The problems with the supposedly "unbiased" review

[Scootinfroodie]

Oh I disagree with that ENTIRELY. If there were only a single polarized perspective in gaming reviews we'd see it widely reflected in scores. I've heard a lot lately about "Bayonetta 2" and how it was skewered by an unfair review. It's got a 91 for the WiiU and 90 for the XBOX 360. 83 positive and 3 mixed reviews for the latter. 51 positive and 2 mixed for the former. Skullgirls got an 83 on PC...higher than the user score for the same game. Of the six critical reviews listed, all were positive.

Mind you, I might be disagreeing on what the one perspective is. If the one perspective is "puff reviews for games that constantly highlight their strengths and wave away their weaknesses" you might be right. But when someone DOES highlight a weakness in a popular game, they tend to get pilloried for it.

...it seems to meet your general criteria for a balanced review. He discusses and even praises the game play, and touches on various elements, from graphics to how it functions in multiplayer. The review as a whole isn't particularly robust in terms of providing information, but I don't find that an inordinate amount of print space was given over to discussing tone. I agree with you that the reviewer in question "doesn't get the point", but that just makes him a reviewer I wouldn't choose to read again. I'm sure there are people who would agree with him.

I'm approaching it from the perspective of accuracy and being informative. It's blatantly incorrect to assert that the game has failed in terms of its intended goal and much of the review reads like a blogpost. If we look at this from a business perspective, this is a writer that can, and honestly should, be a reason for losing readers. If it was "I feel the game is too harsh" then that would be an acceptable opinion of the game overall. However the game is simultaneously too harsh and yet somehow not accurate enough.

Well, I think the responsibility any given reviewer has is to be HONEST. It's why I keep referencing Tom Chick. Tom is an extremely idiosyncratic reviewer. His one star review of Deus Ex wasn't going to reflect the views of a majority of his audience, but that was the review he delivered because it was the review he believed in. I want that from my reviewers. That is what I would consider "ethical gaming journalism". Even if I hate the final score awarded and disagree with it powerfully, as I did in that case.

Sure, but it's a question of who gives those reviews a platform. I can write a review on these forums for the last 3 games I played. I can be as honest as you'd like, but I wont get paid for it and my reviews wont be on the front page of a site that is attempting to court a large general audience. These sites are perfectly welcome to continue to squander their opportunity to keep these readers, but I've watched companies with this attitude fail before

Interactivity has to exist for it to be a game, yes, but I see people who want to measure how MUCH there was, or to what degree they liked the TYPE of interactivity, or Total Biscuit's argument that there must be a failure state, etc, etc, and all of it amounts to an effort to disallow certain games from even claiming the title, often because the person imposing that definition on them doesn't care for that type of game. While I agree there can be room for confusion if you're employing a numeric scoring system and you give "The Walking Dead" and "XCOM" identical scores, given how wildly different they are as experiences, but seriously...people just need to learn to read to figure out WTF it is they're buying.

I think that the type and level of interactivity should be discernible from a review. I also feel that software like Dear Esther ought to have its own category or tag so that people looking for that kind of experience can find it more easily, and those who don't care for it don't accidentally wander into a poor purchasing decision or waste their time combing through a review only to find out that it's not the type of experience they want. This isn't the only instance where I find this beneficial; the broad category that "action RPG" seems to take up is similarly irritating.

Yeah I agree with that. If you've completely obfuscated the nature of the experience in your review, you've left out some pretty crucial information. That said, I really do question how many people are, say, seeing a 9/10 for Gone Home and rushing out to buy it expecting an 80 hour RPG epic or something. At some point personal responsibility for uninformed decisions has to be taken into account. If a review didn't give me all the information I considered necessary for making an informed decision I would just visit a second, and a third, and a fourth. I have never been left in the dark about what kind of game I'm buying.

Gone Home is actually a really good example of the phenomenon I've mentioned in action
A game that started as an Amnesia mod set in an empty house at night? Some people who bought the game and promote it even admit not knowing what the game was initially, and some of them felt it added to the experience. For someone not looking for the type of game Gone Home is, and instead the kind it initially may appear to be, however, it's probably pretty disappointing/frustrating. What's also noteworthy is that for a game based on some sort of twist or mystery or even a particular mood, less information will often add to the experience.

I think it's quite possible that some people get hired due to their ability to write rather than their gaming expertise. I also think it doesn't need saying that in any industry there will be people who run the gamut from very good at their jobs to very bad at their jobs. I've encountered many of the latter in many types of industry. I've never gone out of my way to try and get them fired, however. And a few of them have been significantly more disruptive to my day to day life than writing a sloppy game review or calling my hobby a name in an angry screed.

This is a pretty gross oversimplification of what's going on right now, as well as not actually being related to what I said

I don't know that this is true, although I suppose it depends on what the nature of your baggage is. If you write a review of "Hatred" carrying the baggage of "Hates violence porn" into it, your review...whilst polarizing to fans of violence porn...will be extremely informative to the statistically significant body of people who don't like it. As I said, the more specific to you a review is, the less useful it is to a wide audience, but the more useful it becomes to those who share your predilections. Whether or not having too many of those kinds of reviews on-board is a problem is down to the people running the sites. As a reader, I'm not bound to any one place for my information.

If the reviews for Hatred tell you no more than the current articles and forum posts do and the game ends up being more than that, you're not only failing to provide a distinct service but are actually actively misinforming people. Again, as far as readers go, there have been people "going elsewhere" for a while. Where the issue comes in is when you have writers being added to blacklists (Pinsof), websites are being targeted simply for allowing differing opinions (KillScreenDaily's opinion piece on the Hitman Absolution trailer), and when articles are only written when they suit a narrative (Boogie2988's harassment, TFYC's indiegogo, etc.)
You may dispute the efficacy of these claims (something we should probably deal with in the PM convo) but these are the claims nonetheless. For "differing opinions" alone, the prevailing attitude has been "I'll take my business elsewhere"

Aside from "Gamer is dead", I haven't seen much I'd qualify as "hysteria", and in all honesty as poorly as some of those articles were written I know EXACTLY what they were criticizing, and it's nothing that the average gamer doesn't complain about almost hourly. We all know how toxic anonymity can make people.

I take it you haven't read through many of the "cultural criticism" pieces or really any of the pieces about this whole mess from the sites being accused of wrongdoing
Heck, many sites will go out of their way to feature any TvW video, including the one that attempts to connect context-specific violence against women within fantasy narratives to real-life IPV

 

[BloatedGuppy]

I'm approaching it from the perspective of accuracy and being informative. It's blatantly incorrect to assert that the game has failed in terms of its intended goal and much of the review reads like a blogpost. If we look at this from a business perspective, this is a writer that can, and honestly should, be a reason for losing readers. If it was "I feel the game is too harsh" then that would be an acceptable opinion of the game overall. However the game is simultaneously too harsh and yet somehow not accurate enough.

I found it generically informative. In terms of the reviewer's spin, it seemed evident he found the game's "moral tone" to be deplorable, and had a hard time reconciling his distaste for it with the otherwise competent game play. So his final "reviewer's spin" was a 6.5...not a terrible score by any means, if one is employing the entire scale, and one that denotes a measure of ambivalence.

Now, I personally find the reviewer's objections to the game's obvious satirical tone to be wearisome, and would likely disregard them off-hand. It certainly wouldn't be the only review I read if interested in the game...but then I never read only one review.

Sure, but it's a question of who gives those reviews a platform. I can write a review on these forums for the last 3 games I played. I can be as honest as you'd like, but I wont get paid for it and my reviews wont be on the front page of a site that is attempting to court a large general audience. These sites are perfectly welcome to continue to squander their opportunity to keep these readers, but I've watched companies with this attitude fail before.

Generally I work off the assumption that these people know their business model, have better tools than I do to analyze their readership, and thus make informed decisions about what kind of content they want to show. It's certainly not impossible to imagine they're bunglers who have no idea what they're doing, but that is really their lookout. There is a panoply of options out there for me to get information from. If one website keeps botching its articles I just won't read it. The amount of skin missing from my nose is infinitely minute.

I think that the type and level of interactivity should be discernible from a review. I also feel that software like Dear Esther ought to have its own category or tag so that people looking for that kind of experience can find it more easily, and those who don't care for it don't accidentally wander into a poor purchasing decision or waste their time combing through a review only to find out that it's not the type of experience they want. This isn't the only instance where I find this beneficial; the broad category that "action RPG" seems to take up is similarly irritating.

Oh this, we concur entirely. I'm also increasingly more agitated by "Game of the Year" awards. How does one rank a game like, say, Planescape Torment against a game like Jagged Alliance 2? I realize at the end of the day it's a meaningless designation but readers tend to get very frothy about this sort of thing. And yeah, a distinct sub-genre of "Narrative heavy, interaction-light" experiences would be most welcome. I mean, the genre already exists. We just don't have a clever name for it yet.

Gone Home is actually a really good example of the phenomenon I've mentioned in action. A game that started as an Amnesia mod set in an empty house at night? Some people who bought the game and promote it even admit not knowing what the game was initially, and some of them felt it added to the experience. For someone not looking for the type of game Gone Home is, and instead the kind it initially may appear to be, however, it's probably pretty disappointing/frustrating. What's also noteworthy is that for a game based on some sort of twist or mystery or even a particular mood, less information will often add to the experience.

Gone Home is a curious phenomenon. As you say, it's a game that relies at least in part of subversion of expectations to hit its mark, yet at the same time you could charge the developer with misleading marketing. At the end of the day I think it would have produced a lot less ire if they'd just priced it more reasonably. $20 for what was functionally a two hour game was extortionate.

This is a pretty gross oversimplification of what's going on right now, as well as not actually being related to what I said

I'll leave the GG commentary out of this, that's my bad.

I take it you haven't read through many of the "cultural criticism" pieces or really any of the pieces about this whole mess from the sites being accused of wrongdoing.

Heck, many sites will go out of their way to feature any TvW video, including the one that attempts to connect context-specific violence against women within fantasy narratives to real-life IPV

By all means, if there's a piece you feel is particularly inflammatory I'll gladly look at it. Generally speaking, there are only so many hours in the day, and I don't allot much if any of it to reading cultural analysis on gaming websites. It is ABUNDANTLY likely I've overlooked polarizing pieces. Hell I didn't even know who Leigh Alexander WAS before this started.

 

[Scootinfroodie]

Just realized I neglected two bits in the prevous post. I'll add them here

Oh I disagree with that ENTIRELY. If there were only a single polarized perspective in gaming reviews we'd see it widely reflected in scores. I've heard a lot lately about "Bayonetta 2" and how it was skewered by an unfair review. It's got a 91 for the WiiU and 90 for the XBOX 360. 83 positive and 3 mixed reviews for the latter. 51 positive and 2 mixed for the former. Skullgirls got an 83 on PC...higher than the user score for the same game. Of the six critical reviews listed, all were positive.

I thought we were looking past review scores
I will say as far as scores and averages goes, the very noticeable disparity between reviewer scores and user scores that seems to be across the vast majority of the board feels very telling. It's also refreshing to see user scored products actually running across the whole score range, even if I don't always agree with the scores given

Mind you, I might be disagreeing on what the one perspective is. If the one perspective is "puff reviews for games that constantly highlight their strengths and wave away their weaknesses" you might be right. But when someone DOES highlight a weakness in a popular game, they tend to get pilloried for it.

This *is* actually more along the lines of what I meant, but additionally there is a particular perspective (some would call it Feminist, but I find that as helpful as calling something "Leftist". Great job, its a thing in a spectrum of things!) and narrative that is being pushed on Kotaku, RPS, Gamasutra and Polygon, amongst others. You may agree with this perspective, to any varying degree, but the fact is that there isn't a lot of variation, and the few instances of variation tend to get shouted down

I found it generically informative. In terms of the reviewer's spin, it seemed evident he found the game's "moral tone" to be deplorable, and had a hard time reconciling his distaste for it with the otherwise competent game play. So his final "reviewer's spin" was a 6.5...not a terrible score by any means, if one is employing the entire scale, and one that denotes a measure of ambivalence.

I would consider "if one is employing the entire scale" to be dismissive of context. While I think the whole scale ought to be used, as it stands basically anything below a 7-7.5 is a "don't bother purchasing" score, and anything below an 8 suggests a noticable quality hit. I would suggest that if the reviewer finds material difficult to a degree where they cannot prevent the review from becoming about themselves rather than the game, that they pass it off to someone who can.

Now, I personally find the reviewer's objections to the game's obvious satirical tone to be wearisome, and would likely disregard them off-hand. It certainly wouldn't be the only review I read if interested in the game...but then I never read only one review.

Nor do I, but not everyone can prioritize reading through reviews until they hit one that tells them, with some level of expertise beyond their own, what the game is. Luckily there were a few for Tropico 5, both from newcomers to the series and from people who have played at least one of the previous titles. This does not, however, make the Polygon review more informative for a general consumerbase

Generally I work off the assumption that these people know their business model, have better tools than I do to analyze their readership, and thus make informed decisions about what kind of content they want to show. It's certainly not impossible to imagine they're bunglers who have no idea what they're doing, but that is really their lookout. There is a panoply of options out there for me to get information from. If one website keeps botching its articles I just won't read it. The amount of skin missing from my nose is infinitely minute.

I think in more than a few cases, the business model involves clickbaiting. If you make anger a commodity, it's pretty much guaranteed that it will backfire at some point. Now that people are armed with tools that level that paying field (that I wont list due to site rules), it'll be interesting to see how long that method remains successful.

Oh this, we concur entirely. I'm also increasingly more agitated by "Game of the Year" awards. How does one rank a game like, say, Planescape Torment against a game like Jagged Alliance 2? I realize at the end of the day it's a meaningless designation but readers tend to get very frothy about this sort of thing. And yeah, a distinct sub-genre of "Narrative heavy, interaction-light" experiences would be most welcome. I mean, the genre already exists. We just don't have a clever name for it yet.

I've seen "Interactive Narrative' suggested a few times, which feels a bit "Visual Novel" in the way that it describes the whole experience. Until then I'll just keep an eye out for the "Walking Simulator" tag on steam

Gone Home is a curious phenomenon. As you say, it's a game that relies at least in part of subversion of expectations to hit its mark, yet at the same time you could charge the developer with misleading marketing. At the end of the day I think it would have produced a lot less ire if they'd just priced it more reasonably. $20 for what was functionally a two hour game was extortionate.

I definitely think the price point was a factor, but I suspect the sheer amount of praise for a game that appears to have burned a decent number of people is probably why ranting about it is still "a thing". That Dominique Pampelmousse game gets a decent amount of flack too, but it gets mocked more than it gets lengthy essays written about it mostly because it's pretty obvious what the game is supposed to be

By all means, if there's a piece you feel is particularly inflammatory I'll gladly look at it. Generally speaking, there are only so many hours in the day, and I don't allot much if any of it to reading cultural analysis on gaming websites. It is ABUNDANTLY likely I've overlooked polarizing pieces. Hell I didn't even know who Leigh Alexander WAS before this started.

I'll have to look through them again. There's been some that are definitely blog posts (featured on platforms like Gamasutra, but blog posts nonetheless) like one that is basically a guy complaining about competition, but on a number of these sites there was, until recently, no distinguishing factor between opinion pieces and news by virtue of the site layout and lack of appropriate labelling.

 

[BloatedGuppy]

I will say as far as scores and averages goes, the very noticeable disparity between reviewer scores and user scores that seems to be across the vast majority of the board feels very telling. It's also refreshing to see user scored products actually running across the whole score range, even if I don't always agree with the scores given

As much as I have grown wary of "official" scores, user scores are just useless jungle noises. The volume of 10/10 and 1/10 alone would be evidence that something was wrong. That most turn up the day the game hits the market is just icing on the cake. We talk about "professionals" being unable to divorce their bias from their review...users are functionally worthless at it. You have to mine really hard to find jewels amongst the turd. But, as I said, even score bombers and plumpers can have SOME value. Someone reading day one score bombing of, say, SimCity, would at least get informed as to some of the design elements that inflamed the audience, if not having any actual idea how they impacted game play.

This *is* actually more along the lines of what I meant, but additionally there is a particular perspective (some would call it Feminist, but I find that as helpful as calling something "Leftist". Great job, its a thing in a spectrum of things!) and narrative that is being pushed on Kotaku, RPS, Gamasutra and Polygon, amongst others. You may agree with this perspective, to any varying degree, but the fact is that there isn't a lot of variation, and the few instances of variation tend to get shouted down.

I will tentatively say "that's fair" (although you know I don't believe "Feminism" to follow any particular political doctrine) whilst at the same time say "You have identified a gap in the marketplace and a potential opportunity". Gamer Gate could easily put some time and energy into starting their own website. With hookers, and blackjack. Unlike the calls for game critics to "make their own games", running a website and writing copy is a significantly less taxing and skill-specific endeavor. Indeed, depending on how ambitious one wanted to be, it could be argued that "anyone could do it".

I would consider "if one is employing the entire scale" to be dismissive of context. While I think the whole scale ought to be used, as it stands basically anything below a 7-7.5 is a "don't bother purchasing" score, and anything below an 8 suggests a noticable quality hit. I would suggest that if the reviewer finds material difficult to a degree where they cannot prevent the review from becoming about themselves rather than the game, that they pass it off to someone who can.

I *do* feel that the review was about the game, though. You can argue it was overly focused on one element, but it was an element that stood out to THAT reviewer. A bad score can't be viewed as wrong, even if it becomes an outlier or runs against common sentiment. A game's tone is still very relevant to the experience of playing it, and if a reviewer hated it I want them to be honest with me about that.

Nor do I, but not everyone can prioritize reading through reviews until they hit one that tells them, with some level of expertise beyond their own, what the game is. Luckily there were a few for Tropico 5, both from newcomers to the series and from people who have played at least one of the previous titles. This does not, however, make the Polygon review more informative for a general consumerbase.

My major issue with that review was how short it was, really. I've generally started moving away from written reviews to Let's Plays and demonstrations for the specific reason that review length tends to be truncated and the amount of information available tends to be a bit short-changed as a result. It's possible I'm slowly turning into a reader who would PREFER a biased view of a game just because it gives me an article I consider worth reading, and a viewpoint I couldn't get from just watching the game in action.

I think in more than a few cases, the business model involves clickbaiting.

On that, I agree.

If you make anger a commodity, it's pretty much guaranteed that it will backfire at some point. Now that people are armed with tools that level that paying field (that I wont list due to site rules), it'll be interesting to see how long that method remains successful.

Game criticism has been migrating from written form to YouTube and Twitch and their like for a while now. I expect that migration to continue.

I've seen "Interactive Narrative' suggested a few times, which feels a bit "Visual Novel" in the way that it describes the whole experience. Until then I'll just keep an eye out for the "Walking Simulator" tag on steam

But then how do you distinguish between Skyrim and Dear Esther?!

I kid. I kid the Skyrim.

I definitely think the price point was a factor, but I suspect the sheer amount of praise for a game that appears to have burned a decent number of people is probably why ranting about it is still "a thing". That Dominique Pampelmousse game gets a decent amount of flack too, but it gets mocked more than it gets lengthy essays written about it mostly because it's pretty obvious what the game is supposed to be

It's a pity, because I'm of the mind that the industry needs more "Gone Homes". Not more games about lesbians running away from home, per se, but more games straining at the calcified notions of what "games" are supposed to be. They won't all be winners but the medium will only grow through experimentation.

I'll have to look through them again. There's been some that are definitely blog posts (featured on platforms like Gamasutra, but blog posts nonetheless) like one that is basically a guy complaining about competition, but on a number of these sites there was, until recently, no distinguishing factor between opinion pieces and news by virtue of the site layout and lack of appropriate labelling.

Part of the growing pains when a hobbyist press wants to put on the Big Boy pants and participate in Serious Journalism, I guess.

 

[Schadrach]

An objective review would be a statement of fact-- it would scarcely qualify as a review at all.

It's the difference between "The writing is awful, whoever wrote it has no idea how english-speaking human beings actually speak to eachother, the translation made me cringe." and "The dialogue offended me and did not fit with my world view, therefore I'm going to mark it down."

Neither of those are objective.

It's the difference between "Whoever designed this character was a clown, seriously learn what colours compliment eachother and try again." and "Skimpy outfits, you say? Unnaceptable."

Nor either of those.

It's the difference between "They failed to give the main character one thing a character should have and that is character." and "I don't like the main character being a straight white male."

Nor these.

In fact, none of those you mentioned were objective. The actual difference is that some of those you mentioned contained criticisms you deem valid, and others don't... but your own criteria, by which you judge that, are also subjective.

(Not to mention the last example I quoted was, of course, a strawman).

I think what he or she is getting at is that some of those things are criticisms of the quality of the game itself as a work within the medium, and others are criticisms of the game not aligning exactly with your personal politics.

Like the people who get violently angry with you when you suggest that fanservice in anime is mostly quality neutral (that is that fanservice neither makes a good series worse nor a bad series better) unless it's poorly performed or performed to extreme excess (which are themselves separate things).

 

[Silvanus]

I think what he or she is getting at is that some of those things are criticisms of the quality of the game itself as a work within the medium, and others are criticisms of the game not aligning exactly with your personal politics.

Like the people who get violently angry with you when you suggest that fanservice in anime is mostly quality neutral (that is that fanservice neither makes a good series worse nor a bad series better) unless it's poorly performed or performed to extreme excess (which are themselves separate things).

I do understand this perspective, but it's nothing to do with objectivity.

It's also an arbitrary line drawn between what can be criticised and what can't. Fanservice, politics, narrative-- they're present in games, and they affect the experience for a lot of people.

 

[Wasted]

The only way to make a true objective video game review is one that includes clear numbers. So I imagine a world with objective reviews will only focus on resolution, frame rate, texture quality, etc.

Anything else like themes, gameplay, story, art-style, etc. are subjective opinions.

So this recent call for reviews to be only objective essentially want them to review games the same way people review cars.

 

[Scootinfroodie]

As much as I have grown wary of "official" scores, user scores are just useless jungle noises. The volume of 10/10 and 1/10 alone would be evidence that something was wrong. That most turn up the day the game hits the market is just icing on the cake. We talk about "professionals" being unable to divorce their bias from their review...users are functionally worthless at it. You have to mine really hard to find jewels amongst the turd. But, as I said, even score bombers and plumpers can have SOME value. Someone reading day one score bombing of, say, SimCity, would at least get informed as to some of the design elements that inflamed the audience, if not having any actual idea how they impacted game play.

They are useless to the extent that they tend to be reactionary, but the reaction doesn't come from nowhere. Additionally, it's very easy to filter out the one-line 10's and 0's and look at what is left over. It's a bit like looking through the steam reviews of a product after getting a cursory glance at the "general reception" score

I will tentatively say "that's fair" (although you know I don't believe "Feminism" to follow any particular political doctrine) whilst at the same time say "You have identified a gap in the marketplace and a potential opportunity". Gamer Gate could easily put some time and energy into starting their own website. With hookers, and blackjack. Unlike the calls for game critics to "make their own games", running a website and writing copy is a significantly less taxing and skill-specific endeavor. Indeed, depending on how ambitious one wanted to be, it could be argued that "anyone could do it".

There are sites that have been started by gamergate sympathizers and advocates, as well as sites promoted by the same groups. They're currently on the GG whitelist

I *do* feel that the review was about the game, though. You can argue it was overly focused on one element, but it was an element that stood out to THAT reviewer. A bad score can't be viewed as wrong, even if it becomes an outlier or runs against common sentiment. A game's tone is still very relevant to the experience of playing it, and if a reviewer hated it I want them to be honest with me about that.

It's not about the score being "wrong" it's about the review being appropriately informative for the audience. A 6.5 in modern journo conveyance is a suggestion that the game is borderline unplayable. Is this solely because of what the reviewer (somewhat ignorantly) decided the game was about? Will the audience recognize that this is a case of the reviewer not understanding the franchise when they themselves probably don't know much about it either?

As you've stated below, the review was pretty short. The other issue is that a large portion of that is dedicated to "muh game feels" and those seem to trump both what the game is actually saying and the reality of what it is depicting. This is both a missed opportunity to truly explore the mechanics of the game, and, potentially in a follow-up piece, a chance to garner interest in and educate people on the real world parallels of the island nation in Tropico

My major issue with that review was how short it was, really. I've generally started moving away from written reviews to Let's Plays and demonstrations for the specific reason that review length tends to be truncated and the amount of information available tends to be a bit short-changed as a result. It's possible I'm slowly turning into a reader who would PREFER a biased view of a game just because it gives me an article I consider worth reading, and a viewpoint I couldn't get from just watching the game in action.

I am similarly being driven away from many reviewers, but moreso because of a lack of respect for and experience with the material and its origins. I don't think either of us are alone in our outlook either, and I suspect there's a few things these writers could do to bring back a number of their deserting readers.

Game criticism has been migrating from written form to YouTube and Twitch and their like for a while now. I expect that migration to continue.

I agree to an extent. I still feel, however, that there's space for written work on gaming and that there's still untapped potential for well-thought out written work. The issue is that we aren't going to get that kind of work on the scale we ought to if talented writers are being utilized for clickbait and given elevated status and praise for following a mainstream clickbait narrative. These things are perfectly capable of existing insofar as there's nothing illegal about them, but I do consider a campaign to inform people of the kind of content they're reading to be worth putting some amount of effort into

But then how do you distinguish between Skyrim and Dear Esther?!

I kid. I kid the Skyrim.

On a personal level, I manage because Skyrim is in my hidden folder

It's a pity, because I'm of the mind that the industry needs more "Gone Homes". Not more games about lesbians running away from home, per se, but more games straining at the calcified notions of what "games" are supposed to be. They won't all be winners but the medium will only grow through experimentation.

I don't think there's going to be an end to software like Gone Home, Dear Esther and the innumerable Twine projects that are out there
I do, however, think that they're probably not going to find as large an audience

Part of the growing pains when a hobbyist press wants to put on the Big Boy pants and participate in Serious Journalism, I guess.

Sure, but it's interesting to see how the rhetoric has changed since the Jack Thompson saga. Check out some of the articles on Hatred. All this mention of 'murder simulation' and moral outrage could bring a tear to the eye of a disbarred lawyer and media violence crusader.