Generally, I've given up on game reviews. A lot of them seem biased, pushing a specific angle. And who knows how many are bought off forthe reviews of "AAA" games. I'm much more interested in fellow gamer impressions than some PR-esque review babble.

Journalism has lost its integrity as well. It's hard to find a preview or a decent article that is unbiased or discusses an original premise with well thought-out arguments. Journalists are on the payroll of a lot of game companies, I think it's pretty clear.

With recent review quotes like these:

IGN review of Halo 4 said:

"Halo 4 is a masterstroke everyone can and should celebrate, and its two guaranteed sequels instantly make the next-generation Xbox a must-own system, with Halo 5 its most anticipated title."

Hardcore Gamer review of Assassin's Creed III said:

"Assassin’s Creed III is one of those rare games conceived to be revolutionary from the beginning. Games like this only come around once in a generation. One of the most, if not the most, ambitious titles ever created. An inspiring testament to what can be accomplished with unbridled devotion, it’s possible that nothing of this magnitude will ever be attempted again. It’s a truly definitive event that will be looked-back as a crucial step in gaming evolution."

and this:



...do you still take video game journalism seriously?

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@deathly_hallows

The problem isn't the high scores. If Halo 4 deserves those scores then it deserves them. The issue is the credibility of reviewers. The way the IGN review was written was horrible and if it was a Mario review it would be just as suspect.

@Stephen
Suspect of what, rabid fanboyism? Is that really a crime? Or does anyone here seriously think that Microsoft paid that guy to say Durango is a must-own system and that Halo 5 is it's most anticipated game? Is it totally inconceivable that the dude is just a fanboy who loved the shit out of Halo 4 and got really carried away with all the excitement?

Haha, just for fun, here are some quotes from Super Mario Galaxy's Metacritic page (critical reviews, not users):

Various game reviewers said:

Super Mario Galaxy will influence gaming perceptions, sure to replenish any lost passion. It will frequently hug your inner child, evoke tears of joy and tug at the heart. It is everything we have always desired, more than we could possibly have dreamed.

The genius of Super Mario Galaxy is that its basic game design solves every problem that's ever existed with a platform or adventure game.

It makes you think, it makes you smile and it compels you to play just one more level. Flat out, the most addictive platform game ever created, if not one of the most addictive games ever created.

Super Mario Galaxy will not only rock your socks, it will blow your actual feet clean off, leaving you with a set of comedy stumps that you can use to pretend you're a marauding pirate.

@deathly_hallows

Because I haven't heard of Nintendo flying critics out for special review playthroughs or having the same sponsors as websites and similar shady tactics. Maybe it's happened, I don't know. Like I said this isn't something I pay much attention to.

That's a pretty shitty review as well. The point is these people shouldn't just be gushing over a game for a couple pages. The burden is on them to provide a well articulated opinion about the quality of the game free of as much bias or hype or any other potential factors as possible.

@Jargon
I'm sure I've seen Nintendo advertising on sites during the same period that reviews of Nintendo games were coming out, it's almost unavoidable for large sites. At IGN the editors and the sales team aren't in the same area and don't communicate much, the editors aren't even aware of what ads are going up and when, they don't see them until we do (unless of course you think Greg Miller is lying, because he's my source for that).

Concerning review events, I've heard Jeff Gerstmann go off on those things a number of times, apparently they're boring and awful and no one wants to do them, you have to fly to some crazy location and then you don't even have time to do anything besides sit in your hotel room and play the game, the way he describes it it's not for the editor's benefit (they'd rather just review the games at home), it's so the game doesn't get leaked or pirated. Speaking of Jeff Gerstmann, he's said several times that he's never taken money for a review score, nor has anyone he's ever worked with, and that the only time he's ever experienced any kind of pressure from the advertising side of things was during the Kayne and Lynch debacle that he was fired for because he refused to change his score. Given that the dude was willing to lose his job over the credibility of his review I seriously doubt he's been lying all this time and he's on the payroll of these big companies. Besides, he gave Halo 4 a 4/5 and the review was pretty lukewarm, if Microsoft paid him to hype the Halo franchise then they didn't get their money's worth.

@deathly_hallows Again, I'm not talking about praise, I'm talking about these ridiculous, have to be taken as hyperbolic despite that not being the author's intent statements. There is a difference between "this is a really, really good game" and "this game is so far beyond what anything has done that I question if anything will ever match it". Right? One reads like someone really, really liked a game... which is fair. The other reads like someone has no idea what the F they are talking about, because anyone who plays a fair amount of video games is not going to make an asinine statement like that.

...unless they're being paid to hype a game up to all hell? Well, maybe not. I can give them the benefit of the doubt and assume that this isn't the result of a financial transaction. But it's still ridiculous and reads like I dunno... a virgin reviewing sex after their first time. Um, well, maybe not because that might be "awkward and over too soon", so... a virgin reviewing sex after their second time? You know what I'm getting at. Like the only way you can make these statements about something being SO MUCH BETTER THAN EVERYTHING ELSE is if you have no real context for that everything else and were just introduced to something new and exciting for the first time.

@Zero
I totally agree with everything you just wrote, I just disagree with the OP's conclusion:

anon_mastermind said:

Journalists are on the payroll of a lot of game companies, I think it's pretty clear.

I also think that IGN is a hit or miss site, it used to be great for Nintendo coverage when Matty, Bozon, and Craig worked there, but lately it's been sucking with Rich and Audrey Drake and whoever. But for their PlayStation coverage I like Greg Miller a lot, and even Colin is okay (as long as he's covering PlayStation, he's an idiot when it comes to Nintendo, he claimed that Vita had a better library than Wii...), point being if you get to know the editors personalities and temperaments then you can decide how much sway you give their opinions. I've been watching Vita reviews carefully because I'm still interested in getting that system and Greg caused a huge uproar in the forums by giving Assassin's Creed Liberation a 7, while many fans were hoping that it would get a 9 or something and end up being the Vita's savior. It's stuff like this that makes me balk at the idea that Greg Miller is on the payroll of Sony and Activision, his reviews always seem honest to me, even though he's a huge Sony fan he often gives high profile games negative reviews, why would he do that if he was being paid to be nothing but a PR mouthpiece?

I think when people say "paid" it gives an image of some guy in a suit handing over a bag of money with a $ sign on it. I doubt anything like that happens (or at least, not often.) But I do think advertisers can exert a lot of pressure and I think this pressure has to pass down to reviewers in some form... how could it not? In this respect I think they can definitely hand out poor reviews to big games and such, but I think there will be an influence in there somewhere, and it may come down to tiny things like someone above saying something like "don't you think that you have been a bit negative lately?" and leaving it at that. This wouldn't automatically mean you have to hand out high scores like candy on Halloween, but... it'd pressure nonetheless.

Of course, this is all theoretical...

@Zero
Well then you can't trust Jeff Gerstmann when he says he really likes a certain 3DS game like Pushmo or Dead of Alive Dimensions, because Nintendo paid him off by giving him a free 3DS!* Integrity compromised!

http://www.giantbomb.com/the-3ds-comes-to-giant-bomb/17-3905/

*Same can be said for Kevin Cassidy because he's always unboxing free stuff, his opinions are tainted! Stop reading Go Nintendo! It's all lies!**

**jk, RMC rocks.

Giant Bomb doesn't give a shit what publishers/developers think. They have said numerous times that they built the website in mind with the idea that if they have to go out and physically buy every single game they cover, they are prepared to do so. (And in many cases, they do. Medal of Honor: Warfighter for example. They went out, bought a copy, and spent an hour shitting on it!)

@Xbob42

Nearly every movie on Netflix is scored 3 1/2 stars. What the heck does that mean? Every movie is exactly as good as the next?

Speaking of biased journalism, how do you guys feel about a website having an item called "Nintendo's 3DS being destroyed by mobile gaming... except not at all", calling it news, and then inside linking to another guy's opinion piece?

@Jargon

I'd say a site like that probably doesn't consider itself a serious news site. So no harm, no foul.

@Jargon LOL.

Really though, what is the bias? Biased against the idea that gets thrown around that cell phones are destroying dedicated handheld gaming? I think most intelligent people are biased against that.

Keep in mind the news piece from this unnamed site you mentioned doesn't say anything negative about cell phone gaming.

Sometimes, Jargon, you're kind of a dick just to be a dick, I think.

@kriswright Depends what you mean by a "serious" news site. We're not trying to be the New York Times, that is for sure. And we're definitely biased towards Nintendo, by any dictionary definition of the word bias, but then again, everyone has bias, by any dictionary definition of the word bias, and we're wearing it on our sleeve instead of pretending to be what we're not. I mean, I certainly wouldn't think that some Nintendo-hating Xbox owner would get much out of our "news", but they would also be kind of an idiot if they came to a Nintendo site for news. But I think it's a pretty fair and balanced (lol?) approach for Nintendo fans. I mean, we're speaking to issues that affect Nintendo fans. And I think it's ok to take a little potshot at people who are constantly predicting the downfall of Nintendo from time to time.

@Zero

Haha I was mostly joking, but I do think it's a little questionable as a "news" item. As a @kriswright says, Negative World isn't really a news site, so no big deal, but it does seem like you've been trying to take things more seriously around here lately.

@Jargon Really though the "news" to me is the numbers, which are definitely news, because they are new and they speak to something important in the industry, IE the health of the dedicated handheld gaming world, specifically the 3DS. Everything else is up to interpretation, which should be pretty clear in the way that I specifically mentioned that it was just this one guy who felt this way and I even called out the guy's interpretation and asked our readers what THEY thought instead of saying LOOK, THIS IS HOW IT IS. I also didn't take a single knock against cell phone gaming itself, I just took a minor knock against the doomsayers.

Keep in mind I don't consider the discussion that followed as "news", just the original post.

It's interesting though because I get what you mean, and if we were CNN or something I'd think twice about the slant I put on the headline. But at the same time, news by itself bores me... I don't watch the news, I don't hang out on news sites, I don't even hang out on video game news sites (although I do subscribe to a few sources on Facebook.) I'd rather have the person who posts the news add their two cents, and since we are an open forum, that leads to discussion and agreement and disagreement. I suppose I see it differently because of the forum aspect, as opposed to say FOX NEWS CHANNEL (or CNN, etc. if you get mad at FOX always being called out) which is a one way flow of strictly controlled information with little dialog connected to it other than strictly controlled dialog. Here at Negative World the original poster is just the original poster, and everyone can and should get their say in.

Don't worry, we're not quite at "[news] Nintendo's 3DS is the best thing ever and cell phones suck SPONSORED BY NINTENDO AND CHERRY COKE" yet.

I think I have a different definition for "more seriously" than a lot of sites would. If I we were bigger and capable of starting a revolution, I'd shoot for some kind of populist takeover of gaming media. That would be "serious" gaming media, to me. I try to contain elements of it here, by letting anyone who wants to get involved, but... this is also a part of why we will probably never get huge. Which is ok.

@Zero

The title definitely contributed to it. I doubt even Fox News would have the headline: "Obama wins a second term... NOT!"

We could get into a larger question of whether linking to someone else's research really constitutes another site's "news". I traditionally think of news as involving reporting by someone at the outlet, but that's obviously not how many places on the internet now handle it and since no one is really being paid here, it's definitely not how Negative World would ever do it.

I think the distinction is that Negative World never pretends to be a news gathering agency. By nature, we're going to be delivering commentary, primarily.

Hmm, yeah. To be honest, I've never really been a fan of the idea of being a video game news site that exists primarily by posting other's news, but at the same time, it'd be kind of tough for us to get an exclusive. And that is the direction things have gone in the video game industry as a whole, most of the big sites and definitely the small sites just repost each other's content 24/7. It's another reason that I like to see the OPs view on it and have a discussion follow. In that sense it is more like "this is the kind of stuff we would be talking about around here anyway, might as well throw the news tag on" and less "LOOK WE ARE NEGATIVE WORLD AND WE HAVE NEWS FOR THE PUBLIC".

I will say this, at least I try to get the original source as my source when possible, which often requires clicking through 3 or 4 sites because everyone is just reposting something they saw somewhere else and crediting THAT as the source instead of following it back through the chain. Although, not being a journalist, I don't totally understand the etiquette for that... would you have to credit the source that turned you on to the other sources as well, or just the actual source of it all? Not sure, but I think for our purposes, the original source is fine.

This is also another reason I like our editorials, top ten lists, reviews, etc. more than news. Whatever we can do that is actually "us". But I do think news is a big part of having a public following. Which feels like a shame to me, because I kind of don't see the point in a lot of ways. It'd be easier (if more ethically questionable) to just subscribe to some RSS from other game sites and have their news post to our front page automatically...

I think you're giving FOX too much credit for their headlines though...

I like this one:



OMG POOR (IN QUOTATIONS) PEOPLE OWN REFRIGERATORS?! THEY PROBABLY EAT FOOD SOMETIMES TOO... WHAT KIND OF POOR IS THAT!?

@kriswright Oh, yeah, of course. I even think we could use a few more tags, because I end up throwing a lot of stuff into "news" or "editorial" that doesn't quite fit, but... I also don't want to end up with too many tags and have too much overlap.

Yeah I dunno. I kind of suspect that like 90% of our 'readership' for the average article is the site members, although I do get surprised at how much traffic some of our biggest stuff gets.

Really though, I am taking the site a lot more serious lately, but that to me just means "put a lot of work into it and figure out how to expand the audience". A big part of me thinks that news is only a tiny portion of that. We're not going to be getting exclusives anytime soon and the bigger sites will always be listed higher for any given news story (as well as like, a billion other sites reporting the same news), not to mention, I find the idea of being a news site kind of BORING. Our original content though... well, it's no coincidence that WHITE KNUCKLE SCORIN' is our biggest piece of content yet. I kind of imagine that our "niche" can become being known as this uber creative site with a bunch of creative people that are making fun lists and reviewing obscure games that no one else is and having game discussions on stuff from the NES to the modern and making fun comics and everyone can get involved yada yada. Don't you guys feel like, oddly enough, video game sites aren't as "fun" as they could be? Like, for all of the reporting and editorials and yada yada that IGN does, I still get more excited reading about the top 10 Kirby power-ups from someone I know is excited about Kirby, or getting involved in a roundtable about coming up with new Smash Brothers characters, etc. That is what I'm trying to figure out how to take more seriously and expand in more ways and get out to the public. I know a lot of big sites have stuff like this on their forums, but to me it's like... why limit it to the forums? Why shouldn't this be public, site-promoted content? It's more interesting (I think, anyway, to a certain type of gamer) than a billion news articles (especially since half the time the "news" is like NEW CALL OF DUTY WEAPON REVEALED, which is interesting in some respects, but I don't need a page full of "news" that is full of tiny, minor details...) I'm not just saying this because I run the site... I'm subscribed to a couple different gaming sites on Facebook, including Negative World, and I always feel like we have the most fun content popping up.

I do think, though, that having news is important. It's sort of um... I guess it's like having a bathroom in your bar? No matter what people came to you for, they're going to want to use the bathroom eventually, and if you don't have it right there for them, they will go somewhere else. And then they may or may not come back again.

I was just listening to Podcast Beyond and they're discussing Assassin's Creed 3 and Assassin's Creed Liberation, I challenge anyone who thinks that gaming editors are coerced or paid-off by gaming companies to give untruthful positive reviews and over-the-top praise to listen to this podcast and then ask yourself if you seriously still believe that, at least in the case of these IGN editors: Greg Miller, Colin Moriarty, Brian Altano, and Ryan Clements.

http://feeds.ign.com/ignfeeds/podcasts/beyond/