This is a big deal to be honest, and it is something that needs to be addressed. Simply put the producers are investing tons of cash into these games to pay what the developers demand, and even if they produce a sub-standard product, the producers still want to make money, or at least recoup as much of their investment back as they can. As a result they want anything their money is involved in to be promoted as the best thing since sliced bread. When they can control access to information, honesty is not going to be a major part of their thinking. It also doesn't help that those sponsoring reviewers are usually dependant on ad revenues from the game industry to make their money.
Right now I think there is increasing dis-satisfaction with the game industry and the quality of games. This is why we're starting to see situations where paid, professional reviewers, and actual fan reception are leading to very differant ratings with big titles.
A lot of people seem to overlook that gaming is a fairly unique market, in that gamers can be borderline addictive and they want to game. It's sort of like pro-wrestling's old "seven year rule", the quality of what has been produced in the past and recycling doesn't much matter for the guy who wants entertainment right now. There are only so many games on the market at any given time, and someone who is a major shooter "addict" wants his "fix" and if the current game isn't as good as one he already played to death, he's still going to buy it and have more fun than he would watching paint peel. Of course, despite the lowest human denominator getting into the gaming industry, there is still a pretty solid core of "upper level" humanity in gaming, and I think those people are catching on far more than the target demographic for things like Pro-Wrestling. This means that as the gaming industry becomes more corrupt and gears itself to produce and market for the casuals, there is a good part of the audience effectively throwing on the breaks.
The point here is that there is a perception that a game that sells a lot of copies is a GOOD game. This is not the case, especially seeing as those who dislike a game generally have to have bought it and played it (or tried to). What's more for all the complaining, the used game industry means that more people play a game than there are sales, even if a sequel sells more copies than the original that doesn't typically mean a lot, other than the first game was successful, due to blind purchusing, and people who tried the game used and were never part of the initial sales demographic. We for example really have no idea how many people actually played and were fans of say "Mass Effect 1". If you look at all the used copies out there and think that two people might have played for every DVD out there on average, that would seriously change the analysis of how well received a sequel actually was for example. One of the reasons why the gaming industry doubtlessly hates used game sales, isn't just because of the potential money being lost, but because of how important marketing is, and
how badly it scews their statistics.
I'll also say that while the term is overused, "fanboyism" in it's true form has little to do with opinion. Fanboys are people who will defend something based on an ideal or a brand, even if they know it's crap and might even say so under certain circumstances.
As this revolves around Bioware, you'll notice that in a lot of discussions defending games like "Dragon Age 2" and to a lesser degree "Mass Effect 2", the company and it's past glories come up a whole lot. People will say they had fun with the game, or refute specific complaints (or try to) no matter how ridiculous it seems, but rarely do you see much in the way of people talking about how great the gameplay actually was. There has been pretty much NOONE that actually thought that enemies spawning in waves in "Dragon Age 2" was a good move, or that recycling the enviroments was a great idea. Typically in response you have fanboys who will defend the company, and perhaps talk about the writing and cinematics (which are differant from gaming) but even the fans tend to talk around the actual experience of playing th egame in *most* if not all cases. There is a lot of truth to this when it comes to "Mass Effect 2" as well, though to a lesser extent.
Part of what drives fanboyism is looking at what a company has done in the past, and is capable of, and the hope that if they defend a company they will again go back to their old, better way of development. The idea being that if they actually let a company fall or a product fail, that it can go out of business, and they would be left with nothing. With certain under produced generes like single player RPGs, going with bad games is seem as better than going with *no* games as well, if they force a developer to change entirely.
Of course this is counter productive since fanboy praise simply encourages companies to continue down the wrong path.
There is no simple solution to the issue of course, since every bad product that gets marked as a bad product and sells accordingly, hurts a developer getting production dollars. Every bad game that sells however leads to only more of the same getting green lit.
Time will tell what happens, but the industry as an entire model is a complete mess, and it's relation with the media is a big part of what is fueling that. Not wanting honest response and controlling information, leads to bad products, which leads to slowly building customer dissatisfaction, and more information control. This is the kind of thing that lead to the collapse of industries, especially surprising ones when someone looks and goes "wait, they were in trouble? The media made it look like they were doing so well, and every one of their products was a gem that was selling like crazy".
