I think the person who left this comment on Tim Tracy’s blog over at Gamespot said it best. “Soon Gamespot will be an empty husk of biased commercial game reviews, ninja shows, and naked women, just like…like… G4!!!!!!!!!! NOOOOOOooooooooo“. Why was I reading Timy Tracy’s Blog? Well based on his latest entry it appears as though TimT (a well known and loved guy) is leaving Gamespot. I can’t confirm it but no efforts have been made to deny it either. Gamespot has screwed themselves on this one big time.
Looking over this whole revelation lately it’s truly made me think about the entire commercial aspect gaming has taken on in the past decade. This hobby used to be a fairly small market. You would walk into a Walmart and their game section would be small. Toys R US never even carried video games. Then suddenly it became the favorite pass-time for people of all ages. The corporations have dollar signs in their eyes and you can see some of them begin to drool. What has this done to the spirit behind the gaming? Sure, all the revenue and attention has helped it grow and allowed for creativity to soar but it’s left us with just as much bad.
People always believed that review sites (IGN and Gamespot being the biggest) were giant revenue machines. It was always assumed that they were receiving something in return for their “unbiased” journalism. What strikes us so harshly now is that we don’t just believe it anymore, we know it. The first of many lambs like Jeff Gertsmann (a journalist who has been with the community for years) are going to be sacrificed. Picking ourselves up we should start thinking along the lines of what we can do about it. We’re not going to topple these corporations but we can send a message to anyone willing to listen that perhaps now better than ever is the time for change.
I think the commercial 1-10 scale these sites run needs to be abolished as it currently stands. They throw these review numbers around entirely too much without providing a structured order detailing exactly what warrants a game having a 1, 2, 3, etc. How can you compare Buzz! to Mario Galaxy? You really can’t compare them against one another as games in general because it’s not fair. Buzz! is a great trivia game and Mario Galaxy is a blockbuster platformer.  Does Buzz! deserve a horrible score because it’s a Trivia game? No of course it doesn’t. It deserves a score based on how it stacks up as a trivia game. I have yet to see any definition of how games are reviewed. We’re told it’s from the “professional journalists who follow standards” but that’s all. These review scores are massaged and adjusted by editors as the corporations see fit in order to satisfy advertisers.
Have you ever seen a serious “blockbuster” be rated outside the 7-9 scale? It feels like the 1-6’s are reserved for the Paintball games or the Disney Channel dress-up games on the Nintendo DS. It’s become a joke now to look at how a game is scored or to read a written review. Either the sites themselves stop or the writers need to step up and do what’s right.  Stop writing for the politics and the money behind it and write for the games.
I think people (perhaps the publishers more) are afraid of just how scary it can be when people tell the truth.
I agree, Keen. There was a story I read in school last year and the beginning lines were(not word for word) “The truth is like the sun. You can’t look it directly in the face and not be blinded by it.” I also think that readers are to blame as well, because they’re the ones who hype up a game more than it needs to be, and in turn I believe that hypes up the reviewers and they go in with great expectations and already believe it to be an amazing game. I sit down and play games and if I enjoy them, great. If I didn’t enjoy them, oh well. I’m not sitting down playing that game to throw a number between one and ten on it, I’m there to enjoy myself and kill some time and if it does that job well, I think it’s a good game.
But I think the reviewers go in on the “blockbuster” titles expecting a game that’s going to shave their face for them, get them into Harvard and supply an amazing job and a girlfriend with a DD rack, and if there’s no money behind it giving them a nudge in the “positive” direction of their reviews they’re extremely let down. If anything I think the review sites are based off of fear, as you said. With Jeff I think he was taking a shot in the dark. He sincerely didn’t like Kane and Lynch. He didn’t say it was a horrible game, he said it was average but hard to like and they fired him because he wasn’t going with the bribe scheme they had set up.
I think the commercial 1-10 scale these sites run needs to be abolished as it currently stands.
I’m sorry, but the irony of this statement with your brother’s 4/5 score of Mass Effect directly above it was pretty hilarious.
Reading comprehension for the lose here. Read it again. “I think the commercial 1-10 scale these sites run needs to be abolished as it currently stands.”
Then read on for further clarification. Here, let me help you… “They throw these review numbers around entirely too much without providing a structured order detailing exactly what warrants a game having a 1, 2, 3, etc.” Then read on further to see I even clarified it more when I gave the example of Buzz! vs. Mario Galaxy.
So if you take the time to understand what was being said you’ll notice that I didn’t say completely abolish the 1-10 scale. I said abolish it as it currently stands. The 7-9 scale is reserved for big bucks publishers.
Hopefully now you can understand.