGM 195, as one reader submitted in a later Letter to the Editor, has a similar deal, only this time disguised as as a six-page feature article about America's Army - titled "From Combat to Console." What the hell is going on here?
While I too would love to hear which places Shoe has found out for sure house the harder-to-detect, more damaging bribery bullshit, I'd be quite happy just knowing that he stood up, that somebody in the industry gives a damn about ethics when it comes to gaming journalism. Whether or not he seemed to be unecessarily placing a halo over EGM, I'm glad he brought some of this out for the readers at least...
Regardless of the ethical question, and IMHO more importantly than the point Shoe brings up about Games Journalism being unrespected compared to its other reporting peers, one would think that those working at such publications have a love of good games... Giving crappy games better scores, more cover space and deceitful advertisments means MORE crappy games sell, developers see these crappy games selling, and thereby increase production of more half-assed sequels and the like to turn a quick profit... the quality of the titles available to us consumers takes a dive. Especially in the case of the uninformed parent issue, where Mom, Pop or Grandparent wants to get their child a decent game but can't see through bullshit like hidden advertisements and the like, I would think these tactics are a disservice to the industry.
I fully intend to work in this gaming journalism field when I finish my formal education, and if I find myself having to quit from a publication that puts money over ethics and a love of games, here's hoping there'll be a man like Shoe to hire me.