Who Do You Trust?

[shMerker]

Reminds me of a chart I saw of movies by ticket sales that showed that blockbusters like Transformers or Independence Day made most of their box office sales within the first weekend, whereas movies that won Academy Awards had modest opening weekends followed by several weeks or even months of sustained sales. I suspect that many "classic" games are the same way.

 

[Smokescreen]

The problem is this: the product that the review is, is offered to the readers, not to the gaming company.

Fucking with your consumers is a bad practice, and if there isn't a way to put a check on that then there is a serious, serious goddamn problem, not to mention a breach of trust between the readership and whomever is doing the talking (which includes The Escapist). Penny-Arcade is a solid example of this; they tell you what they like, what they don't like and although I know they are not game critics per se, they have credibility, and that's worth a hell of a lot more than you might think.

Finally, to this throwaway final line:
"These people are treasures to which you should hold dear, but in the end, only one person's opinion should really matter to you: your own."

I say: Fuck off, man. I am a busy person with a lot of things to do, and games take TIME and MONEY from me. I need to be able to trust the reviews I see, if for no other reason than if I pick out a 'substandard' game I know what I'm getting into. I don't expect reviewers to do anything more but tell me their point of view, but it needs to be a mostly honest one, or else I'm unable to make a choice I can be responsible for. If I'm being fed shitty information, and I buy a shitty game, then I'm not only angry at the company that produced it, but at the people who fed me shitty information to begin with.

Reviewers have a responsibility, like it or not and saying: Hey, you should only trust yourself, is a bullshit way of saying caveat emptor, bitches, and letting those reviewers off the hook for not doing their jobs.

I might disagree with your point of view, but if your job is to provide that point of view, I have a right to expect that you have done your job, or will soon be replaced with someone who will.

 

[Evil Genius for a Better Tomorrow]

I thought this was a great article and exposes a real problem in the gaming media, that is not being able to freely express an opinion on a new release.

I understand why a game company, who have invested potentially millions of dollars in developing a game, may get annoyed at a poor review but for them to then threaten legal action or pull sponsorship etc from the media outlet that has given the subpar review is a disturbing sign of the times and in a way is undermining a basic freedom of western society. That freedom is to be able to express a viewpoint, as long as its not defamatory or false. The major media corporations and their journalists now self censor their content for fear of upseting their sponsors. This means the average person who may not have the time nor possibly the level of education has to rely on the integrity and honesty of the media to be reliably informed. Yet this is being compromised because of commercial interests. This then begs the question: which is more important - the commercial interests of the game company or the integrity of the media outlet or journalist/reviewer who is providing an opinion that should be free from influence?

I suspect that journalistic integrity and the freedom of the press will be steadily eroded by the commercial imperative thus we will see fewer honest and impartial reviews of games [and other things/new ietsm etc] which in turn invokes the spectre of Orwells nightmare world of 1984 where everything is santitised and controled and the truth is irrelevant.