Interesting, and honestly this is one of the big reasons why I have issues with professional reviews to begin with. Professional reviewers are too easy to leverage, as to become professional they sometimes have some kind of qualifications/business experience that makes their opinion supposedly re meaingful than the average guy on the street. Authors, magazine regulars, etc, like we see here, which puts them on the side of the industry or easy to attack through their other interests. Even not considering that professional reviewers are often hired by periodicals that actually make their money by selling ads to the very companies making the products being reviewed. That tends to hurt the impartiality of the reviewers. Right not it's rare to see game reviews below a 7/10, and people scream bloody murder if their game ever gets reviewed as below average like say a 4/10.
I tend to find professional reviews interesting, but put more stock in community response, looking towards youtube guys like Whity The Reviewer or Slasherthrasher when and where I find their stuff for more impartial coverage as they aren't taking money from anyone to the best of my knowlege.
As a result I find it kind of interesting to see that with an increasingly corrupt professional review industry, we're seeing the private "user" reviews greatly deviating from the professional ones, and situations with Bioware attempting to "shill" their products and so on. Right now I also notice that without any direct way to control the results without shilling or calling for fanboy rampages, there is a tendency to blame poor word of mouth reception on "review bombing" when in reality trolls have been out there since there have been reviews and things like meta critic, and they have never had the effect attributed to them with things like the initial reaction to "Portal 2" which seems to have been boosted by a fanboy crusade in response.
I find the whole thing interesting, and wonder what is going to happen. It makes me think that the whole system needs to be somehow reformed (and by this I don't mean getting rid of numerical ratings, they work well, the people who complain about them are usually the ones who get nailed). If there isn't one already, maybe some kind of "video game review writers union" or something, though given the number of, and nature of game reviewing, that wouldn't work without what amounts to mafia-type enforcement of policies, so it's an impractical idea at best.
I tend to find professional reviews interesting, but put more stock in community response, looking towards youtube guys like Whity The Reviewer or Slasherthrasher when and where I find their stuff for more impartial coverage as they aren't taking money from anyone to the best of my knowlege.
As a result I find it kind of interesting to see that with an increasingly corrupt professional review industry, we're seeing the private "user" reviews greatly deviating from the professional ones, and situations with Bioware attempting to "shill" their products and so on. Right now I also notice that without any direct way to control the results without shilling or calling for fanboy rampages, there is a tendency to blame poor word of mouth reception on "review bombing" when in reality trolls have been out there since there have been reviews and things like meta critic, and they have never had the effect attributed to them with things like the initial reaction to "Portal 2" which seems to have been boosted by a fanboy crusade in response.
I find the whole thing interesting, and wonder what is going to happen. It makes me think that the whole system needs to be somehow reformed (and by this I don't mean getting rid of numerical ratings, they work well, the people who complain about them are usually the ones who get nailed). If there isn't one already, maybe some kind of "video game review writers union" or something, though given the number of, and nature of game reviewing, that wouldn't work without what amounts to mafia-type enforcement of policies, so it's an impractical idea at best.
