Jim Sterling Quits Traditional Reviewing

[sXeth]

So he's still doing reviews, just not adhering to the traditional conclusion-based format (or numbering scale) and in a more informal or free opinion sense.

Probably the best route really. "Objectivity" was prettymuch a unicorn outside of stuff that was straight up and outright broken. Review scores were always a bit of a lazy toss up in the history of the medium. Half the time you'd read a review and then find the score strangely at odds with the actual thoughts and opinions expressed in detail. Then you also had the consistent barrage of people complaining about whatever scale you graded on.

 

[Neurotic Void Melody]

 

[Erttheking]

Jim... wasn't a very good reviewer to say the least (at least in the last years). His temper tantrum over Hellblade kinda epitomizes that.

Or, y'know, it demonstrated sincerity and transparency and that he was smart and modest enough to admit he made a mistake? Game reviews are subjective, after all, and his experience was subjectively broken initially.

What Darth said. I don't agree with CriticalGaming on how all reviewers are now garbage because they're not talking about microtransactions as much as he wants them to, but how would you want a reviewer encountering a game breaking bug? I spent six months doing freelance journalism and I encountered a game where the last three levels wouldn't load. I gave the game a 2. I was originally going to give it a six or a five (with five being an average game on the scale I was using) but after that I gave it a 2 and I don't regret it. I clarified which version of the game I was using just in case that was where the problem was, but I still stand by the 2 I gave that shit shit game.

There's no excuse for that temper tantrum, he could have waited for a fix (or contacted the devs to try to debug it/get a new save), watched other people play via youtube it or just replayed an already short game (I see a speedrun at 2 hours). Apologizing afterwards doesn't make it less display of childishness and laziness.

And I could have waited for a patch for the levels not loading in the game that I got. But life doesn't work that way. They was the review copy I was given, it didn't work, therefore I gave a review reflecting it. A game reviewers job is not to go out of their way to give a game the best possible score possible. If your game has a game breaking bug, that's a damn serious problem. A lot of times devs flat out don't patch games for problems, Homeworld Deserts of Kharak is getting downvoted on Steam because it still has bugs that were there when it was still released. So how long was Jim supposed to wait for the game to be debugged before he was allowed to complain about it? And by your logic, is he allowed to complain about bugs in general? And someone was able to speed run the game in two hours, well if Jim was a speed runner that would actually mean something. And if your defense of a game is that "well he could have gotten a good experience if he watched someone else playing it" you seem to have radically missed the point. Yes, he would. Because that would be a more ideal version of the game than what he played, but he didn't get the more ideal version of the game because he ran into a serious problem that ruined his experience. Reviewers give THEIR experience, not someone else's.

But whatever, you seem pretty determined to hate him and I know how you get when you're determined to hate someone. After all, I'm so sexist.

 

[Erttheking]

Snip

Yeah, I read the OP and what you said in the other thread, no need to rehash it.

 

[Arnoxthe1]

This is kinda silly to me, honestly. The Jimpressions/WTF is... way of reviewing games is not adequate. Sometimes, the game needs to be played in full instead of just the first 2 hours in order to give an accurate look at the game's overall quality. Doing these kinds of reviews just does not allow that. Furthermore, Jimpressions is kind of a loose rambling way of reviewing it. Some people don't want to watch 20-30 mins of Jim screwing about and talking about his first impressions. It may be fine for a demo, but for a full review of a full game, it doesn't and won't work.

 

[gsilver]

Didn't he just do a video on Shadow of War and how rushed reviews didn't do a very good job at breaking down the problems with the game because the lootbox grind for the real ending doesn't become apparent until the final act?

 

[Tanis]

Wait...Jim actually did traditional reviewing?

I thought he was just a slower, more blunt less fun, version of ZP?

 

[DaCosta]

Professional game journalists are bought out, and random, rambling shitheads on Youtube are the future!

C'mon, what year is this? 2014?

 

[Kyrian007]

The problem with game reviews is that very few people these days use them to actually inform themselves about a game they're interested in; instead, they want reviews to buttress their already-formed opinions.

This is the simple and unfortunate truth.

Before the era of social media, the average reader realized his opinion actually doesn't matter to anyone but himself. And someone who had worked himself into a position where his opinions actually did matter... that was a person potentially worth listening to. Now any schmuck with an internet connection can create an online echo chamber for himself... that makes him seem like the center of his own universe. And if a reviewer (gasp) dares dislike something they like... "That reviewer is bias, who paying him off, I teh hatez all his revews (dislike... shitpost... etc)"

Whereas a more measured response would be "wow, I kind of liked that... oh well, he was right on about x... and x... and x... I'll continue to tune in." Or even "wow, that's the 3rd time in a row I've disagreed with his take. Perhaps I should look for another reviewer with tastes similar to mine."

It simply is as much or more a fault of the readers as it is reviewers.

 

[lacktheknack]

Reviews died the day the internet decided it wanted "objectivity" because people are sociopaths who don't understand their own words.

 

[TallestGargoyle]

Nope, to fix reviews, take the humans out of them. I want objectivity, Jim Sterling did a wonderful spoof of a purely objective review and I thought it was perfect. Exaggerated, of course, but more in line with what I?d prefer than anything any other reviewer has done.

I mean, he made that video purely to take the piss out of the concept of an unbiased, objective review, since a review is inherently biased by the person writing it. If you don't consider personal opinion in a review, it's not a review, it's a description.

 

[wizzy555]

Reviews died for a number of reasons:

1) Let's plays, and screaming streamers are more profitable.
2) Written things have generally lost market share to video and podcasts. (low attention span of of the modern age)
3) Certain reviewers causing controversy for clicks and infamy.
4) (flip side of 3) Certain fan bases being ridiculously overly sensitive to opinion.

 

[Phoenixmgs_v1legacy]

Professional game journalists are bought out, and random, rambling shitheads on Youtube are the future!

C'mon, what year is this? 2014?

I don't think professional reviews are bought out, it's that professional reviewers think games are supposed to be objectively reviewed. A professional reviewer can't just dislike a game because they just don't like it because that's wrong for some reason. Why can't Shadow of War get a negative review just because the reviewer is sick of Arkham combat or just never liked it to begin with? Just go to Metacritic and look at all the games that don't have a single negative review, it's pretty unbelievable actually. How am I supposed to find a reviewer that has similar likes and dislikes as I do when there are no dislikes? Jim was one of the few reviewers that did properly review a game giving a game a bad score if he didn't like it; however, Jim wasn't a good reviewer for me because we rarely shared similar opinions. There's literally one negative review for Final Fantasy XIII and guess what? That's Jim's review. There was more review variance back in the day with EGM's 3 reviewer format than there is with 100+ reviews now. That's a complete failure of professional criticism for the gaming medium. And yes, there are a SMALL handful on people on Youtube that easily outdo any professional reviewer due to the bar being so goddamn low.

 

[EscapistAccount]

This action shows a person as entitled and patientless as well as a reviewer rushing in to put reviews for clicks rather than actually taking the a fucking day to relax and realize ("hey it's a short game, let's just rush through it again")

If you buy a game you are entitled to a game that works, that's a basic sale of goods right. You shouldn't be expected to wait until the product you bought on the promise it would work starts working any more than the game shop should let you have the game and wait patiently for your money.

Jim could have got in touch with the company and sorted it out, or waited for the game to be fixed, but as someone who bought a defective product that's not actually something he's required to do as a consumer and reviewer. If he gets software and it doesn't work he's well within his rights to pan it for not working, even if he did cool off and then change the review.

I know 'entitled' is an Internet thing but that only works in the case of free/community stuff people are doing out of the goodness of their hearts, when a sale comes in and as long as your expectation is reasonable then yeah, you are entitled to that.

 

[The Rogue Wolf]

"You shouldn't write a review of a game unless you've finished it and have a complete understanding of it."

I'm curious- on a scale from Gone Home to No Man's Sky, where is the cutoff point for that?

 

[Erttheking]

And he was in the minority in getting it. If it was a bug that affected everyone then I'd agree that it's a fair warning (even if he himself repaired the score afterwards to something better, meaning he knows he overreacted) but he could have easily resolved the problem in about 2 hours.

This action shows a person as entitled and patientless as well as a reviewer rushing in to put reviews for clicks rather than actually taking the a fucking day to relax and realize ("hey it's a short game, let's just rush through it again")

Your point? How many people would have to get it before he was allowed to complain about it? As I said before Inu-Kun, a reviewer doesn't give the most ideal experience that is possible for the game to have And yes, he stated that he overreacted, that was his decision to make, but you seem to be criticizing him for marking the game down for the glitch at all, which he still ended up doing in his final review. And he could have solved the problem in two hours? No, he couldn't have. Just because someone was able to speed run the game in two hours.

"Entitled and...patientless?" God you're desperate to hate him. You do this every time. You dig yourself in, refuse to concede even the most minor of points, and just fling insult after insult. I would know, you've done it to me. He's entitled? Yes, yes he is entitled. He was entitled to an experience that actually worked. Amazing how gamers were angry at that word being misused and abused when the ME3 ending controversy was happening, only for some of them to turn around and start misusing and abusing it themselves. Patientless? The term is impatient first of all, and second of all, Jim pointed out that his schedule isn't exactly clear. He produces content at a fairly steady rate, and flat out said that if he had taken another seven or eight hours (which is around what would have taken him because not all of us are expert speed runners) it would have eaten up a lot of time that he said he would have needed elsewhere. And pushing for clicks? He doesn't fucking run ads on the Jimquisition! Clicks are meaningless to him! For fuck's sake Inu-Kun, this is why I said you're desperate to hate him.

 

[Xprimentyl]

snip

"I don't want reviews pointing out the game's flaws, I want objectivity."

For that kind of "objectivity" you can't do any better than reading the list of the game's features from the developer/publisher/retailer website.

Exactly...

I think reviews may not be obsolete...

Nope, to fix reviews, take the humans out of them. I want objectivity

The whole point of a review of ANYTHING is for the reviewer to express their OPINION. Objectivity in game reviews is the reason they are obsolete on the "professional" level. Errant Signal's review of Prey is so much than any professional review whether you agree or disagree with his opinion because it's an actual review.

My...

Nope, to fix reviews, take the humans out of them. I want objectivity, Jim Sterling did a wonderful spoof of a purely objective review and I thought it was perfect. Exaggerated, of course, but more in line with what I?d prefer than anything any other reviewer has done.

I mean, he made that video purely to take the piss out of the concept of an unbiased, objective review, since a review is inherently biased by the person writing it. If you don't consider personal opinion in a review, it's not a review, it's a description.

Point. Sorry you missed it.

To be clear, I don't like reviews or most reviewers. I know Jim's completely objective review was a farce; it was still closer to what I prefer than most reviewers. Yes, I juts want to read a brief description, maybe some screenshots and make my own call as to whether or not it's worth trying; I don't want or need someone else's opinion.

 

[shrekfan246]

Yes, I juts want to read a brief description, maybe some screenshots and make my own call as to whether or not it's worth trying; I don't want or need someone else's opinion.

You know you can get that already, right? By, like, reading the back of the box or the Steam Store page or even going to the developer/publisher's website directly in some cases? And you never need to read or even look at any reviewers or critics? And you can leave other people to follow said reviewers and critics if they so desire to have different information conveyed to them about something?

 

[Xprimentyl]

Yes, I juts want to read a brief description, maybe some screenshots and make my own call as to whether or not it's worth trying; I don't want or need someone else's opinion.

You know you can get that already, right? By, like, reading the back of the box or the Steam Store page or even going to the developer/publisher's website directly in some cases? And you never need to read or even look at any reviewers or critics? And you can leave other people to follow said reviewers and critics if they so desire to have different information conveyed to them about something?

Dear lord? no ?poo-poo,? Sherlock; that?s exactly what I do. The OP asked ?What do you guys think?? I then stated MY opinion. My initial post said reviews aren?t obsolete. I never said there shouldn?t be reviews or others shouldn?t pay them any attention neither did I pass judgement on any who do. Can anyone tell me why on the internetz everyone looks for a negative or accusatory connotation in forum posts?