So the public has realized the bias of the actual media...

Does this mean there is hope the same will happen with game journalism?

 

Nah, not really. Game Journalism was fun when it was amatuerish. Nowadays it's just a bussines like any other that runs on advertising money. They sure as hell won't bite the hand that feeds them, therefore losing all credibility they had.

 

HOW DARE THEY GIVE GOOD SCORES TO GAMES THEY LIKE

 

HOW DARE THEY FIRE REVIEWERS FOR BASHING A GAME THAT PROVIDES ALL THE ADVERTS FOR A WEEK

 

FUCK YEAH FUCK AUTHORITY

 

Though you do have a point the standard of games journalism has defenitely lowered in the last few years. What made me certain of this is when my fav gaming mag went out of business. They specifically gave as the main reason that due to them giving harsh reviews a lot of company's didn't send review versions nor were they any more invited to previews. I've seen stuff like that happen a lot more as the industry matured and started making more money. Perhaps I'm just an old crotchy bastard longing for the old days, but to me the journalistic integrety of games sites and magazines has long gone.

 

People in the industry or gaming journalism have been caught lying and manipulating to please the publishers for years. Gaming journalism ranks pretty low in the hierarchy, so I wouldn't expect the finest at the best of times, especially now it's been tainted by the big purses and the hopes of being "professional".

The system is flawed. If you want genuine and worthwhile opinions you are better off going to a forum or friends and asking them. Too many "OMG 10/10!!!" reviews for AAA titles like Spore to make the print magazines or the big sites useful or reliable.

I see Metacritic also decided to censor the Spore reader reviews (and then eventually back down when there was an outcry). Pathetic. Clearly they cannot be trusted.

 

Isn't Metacritic part of the Gamespot/CNET family? It makes sense that they would manipulate data. It was always pretty important to see discrepancies between aggregate scores from "professional" sites versus user reviews (Oblivion a prime example). Intentionally nerfing that is pretty bad.

 

For a review aggregate, Metacritic is incredibly biased. They censor out quite a few sites, and use this odd "preferred site" system for rating balance.

It's a fairly unreliable service. Which is exactly why the gaming industry prefers it over - say - gamerankings.

Doesn't really address his point, does it?

 

None of which are high-profile AAA games, garnering insane amounts of media attention with a harsh corporate culture.

 

Everyone has always realised how biased every facet of the media is journalism has always been viewed as a fairly base form of literature. It's only teenagers and the socially immature who are refuse to add a pinch (or barrel as the case may be) of salt with their journalistic media.

 

No, I think Jaime's point is quite valid. Force Unleashed was a massively hyped and advertised game, and Gamespot still gave it a bad rating. As did Gamespy and IGN. All major sites. There were Mercenaries 2 adverts for a week there, and at the end of it, it got a miserable 5.0.

About the whole Jeff Gerstmann controversy, let's just admit something. We don't know jack shit. Absolutely anything and ANYTHING one could say about it is absolute conjecture. Turnover is high in such businesses anyway, and any reason is as likely as another. People in game journalism rarely stay in one place for long. Christopher "Shaithis" Beucher left Gamespy and joined Crispy Gamer, despite being a prominent figure there.

 

When a game is truly and horribly bad, it's just too much for game reviewers to cover up, so they tend to give the games the treatment they deserve. In these cases the publishers too must know that their game stinks, and the best they can hope for is to delay the reviews so they can sell a few copies before the game's shittiness is revealed.

It's gnerally the overhyped mediocre games that get the undeserved, suspicious 9/10 reviews.

 

I always read the net reviews before buying/DLing a game nevertheless; even IGN or Gamespot reviews provide a clue to what the game represents, you just have to read between the lines. If fe. you read a 9/10 RPG review and the journalist says about 2-3 lines about the actual RPG content, placing much emphasis on the graphics or other irrelevant things, then you can assume that it's all a bunch of BS and the game isn't worth your time and money.

 

2 is now too many?

http://www.metacritic.com/games/platforms/pc/spore

 

Dear god, look at that dichotomy.

4.7 from users and 8.5 from critics. That is a huge margin of a difference.

 

"Thank you EA for DRM-ing this game beyond usefulness. I'll be nice and assume I'll almost get to play this game almost half as much as I'd like, so my 8 becomes a 3 (very tempted to give a 0 just to spite EA)."

The users reviewed the DRM, not the game.

Hope this helps.

 

Majority of comments there are about the gameplay (they say it's boring, shallow, easy, collection of minigames, short, no replay value...).

 

Who needs game critics when we've got the Codex to set us straight?

 

Nah, the Codex is too prestigious a magazine now to be trustworthy

 

If the game had faulty installer wiping out the entire partition every second time the game is installed, I guess they would be reviewing the installer, not the game itself, right?

DRM is a part of the game, because it's an obligatory part of the purchasable package.

 

And a lot of them also point out how horribly lackluster the game itself is.

 

This.

 

Nonsense, DRM is entirely optional.