A status update from Candice on Facebook sparks a heated discussion about reviews in modern day games journalism. Are game reviewers too negative these days?
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Gamers Garage: Episode 230 – Played Sports Games Once
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Co-Owner of WouldYouKindly and Founder of The Gamers Garage podcast. 9 years experience in the video game industry running tournaments/leagues, communities, creating/producing podcasts, and operating independent video game media websites. Still hates platformers. Ghost Recon fanboy extraordinaire.
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This week’s show got me all kinds of fired up. I was talking to you through my headphones.
I think some of the things that you were talking about has to do with several factors, one of the main factors being subjectivity in game reviews not being explained. All gamers need is a frame of reference at the beginning of a review, and then *boom* they’d understand how many grains of salt that they should apply to the reviewer. Just because you review games on a website somewhere doesn’t necessarily mean that anyone anywhere should give a shit IMHO. But if you’re able to build some sort of credibility by approaching games with either an open mind or a framed-for-the-reader closed mind, then and only then can you begin to be considered a real reviewer. Perhaps it’s reviewer self-consciousness or something, but I tend to think that there are too many negative reviews out there that are negative for the sake of being negative. Maybe a reviewer needs to sound like he knows a lot by destroying something (you see that all over the world; new teachers are overly harsh; new editors are overly critical; new bosses are overly dick-ish). Balancing (or attempting to balance) objectivity with subjectivity can make a great reviewer. Total subjectivity builds audience for the reviewer (or entertainer like Klaus).
Great episode!
Candice’s argument is valid and I really appreciate it. Those people that shit on games for reviews should do that for indie devs that read every single review. Their response to the review should call them out. This is part of the maturing process of reviewers is something everyone has to go through. Most reviewers that are on IGN’s and Gamespot’s staff had to go through this process.