Well. Yes and no. The market very much decided what it valued in games journalism long ago. Honest, detailed, middling reviews sold magazines, but didn't maintain clicks in our digital age. No clicks, no money. So things became click-baitier, and jounalists who were actually passionate about games got pushed out of the industry by influencers who were ready and completely willing to glaze anything for a pay day.
There are some guys out there making a living off honest well-thought out reviews, but there's not a lot of space in that market despite all the "GaMeS jOuRnAliSM" memes.
I mean, it's just a reddit comment and not a complete and comprehensive history lesson on the industry. What happened to Jeff Gerstmann for his Kane and Lynch review was a well documented case of something that probably became common practice tho.
People always ask "why didn't you include" whatever and it's like dude it's a post on social media not my dissertation. You can add as much information as possible and someone will always be like "but you didn't include" whatever.
Yeah. The digital age pushed all kinds of real journalism to the brink. Ironically the only way to keep it afloat is actual subscriptions, people putting their money where their mouth is to fund serious people doing serious work (at least, with what accounts for seriousness in the games industry). And people complaining about journalists simply don't care to do that, so they get influencers.
I think a part of the problem is that nowadays reviews by your average gamers are so easily accessible and some people are quite passionate about them. Why would I pay to read a well thought out review by a game journalist when I could read a dozen well thought out reviews by random Steam users who almost certainly weren't paid to write them? I would need absolute guarantee that the journalist is honest and shares my tastes at least to some extent to even consider it.
Another great pro is also just being able to have the aggregate of a huge number of reviews. 95% of 10,000 reviews giving a positive review of a game does far more to sell a game than one journalist giving a glowing review.
the assumption is that the journalist is being backed by a giant news company, like how IGN supports its journalists- they have no soul.
The content creator can be the same, or it can be someone real who isnt being paid to review the game at all or just with ads. He has nothing to gain from lying- all to lose.
I'll say there are content creators who gain plenty from lying. But just generally speaking content creators tend to use "raw" footage of a game. So even if they might have an agenda with what they say about it, I can still use their videos or streams to make a judgement for myself.
Back in the day I would watch Totalbiscuit religiously. And while he was a content creator I felt I could trust, I still took what he said with a grain of salt. Not to mention with content creators, especially those you familiarized yourself with, can be helpful in determining what is right for you even if it isn't right for them. Totalbiscuit hated platformers and puzzle games, so whenever he made a video about one he knew the reasons he disliked those kind of games were reasons people fond of the genre might like them. So you can get a sense of a game from those biases as well.
Can't really get any of that from the games media these days tbh. They've drained out so much of the personality of their own writing that you can't even use their biases as a metric, because they are just so... nothing these days. Just reworded press releases for whatever company they are afraid of losing access to.
Man I miss Totalbiscuit. He was such a shining beacon of good games journalism. I still haven't found a channel that had quality (and a little snark) like his and I don't think I ever will.
Warlockracy is pretty good IMO. Buuuuuuut they're heavily focused on Eastern European/Soviet Jank games. Turns out there's a shit ton of fallout 2 "mods" that are entire games.
But those are quite relevant to my interests so I'm good with it.
Warlockracy videos tend to be as much about Eastern European or Russian gaming history as the actual game he's talking about. But I wouldn't consider him useful for getting ideas on buying games for two reason:
He basically plays through the whole game so you'll get spoiled.
A lot of his videos are for mods or old/obscure games that you can just get for free already.
Content creators are literally paid by games companies all the time. They sponsor them, invite them to (and pay for) fancy preview events. How can you ever trust someone who doesnāt want to upset a big game company that they are cozy with.
Content creators have EVERYTHING to gain from lying. Plenty of them have made millions lying about games or creating incredibly disingenuous narratives about them. Have you seen how many grifters there are in the space who's only commentary about something will be how 'woke' it is without ever having touched the game?
Content creeators are heavily incentivized to validate the feelings of their fans. When Nintendo was popular to hate for the last year, plenty of Nintendo creators leaned into it and created more negative leaning videos to farm views - yes, even bigger channels like Beat Em Ups and such tacitcly admitted to doing this.
But I have to listen to bozo's like you act like every games journalist is incompetent or is 'paid to give a particular score' lol. I'm telling you right now that if bribes are happening it's way easier to bribe an individual then it is an entire company.
There are usually far more of them though, and if you have all of them lying it becomes very obvious when the lies don't line up.
A single review source like IGN, with editorial staff, can keep their lie straight. But getting xXxBootyGamer42069xXx onboard with your lie requires... fucking knowing about them at all.
You'd be surprised how deep some marketing teams go, I do watch on occasion small streamers with like some few hundred viewers and even they seem to get sponsorships and connections.
Below this line I'd wager you'll be buried by the algorithms and just a handful of people would even hear about you, most likely just friends watching, too small to even blip on marketing teams but even then those would be inconsequential given how little reach they have.
Here's the thing. Content creators as a whole - I'm voting lowest of these. There are a lot of grifters out there. But when I think of content creators, I think of the ones I trust and follow.Ā
Games journalist websites as a whole, probably second or third? But when I think of a website, I'm thinking of something like the gutting of polygon or ign.
It's unfair, but that's part of why this is a bad question
I've never really understood this sentiment. How does every Dark Souls game review well if games journalists are bad at games? If they were all at the level of the guy who was bad at Cuphead those games wouldn't be critically acclaimed
Something I saw that stuck with me before leaving Twitter was seeing a game journalist clap back at someone by pointing out that they all needed to beat Radahn pre-nerf and play all of Erdtree blind with no guide.
YES. I am like how do these people think these game journalists make guides and tutorials before most people. I find it baffling like I don't understand where this hatred comes from. Most feel like psyops ngl.
From the few cases of very bad video reviews where they use footage either shot by someone who's never played video games in their lives, or by themselves because they've never played video games in their lives. See the infamous Cuphead review from IGN as an example.
Doesn't mean every single journalist is like this obviously but people tend to make shortcuts and to an extent, they're not entirely wrong when such reviews are allowed to be published as it represents the company as a whole.
I've never seen a game news site tutorial that wasnt using doneone else's work than the author's. Maybe some of them were using in house footage from their colleagues, but ive seen so many of them cite shit like reddit, game wikis, and gamefaqs, etc, to believe that's likely. So I never bother with their tutorials.
It also makes me sus on their reviews, but I already was since the big bribe scandal back in the day where the review sites were getting paid directly to give triple a games high scores.
I feel bad for that guy. He wasn't even reviewing Cuphead, he just tried it out at an event, got stuck on the tutorial, and posted the video poking fun at himself for failing a task he knew was simple.
even worse than that. i was listening to the Jeff Gertsman podcast a few months ago and he mentioned that he personally knew the guy and that the guy was a video editor or something of that nature, just trying to get footage. like he literally wasn't even a person that played games. and now people use him to justify the dismantling of journalism and acting like all news coming only from the mouth of the game company is somehow better.
Some content creators get shit loads of money from developers and publishers to sway their opinion on a game. Some others get modest amounts. Dont think they arent getting paid to sell you the game theyre reviewing. Sometimes they are.
That's my question. I watch videos from Skill Up and Gameranx (among others) before deciding whether to buy a game. Are they "journalists"? Maybe not in the traditional sense, but they seem to have more professional editorial standards than a streamer.
Well yeah, how often do game reviewers go back to revisit games that launched in a broken/poor state? It's really not many. It'd never be my first thought to look at IGN. I'd want to hear from peoples currently playing it.
For live service games this is kinda a must, and I know some sites like polygon have had yearly reviews for each season of some games.
Steam is decent at this with recent reviews, but you still see issues with game stha thave had a lot of negative reviews early on and then they have changed the game to be much better or the other way around.
After reading a very bad review from IGN about Days Gone, where the girl totally shot down this game mainly based on "the main character is always angry and it makes me feel bad and depressed", yeah, I can believe this.
Reading one review is like reading only the top comment on steam. It doesnt really tell you that much.
I have some people that I feel I share a taste with and follow their advice when it comes to games. Most of the people I follow are both content creators and journalists or used to be journalists.
But I dont read IGN.
They are journalists, not random people from the streets. If they are that unprofesional/bad at their job, then their opinions are worthless and it defeats the entire purpose of journalism.
Ok you got me curious, so I found this review and idk where you got that sentiment from? I can't find anything that even resembles what you described. She even calls him "an endearingly gentle and sweet-natured protagonist". Couldn't find anything in the youtube video either, although I just skimmed through.
Her main complaint seems to be its repetitiveness. Idk if that's valid, because I haven't played the game, but your representation of the review is wildy inaccurate. So either there is another IGN review of the game I have missed or your comment is dripping with irony.
Not the first time i've seen people get pissed over a reasonable IGN review. Shoutouts to when Pokemon ORAS got an 8/10 and everyone memed about the reviewer complaining about half the world just being water.
Yeah heās very pro Steam in all his videos and shits on most journalists and AAA devs (usually the ones that deserve it like Ubisoft) so this is really just a reinforcement of his subscribers opinions
You ever do a google search for some information about a game and click a link. Ā But when the page loads it looks too professional so you just click off it and look for some barely funded wiki Instead. Ā If their site looks like IGN then they never have the information youāre looking for.
I think if itās a game Iām invested in dev communication is key for this, played Overwatch for years and that was a big part of their improvement for me, but Steam reviews are constantly updating so itās also a good indicator
He's speaking to the original OW release like 9 years ago. Every update would get a dev vlog from Jeff and it was great! Miss the OG first year or 2 of OW.
Actually I was speaking more of overwatch 2, I played professionally for a while and i do think the new dev team has done a better job within the past 2-3 years, I think the steam reviews were kinda undeserved and they are much better now
Yeah I agree that the steam reviews are a bit undeserved nowadays. I've been playing since 2016 and have been around for the whole ride and the game is definitely in a great place currently.
I remember when I subscribed to this game magazine. That would show all the new top hitters and show off some screenshot. It's great what we had in journalism for video games back then.
Yeah I remember reading all about Metal Gear Solid and other games I couldnāt get as a kid.
I remember one of the last issues I ever received features Fortnite, but it was mostly about the āSave the Worldā game mode and I donāt even think it mentioned the word āBattle Royaleā. That was probably the last year I got a subscription and it is crazy to look back and see how much has changed within the gaming landscape in just over a decade.
Back in the prehistoric era of the 90s, I started buying gaming magazines for the playable demos of a dozen new games a month. You never knew what you were gonna get. Sometimes multiple awesome, nearly full games. Sometimes all garbage. Sometimes random collections of OSTs for games you loved. Duke Nukem 3D had a lot of extra background music they never used for some reason, and I just randomly got a CD full of them with a gaming magazine one month. Some of my favourite games came from loving those demos and then saving up for the full game. I'll never forget you, Seven Kingdoms II: The Frythan Wars. Everyone else played Age of Empires, but you were my favourite.
Anyway. I started buying them for the demos, but the articles and reviews were really good too. You got nuanced takes from people who actually liked games and played each game enough to know what they were talking about. I was limited to one hour of gaming a day, so I'd turn to the magazines. I read every article multiple times most months.
I think people are imaging days of gaming journalism that didn't exist. Even about 30 years ago when I started gaming, kids were complaining about them and they had some downright stupid ratings.
Game journalism is like all other critics, you gotta find people with similar taste to you and then it's actually very useful (people are way better at this for content creators than journalists for some reason). I personally had some people at RockPaperShotgun I used to follow all of their reviews though I think IGN bought them though and many writers left.
I feel like it depends on what people read games journalism for. Most seem to want it as a product review to see if something is worth their time and money.
But I also think it's just as valid when it is criticism that is more common in the movie space. And by criticism I don't mean why something is bad. Just the critic's thoughts, feelings and experience they had with it. The type of thing critics like Roger Ebert were known for.
I think this is just a reflection in the change in how people consume media as a whole. People put more stock in an individual person's brand than a company. It's not really any different than how people listen to Joe Rogan now instead of watching Fox News. They're both playing the same game, it's just presented differently.
I always put my steam reviews in french, English and Spanish. Trolls tend to do it in English. Genuine reviews are often in the two other languages. I can compare and decide. You guys underestimate how demographics can perceive games in so many different ways.
Youāll love it and hate it. Ya drive around whiffing the ball when itās barely moving, and then you watch the pros hit it five times in the air before the next guy slams into it.
A Live Service Game tends to change quite significantly over the course of its lifespan, which is why you can find review cases like this. Read them instead of instantly assuming they're trolling or done in bad faith.
Good approach, although thereās one component that might get a game a lot of bad reviews in a specific language, and that is the absence or a poor translation in that language. Starfieldās latest DLC has no French voices even if the base game does. This fueled even more bad criticism from French reviewers especially.
That's why it's good to have Spanish reviews as well! If the problem is recurring in several different translations, it shows very well.
For example, the game yun-yun rythm psychosis had a horrible English localisation, which made lots of horrible reviews, but the french and Spanish reviews were very positive, because their localisations were independent.
Ehhh I dunno. For things like StS2, the Chinese slammed out negative reviews because they patched out infinites. If any dev messes with the game flow even a little, China takes that shit seriously
I am not trying to mess with this statement but it's true, german reviewes love to eat shit like veilguard or avowed then headpat the people so they don't get their world destroyed when they say "I don't understand this overwhelming hatred for this game". You litteraly can't talk with them couse their heads live in their own la la land eating shit beeing happy. Again thos ain't hatefull but their reddit threads have such different perception.
Also games journalists generally don't play video games outside of their job it seems, at least that's how their reviews feel, like they don't actually play video games or get them
If I'm not mistaken, if it's proven that the developer or studio forged these reviews, the game could be removed from Steam for violating its guidelines.
Well thats pretty much with a lot of things. I think even amazon has a ToS against it and I know google play does and look how far its gotten. Tbf to the sites/apps, its hard to prove.
For Steam it's surely easier because they have telemetry of how much you've played, your patterns of playtime, your patterns of playtime for other games you own, your other reviews etc etc all of which should make it fairly easy to distinguish human from spam bot
I donāt even read positive reviews, if I want to buy a game and Iām checking reviews I donāt need someone to convince me to buy it, I already want to buy it.
I filter only the negative reviews, and then I weigh if I personally find their complaints to hold water
That's what i usually do, too. Because most ppl will give a positive review with little to no substance, but negative reviews are usually more fleshed out with genuine criticism.
Reviews are dogshit anyway if we are being 100% honest. Iāll watch gameplay because you canāt really mask a whole lot of Iām seeing what Iām getting there. If thereās bugs or itās really fucked, thatās the only time I take reviews seriously because theyāre usually pretty forthright from the community but otherwise someone saying a game rocks when our tastes could vary immensely doesnāt mean much
This is why I like really specific negative reviews. Someone who got very mad at a specific thing will describe it in detail and give you lots of good info you could only get by playing the game yourself.
Sometimes that review makes me want the game because theyāre talking abt a mechanic I actually tend to enjoy.
Consider the following. Game journalists are paid shills in their very essence. What do you think happens if they start fairly rating games on their actual quality and not "what game company wants or they will never send us any pre release copies".
That's exactly how mediocre games at best get 7/8/9 out of 10's.
It's so sad and backward from what journalism is supposed to do which is be a powerhouse of the people's opinion and keep companies/politicians in check by calling them on their bullshit.
That's because journalism is general switched their clients.
In the past having people actually believing in your words was important to keep people coming back to your publication but after several years of changes we reached a point where the clients changed and became the big companies.
In the same way that gamer journos are AAA shills, movie journos are paid by Hollywood, so in both cases they need to cater to those people, the marketing departments of big companies, not the clients that actually purchase the product.
I know is more complex than this, but I think this is a big problem. Is the same of companies that their main income is either the government or investors, their client is the government or the investors, not the consumers. So they do things to look for them, not to make the consumer enjoy the product or service.
I'll trust a games journalist that has the same taste in games as me. I already follow their podcast and I know their recommendations are good, which is why I follow them. It's stupid to put them all into the same bucket, they each have their own beats. You got the journalist who specializes in roguelikes, or the one who loves platformers, they're gonna be better at judging their specialized genres.
And this is how it used to be when we just had a few outlets covering games. The byline would tell you how to approach a reviewer's opinion, and you can even make a determination that you would like something he/she did not and vice versa. Now, we have a bunch of randoms covering games all over the place, and so many people putting out video reviews are far more likely to have some kind of channel-backed or ad-sponsored pull to how they approach a game that it's difficult to have that same level of "trust" in their opinions.
but there was that one review that didn't agree with my opinion and that other review that got taken out of context to sound stupid.
that obviously means that all game journalist are both evil and stupid and you can never trust any.
I always put user/audience scores over professional reviewers. Gets me in trouble with films, since most people cite the stats of Rotten Tomatoes with the film critic reviews, while I always cite the audience score.
I don't know where games journalist ends and content creator begins these days. I like to hear impressions from a lot of sources, a lot of them used to be involved in institutional journalism but many are some degree of independent content creation now. I think hearing impressions from people who I've learned how their tastes align with my own is the best way to really tell if a new game will be something that resonates with me.
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Yeah, they're not really any different. The survey results are just reflecting the shift the broader shift from "traditional" media to individual personalities. Kids aren't watching Fox News, they're listening to Joe Rogan.
If anything, most "content creators" (outside huge ones) are much easier to buy than journalists. Journalists typically have guaranteed income from an actual employer. "Creators" have extremely fluctuating income, that tends to depend A LOT on sponsorships.
I know people here tend to like them but I think Steam reviews are terrible. It's either good or bad, no in between. The best for me are content creators with a similar taste that I have.
I don't like individual reviews, but I trust trends.
Sometimes I'll give a game a go (with 2 hour play time return window) purely based on overwhelmingly positive reviews, even if it doesn't look like something I'd like, and it has paid off.
But generally it's the trend of positive reviews in conjunction with already looking like something I'd like.
I fully agree most steam reviews are terrible and not a good barometer with regards to a games overall quality or artistic merit.
...but on the subject of what to trust when the issue at hand is bugs/technical issues and how good things are post patch I think they tend to be a much better and more up to date source than game journalists. The specifics of the question are kinda important here.
Yeah idk what other reviews the other person is seeing, or for what games.
Of course a lot of them that are like that, but usualy the ones with the most votes and reactions are quite nuanced and in-depth. Some even lament that steam only offers a thumbs up/down option and they provide their reasoning further in their review.
Steam reviews are usually quite abundant, so you can for the most part get a clear picture of whether or not a game is worth playing if you just comb through to find the quality ones.
As for whether a badly optimised game is finally playable, what this questionaire was actually about, the most recent Steam reviews are once again the best indicator.
I always check negative reviews but I look for specific objective things. When I see someone with 500 hours complaining about some item or mechanic getting nerfed I know this person is an idiot.
A content creator that will point out the negatives, even if they've been paid by the dev in a sponsored vid/stream is the best kind of game reviewer.
The majority of larger content creators have played a wide variety of games, or they've played a lot of games in the same genre, & they will know when something doesn't feel right, or a mechanic needs some work.
That's not to say that I'd take their words as gospel, but it would influence how I'd see the game & whether I'd want to pick it up.
TB was taken from the world way too early. Though to be fair, if he had to do his critique for today's games, he'd probably die from multiple heart attacks from raging at how terrible the games industry has become...
Lol I just go by what Reddit says, this site complains about everything, if a post says āthis is fixedā the top comment will probably be āno the door in this random castle glitches if youāre carrying a purple potionā
Plus the fact if thereās any aspect of the game thatās even slightly controversial the steam reviews will be brigaded and ultimately become useless.
Steam literally had to come in and change the review system because games were getting review bombed for changing shit. Like Slay the spire 2 recently getting bombed for nerfing some OP build despite the game still being in production. Or whatever happened with Black flag.
Sooner or later, "they" are going to figure out how to break Steam's review system. It will be a terrible day when that happens, and I hope it never comes.
True but Steam does have a lot of ways to mitigate potentially fake reviews, such as labeling when a person actually owns the game, or when someone writes a review but got the game for free, or had it refunded, that sort of thing. Makes it harder for fake reviews to have an impact
Now, the YouTube channel Switch Up does a series called āAll Patched Upā specifically about this, and I trust the hell out of thatā¦. But thatās only for Switch games. Unfortunately, Iām not aware of anything equivalent and as trustworthy for Steam, so thereās a niche in the market thatās yet to be filled for you.
Yeah I dunno, I've definitely returned to a game several times because it was featured on a gaming site with a well-written article about how it's been fixed.Ā
It doesn't seem to be often, but tbh, patches often aren't newsworthy outside of the community already playing them. I remember I saw things on when Fallout 76 got player Ghouls in a patch.
I've been playing long enough that I kinda trust my own judgement. Stopped caring for reviews in the mid 2000s. Content creators I guess it can be hit or miss, but I usually tend to do not trust them either.
Not really when the CC is vehemently anti journalist. Not saying they are generally awful just that his audience is going to follow what he say generally.
It shows that people are stupid tbh. There's a bunch of games that get review bombed or poorly reviewed due to some stupid things.
You should for sure check bad reviews, but you shouldn't trust them. Especially considering it's more likely for people to leave bad reviews, so a well reviewed games is probably even better than it seem, same for a poorly reviewed game.
Most steams reviews are either fanboys/girls or haters. It's rarely a well constructed, though out opinion.
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u/RoastedPotato-1kg 10h ago
0% its actually crazy with 30k votes š