Defying Review Aggregation 53
Logiksan writes "With the growing number of review aggregation sites like GameRankings and RottenTomatoes, it's becoming increasingly harder for individual game critics to be heard. GameDAILY Biz took a stab at the issue at came up with 5 aggregation-defiant tactics designed to help make reviews relevant again. Among their list of ideas is to destroy the typical review grading curve. The article states, 'If, for instance, a publication could establish a 10 point scale in which reviews were based upon purchase value and average games scored only a 3 or a 4, the higher scores would certainly become far more important. The lower scores would give the publication instant credibility as 'discerning gamers' and would free up the top scores (5-10) to show a more full range of differentiation for the top-tier titles gamers care about most.'"
From a former zine game editor.... (Score:5, Informative)
If you do a good job, readers may check out your review for a particular game (some people read all reviews) and decide to go directly to you from then on.
Gamerankings is also great because they allow their readers to also rate the reviews themselves. So if you are a good writer, your reviews will stand above the mediocre ones when people look for reviews on a particular game.
Maybe Gamedaily got tired of seeing so many of it's reviews receive one star or less?
If I was really interested in starting a new zine from scratch, I would LOVE to get my reviews into the aggregator, try to accumulate high rankings for my reviews, and the traffic would increase and so would the willingness of devs to send me demo copies and put my quotes on their game boxes and I would also be able to get more advert revenue. It's a win-win-win all around.