The Pointlessness of Current Videogame Journalism 312
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.'"
Business is business (Score:2, Interesting)
Real Gamers have known this for years (Score:5, Interesting)
You will almost never see a game like N [harveycartel.org], or Uplink [uplink.co.uk] 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".
Journalists are in for a rightous trashing. (Score:5, Interesting)
I don't mind when things DON'T get reviewed. There are understandable limitations of time, space and money.
I DO mind when things are reviewed and it just reads like the press release from the company, and the reality is vastly different.
That's when I stop reading.
If you've nothing good to say, then say that you've got nothing good to say. Don't just blather on with the press release in one hand and the tatters of your integrity oozing through the fingers of the other hand.
And if you play something and it SUCKED, I expect to hear about why you thought it sucked and what could be done so it didn't suck so hard.
Sorry but lazy journalism is just PR work and payola.
PQ, Gamespy et al. (Score:3, Interesting)
I did a lot of mods myself. Some I would have liked to have finished, but the ones I did finish all collect dust now. (and some of them collected dust THEN)
At the same time Bluesnews [bluesnews.com] was also a great place to find out awesome insights to the whole Quake scene.
Look at these two sites now, and all you can see is marketing.
They both, arguably, sold out. I don't know why... maybe they like affording new computers from Alienware [alienware.com], or maybe they just like the concept of selling their souls. Another person who sold out bigtime was Dakota, the CTF guy that some of you might remember as the founder of Captured.com [captured.com] (which is now closed). He joined Gamespy and is running a large part of that company now. He used to post amazing CTF news, mods, tourney info and stuff.
Vid journalists all get bought up by the industry.
But the games changed, too. It used to be a lot of fun to play Quake or Thunderwalker on servers, but then other games came along and stole the show, thus putting an end to the tight-knit community. Each new game fractured the core community until, for quite a while, there was no cohesion.
All good things come to an end, and I think that is how we really know they were good.
Re:Halo 2 (Score:5, Interesting)
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!]
PC Gamer (Score:4, Interesting)
I'm not sure if he wrote it or not, but the first page of the reviews section was about their ratings system.
They sum up readers perceptions of game ratings, like this:
I'm sure it's somehow relevant.
Re:Something had to be said... (Score:2, Interesting)
This got better; some 16-bit games toward the end of that era were great... but I still felt they lacked something from the 8-bit era. The 32-bit era (and primarily the PC) heralded even more, but delivered exponentially less. So much time these days is spent polishing the graphics and creating a marketing blitz, that somewhere along the way gameplay seems to have taken a back seat.
This has just gotten worse in recent years as "newer", "faster" and "glitzier" have become the watchwords of the game industry. The focus on adapting to the latest "cool tech" instead of spending time actually making the game fun to play.
There have been exceptions... but that's part of their problem; they're exceptions. What do I play these days on my PC? Freespace 2 still gets fired up occasionally (there are third-party updates that take advantage of newer hardware), and Independence War 2. These are good games that use the technology to advance the gameplay. Beyond that, a copy of UAE and copies of all my old Amiga games keep me occupied. I haven't seen a game in a long time I actually want to buy... I played Halo 2 on my friend's X-Box... but it was vapid. I also played Star Wars Battlefront 2 on his X-Box and found myself bored to tears after an hour or so. Is this what quality games are these days???
Thank goodness someone said it. (Score:5, Interesting)
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.
I agree with what he says for the most part (Score:3, Interesting)
The PC Gamer CIV4 example (Score:3, Interesting)
I'm not sure when the last time they actually followed the practice was, but i'm guessing it's been years.
Take CIV4 for example.
I did them a favour of informing them of how a significant percentage of gamers could not play the game because of brutal bugs that get worse as the game progresses. And I warned them that if they ignored it, they'd loose me as a reader as well as everyone else I could pass the word on to. They obviously didn't care.
For many, excitedly buying CIV4 when it came out meant nasty graphics problems ending in a crash to desktop or bluescreen. Playing with the large map settings made the game entirely unplayable beyond the early stages with turns that took exponentially longer until the crashes happen.
For at least 2 months gamers were subjected to this bullshit with almost no word out of 'gaming god' Sid Meier's Firaxis.
Then what do you know, a miracle happened. A patch was released and the game became playable, and was finally the game we expected.
I think it was the next damn day (gee what a coincidence) that I found the PC Gamer issue with a massive review suddenly now available which expounded on what an incredible game it is, gave it a very high mark in lines with the past CIV games
They mention that a few gamers had posted about problems in a forum. No mention was made about the wide spread crash to desktop problem. This game deserved a mark in the low 40's, not mid 90's.
It's total bullshit. hundreds complained on the CIV4 fansite forums. hundreds tried to find any link between their hardware and the crashes
So I'm sticking to my word. I'm not buying PC Gamer anymore and several of my friends are doing the same. A couple of them are serious CIV fans and will not be giving their money to Firaxis over the way they've treated their fans.
Re:Almost got it right (Score:2, Interesting)
That's no paragraph... (Score:3, Interesting)
This article should come with instructions to breathe between each sentence, they're so long.
Most of the things that look like paragraphs are actually a single sentence. I agree with other comments about the quality of this guy's writing. Glass houses, and all that.
Re:Video game "journalism" as bad as Moto"journali (Score:1, Interesting)
"Motorcycle Consumer News is wholly supported by our readers, who expect us to be unswayed by industry influences on reporting." They just charge more per issue for a nicely done black and white non-glossy magazine thats been around for many years. Every month they go into great detail on what rocks and what sucks about everything from sport bikes to cruisers, including gear. They have no problem telling it like it is and frequently burn various products in an evenhanded manner. Now they're online too, google for it.