Sima Tuna wrote:Game reviewers just want every game to be a walking sim because walking sims are easier to review. It's a way for people who don't really enjoy gaming to "complete" a lot of games quickly to meet quota.
I'm telling you guys, once you realize this fact, it's like you've been given a skeleton key that unlocks the hidden meaning behind every professional review.
While that certainly plays a part, I think the more influential factor is that professional reviewers are forced to play and review games
on a deadline.
That means you have a handful of days to beat this (buggy pre-release version of the) game and scribble your thoughts in a semi-readable format on paper, with the deadline being one or two days before release date so your editor has enough time to mess/patch up your manuscript. And it's gotta be ready before the launch day specifically, because nobody will care about your week-late review after the game has already been discussed to death online. When playing on a deadline and dealing with workplace expectations, the frustration you feel over a death or game over or any kind of barrier blocking you from seeing the ending will naturally multiply exponentially. Under such a deadline, replaying a game more than necessary is simply out of the question, thereby putting games or even entire genres that are reliant on repeat playthroughs or slow mastery at a disadvantage.
You can imagine then that under such circumstances, a short and easy game will evoke more positive feelings simply because it lets you finish your job faster. And that over time, such preferences eventually solidify into a culture which in turn attracts a specific kind of person with specific kind of tastes, who are in turn forced to review games of genres that they don't even remotely jive with. The environment and circumstances under which consumers and professional reviewers is so fundamentally different, yet I never see any professional video game publications even acknowledge this difference in experiences.
Certainly professional game reviewers in the 90's had more enthusiasm for the medium as a whole, but that didn't change the fact that most of their reviews were just as analytically bankrupt and bereft of insight as those written by professionals today (the audience then just didn't notice because their tastes happened to largely align with that of professional reviewers), who would also dock or award points for the most inane things. While a lot of that can be put down to game design theory not being as developed at the time/non-existent standards, the reality is that making a good review takes time.
It takes time to play and
understand the game, collect your thoughts on it, and make something readable out of it. Put me, you, or anyone else under such time constraints, and the resulting review simply isn't going to be as good as it could have been. You don't have the benefit of being able to see how other (more skilled) people play it, you don't have the benefit of discussing your thoughts with other people who also played the game to see if you overlooked something or if some of your observations are simply shower thoughts, you don't really have the time to replay the game or thoroughly test out some of its specifics, and you don't have the benefit of letting your thoughts simmer for a while and wait for the honeymoon period to wear off.
There exists no (vocal) push for a higher standard of professional game reviews. The audience at large looks towards professional reviews largely to validate their own existing opinions--not to learn new insights. And if it doesn't align, you're going to get shit, which is practically always the case. So even if you did put in serious effort in your review, it's not like many people would care--including your editors. Which brings me to my next point: effort doesn't generate clicks, making polarizing clickbait articles does. There exists a financial incentive to make controversial pieces about how games should be like this or like that, or what is really killing/saving videogames. FWIW, I think the modern generation of professional reviewers wasn't (always) cynically doing so for the money; years of grueling online gorilla warfare between The Gamers and professional reviewers has made things personal--a conflict which the higher-ups at online publications are more than happy to encourage for their own wallets. It's worth wondering that if it hadn't been for the commodification of game reviews, that there would have been no meaningless conflict between gamers and writers, and that narrative-focused indie games could have lived peacefully alongside shooty bang bang games without getting heaps of undue shit.
Professional reviews get a lot of shit for good reason, but it's always done with the implicit idea that if the right people were in charge, that they could be good again. But nobody is asking themselves:
should professional reviews even exist?. I'm sure having different folks in charge would improve things somewhat, but whatever improvement and goodwill would always be constrained by a fundamentally broken institution that's optimized for monetary gain at the cost of review time and a higher likelihood of frustration. The most talented professionals know this and often go solo--services like Patreon allow people to make a decent living creating content like that. I mean, why would you willingly accept a full-time job consisting of stringent deadlines and editors/gamers breathing down your neck?
As far as I can tell, there's a very low barrier of entry when it comes to working as a professional video game reviewer person, which is likely why it has become the writer's equivalent of the universal McDonalds wageslave job for people who are (starving) writers first and gamers second. Which is kind of an issue when their opinions are then given special attention by the public and even game companies, purely because they get paid to do it. It's not even like most of them are pretending to be experts or enlightened: their opinions are artificially given value purely because they're considered a commodity by game publishers. And that commodification in turn leads to miserable working conditions for a thankless bullshit job.
I don't think that raising the barrier of entry will improve anything, because I don't think
anyone should be able to elevate themselves to a position of authority. One being "good at video games" or being a more adept writer shouldn't give their opinion any extra weight, and in practice it rarely does anyways. Self-proclaimed/appointed authorities who get preoccupied about how games
should be slowly start to calcify and lose the ability to engage with a game on its own merits, which especially hurts when a game is doing something new or unorthodox (cue Gamespot's quote on
Alien: Resurrection's controls). Moreover this vying for dominance also pushes away equally valid alternative perspectives on games that are also interesting to read.
Professional reviews had their use in 90's gaming magazines back when they were the only available avenue of learning about new games, but nowadays you can read far more varied and insightful opinions on the internet (if you know where to look). One can argue that professional reviews are good for having a baseline idea on launch day whether the game isn't technically broken or whether its gameplay is beyond screwed, but that's just being unable to see the forest for the trees: publishers/developers should be putting out more public demos and let us see what the game's like for ourselves. Down with the elites, put the power back in the hands of the people!
Professional reviewers are already being slowly phased out by individual YouTube influencers and Twitch streamers, who many people are already turning towards to copy their opinions from. The age of rage reviewers/skeptics has passed, and there's a new boom of video essayists trying to analyze games on a deeper level. Are the opinions of these YouTubers more valuable and insightful than that of professional reviewers? Kinda, but not by much. Are they immune to being bought off by publishers? Not really. Are they less likely to proclaim themselves or be considered an authority on video games and influence large portions of video game discourse and what decisions game devs take? Absolutely not. Do they finally appreciate arcade/retro games on their own merits instead of the horrible lens of them being outdated or a nostalgia trip? Ye- no. Is the most popular content also the highest-quality content? lolno.
But, on a open platform there at least exists the opportunity to put forth your own opinion and be heard by many, without having to subject yourself to the soul-crushing work conditions of being a professional reviewer. There exists at least an 1% chance to find a golden nugget in a sea of shit, as opposed to no chance at all. There, we're all equals.
Except for Painkiller fans.