Gaming journalism, how relevant is it (still)? Believe the reviews?

[Captain Spaulding]

Just wanted to leave this out here for this game and for others... gaming journalists don't matter anymore! Despite the gaming market having grown both in terms of sales and as a player count tremendously over the past couple of decades, the likes of IGN, Eurogamer, RPS, Kotaku and others, are increasingly less relevant (even though the decline seems to have stabilized at ultra low-levels). Just to prove this point, go to Google Trends, which tracks overall online interest for a certain topic and compares it to its maximum.

So yeah, Veilguard has many 9s and 10s, but do they matter in the grand scheme of things? Not really...

Let's do IGN on Google Trends. 20x below its peak in 2007, but that was short-lived, so maybe it is better just to say it is 13x below it's "normal" levels in 2007-2008. How about Kotaku? 16x below its peaks in 2011 and 2013. Eurogamer? 7x below its peak in 2013. Rock Paper Shotgun? 6x below its peaks in 2012 and 2013.

The only "outlets" I trust anymore are a handful of youtubers (many of which haven't gotten a review code for this, by the way), but mostly players, like Steam rating score and Metacritic user score. As thing stand, critics reviews mean nothing for the vast majority of us. We'll see how things stand in a few weeks when the dust will have settled, but it's not looking pretty for this game...

[Captain Spaulding]

Originally posted by Termix:

Originally posted by forsakenprase:

So you trust user reviews even if they’re review bombed?

Yes.
And the answer is simple:
There is no monetary incentive behind user reviews, hypers and haters are likely to cancel each other out and if a game is review bombed, there is most likely a reason behind it.
Steam also offers to exclude review bombs from the score that's displayed to you.

If you look at influencers and that term encompasses gaming "journalists" and youtubers - they are all in it for the money and you cannot trust any of them.

So yeah, I'll stick with my fellow customers.

Exactly... I can't get over how some easily dismiss the reviews because of perceived review bombing and they you call people like me "biased". Some games are just terribly good or bad, hence, the overwhelming amount of reviews on the one side. If review bombing exists, what's to stop "the other side" from countering it?!

[Mysti_Fogg]

Originally posted by Captain Spaulding:

Originally posted by Giganx:

The Beethoven comparison really doesn't stand because it's Steam. Most of the people on these boards are flat out worse at video games than journalists. The release day forums on any game that doesn't include an Easy/Story mode are hilarious.

Also, Steam Users definitely have ulterior motives. Most of those ulterior motives are just personal or political. A lot of the Steam community nowadays is political activists pretending to be gamers; moving from 1 new release to another spamming woke/anti-woke garbage.

Read User Reviews and actually READ critic reviews. The differences in quality, intelligence, and amount of information/assessment of the actual game, are obvious. Relying on User Reviews is equal parts hilarious and sad.

Nope, been burned in the past by trusting game reviews and not trusting them anymore... looks like you're in a minority (returning to my initial post). Quality-wise, they may sound better, but the vast majority of sites have sold themselves out to the publishers and hence, don't tell relay an accurate picture anymore...

Also, just FYI, here's a chart showing the growing divergence between user scores and critic scores on Metacritic... note that it wasn't always the case. So yeah, "professional" reviewers are increasingly disconnected from what their clients - us - expect, hence, the growing irrelevance they have. I couldn't care how they write, if they tell me a game is worth buying and I get a piece of crap once, twice, thrice.... well, I'm not gonna trust you anymore. This is where we're at.

https://www.reddit.com/r/pcmasterrace/comments/1facvpz/oc_metacritic_userscore_and_criticscore_for_pc/#lightbox

I have questions on this chart. Why is there a steady decline in ratings from users? Because stuff definitely released to good reviews from both players and critics between 2000 and now. Mass Effect, Dragon Age, Grand Theft Auto, Mincraft, Fortnite, various Madden games, iterations of Mario Kart. Why does nothing make the user score spike back up? Because it feels like it should.

[Nezchrynliir]

Originally posted by Captain Spaulding:

Originally posted by Giganx:

The Beethoven comparison really doesn't stand because it's Steam. Most of the people on these boards are flat out worse at video games than journalists. The release day forums on any game that doesn't include an Easy/Story mode are hilarious.

Also, Steam Users definitely have ulterior motives. Most of those ulterior motives are just personal or political. A lot of the Steam community nowadays is political activists pretending to be gamers; moving from 1 new release to another spamming woke/anti-woke garbage.

Read User Reviews and actually READ critic reviews. The differences in quality, intelligence, and amount of information/assessment of the actual game, are obvious. Relying on User Reviews is equal parts hilarious and sad.

Nope, been burned in the past by trusting game reviews and not trusting them anymore... looks like you're in a minority (returning to my initial post). Quality-wise, they may sound better, but the vast majority of sites have sold themselves out to the publishers and hence, don't tell relay an accurate picture anymore...

Also, just FYI, here's a chart showing the growing divergence between user scores and critic scores on Metacritic... note that it wasn't always the case. So yeah, "professional" reviewers are increasingly disconnected from what their clients - us - expect, hence, the growing irrelevance they have. I couldn't care how they write, if they tell me a game is worth buying and I get a piece of crap once, twice, thrice.... well, I'm not gonna trust you anymore. This is where we're at.

https://www.reddit.com/r/pcmasterrace/comments/1facvpz/oc_metacritic_userscore_and_criticscore_for_pc/#lightbox

Further proof media reviews are being bribed to be good while users are seeing though lenses untainted by corporate greed. This is a clear example of the corruption in the media by publishers, who will do anything to get their games showing positive responses.

[Captain Spaulding]

Yeah, that user/reviewer Metacritic chart is a tricky one to explain, though if you go at some critically acclaimed and celebrate games, like DA Origins, the difference between critics and users is inconsequential. Also, the fact that user score dips for newer games might have something to do with the fact that the vast majority of newer games are quite bad actually... and this is shown in player numbers/gameplay time. I recall seeing a statistic a while back that something like more than half of gameplay was dedicated to game older than 5-10 years, while the rest was mostly mopped up by a handful of new games.

Edit: here it is... so maybe the decline in user score could have something to do with the fact that modern games are quite bad or at least worse than older ones. I can attest to this as I play games much older than 6 years :) ... I actually play a lot of games that are from the 1990s or 2000s ...

https://www.yahoo.com/tech/60-percent-playtime-2023-went-193020588.html

[SudoRMRF]

Originally posted by Termix:

Originally posted by Giganx:

So why isn't every game EA releases a 10/10, 100 score on Metacritic? Do you think EA can't afford 10's?

Nobody buys a score, but by creating an environment of fear, you will get higher ratings naturally.
It's really easy, imagine you were an influencer (gaming "journalist" or youtuber) and you would be invited to events around the world to playtest games, receive early copies to gain more followers/money etc. and all that without paying a dime.
Do you think you will judge the game as harsh as a paying customer or more lenient? Keep in mind that you know you could lose all these privileges and with them a lot of money.

You can also bet on the company's downfall/general sentiment of players/viewers and tear a game apart, since you think it benefits you more.

This is the landscape that was created.
Movies are in a much better place, because you can't really restrict access, so this whole "fear" component isn't as prevalent.

Yes, I would still rate it low. If I go to restaurant and chef just poops on my plate it doesn't matter how fast he pooped and what discount he did.

[Captain Spaulding]

Originally posted by forsakenprase:

Originally posted by Termix:

Yes.
And the answer is simple:
There is no monetary incentive behind user reviews, hypers and haters are likely to cancel each other out and if a game is review bombed, there is most likely a reason behind it.
Steam also offers to exclude review bombs from the score that's displayed to you.

If you look at influencers and that term encompasses gaming "journalists" and youtubers - they are all in it for the money and you cannot trust any of them.

So yeah, I'll stick with my fellow customers.

Many of your 'fellow customers' have already declared they'd buy the game just to post a bad review, then refund before the time runs out. (Spoiler: Steam doesnt allow that.) So your 'fellow customers' are the last ones I'd seek a review from, if ever.

Riiiight, and I'm sure nobody that's part of this whole culture war nonsense that's on "your" side (I don't have a side) hasn't done anything remotely similar ever, right? Yeah, continue to trust the mega corporations, your money is best served in their pockets...

Sales/user reviews will declare the success of this game and how good it actually is, not some the dying/increasingly irrelevant legacy media.

[Griever]

Trusting youtubers is worse than industry reviewers.

Many youtubers if not the majority of these gaming accounts are very influencable by money because they're just individuals. I've figured out that basically if they don't receive a review code, they won't review a game positively and if they do, it's because they constantly get review codes.

And there's also the fact that even those that don't seem influenced, are often unprofessional in their review. For example you'll either have fans of the game or people that despise the game ideologically already (anti-wokes like Synthetic Man) that basically do ultra slanted reviews that are basically just their personal rant on the game. For example I'm anti-woke but countless games that Synthetic Man trashed I found to be really decent (FF16 is one, and he also trashed SH2 when it's actually an awesome remake, just because his entire brand is being anti woke).

Major gaming journalism reviews are a mixed bag. European ones are often way better such as Noisy Pixel or Eurogamer, but IGN/Gamespot is decent but I obviously don't trust the scores themselves as they have big links to the corporations.

[Deroldsen]

Looking at reviews from like, IGN, they weight heavily toward 7-8, and virtually disuse 1-5. Larger tittles clearly get a bump, probably from evaluating things like "they used modern rendering" and "it has controller support" its ridiculous. Unfortunately when reviewing anything myself, i now feel obligated to offset that, and have been burned so many times by these glowing critic reviews and sleezy developers.

[KnowledgeCoffee]

Originally posted by Captain Spaulding:

Just wanted to leave this out here for this game and for others... gaming journalists don't matter anymore! Despite the gaming market having grown both in terms of sales and as a player count tremendously over the past couple of decades, the likes of IGN, Eurogamer, RPS, Kotaku and others, are increasingly less relevant (even though the decline seems to have stabilized at ultra low-levels). Just to prove this point, go to Google Trends, which tracks overall online interest for a certain topic and compares it to its maximum.

So yeah, Veilguard has many 9s and 10s, but do they matter in the grand scheme of things? Not really...

Let's do IGN on Google Trends. 20x below its peak in 2007, but that was short-lived, so maybe it is better just to say it is 13x below it's "normal" levels in 2007-2008. How about Kotaku? 16x below its peaks in 2011 and 2013. Eurogamer? 7x below its peak in 2013. Rock Paper Shotgun? 6x below its peaks in 2012 and 2013.

The only "outlets" I trust anymore are a handful of youtubers (many of which haven't gotten a review code for this, by the way), but mostly players, like Steam rating score and Metacritic user score. As thing stand, critics reviews mean nothing for the vast majority of us. We'll see how things stand in a few weeks when the dust will have settled, but it's not looking pretty for this game...

Journalist have been out of touch with the base for years in all forms of media. You more often than not see them praising games like Concord, Unkown 9 and Dustborn or shows like The Acolyte when the actual base widely and strongly reject them. I only trust reviews from the players or viewers.. This is why we see those media outlets closing down. No one trusts them anymore and why would they? They rather push a message then give the consumer true objective reviews.

[KnowledgeCoffee]

Originally posted by MemeMachine:

I will have more respect for people sitting at a freshly painted wall watching it dry than I do for gaming "journalists".
Paid off to give good reviews most of the time, while having some of the worst possible takes on the planet.
Anyone listening to them needs help.

i trust the wall to give a review with more integrity than the journalist

[Calgar]

Wait for the Steam refunds. The gaming press can't stop that.

[Captain Spaulding]

Originally posted by forsakenprase:

Originally posted by Captain Spaulding:

Riiiight, and I'm sure nobody that's part of this whole culture war nonsense that's on "your" side (I don't have a side) hasn't done anything remotely similar ever, right? Yeah, continue to trust the mega corporations, your money is best served in their pockets...

Sales/user reviews will declare the success of this game and how good it actually is, not some the dying/increasingly irrelevant legacy media.

I didnt know your blindness was that deep rooted. Nice skirting along the fact there are indeed some who'd rate it low because, as you said it, 'culture war'. I personally, dont care of those wars, I simply want to play the game, and I'd review it on merit, there's a difference. Pity, you're too far gone to see it. And you do have a side, you're just trying to hide it.

Meh, I am not blind and I am deeply open to any actual counter-argument (factual, not heresay/your own ideas), of which you haven't provided any... and FYI I'm a liberal, probably tilting towards libertarian on some topics, which pits me against the "woke" crowd in this match-up, much like if this was during the 1980s and I was in the US, I would've been against the then conservatives. Does that make me part of the "culture war"? I doubt it... I'm constant in my advocacy of individual liberty and in my hatred of censorship, of big government and of any form of identity politics/classifying humans on any criteria such as religion/gender/race and so on.

Have fun with Veilguard, I couldn't care less...

[Captain Spaulding]

Originally posted by forsakenprase:

Originally posted by Captain Spaulding:

Meh, I am not blind and I am deeply open to any actual counter-argument (factual, not heresay/your own ideas), of which you haven't provided any... and FYI I'm a liberal, probably tilting towards libertarian on some topics, which pits me against the "woke" crowd in this match-up, much like if this was during the 1980s and I was in the US, I would've been against the then conservatives. Does that make me part of the "culture war"? I doubt it... I'm constant in my advocacy of individual liberty and in my hatred of censorship, of big government and of any form of identity politics/classifying humans on any criteria such as religion/gender/race and so on.

Have fun with Veilguard, I couldn't care less...

The facts are right before your eyes. Read the threads, count how many have said they'd simply buy the game to post a bad review then refund. I cant help if you're blind to it all, and provide questionable facts yourself. I, for one do not care about your political stances, again, I'm here for a game. And lol, IF I'd have fun with Veilguard is not for you to assume, and you're certainly here a lot for a game you dont care for.

I'm here for a franchise I used to care a lot about, for a developer I used to care a lot about... I find it funny how you can assume stuff about others and think that that is that. Also, you know that 1-2-3 posting whatever is not evidence? Anecdotal observations are not evidence... also, I could say that I've seen people saying that they're buying multiple copies and/or plan to buy the game to support it (which I have seen)... how's that any different from those saying they'd buy it to post a bad review (which won't be shown on Steam either way)? Toxic positivity vs toxic negativity pretty much cancel themselves out, I find both quite obnoxious and trust me, I see more of the former than the latter when it comes to this game on this very forum....