More gaming journalism being controlled

[MKJ]

http://kotaku.com/5991383/strings-attac ... wing-games

For SimCity I got a 16-page "review guide" that included two pages of Q&A about what makes it the right time for a new SimCity and whether you can play single-player (yes, you can....technically). But SimCity's review guide was sadly lacking any amusing spoiler restrictions.

Can't remember getting these kinds of sheets when I still reviewed. Previews sure, but reviews? Pretty sad actually.

[scared?]

Lol wut?...

[Plan B]

Game sites aren't objective?
What a fucking surprise. Seeing they're funded by the companies who's shit they're supposed to "critically" review.

[plained]

U DOEN SAY?

[seremtan]

this is outrageous. someone call Julian Assange

[GONNAFISTYA]

[MKJ]

i thought at least you could appreciate it, gky.

[GONNAFISTYA]

I do. I'm more making fun of semencan's post than this thread, because old lady gamers are all he can get these days.

But for me personally though, gaming journalism reached the point of no return the instant someone came up with the utterly shameless idea of putting an IGN hostess in Mass Effect.

I literally pay no attention to gaming journalism itself anymore except to bash it. I'm convinced it was never intended to be anything other than another form of advertising with a whole lot of reciprocal dick-sucking going on. For me, the word "journalism" implies some form of public watchdog, informing customers which products are worth their money and which aren't. But in the end it simply doesn't matter, as consumers of gaming products are just a bunch of fucking idiots who'll buy anything regardless of quality. The gaming press (and even the mainstream press) did their jobs and told the entire planet a billion times over that the latest SimCity game was a dud out of the gate, yet thousands of morons kept buying it anyways. To that, I say,"Fuck em." I personally want to create high-quality games because that's who I am as a person who takes pride in their work, but I honestly don't care if customers bitch about broken or shitty games. They made their beds, now lie in them. Morons.

In short: there is no use for gaming journalism at all, not only because that's how publishers want it, but because their customers just don't give a shit. Game journalism is just there to promote the game and shut up.

[seremtan]

who even reads gaming journalism these days anyway? if you want to know if a game's any good, just watch someone play it on pootube for a while

[Mogul]

I've been watching rev3 on YouTube (Adam Sessler's new outfit). I haven't been disappointed with them in the least, so far. Some of their interviews are really smart and in-depth. It's like if Gamasutra were on tv in short bursts once or twice a day.

[Eraser]

For me, the word "journalism" implies some form of public watchdog

Goddamn subliminal advertising

[GONNAFISTYA]

Yeah...so it turns out Metacritic doesn't exactly have a "level playing field" when it comes to how they weigh review scores.


Full Sail study attempts to shed light on Metacritic's weighting system

The website Metacritic weights the scores of different video game critics and publications when calculating its aggregate 'metascore' for any particular title.

Each critic/ publication is assigned one of six different weightings of 'importance', with some publications exerting considerably more influence over a game's final 'metascore' than others.

This was revealed by Adams Greenwood-Ericksen of Full Sail University at a talk titled 'A Scientific Assessment of the Validity and Value of Metacritic' delivered at the Game Developer's Conference in San Fransisco this afternoon.

Here's the important part:

Metacritic confirmed to Greenwood-Ericksen during the course of his research that the site applies different weightings to incoming critics and publications' reviews in order to calculate its 'averaged' numerical score for any particular title.

Metacritic's response: "their guesses are wildly, wholly inaccurate"

Today, the website Gamasutra "revealed" the weights that we assign to each gaming publication (for the purpose of calculating our Metascores), based on a presentation given at the Game Developers Conference this morning. There's just one major problem with that: neither that site, nor the person giving the presentation, got those weights from us; rather, they are simply their best guesses based on research (the Gamasutra headline is misleading in this respect).

First off, the Greenwood-Ericksen report on the Gamasutra site was not journalism or someone's opinion, it was the results of a scientific study, thus having no other possible result other than giving "their best guesses based on research". FFS...that's what science is. The fact that Metacritic is doing everything it can to ignore that fact and refusing transparency of their "real" weighting system just makes things worse for them. Face it, Metacritic...your "game" has been exposed. Nobody should trust your results ever again.

I stopped paying attention to Metacritic scores more than 5 years ago because I saw it for what it is, a hammer to be used against the industry and the people who work in it. I'm hoping more people ignore it as well, but I don't hold out much faith...people are just too fucking stupid. It's a hard, uphill slog to change that mindset because 95% of upper management in games companies still see the Metacritic rating as their holy grail of games quality and more importantly...marketing budget approvals. I seriously despise this industry sometimes.

[obsidian]

Heyyyy.... remember when back in the day when if you wanted to find out if a game was any good and worthy of your hard earned money, finding a game review was next to impossible because the whole internet journalism thing didn't exist yet? What was a game developer to do in a world where you couldn't just pay some guy to write a favourable review to get you morons to buy our game?

What's that? You're telling me that we used to let people download a demo or shareware version of the game? Then if you like it, you can buy the full game. Isn't that what we do now, have you buy part of the game for $70 and if you like it you can buy the day-one DLC or pay microtransactions to actually have an enjoyable gaming experience? Wait, you're telling me that we used to give away the demo or shareware for FREE... without DRM or having to sign up for our shitboard distribution service... ??!?!?!... WTFFFFF... INCONCEIVABLOO... FFUUUUUU..........

[seremtan]

hey remember when other people would post 1080p gameplay footage on Youtube so you could make up your own mind about whether it looked like something you'd enjoy?

those were the days