Game journalism

GLORIOUSLeader

The fact that it's such a sorry state is rather depressing. I can count on one website to be consistently great towards gaming, and it's not even a gaming website, but rather http://gamejournos.com/, a website dedicated to calling out game journalists on their bullshit. At least music outlets have some sense of integrity when they're not reviewing; gaming can't even claim that.

Gelzo

A widespread lack of journalistic integrity, with a very notable exception being a source that calls out other journalists on their bullshit?

Wow, it's just like regular journalism.

Chagen

Just take everything with a huge grain of salt.

It's still shit, but it's somewhat useful in that regard

Gelzo

If you have to doubt everything they say, what is the point in listening to them in the first place?

Chagen

Because....you can still get news from them?

That's about the only thing they're good for.

Also, the magazines still do run somewhay good articles. It's just rare.

GLORIOUSLeader

^^^^ Heh. I just noticed that. 

The problem, Chagen, is that because sites like these all report on the exact same material, there's a dearth of quality and an excess of misleading headlines, poor research, utterly atrocious review scores¹, repetitive journalism, and if you're Kotaku, utter lack of class. 

¹ On Metacritic, the first page of "Highest-Reviewed Albums Of All Time" lists scores that go all the way down to 88. However, it takes until the fourth page of "Highest-Reviewed Games of All Time" to reach that same metric.

captainbrass

The risk of sucking up to the people who make whatever it is you review in return for freebies and favourable treatment is inherent in all entertainment journalism. I suspect that the problem with video game criticism as opposed to, say music or food writing is that it's lower down the food chain of journalism, so you're more likely to get the chancers and those lacking integrity.

Resdef

You know, I used to enjoy reading that site until the writer began bashing Fallout New Vegas while praising Fallout 3 as not only a superior game, but also as one of the best RPGs he had played. I immediately removed GameJournos from my bookmarks and never looked back.

Gelzo

New Vegas was a lot more interesting to me.

Chagen

Yeah.

GameJournos is a annoying and fucking self-aggrandizing as the sites it critisizes.

GLORIOUSLeader

^^^ Because, of course, your opinion is objective fact, and anybody with a contrary opinion to yours is a retard and an asshole.

Gelzo

It's reasonable to stop following a reviewer if their tastes differ significantly from yours.

RedEyedAbyss

"On Metacritic, the first page of "Highest-Reviewed Albums Of All Time" lists scores that go all the way down to 88. However, it takes until the fourth page of "Highest-Reviewed Games of All Time" to reach that same metric."

Leaving aside the idea that people put too much stock in these numbers in the first place, elaborate on how this is a bad thing.

MillerCross

Basically, it means that game journalists have low standards as a collective. Meaning that games higher notes than what they (probably) deserve. 

GLORIOUSLeader

^^ Generally, game reviewers give inflated review scores to games that don't deserve it, meaning that a game that gets a 7 (which should be, in theory, a very good game) can face a large backlash. Note the massive discrepancy between user scores and reviewer scores (Dragon Age II is a prefect example); game journalists are afraid that they won't be sent any more free copies or exclusive interviews if they don't give great scores to massively hyped-up games.