4 ms·

I find it funny how many comments here complain about the infusion of politics into games media but not one mentions the fact that games media in general is a p

I find it funny how many comments here complain about the infusion of politics into games media but not one mentions the fact that games media in general is a prime example of "access journalism". Most gaming media outlets live in fear of losing access to pre-release copies of games because it would mean their reviews will lag behind their competitors. This means they go easy on games (the average review score on any large site is not 5/10). Games consumers then reinforce this dynamic by complaining loudly and angrily when their favourite games get scores they think are "too low". Compare this to movie or music reviews where critics are more than happy to tear popular releases apart. This is the same thing that drove me nuts about "gamergate". It's like talking about how bad it is that the paint is peeling while the whole house is on fire.

loveparade 3y ago
Player reviews for games aren't much better, unfortunately. So many games get review bombed for political reasons. It's the Amazon equivalent of "this book sucks because my package was late" but orders of magnitude more frequent. It's nearly impossible to find high quality game reviews.
- jhchabran 3y ago
  While I'm not sure I see as much games being review bombed for political reasons in my sources for video game reviews, I strongly agree with you that it's really hard nowadays to find high quality reviews. It's always been bad in mainstream video games medias though, but underdogs that are more open to criticise game tend to not last very long. The best approach I've found is to become aware of who are writing the reviews I perceive as high quality and simply follow them when they change medias and pay attention to what they communicate about their current position. Ultimately, the best reviews are almost always coming from sources that have a business model that doesn't rely on ads.
jchw 3y ago
I do agree, the bickering about politics is a little silly when you consider just how terrible the actual "journalism" part is. I think there's a general feeling that all journalism has faltered a little bit in the face of the Internet and a 24 hour news cycle, but I'm not even sure video game journalism was ever good. I'm not sure it was ever really 'journalism'. I'll admit I do miss the older generation of video game 'journalism' nonetheless. Had its problems, but the thing is, it did feel like people were sharing their genuine and honest opinions as a capital-G "Gamer" more often. It became mostly known for the stereotypical attitudes that people have since come to dislike, which you can see manifested sometimes e.g. in old Penny Arcade comics. The only irony is that it feels like somehow, people's more progressive attitudes manage to have even less nuance than the older "unrefined" opinions that have since been walked back on by many. You can see this especially in the bizarro way that people have become regressive about sexuality in video games-I'm not really sure how a bunch of people were convinced to go all the way from 90's style "toxic masculinity" to a totally puritanical anti-sexuality stance in such a short period, but I'll be damned, they really managed to do it. What happened in this time period, though, is interesting. There's really no such concept as a "capital-G Gamer" in a society where pretty much any kind of person plays video games to at least some degree. There's still a spectrum of different kinds and different levels of dedication, but the lines are firmly blurred. Gaming is just another thing that people do, on computers, phones, whatever, wherever. To me, the modern era though, won't actually be colored by how gaming went mainstream, or by any event involving gaming at all. It'll be about how everyone became phony and full of shit with pandering to trends and moral grandstanding. I'd be willing to place a wager on that one. Unfortunately, that isn't specific to gaming, gaming journalism, or any kind of journalism.
- TerrifiedMouse 3y ago
  > I'm not even sure video game journalism was ever good In my youth I read a few PC game magazines. Not sure about the accuracy of the reviews but the people writing them did try to make their reviews as entertaining as possible with jokes and what not. Sadly, those old magazines are long gone so I can't really go back and re-read them to see if it's just rose-tinted glasses. I don't even remember the magazine name or which country it was from. Edit: Come to think of it, those reviewers were kind of like Yahtzee (formerly*) of Zero Punctuation fame. * https://twitter.com/YahtzeeCroshaw/status/1721687212541280425 https://twitter.com/YahtzeeCroshaw/status/172168721254128042...
  - praisewhitey 3y ago
    There are a lot of old video game magazines on the Internet Archive https://archive.org/details/videogamemagazines https://archive.org/details/videogamemagazines
- AlexandrB 3y ago
  > I'll admit I do miss the older generation of video game 'journalism' nonetheless. Had its problems, but the thing is, it did feel like people were sharing their genuine and honest opinions as a capital-G "Gamer" more often. It's important to recognize that the stakes were lower back then. When games cost hundreds of millions to develop and market and are expected to have revenue in the billions bad reviews have the potential to have a massive impact on that revenue. > You can see this especially in the bizarro way that people have become regressive about sexuality in video games-I'm not really sure how a bunch of people were convinced to go all the way from 90's style "toxic masculinity" to a totally puritanical anti-sexuality stance in such a short period, but I'll be damned, they really managed to do it. I don't know if I agree. If you look at the most profitable gaming sector - mobile gacha games - some of these games are extremely "horny". But there's also another elephant in the room here that has nothing to do with games journalism: China. I think a lot of content in popular games is toned down so it doesn't run afoul of Chinese regulators. There are examples online[1] of it being done retroactively, but if a game is being developed from day one with the Chinese market in mind, you would never know what was cut to make that happen. [1] https://old.reddit.com/r/wow/comments/49x7m0/chinese_wow_censorship_comparisonlots_of/?rdt=36424 https://old.reddit.com/r/wow/comments/49x7m0/chinese_wow_cen...
ajmurmann 3y ago
Worse even that gamergate was about Kotaku who also got blacklisted by Bethesda for their reporting.
drawkward 3y ago
Food for thought: maybe because people try to make better than mediocre games, the average review score is higher than 5/10.
- AlexandrB 3y ago
  Couldn't the same be said for movies of music? I don't think most people set out to make mediocre media. There's nothing special about games in this regard. In general the whole scale of scores for games is shifted upwards: https://old.reddit.com/r/gaming/comments/eu63f/modern_gaming_review_scale/ https://old.reddit.com/r/gaming/comments/eu63f/modern_gaming...
  - the_only_law 3y ago
    > don't think most people set out to make mediocre media. Heh I’m not sure. I’ve been following the drama around CA and total war recently and the company seems to have set to do exactly that. Pump out mediocre recycled crap as long as people keep buying it. Except this time it’s blown up on them.
  - dagw 3y ago
    At least it's better than the scale used by many outlets to rate wine, where 80/100 is for wines they consider undrinkable, and 91/100 is a pretty good mid-level wine.
- InitialLastName 3y ago
  There's also a selection bias going on with the reviews: There are thousands of games coming out every year, so why would a publication pay someone to write reviews of the games everybody knows are going to be bad, and that readers aren't interested in reading?
klausa 3y ago
This is very 2008 understanding of the industry. Sure, insider access to studios and pre-release games is important to media, but that’s… also the same for movies and books and TV and music publications? And the argument about the scoring is so old and trite. There are so many games coming out nowadays that the bad ones just don’t get the time of the day. Does median score on Pitchfork hover around 5? But even apart from that, written reviews aren’t the big traffic drivers they used to be. Bits of gameplay narrated by staff, guides, walkthroughs etc, and other commentary are only increasing in how much they matter traffic-wise. The truth is that for the most part (with notable exceptions) people on both sides of the divide are adults, and nobody is going to blacklist a website because they didn’t like a negative review. Publishers also generally do not get to influence review scores, the firing of Jeff Gerstmann from GameSpot and subsequent exodus of editorial staff is still An Event that everyone remembers and knows about.
PurpleRamen 3y ago
> the average review score on any large site is not 5/10 Because this score is in relation to the whole market, not just the reviewed games. Journalists only review the promising games, which means usually from established studios, or from unknown developers when they received some positive feedback from the community. But as it's their job, they still see the whole market, they know how low the bottom, and how high the ceiling is.
HDThoreaun 3y ago
I think reviews in general suffer a lot from the commodification that's happened as the gatekeepers have conglomerated. I never trust reviews from publications that have a whole team of reviewers anymore, you have to find individual, usually independent, reviewers who have their own fanbases to have any trust. Best video game reviewer is dunkey, best music reviewer is anthony fantano, I haven't found anyone I love for movies or film, but I'm always looking.

loveparade 3y ago

Player reviews for games aren't much better, unfortunately. So many games get review bombed for political reasons. It's the Amazon equivalent of "this book sucks because my package was late" but orders of magnitude more frequent. It's nearly impossible to find high quality game reviews.

jhchabran 3y ago
While I'm not sure I see as much games being review bombed for political reasons in my sources for video game reviews, I strongly agree with you that it's really hard nowadays to find high quality reviews. It's always been bad in mainstream video games medias though, but underdogs that are more open to criticise game tend to not last very long. The best approach I've found is to become aware of who are writing the reviews I perceive as high quality and simply follow them when they change medias and pay attention to what they communicate about their current position. Ultimately, the best reviews are almost always coming from sources that have a business model that doesn't rely on ads.

jchw 3y ago

I do agree, the bickering about politics is a little silly when you consider just how terrible the actual "journalism" part is. I think there's a general feeling that all journalism has faltered a little bit in the face of the Internet and a 24 hour news cycle, but I'm not even sure video game journalism was ever good. I'm not sure it was ever really 'journalism'. I'll admit I do miss the older generation of video game 'journalism' nonetheless. Had its problems, but the thing is, it did feel like people were sharing their genuine and honest opinions as a capital-G "Gamer" more often. It became mostly known for the stereotypical attitudes that people have since come to dislike, which you can see manifested sometimes e.g. in old Penny Arcade comics. The only irony is that it feels like somehow, people's more progressive attitudes manage to have even less nuance than the older "unrefined" opinions that have since been walked back on by many. You can see this especially in the bizarro way that people have become regressive about sexuality in video games-I'm not really sure how a bunch of people were convinced to go all the way from 90's style "toxic masculinity" to a totally puritanical anti-sexuality stance in such a short period, but I'll be damned, they really managed to do it. What happened in this time period, though, is interesting. There's really no such concept as a "capital-G Gamer" in a society where pretty much any kind of person plays video games to at least some degree. There's still a spectrum of different kinds and different levels of dedication, but the lines are firmly blurred. Gaming is just another thing that people do, on computers, phones, whatever, wherever. To me, the modern era though, won't actually be colored by how gaming went mainstream, or by any event involving gaming at all. It'll be about how everyone became phony and full of shit with pandering to trends and moral grandstanding. I'd be willing to place a wager on that one. Unfortunately, that isn't specific to gaming, gaming journalism, or any kind of journalism.

TerrifiedMouse 3y ago
> I'm not even sure video game journalism was ever good In my youth I read a few PC game magazines. Not sure about the accuracy of the reviews but the people writing them did try to make their reviews as entertaining as possible with jokes and what not. Sadly, those old magazines are long gone so I can't really go back and re-read them to see if it's just rose-tinted glasses. I don't even remember the magazine name or which country it was from. Edit: Come to think of it, those reviewers were kind of like Yahtzee (formerly*) of Zero Punctuation fame. * https://twitter.com/YahtzeeCroshaw/status/1721687212541280425 https://twitter.com/YahtzeeCroshaw/status/172168721254128042...
- praisewhitey 3y ago
  There are a lot of old video game magazines on the Internet Archive https://archive.org/details/videogamemagazines https://archive.org/details/videogamemagazines
AlexandrB 3y ago
> I'll admit I do miss the older generation of video game 'journalism' nonetheless. Had its problems, but the thing is, it did feel like people were sharing their genuine and honest opinions as a capital-G "Gamer" more often. It's important to recognize that the stakes were lower back then. When games cost hundreds of millions to develop and market and are expected to have revenue in the billions bad reviews have the potential to have a massive impact on that revenue. > You can see this especially in the bizarro way that people have become regressive about sexuality in video games-I'm not really sure how a bunch of people were convinced to go all the way from 90's style "toxic masculinity" to a totally puritanical anti-sexuality stance in such a short period, but I'll be damned, they really managed to do it. I don't know if I agree. If you look at the most profitable gaming sector - mobile gacha games - some of these games are extremely "horny". But there's also another elephant in the room here that has nothing to do with games journalism: China. I think a lot of content in popular games is toned down so it doesn't run afoul of Chinese regulators. There are examples online[1] of it being done retroactively, but if a game is being developed from day one with the Chinese market in mind, you would never know what was cut to make that happen. [1] https://old.reddit.com/r/wow/comments/49x7m0/chinese_wow_censorship_comparisonlots_of/?rdt=36424 https://old.reddit.com/r/wow/comments/49x7m0/chinese_wow_cen...

ajmurmann 3y ago

Worse even that gamergate was about Kotaku who also got blacklisted by Bethesda for their reporting.

drawkward 3y ago

Food for thought: maybe because people try to make better than mediocre games, the average review score is higher than 5/10.

AlexandrB 3y ago
Couldn't the same be said for movies of music? I don't think most people set out to make mediocre media. There's nothing special about games in this regard. In general the whole scale of scores for games is shifted upwards: https://old.reddit.com/r/gaming/comments/eu63f/modern_gaming_review_scale/ https://old.reddit.com/r/gaming/comments/eu63f/modern_gaming...
- the_only_law 3y ago
  > don't think most people set out to make mediocre media. Heh I’m not sure. I’ve been following the drama around CA and total war recently and the company seems to have set to do exactly that. Pump out mediocre recycled crap as long as people keep buying it. Except this time it’s blown up on them.
- dagw 3y ago
  At least it's better than the scale used by many outlets to rate wine, where 80/100 is for wines they consider undrinkable, and 91/100 is a pretty good mid-level wine.
InitialLastName 3y ago
There's also a selection bias going on with the reviews: There are thousands of games coming out every year, so why would a publication pay someone to write reviews of the games everybody knows are going to be bad, and that readers aren't interested in reading?

klausa 3y ago

This is very 2008 understanding of the industry. Sure, insider access to studios and pre-release games is important to media, but that’s… also the same for movies and books and TV and music publications? And the argument about the scoring is so old and trite. There are so many games coming out nowadays that the bad ones just don’t get the time of the day. Does median score on Pitchfork hover around 5? But even apart from that, written reviews aren’t the big traffic drivers they used to be. Bits of gameplay narrated by staff, guides, walkthroughs etc, and other commentary are only increasing in how much they matter traffic-wise. The truth is that for the most part (with notable exceptions) people on both sides of the divide are adults, and nobody is going to blacklist a website because they didn’t like a negative review. Publishers also generally do not get to influence review scores, the firing of Jeff Gerstmann from GameSpot and subsequent exodus of editorial staff is still An Event that everyone remembers and knows about.

PurpleRamen 3y ago

> the average review score on any large site is not 5/10 Because this score is in relation to the whole market, not just the reviewed games. Journalists only review the promising games, which means usually from established studios, or from unknown developers when they received some positive feedback from the community. But as it's their job, they still see the whole market, they know how low the bottom, and how high the ceiling is.

HDThoreaun 3y ago

I think reviews in general suffer a lot from the commodification that's happened as the gatekeepers have conglomerated. I never trust reviews from publications that have a whole team of reviewers anymore, you have to find individual, usually independent, reviewers who have their own fanbases to have any trust. Best video game reviewer is dunkey, best music reviewer is anthony fantano, I haven't found anyone I love for movies or film, but I'm always looking.