For the last couple years, hardcore gamers hinged on the words of so-called “Game Journalists” and their “reviews” and I can’t say I blame them. Games are expensive and you don’t want to blow $50 on crap. If a movie sucks, you’re out $10. If a TV show or song sucks, you can change the station but hardcore gamers don’t want to waste $50-$60 on something that might not be good though in the last few years game reviews are getting over inflated. Tons of 9s and 10s for the HD twins games that sell well for the first month and fall off the charts while stuff like Mario 5 is blown off as “backwards” or “Nintendo being lazy” and gamers who lack the ability to think for themselves repeat the words of the so called journalists like the sheep in Animal Farm. “Hardcore good! Casual Baaaaaaaddd!!”
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However that’s on the verge of changing. Take a look at this.
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Two Worlds II (redundant name I know) is a pretty standard industry RPG. The first game was mostly blown off as a crappy knockoff of Elder Scrolls: Oblivion so it’s a surprise to anyone that this game got a sequel but now it’s said that this publisher was paying off “journalists” to boost the scores because for the past few years, the industry saw a link between good reviews and sales. Of course Nintendo showed up with the Wii and then poor scoring games like Carnival Games and Just Dance are selling well to an audience that *gasp* didn’t hinge on the high and might oracle game reviewers and bought *gasp* what was fun to them!!
Two Worlds II (redundant name I know) is a pretty standard industry RPG. The first game was mostly blown off as a crappy knockoff of Elder Scrolls: Oblivion so it’s a surprise to anyone that this game got a sequel but now it’s said that this publisher was paying off “journalists” to boost the scores because for the past few years, the industry saw a link between good reviews and sales. Of course Nintendo showed up with the Wii and then poor scoring games like Carnival Games and Just Dance are selling well to an audience that *gasp* didn’t hinge on the high and might oracle game reviewers and bought *gasp* what was fun to them!!
But I shared this story with my “hardcore” friends and they were appauled. There was already disdain against Gamespot’s reviews after the infamous Jeff Gertsman incident, but now more and more gamers eyes are opening to what’s going on here and many turned around and went out and bought Mario Sports Mix and said “Screw it!! I’m going to buy what I want!!”
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Game reviewers are becoming film critics and soon the industry is going to be divided into “what people like playing” and “what journalists think are ‘art'” and we saw how well that worked out for the movie industry. Nobody saw The King’s Speech but it won all the awards. In a couple years, the game of the year will go to some stuffy indie game that no one played.
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You never hear about ‘book journalists’ or ‘movie journalists’ or ‘music journalists’. So how in the world did we get ‘game journalists’?
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