Recently, I've been perusing metacritic quite a bit to check out what the critic's were saying about whatever game I'm interested in. It's always interesting to see what the metascore is vs. the user score. Initially, I've kind of generally regarded the former as having more weight than the user score because it's an average of the professional critics, so surely it must be more reflective of a game than what a bunch of random joes think? They're "professionals", they know more than me because they do it for a living and they're generally more articulate, their reviews more thoughtful, they're backed by companies, they get the game earlier, etc. Back in the days of Atari, Nintendo, SNES, what have you, when reviews were mostly gotten from magazines and small articles (I was around), I'd say this was the case. So the reasoning if they did the public well back then, they'll still do good now, right?
Reviewers of then, compared to the reviewers of today, were in a very different atmosphere. Gaming was a very niche thing, not the huge, mainstream, money market it is today; nor were reviews so easily accessible at the tip of a finger, at home, on your phone. Word of mouth was perhaps the biggest factor to a games success, so a game would actually have to be good to sell. Does that still apply today? Or do you just need good reviews to do well? Now, people just hit up IGN or Giantbomb or Metacritic because these websites employ people to review games, they should be good at it. They have the connotation of the word professional attached to them, do they need any further validation? How many people read full reviews versus a quick skim through, followed by a stern look at the score?
"This game got rave reviews from multiple critics, it must be good. I can't go wrong buying it."
Here's the problem. Say I go to a website for a review on Company of Heroes 2, but it has CoH2 advertisements plastered everywhere, am I really going to get an honest review? Is it going to look good to the publisher when a review blasts their game that they pay to have advertised there? When I go to check out some video review on Diablo 3, are major flaws going to be pointed out when the reviewer relies on Blizzard for his/her review copy? How inclined will Blizzard be to give them review copies of their future games after a less-than-stellar review? I guess you see where I'm going with this, quid pro quo happens, media blacklisting happens.
"Oh, that's the company that gave us a bad review, don't invite them to our next media event. They get no coverage."
I asked myself, why do such discrepancies exist between the metascore and user scores on games like Company of Heroes 2, Dragon Age 2, SWTOR, Diablo 3, Modern Warfare 3, GTA 4, etc.? It was easy to just brush off the user scores as troll garbage, but after playing all of these games, and many more, finding that many of my experiences reflected the user score closer, I couldn't really ignore that fact as far as actual game quality goes. Over-time, I've come to view that as a better metric than the metascore. Sure, I can continue to dismiss the user ratings on metacritic because of how polarizing or knee-jerk they can be, but I feel they balance out when you get enough of them (see: bell curve). And can you really dismiss the consumers? Aren't they actually a better representation of me? Are we, the consumer, still the ones who ultimately decide if something is good or bad? Or are we told by the critics? They can tell us a game is a groundbreaking masterpiece, but in the end, doesn't make it so. Look at Modern Warfare 3 (Xbox), which has an 88/100 metascore, but 8300+ people rated it to an average of 3.3! Are the critics this out of touch with the consumers, are the consumers confused about what they want, confused about the definition of good, or is something else going on?
Think about it, the metascore is an aggregate score from a handful of "professional" critics who may or may not be influenced by more than their opinion, while the user score is the average from thousands of CONSUMERS. You. Me. The ones that actually buy the game and aren't handed a review copy along with whatever baggage it comes with. We might not be able to hide behind a wall of rhetoric, discuss all of our points at-length, or clearly justify our criticisms, but most of us still know whether we like or dislike something!
One of the biggest issues with video game reviews is that few reviewers actually play through an entire game, or spend time doing things that an actual player is supposed to do. Or they do, but they've already released their article a week ago so that their website could be relevant with game release day.
Hence why games like MW3, D3 and SWTOR have such good professional reviews, but so much consumer backlash. The initial game impression and the first several hours of novelty are cool, but once you actually settle down to play the games for the long-hall, the major flaws start showing.
I guess the issue is some publishers hand out their games to reviewers who are guaranteed to praise their game.
And there is also the problem where reviewers do not finish or play the games long enough. Some people might review RPGs based on the first few hours of gameplay but I believe you have to finish the game to be able to provide an accurate review.
Like if we based The Witcher 2 on how the prologue plays out, we can easily call it as a pretty boring game. Although the game gets a lot better than the moment the storyline starts branching. (In particular I think Chapter 2 was easily the best part of the game, regardless of which path you took).
I guess there might also be pressure on the reviewers from their superiors. It could be possible that the writer does not think too highly of the game but is under instruction from his boss to give the game a positive review.
I've always wondered about that quid pro issue you mentioned and wonder how common it really is. It certainly does create for some potential disingenuous reviews.
I also don't think this is exclusive to the video game industry as well. It's one of those things that consumers should hopefully always keep in mind.
One large problem with relying on user scores from meta critic is that many people give a game a zero or a 1 because it doesn't live up to their expectations, and thus screw up the aggregate. I think the majority of people who rate games lowly on metacrtic haven't played terrible games, just disappointing ones. Realistically, I think both aggregated user reviews and professional reviews will always work better hand in that separated, however when forced to choose, I would much prefer the critical analysis of john walkers and tom francis's of this world, rather than the boo or hurrah mentality of bunch of pooled users on the internet.
For better or worse, reviewers are becoming increasingly obsolete by the year. There are so many ways of getting a first look at the game nowadays that is not colored by personal bias or company interests that people no longer need to rely on someone's rambling and a numeric rating to determine whether they'll like the game or not.
I try to refrain from raging at people who use scores of any kind to judge whether or not a game is worth purchasing. I personally don't believe that you can distill someone's opinion down to a numeric value, and I implore people to read the actual reviews -- as many of them as they can. I realize that I can't really change peoples' minds on this, though, and that human beings will always look for the quick and easy answer to any one question, especially when it's regarding something they just do as a hobby or as entertainment and don't want to think too much about.
What I will do, however, is rage at people who rely on Metacritic. It's a very flawed system and it's bad for the industry.
For starters, every site has their own value range wherein a game is considered good -- 60% on one site is a solid title, and on another it's considered mediocre. Even discounting this fact, Metacritic's conversion method is vastly flawed. For instance, Giant Bomb has a rating system of 1-5 / 5. A game that GB would consider a rock solid 3/5 is given a score of 60% by Metacritic, which is not the same thing. Some other sites use A/B/B-/C, and the way Metacritic handles a lot of these values is obfuscated.
Third, and most frustrating to me, Metacritic uses weighted average, which means that the way individual scores affect the average is based on the popularity of the site in question.
Thing is, all of this wouldn't even bother me so much, except publishers are using Metacritic scores to determine how a developer gets paid. This is some absolute bullshit, and I admit that it clouds my opinion. It makes it hard for me to support the site, even if its abuse is not actually the fault of Metacritic itself.
Their arbitrary and non-transparent nonsense doesn't help, though.
As the guy who keeps trying to improve Recommended Game Polls, let me tell you, public polls where the rater has no incentive to vote properly are usually useless, and at best, inaccurate. Just read as many reviews as you can, 'try the game', then buy it if you like it.
Never ever rely on, or even read, the user score on metacritic. CoD games are a great example, reviews love them and players love them (which is why they sell so well) but there's a VERY vocal minority who hates them with a passion and they make sure every single cod game has terrible user scores which reflect reality by about 0%.
Very good games can get a terrible score on metacritic from the (extremely) vocal minority.
It's always some irrational people rating something either 0/10 for a bad PR move by a company or 10/10 from people who are blindly loyal to franchises.
On August 19 2013 16:53 Aylear wrote: I try to refrain from raging at people who use scores of any kind to judge whether or not a game is worth purchasing. I personally don't believe that you can distill someone's opinion down to a numeric value, and I implore people to read the actual reviews -- as many of them as they can. I realize that I can't really change peoples' minds on this, though, and that human beings will always look for the quick and easy answer to any one question, especially when it's regarding something they just do as a hobby or as entertainment and don't want to think too much about.
What I will do, however, is rage at people who rely on Metacritic. It's a very flawed system and it's bad for the industry.
For starters, every site has their own value range wherein a game is considered good -- 60% on one site is a solid title, and on another it's considered mediocre. Even discounting this fact, Metacritic's conversion method is vastly flawed. For instance, Giant Bomb has a rating system of 1-5 / 5. A game that GB would consider a rock solid 3/5 is given a score of 60% by Metacritic, which is not the same thing. Some other sites use A/B/B-/C, and the way Metacritic handles a lot of these values is obfuscated.
Third, and most frustrating to me, Metacritic uses weighted average, which means that the way individual scores affect the average is based on the popularity of the site in question.
Thing is, all of this wouldn't even bother me so much, except publishers are using Metacritic scores to determine how a developer gets paid. This is some absolute bullshit, and I admit that it clouds my opinion. It makes it hard for me to support the site, even if its abuse is not actually the fault of Metacritic itself.
Their arbitrary and non-transparent nonsense doesn't help, though.
Thanks for the post, I didn't even know they used weighted averages! I know of people who just discount numerical scores altogether. If not sites like GameRankings or Metacritic, as convenient as they are, what metrics should we be using?
People are idiots. People who write reviews are most often idiots or jump bandwagons (hype / hate).
So what do you do? You _read_ the reviews and dont give a shit about some random number. Oh that guy gave a 1 and his review is "shit game", well you should probably ignore that.
If someone writes "there's no pvp in the endgame, some classes are fucking OP, and it gets boring really fast after you reached Inferno" (i.e. D3) you have a better idea. You dont care about PvP. You dont care that other people are more efficient. You didnt plan to play the game for months. Well - this just might be a game you might enjoy. While apparently not a 10/10 it will be a decent & enjoyable time for you. Of course if you enjoy PvP etc etc you should skip the game.
And if not - you will survive. You have to play some shit games to really appreciate the good games.
For the launch of BF3, EA sent out invites with a form to fill in to journalists for a sneak peak at the game close to release. On the form were questions about the CoD vs BF series. Along the lines of "Do you like BF more then CoD?" "Have you played CoD and what did u think of it?" "Have you played BF? Was it better then CoD?" those who showed criticism towards BF or leaned towards liking CoD better were not invited.
Gaming journalists are bought or strong armed into writing positive reviews just about all the time for big releases tbh. Play DA2 for 10 minutes and you see that it is not "RPG of the year, one of all time´s greatest RPGs" and there have been reported several instances of game journalists sitting somewhere on camera, reviewing a game with advertisement for the same publisher in the background. Hell i remember PC-Gamer's review of Diablo 2 years back, the screencaps they showed the player had the level 1 potions well into act 3 and 4(far into the game) so i assumed he played with godmode hack. And i was right, they admitted it a few months later citing time as an issue. How do you get an even remotely accurate review of a hack n slash aRPG, where dying is a huge part of the challenge and skill usage and character development - if you play with freaking godmode on?
Tbh anyone can be a game journalist, as long as you have a pulse and can type somewhat decently you qualify. Reviews are bogus to begin with since it's just your opinion so you can write whatever you want. That opinion is however, from what i have seen again and again - usually very 'lobbied' or how you might want to call it. It is at the very least very skewed and does not reflect how an actual consumer would experience the product.
I rarely ever depend on reviews these days...most of the time I buy something it's because of recommendations from a trusted forum/friends, or seeing something in a letsplay. Reviews,even user score based reviews I feel dont really cut it.
On August 19 2013 16:53 Aylear wrote: Second, Metacritic never alter their scores. Ever.
good point, i've noticed that myself as well.
On August 19 2013 16:53 Aylear wrote: Third, and most frustrating to me, Metacritic uses weighted average, which means that the way individual scores affect the average is based on the popularity of the site in question.
weighted average HAHAHAHA i didn't know that.
As far as CoH2 goes. The "User Score" started off at 5.9 from users about 3 weeks after the game was released. This score included a few CoH2 fan-boys with no other metacritic user reviews other than a single "10" for CoH2.
Then, 3 weeks later a bunch of Russian citizens got angry about the content of the campaign. I do not want to debate the MERIT of their complaints. I only use this fact to show why the Metacritic user score went from 5.9 to 1.6 after a bunch of people posted 0s and said nothing in their "review" about the game itself. The metacritic score dropped from 5.9 to 1.6 in something like 3 days.
So... is 5.9 truly the accurate assessement of the "users"? or is it 1.6?
I'd go with 5.9. CoH2 is missing many features most expect from a $60 RTS game in 2013. What the game does have it does fairly well.
As was mentioned earlier in this thread; do not take my word for it. Head on over to Twitch.tv and check out CoH2 for yourself.
reviewers are awful shills, nothing more. crowd sourced gamer reviews arent much better though. consumer reviews are filled with stupid shit like 1stars to boycott some kind of thing in the game instead of actual reviews
Giant Bomb covered this a while ago and has said that you have to pick your reviewers and know where they stand. Just like everything else in the world.
Also, Metacritic is shit and their user reviews are shit. People actively review bomb that site and small groups of people make large numbers of acocunts just to bring down the score. Users scores are worthless and you are better off just asking a friend if they liked the game.
On August 20 2013 01:40 StarStruck wrote: I haven't touched a video game magazine in years. I think I was about twelve when I made this realization. They're like picture books for little kids.
I use Giant Bomb, TB and a couple of other people on the internet to get my information about games and if they are good. In the era of Youtube and twitch, you pretty much can figure out if a game is good for you on your own.
On August 20 2013 01:24 Plansix wrote: Also, Metacritic is shit and their user reviews are shit. People actively review bomb that site and small groups of people make large numbers of acocunts just to bring down the score. Users scores are worthless and you are better off just asking a friend if they liked the game.
I personally find the user scores to be decent if you're looking up some niche games that get ignored by the masses and shat on by the critics that don't personally enjoy the genre.
Do indeed stay the fuck away when it comes to AAA western games though.
But yeah I make my purchases based on what I hear from friends if they got the game and by watching gameplay footage, doesn't matter to me whether it gets a 6 or 10 from IGN.
On August 20 2013 01:24 Plansix wrote: Also, Metacritic is shit and their user reviews are shit. People actively review bomb that site and small groups of people make large numbers of acocunts just to bring down the score. Users scores are worthless and you are better off just asking a friend if they liked the game.
I personally find the user scores to be decent if you're looking up some niche games that get ignored by the masses and shat on by the critics that don't personally enjoy the genre.
Do indeed stay the fuck away when it comes to AAA western games though.
But yeah I make my purchases based on what I hear from friends if they got the game and by watching gameplay footage, doesn't matter to me whether it gets a 6 or 10 from IGN.
Yeah, I don't use scores that often, unless something gets all 9s or higher, and then I feel I need to a least look at it. But they are a good metric for games you don't know about or have not looked into. I didn't know a lot about the Metro games and the reviews that were out ther were helpful for me to get an idea of what they were about.
On August 20 2013 01:40 StarStruck wrote: I haven't touched a video game magazine in years. I think I was about twelve when I made this realization. They're like picture books for little kids.
I use Giant Bomb, TB and a couple of other people on the internet to get my information about games and if they are good. In the era of Youtube and twitch, you pretty much can figure out if a game is good for you on your own.
This so much. It's just far better to be able to watch gameplay and listen to someone discuss what they do and don't like about a game while they play it.
I think one of the large problems is the expectations of gamers today versus the amount of investment they are willing to divy up to the dev.'s of said game. With games increasingly expected to have better engines, mechanics, and graphics (all of which cost LOTS of money) -- it is not surprising to me to see consumer backlash because the consumer perspective is not appropriate to the game that was developed. With the invention of digital distribution, the publishers are probably seeing a mixture of increased/decreased returns on investment based on the distribution system they care to utilize and contract with--thus investment may be slowing. Add on to that the indie game boom, and the economics of the industry are quickly becoming more diversified resulting in lower investments for some firms with expectations of increased quality and speed of release. In short, its a giant CF. So just keep supporting!
Making educated purchases to support those companies you wish to support the most is ideal. The reviews are worthwhile taken in context of the source of the review and compared against other reviews. Or you can just be like me and just buy the dang game, play it, and shelve it if I don't want to play it again anytime soon (2nd hand shops are ripoffs to sell games back to anyway :D).
I thought it was fairly common knowledge by "hardcore gamers" that the media/review side of gaming had been bought out years ago. This is been revealed several times over the past decade or so, usually by people leaving the industry. Sometimes game companies outright buy favorable reviews. Other times, they give reviewers rewards or other incentives for favorable reviews, or minimum scores.
I haven't taken an actual score from a major media outlet (IGN, etc.) seriously in years. It also bothers me that the writers, who basically make a living writing and playing video games, more often than not seem to be actually terrible at video games. I don't expect them to be pro players, but seriously, have you ever watched some of these guys actually play games? Most of them are god awful, and it really shifts their bias towards more "casual" games, or away from harder games.
On August 20 2013 07:28 HardlyNever wrote: I thought it was fairly common knowledge by "hardcore gamers" that the media/review side of gaming had been bought out years ago. This is been revealed several times over the past decade or so, usually by people leaving the industry. Sometimes game companies outright buy favorable reviews. Other times, they give reviewers rewards or other incentives for favorable reviews, or minimum scores.
I haven't taken an actual score from a major media outlet (IGN, etc.) seriously in years. It also bothers me that the writers, who basically make a living writing and playing video games, more often than not seem to be actually terrible at video games. I don't expect them to be pro players, but seriously, have you ever watched some of these guys actually play games? Most of them are god awful, and it really shifts their bias towards more "casual" games, or away from harder games.
Being good at games does not mean you will be a good reporter or writer. Further more, it does not mean you will be good in an office setting or can meet deadlines. The people at Giant Bomb are the best at reviewing games objectively and provide very good reviews. They are not great at every game they play, but that isn't really a requirement.
Skill at games does not really equal skill at anything else taken on its own. It will not make your a good reviewer.
Reviewers being good - depends on the audience, if they are making a review that noobs will read (watch), it makes sense to describe what a noob will feel like when he plays it. In the '9x I think the paper magazines were actually pretty important and their opinions had some weight, today it's really hard to find quality journalism since most of the sites exist just so ads can appear somewhere. Some youtube reviewers are decent. Also, the numbers usually aren't the most important thing in a (good) review.
if we were to pretend for a moment that video game reviewers as a whole are not shills, id say that being good at video games ranks pretty low as far as criteria. a love for video games is more important than being 'good' at them, however it is you define that.
You just can't trust that professional reviewers are working for the benefit of the consumers. They don't care what they think about a game. If they want to continue getting paid to review games, then of course they would rate them positively or relatively positively. What incentive would there be for giving a deserving game a bad score? Maybe they might become a little more credible, but I think they'd care more about money than being credible.
User reviews tend to be pretty bad as well. The "score" is so far inflated or deflated by users voting 1s or 10s for games they either really liked, or really hated. This does not balance out and give a "true" average of how games likely actually play like. What I do recommend though is reading through user reviews and seeing what common complaints are about the game. Sometimes you'll find a good detailed review that focuses on a lot of criticisms and positives that a game has. Those are the reviews I feel that have the potential to be pretty credible.
I've always thought of video game reviews from big sites (aka the 'critics') to be fluff for people who already want to buy the game and just want to read stuff about it to enhance their excitement over it. That was what I used them for when I was younger, and I don't look at them at all anymore.
I think they're misrepresented as reviewers and critics. The score number is just a number. Gamers love numbers. Big numbers oooo. You were already gonna buy Mario or Zelda before you saw 9.4/10 or whatever, but now you're pumped to play it even if it's the worst one in the series.
An actual service that aggregates professional game reviews doesn't exist yet, and that might just be because legitimate critics don't exist. But even if they did, you still might find yourself disagreeing with a lot of them, because there ends up with critics a few schools of thoughts by which they try to create the criteria for which they are to judge by. And it might not be criteria that reflects your interests (such as a AAA game's cutting edge textures and graphics).
There are definitely a lot of amateur reviewers tho, who don't do it as their main thing and don't make money for it. Just a person whose videos you like on youtube who randomly decided to do a review. They're pretty honest and some even try to be fair / go into the frame of mind of someone who might not like a game they like. And of course there's plenty of amateur reviews which just don't give you any idea what to expect, but hopefully those aren't done by a person you like.
It's a lot of brand value. Both in what you decide to buy (hey I liked other games of this series / this developer), and in what gets rated highly on websites. You might see a disparity in your screen shots, but a lot of people can't get enough of those AAA generic shooters, and they might not be the ones who vote on gaming websites. That 80/100 might not be as disingenuous as you think. 1.6 and 3.3 sound like they got hit with some forums that all decided to vote 1 or something. A score that low should mean the game is buggy and unplayable, or just has no content or something like that. A person who sees that score thinks twice about the purchase, but then sees the critic's review and probably puts two and two together about angry nerds. AAA shooters definitely get a lot of hate from a pretty small demographic.
Some people like playing the same game over and over. Some people like reading the same story over and over (Sherlock Holmes, Agatha Christie... very formulaic). If a critic rates those very popular things highly, but you chastise the game for being uninventive and uninteresting, perhaps you just need to look for critics who judge by the same criteria you do.
On August 20 2013 08:55 Epishade wrote: You just can't trust that professional reviewers are working for the benefit of the consumers. They don't care what they think about a game. If they want to continue getting paid to review games, then of course they would rate them positively or relatively positively. What incentive would there be for giving a deserving game a bad score? Maybe they might become a little more credible, but I think they'd care more about money than being credible.
User reviews tend to be pretty bad as well. The "score" is so far inflated or deflated by users voting 1s or 10s for games they either really liked, or really hated. This does not balance out and give a "true" average of how games likely actually play like. What I do recommend though is reading through user reviews and seeing what common complaints are about the game. Sometimes you'll find a good detailed review that focuses on a lot of criticisms and positives that a game has. Those are the reviews I feel that have the potential to be pretty credible.
I still think there are some good reviewers, I really like Tom Chick. Especially since he was one of the few critics to call HotS out on it's terrible campaign and give CoH 2 a 1/5... I thought CoH 2 was pretty bad XD.
On August 20 2013 08:55 Epishade wrote: You just can't trust that professional reviewers are working for the benefit of the consumers. They don't care what they think about a game. If they want to continue getting paid to review games, then of course they would rate them positively or relatively positively. What incentive would there be for giving a deserving game a bad score? Maybe they might become a little more credible, but I think they'd care more about money than being credible.
User reviews tend to be pretty bad as well. The "score" is so far inflated or deflated by users voting 1s or 10s for games they either really liked, or really hated. This does not balance out and give a "true" average of how games likely actually play like. What I do recommend though is reading through user reviews and seeing what common complaints are about the game. Sometimes you'll find a good detailed review that focuses on a lot of criticisms and positives that a game has. Those are the reviews I feel that have the potential to be pretty credible.
I still think there are some good reviewers, I really like Tom Chick. Especially since he was one of the few critics to call HotS out on it's terrible campaign and give CoH 2 a 1/5... I thought CoH 2 was pretty bad XD.
I would not give company of Heroes 2 a 1 out of 5, but I would give it a 2 or 3. They phoned that one in and it was pretty by the numbers. There wasn’t anything new or interesting in the game. I really get the feeling they put their B-team on that game and are doubling down on the real deal, Dawn of War 3.
I don’t like reviewers that give games a 1 based that are clearly functional games. A middle of the road game is a 2 or 3. Giving a game a 1 for shock value is the sign of a bad review in my book.
On August 20 2013 07:28 HardlyNever wrote: I thought it was fairly common knowledge by "hardcore gamers" that the media/review side of gaming had been bought out years ago. This is been revealed several times over the past decade or so, usually by people leaving the industry. Sometimes game companies outright buy favorable reviews. Other times, they give reviewers rewards or other incentives for favorable reviews, or minimum scores.
I haven't taken an actual score from a major media outlet (IGN, etc.) seriously in years. It also bothers me that the writers, who basically make a living writing and playing video games, more often than not seem to be actually terrible at video games. I don't expect them to be pro players, but seriously, have you ever watched some of these guys actually play games? Most of them are god awful, and it really shifts their bias towards more "casual" games, or away from harder games.
Being good at games does not mean you will be a good reporter or writer. Further more, it does not mean you will be good in an office setting or can meet deadlines. The people at Giant Bomb are the best at reviewing games objectively and provide very good reviews. They are not great at every game they play, but that isn't really a requirement.
Skill at games does not really equal skill at anything else taken on its own. It will not make your a good reviewer.
I'm not saying being good at video games makes you good at anything else. What I'm saying is, if your are bad at video games, I don't really care about your (the reviewer's) opinion on a game. I imagine most reviewers would make a decision about the multiplayer in sc2 within about an hour of playing, good or bad. An hour of playing sc2 multiplayer doesn't tell you shit about what it is really about. Sure, you can relate basic concepts (it is these 3 races against each other, you get resources and make units), but that is such a dumbed-down appraisal of the game. That is the kind of crap I often see from "professional" reviewers. Then I watch them play games (either on stream or recorded) and it turns out they are actually terrible.
It is like if your grandparents played a game and reviewed it. Would you care (it is an extreme example, but you get the point)? No, because they don't play games like you do at all. They don't understand games the way you do at all. What baffles me is most of these reviewers are around my age, ostensibly play tons of video games, and are usually just god-awful. I'm not really sure what to make of that, but I don't really care about their opinion on video games, regardless of how well they write or meet deadlines.
On August 20 2013 07:28 HardlyNever wrote: I thought it was fairly common knowledge by "hardcore gamers" that the media/review side of gaming had been bought out years ago. This is been revealed several times over the past decade or so, usually by people leaving the industry. Sometimes game companies outright buy favorable reviews. Other times, they give reviewers rewards or other incentives for favorable reviews, or minimum scores.
I haven't taken an actual score from a major media outlet (IGN, etc.) seriously in years. It also bothers me that the writers, who basically make a living writing and playing video games, more often than not seem to be actually terrible at video games. I don't expect them to be pro players, but seriously, have you ever watched some of these guys actually play games? Most of them are god awful, and it really shifts their bias towards more "casual" games, or away from harder games.
Being good at games does not mean you will be a good reporter or writer. Further more, it does not mean you will be good in an office setting or can meet deadlines. The people at Giant Bomb are the best at reviewing games objectively and provide very good reviews. They are not great at every game they play, but that isn't really a requirement.
Skill at games does not really equal skill at anything else taken on its own. It will not make your a good reviewer.
I'm not saying being good at video games makes you good at anything else. What I'm saying is, if your are bad at video games, I don't really care about your (the reviewer's) opinion on a game. I imagine most reviewers would make a decision about the multiplayer in sc2 within about an hour of playing, good or bad. An hour of playing sc2 multiplayer doesn't tell you shit about what it is really about. Sure, you can relate basic concepts (it is these 3 races against each other, you get resources and make units), but that is such a dumbed-down appraisal of the game. That is the kind of crap I often see from "professional" reviewers. Then I watch them play games (either on stream or recorded) and it turns out they are actually terrible.
It is like if your grandparents played a game and reviewed it. Would you care (it is an extreme example, but you get the point)? No, because they don't play games like you do at all. They don't understand games the way you do at all. What baffles me is most of these reviewers are around my age, ostensibly play tons of video games, and are usually just god-awful. I'm not really sure what to make of that, but I don't really care about their opinion on video games, regardless of how well they write or meet deadlines.
You are expecting to much from reviews and reviewers. Your skill level and interest in games seems to vastly outstrip that of the general person playing games. You have to look at what a review is and its purpose. It is, by nature, a short hand for someone to make an informed decision on if they should buy a game and if they will enjoy it. It is meant for people who have dug into the game or do not have a lot of information on how it players. Also, it is meant for the general game player, not the hard core. SC2 was not reviewed based solely on its multiplayer and neither was Modern warfare.
Also, you should give video game reviewers a break when it comes to being “good at a games”. The guys at Giant Bomb have said over and over that they simply do not have time to get good at games any more. Even FPS games outpace them because they have to review so many games and cannot dump the time into the game to get really good at it. The same thing goes for the rest of life. Having a house and girlfriend have made me very bad at SC2 and “not embarrassing” at Dota 2. My friend who has a one year old son can’t even play multiplayer games any more because he just don’t have the time to even get good to play with us.
I'm not really "expecting" anything from reviewers. I'm possibly suggesting, at the most, that it would be nice to see reviewers that were actually decent at the games they play. But really, I'm not even saying that.
What I am saying is that I find (personally) the entire crop of "professional" reviewers useless when it comes to informing me about whether or not I'd like a game, in large part because they are generally terrible at video games. All I've said from the start is that most "hardcore" gamers (and I use the term loosely here) have known that the mainstream reviewers cater to the "casual" crowd, and their opinion is pretty useless when it comes to whether or not someone who puts time into video games will actually enjoy it. Given that this is a site dedicated to playing 1-2 games at the absolute top level, I'm guessing that would have some relevance here. I understand why the "mainstream" reviewers target the "casual" audience; it is a much larger share of the market and commands a lot more money than "hardcore gamers." It also means (to me at least), their reviews are generally worthless.
I don't even know if I should consider myself a "hardcore gamer." I work 9 hours a day, and have a life beyond video games on the weekends. What I do know, is that I'm not nearly as bad at games as people who, ostensibly, play video games most of their day and then write about it. That is disappointing to me, but not much I can do about it.
All I've said from the start is that "mainstream" or "professional" reviewers opinions are largely irrelevant to people who try to get good at specific games. Whether or not it "should" be that way, or it is "acceptable" that it is that way is largely irrelevant. It just is that way, so... I said it.
EPT![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/A7WkIkB.jpg)
![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/Q7pHHy3.jpg)
