Special interest journalism is usually overrun by corporate interests and inflated reviews. Find someone who knows the history of the industry and was fired or left an organization for something like reporting a low review to search out integrity for individuals.
I hate games journalists. I’m sure there are some good ones but most of them are corporate trash and their reviews are thinly veiled ads. They dont care about the games they write about. They dont take the time to learn the games and are just generally bad at games. Basically the entire industry is just shitting out the most dogshit video game opinions 24/7. I’d rather go to Lemmy or Reddit and read what actual players have to say about games.
I mean I’d like to be upset but honestly video game journalism has always been the lowest form of Journalism. Mostly it’s just pure propaganda and press releases from major game companies. 90 to 95% of Articles written by these game journalists were just useless fluff.
Remember how Cyberpunk got hyped across the board? Not a single critical voice before launch (as far as I’ve heard). If that’s the “journalism” you’re providing, then I’m sure as hell not paying for it.
It's hard to be critical of something that hasn't been released yet. All anybody had to go off of were statements from the developers, until the product was actually released and people could get their hands on it.
That might be exactly part of why gaming journalism is irrelevant.
If the “news” about an upcoming game is just repeating developer hype, then it’s just useless noise. At that point the only thing that matters are reviews, and independent YouTubers are beating the professionals in quality and trustworthiness.
So what’s left? Actual dry industry news? I suppose some small amount of people care, but not enough to support the amount of gaming journalists out there.
Absolutely agree. A youtube video where you can mostly ignore what theyre saying and just see the game and problems with it along with some benchmarks is all you need.
If its online, watching someone play online to get a feeling of how the community is also works, particularly if its just them playing solo for a long stretch of time not editing out toxicity.
Maybe it’s because my experience with it goes well back into the print era, but very little of it is actual fact-finding capital “J” journalism, and even that part has only come on in the industry more recently. I’ve always put the games press in its proper buckets of “previews for access” and then game criticism. Quality for both varies, but I’m rarely disappointed when I stick to a publication I like (until the inevitable EIC churn, anyway).
Yup, I remember even back in the print era there was significant criticism about the relationships between games publishers and various magazines resulting in what was essentially advertising disguised as articles. Payment was either indirect (exclusive access to preview builds etc) or direct via in-magazine advertising. Can’t badmouth the big flagship game releases too much when EA just paid big bucks to advertise the very same title for the next view editions.
The entire industry was flooded with mouthpieces for developer statements, and opinion piece hottakes. How many of those people does an industry really need? (Or more importantly: How many of those people can it financially support?)
As for reviews, they are for the most part similarly worthless and hard to trust. There’s about five YouTubers who I actually trust the opinions of, and I haven’t felt left out at all with that as the extent of my gaming journalism intake.
I can’t be certain, but I suspect a lot of gamers are completely burnt out on the professional gaming journalism industry.
Most “reviewers” get a version of the game with infinite money and health to get through the game quickly and only talk about story and size.
I bet there’s bosses and quests that have a special place in our rage that these people just breezed through and they don’t remember them a single bit.
The most I’ve heard about reviewers getting extra help is that they have a small tip sheet for the trickiest parts, and only sometimes. If they need extra help beyond that, they’re messaging their colleagues on Discord who are also under embargo.
I’ve gotten release copies of games for review. Unless they have another secret tier of pressers, this is nonsense. If anything, review copies are more likely to have bugs that making completing the game harder.
It would be difficult to measure if that was the case, but what does seem to be the case is that the old revenue model these outlets relied on just paid less and less over the years.
No, they shouldn’t have started businesses to chase ad money and convince people to work for you in a market that was saturated.
The OG magazines didn’t sell that much back in the day but enough to be a stable business due to its format and brief writings.
Then again who wants spoilers to anything? Same thing happened with movie critics. We all know too much, too quick, too soon. There’s no surprise or open expectations like there once was. You just need an announcement and a date. You know what you like.
Games “journalists” have always been awful at their job and the entire industry is so incredibly fucky with nerds power tripping on the tiniest modicum of power they’ve been given.
Personally haven’t really read gaming journalism even before. If I want to see what score a game has, I’m much more likely to check How Long To Beat or Backloggd, where users rate games.
Or, as has been mentioned in this thread, Youtubers, if I want a singular subjective opinion as opposed to a “out of 5” or “out of 10” score which, admittedly can be tricky when different people have a different view on what each number should mean. For instance, a 5 (on a 10 scale), is average for me when I rate anime. But most of the anime community uses 7 as the average, so a 6.2 show on MyAnimeList, which you would think is above average, is actually below.
idk, i have a hard time imagining a scenario where AI output is preferable to the alternatives. If one “needs” an AI to do something, they should just hire a human. They will get better results than they get from the word-association machine. Once AI companies stop subsidizing the cost of AI to attract users, the human will probably be the cheaper option, too.
i have a hard time imagining a scenario where AI output is preferable to the alternatives.
Oh that’s easy, it’s when you need the thing cheap and now.
I used to work at a friend’s start-up where, charitably, his approach to business was archaic. “We don’t need to advertise because good word-of-mouth is good enough, and what’s the point of having a website and social media?” kind of archaic. Without a doubt, he would be using AI for absolutely everything.
I’ve never remembered seeing quality video games journalism.
The tyypes that they’re describing as that always seemed hacky and liable to push very subjective opinions as facts.
Their scores almost always seemed wonky and part of that is probably because individual scores for something as complex as a game don’t really make sense. They rarely make sense for anything.
Instead what you want are scores in multiple areas with no single amalgamated score.
Anyhow, for the longest while video games journalism has been rife with controversy about pulling negative reviews for ad deals etc.
I think unfortunately written media is pretty much dying due to finances, and for video games, due to never being all that good in the first place.
The details I care about, like monetization, grind, and performance, are the details that most games journalists just completely skim over or they’ll glaze game companies while they perform awfully here.
My way of buying games is basically watching video reviews of someone playing and mostly ignoring their commentary to figure out those details for myself.
That and benchmarks of course… and figuring out whether they’re owned by the saudi government…
Anyways, yea, video content for games both makes more sense, and more money.
I can totally get this feeling for PC/consumer electronics hardware related articles and reviews, but for video games? Meh. I won’t cry.
Understandable. I just feel like amalgamated scores tend not to truly reflect the subjective opinions of the reviewer as sometimes games are more or less than the sum of their parts, and then it doesn’t represent anything close to objectivity because it ignores that different people value different things more or less than others, therefore making this score not all that useful for them.
I can completely understand just wanting a quick score at a glance from a favourite review or outlet though.
I listen to podcasts featuring people who used to score games in that separated way for Gamespot, and it frequently led to scores that were out of sync with what the content of the review actually said. Plus, who’s to say if the visuals of Clair Obscur are better or worse than Hades II when they’ve got very different goals and art styles? And does it matter how high the visuals score for Bye, Sweet Carole is if they’re leaving a subpar review for the puzzles? That’s what the content of the review is for.
How grindy a game is or how it’s monetized often makes its way into a review. Publishers can get slimy around it though and turn the knobs to be more nefarious after the review period, which people can call them out for, but much like how lies spread faster than the truth, updates spread slower than initial reviews. What I’d personally like to see make its way into reviews are how much ownership the game actually grants. So many multiplayer modes are not designed to last, and no one, often times not even the people updating the features list on the Steam store page, care to mention if a game supports offline multiplayer like LAN. Some games blur the line, like Hitman, on just how offline their game and its content can be. That’s what I’m missing from review outlets.
But all of this has only been about reviews, and games media also breaks news. Real change has been happening by way of reporting on unionization and crunch. Harassers are being taken to court or otherwise removed from their position of power in their companies. Sometimes we can actually get real confirmation that absolutely nothing is happening with Bloodborne and no one should get their hopes up for anything anytime soon. All of that is valuable, too.
I listen to podcasts featuring people who used to score games in that separated way for Gamespot, and it frequently led to scores that were out of sync with what the content of the review actually said.
This is my point about why a single number doesnt make sense.
Things are not a simple sum of their parts.
Plus, who’s to say if the visuals of Clair Obscur are better or worse than Hades II when they’ve got very different goals and art styles?
Also in support of what I’m saying.
How grindy a game is or how it’s monetized often makes its way into a review.
Before I completely gave up on written reviews, I feel like it was increasingly obvious that reviewers were purposefully just glossing over painfully obvious mtxs and marketting dark patterns to the point I felt like they were clearly being influenced by the fear of losing special access to ignore what they knew games companies felt strongly about.
Some ex media org folks have talked about the politics internally that went into pressuring people not to acknowledge problems like this, though I don’t recall the name of any specific source. I feel like there was a large group that split up and some of them talked about it. I want to say Jim “Stephanie” Sterling (I believe thats how they title themselves) has talked about it, but I can’t quite recall.
Anyhow, I don’t think the knobs being cranked can be fully to blame as I don’t think that happens all that often because they dont even need to. It has happened a few times infamously though and devs regularly try to boil the frog in modern games
So many multiplayer modes are not designed to last, and no one, often times not even the people updating the features list on the Steam store page, care to mention if a game supports offline multiplayer like LAN. Some games blur the line, like Hitman, on just how offline their game and its content can be. That’s what I’m missing from review outlets.
Definitely true.
Feels like the sort of thing movements like StopKillingGames would hope regulation would solve. Id love to see like, a mandatory nutrition facts label on games dictating a minimum amount of time from launch the servers will be active, whether you can play without servers, etc etc.
Real change has been happening by way of reporting on unionization and crunch. Harassers are being taken to court or otherwise removed from their position of power in their companies.
True and good, but with current admin, I think we’re going to see a lot of these positive changes reverting as we come to realize that crime is legal for those affiliated and who bend the knee.
I think the people who just pick up an instrument and fool around with it might be more tempted to use AI than an actual composer who knows and cares about music theory and sound production.
It’s all about what they want to do. You don’t ask a algorithm to solve your sodoku, because what’s the point of doing it then.
It’s a standing joke that composers actually make their living doing tedious tasks like commercial jingles and background music for radio shows. The AI can easily do that, removing both the tedious work, but also the payment.
Algorithm based music isn’t a new thing. One could argue that it was exactly what Bach was doing. His ideas were mostly simple three note motifs, and the rest of the hourly long concerts were just him churning out all the possible arrangements using strict theory. AI could do that faster than a human, but I also don’t think any human is really interested in doing it like that anymore. It was a huge accomplishment by Bach, but only because he was the first to lay the groundwork. It’s not interesting today.
Composition today is all about conveying an idea or emotion through sound, which would be rather difficult for an AI. It can probably fake it well enough, but it’ll be based on already existing methods, aka slop. There’s already enough human made slop in music to saturate the market for such. AI doesn’t really have an edge in doing it, except it might be cheaper for those that need it.
Their game reviews are worth shit all, so their only worth is reporting on the game industry itself. And that’s a niche area that not many people are interested in.
videogameschronicle.com
Aktywne