Slanted video game reviews

[Ljs1121]

If the reviewer feels the game deserves an 8, he/she will give it an 8.

A review is the reviewer's subjective opinions and thoughts on the quality of the game.

 

[Twilight_guy]

I'm not enough of an anti-establishment tin-hat wearing to assume that its paid for. I'm more inclined to believe the review just had a different opinion then its a conspiracy and was paid for. Maybe I'm just not cool enough to think that its all the generic evil company/corporation/special interest/Templars/Girl Scouts behind everything.

 

[PhunkyPhazon]

I don't really think this is an issue, no. It might be worth more consideration if people didn't accuse reviewers of doing this every time they disagree with one. While there obviously have been a couple of incidents involving this, it tends to be incredibly rare. Sure I raise an eyebrow when I see even two or three reviewers give games like Kane & Lynch 2 high scores, but that doesn't necessarily mean they were paid under the table.

 

[Smertnik]

Well, what does the reviewer actually say about the game? (no, I have no intention to watch the video myself) Does he misinform and/or withhold vital information about its shortcomings? If not there's no point in criticising his review. A rating is just an arbitrary number, it holds no meaning whatsoever.

 

[JediMB]

Didn't GameSpot fire a guy for giving a game they had plastered all over the site a negative review? Kane & Lynch 2, maybe?

That said, Fable: The Journey seems to have pretty mixed reviews, so I'd wager it's mostly a matter of the Kinectness not doing it for everyone.

 

[Rooster Cogburn]

Well, what does the reviewer actually say about the game? (no, I have no intention to watch the video myself) Does he misinform and/or withhold vital information about its shortcomings? If not there's no point in criticising his review. A rating is just an arbitrary number, it holds no meaning whatsoever.

A rating is a subjective opinion, but it should not be arbitrary. I would call a reviewer who rates games literally at random a bad reviewer.

I think it's inevitable that the reviewing process will be influenced by the incentives of the space a reviewer occupies. They need advertisements and access, and the scores affect both. Would you want to be tried by a jury who stands to benefit personally from your conviction? I don't care if they swear not to be influenced by that Lamborghini the prosecutor promised them. No one would respect their decision if they convicted me, or at the very least it would be subject to doubt. Even the appearance of influence should be avoided as much as possible.

Every review process for every commercial medium ever has had to deal with this problem to some extent. And there is a lot at stake. Decades ago a review process that drifted too far into influence turned away audiences not just from reviews of novels but from the novel itself.

Here is the problem explained by a pretty cool guy who doesn't afraid of anything:

On the face of it, the book-ramp is a quite simple and cynical swindle. Z writes a book which is published by Y and reviewed by X in the Weekly W. If the review is a bad one Y will remove his advertisement, so X has to hand out 'unforgettable masterpiece' or get the sack. Essentially that is the position, and novel reviewing has sunk to its present depth largely because every reviewer has some publisher of publishers twisting his tail by proxy. But the thing is not so crude as it looks. The various parties to the swindle are not consciously acting together, and they have been forced into their present position partly against their will.

George Orwell
In Defense of the Novel
1936

That's why it annoys me when people act like I'm being petty or paranoid simply for suggesting that a reviewer might not be 100% free from influence. We know he/she is being influenced, the only questions are how much, how much does it affect their appraisal, and what can we do about it. Admitting the problem is the first step, and denying it just makes me wonder what you're trying to sell.

A single review of 8.0 isn't exactly a smoking gun, however.

 

[scnj]

anc[is]

The chap got fired, there was an uproar and now he has his own game review site.

This is all from memory so I apologise for any inaccuracies.

You're thinking of Giant Bomb, and ironically enough they just recently got bought by the parent company of Gamespot.

Another fun fact: as part of that buyout Gerstmann was allowed to talk about why he got fired. It was in fact because Gamespot was paid off for a good review via advertizing money.

That's a complete misrepresentation. Gamespot weren't paid off, their advertising division had just changed. When a game is heavily advertised on a website and it gets a middling to poor review, it is very common for the PR division at the publisher to threaten to pull adverts. It's happened at Destructoid several times if I recall correctly.

Now, normally it's the job of the website's advertising division to sort the issue, either by talking the PR rep down, or by pulling the ads. However, the new advertising people at Gamespot were new to the job and weak, and convinced the bosses at Cnet to fire Gerstmann. The Kane & Lynch incident was the second of these problems, though I forget what the first was.

Either way, there was no actual bribery involved, just a lot of people who were bad at their jobs punishing the one guy who'd done his correctly.

Edit: This probably explains it better. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jeff_Gerstmann#Reason_for_GameSpot_termination_revealed]

 

[Something Amyss]

The consensus is that fire is hot, if somebody told me that they 'don't think it's that hot', I'm not going to respect their opinion based on the overwhelming evidence against it.

Yes, but the thing is, fire is something that can be measured objectively. We're talking about a review experience, and you're basically complaining about deviation from a norm that isn't there. The Metacritic rating, for example, includes several 80s. You know, because it's measuring averages.

It seems like "paid off" is one of the catch-all complaints. Let me ask: is there anything in the review itself you take issue with? Not knowing about the game myself, it seems a well-argued review. Then again, the same is true of many of the 70s and 60s.

 

[Netrigan]

The problem with so many video game reviews is they're in publications or web-sites who get the vast majority of their advertising money from video games.

Consciously or unconsciously people are not going to be all that willing to bite the hand that feeds.

And if it's a major franchise, the review is almost certainly going to be written by a fan of the series, so we end up with games that are deemed not very good in hind-sight being hailed as a classic upon release. I first noticed the tendency back when Quake II was released where the reviewers were often describing a pretty mediocre game, but ended up giving it a 9 or 10.

Then when the next game comes out, the same reviewers would call the game they hailed as a masterpiece to be "disappointing".

Yeah, there's a lot wrong with video game reviewing. You have to disregard the scores and pay close attention to what they're saying. Serious Sam games tend to get points knocked off for failing to innovate, even though the same reviewer goes on about how much fun it was. While something like L.A. Noire gets a couple of points tacked on because it's innovative, while the reviewer goes on and on about all the stuff that doesn't really work well or isn't fun.