🚀 go-pugleaf

On Mon, 20 Jul 2015 13:45:29 +1200, Peter Huebner
<p.w.h...@gmail.com> wrote:

>In article <mo6ji7$2t3$1...@speranza.aioe.org>, no-spam@never.spam says...
>> 
>> Games Reviewers Not Doing The Job properly as we need.
>
>Long  gone the days of early Computer Gaming World where you'd get 
>actual, real, honest several-pages-long reviews of games. Does anyone 
>else remember the early editions printed on coarse brown paper? Then 
>they were taken over and turned into an advertising glossy, and I 
>eventually stopped my  subscription because the content was getting less 
>and less in favour of advertising.

If you're ever feeling nostalgic, you can view old issues here:

http://www.cgwmuseum.org/galleries/index.php?year=1981&pub=2&id=500

>These days  when I look at a 'review' on one of the 'professional' 
>gaming sites, it's mostly just some idiot paraphrasing the publisher's 
>publicity guff, typically without any critical review at all. A few 
>colourful screenshots. They've all turned into mindless cheerleaders. 
>Few of them seem to've played the game for more than half an hour.

This is one of the joys the interweb and Google advertising has
brought us.  Pretty much everyone making a living in any sort of
writing these days does so with one primary focus in mind -- to sell
ads.  Thanks Google.

There was a time when articles were primarily written by writers who
were subject matter experts on a given subject, they wrote the content
without much thought to marketing, and marketing people handled
advertisement matters while keeping their mitts out of the content.

Things have changed.  Writers are mostly now marketing professionals
in disguise.  

I actually had a number of technical articles published in nationally
circulated "hardcore techie" magazines in the 80's and 90's.  For the
most part, I'm pretty sure the editors had no idea what I was talking
about, yet published them anyway, without any regard to the fact that
whatever I was saying might have been, in essence, badmouthing the
advertiser on the glossy page one flip away.  Back then things like
that just went under the radar.

Those days are gone.  Real writers no longer write for magazines or
publications where they are 'directed' on what to write.  If they are
worth a crap they went freelance and started their own blog long ago.
But thanks to Google, and the public's resistance to learn any other
search engine, in order to get proper organic search hits they have to
pander to the the type of writing that lands results.  This has
effectively ruined the traditional review.  They can't be trusted
anymore.

Some of our best bets are people like the "Worth a Buy" guy who have a
Youtube channel and review games, but even then they have a stronger
interest in luring people to their site and selling ad clicks than
they have an interest in investing time to understand gaming better,
understand their audience better, and provide info that benefits their
audience.  They have to look out for themselves and getting their
bills paid, and sometimes that turns them into entertainers more than
informative reviewers.

>I find I do a hell of a lot better by, as Mr. Stowleigh says, looking at 
>user reviews on steam, or other fora. 

User reviews (Steam or elsewhere) was one thing we didn't have easy
access to (aside from word of mouth) back in the early days.  I'm sure
plenty of us have wasted money on games that we thought we would like
based on one reviewer's description, only to play it for an hour or
two and never return.

User reviews have helped quite a bit in that regard.  When gamespot
first started publishing user reviews (15 years ago?  Not sure), I
started comparing what the audience at large thought to my own opinion
and seeing how that number compared to the individual professional
reviews.  The user reviews are always a more accurate meter for me.

It's simple mathmatical/statistical nature at work.  A sample size of
tens of thousands is going to produce a better and more accurate
median reading than what a handful of "professional" editors have to
say.

> My online boxed-games store for 
> instance does publish critical user reviews despite the fact that it 
> might hurt their business.

I think these online retailers have learned that critical user reviews
don't hurt them at all.  If someone is looking for a game they are
going to buy a game.  Whether they spend their money on a good one or
a bad one is inconsequential to a retailer.  Retailers know that it is
in their best interest to drop all crap products and try to stock only
the best of breed.  They make more money when their customers are
happy, support calls and refunds are expensive.

That said....

What I think we probably all miss (and your reason for bringing up old
school CGW issues and probably Trimble's reason for post) is that in
the old days, we were sometimes inspired to try games based on reading
about someone else's in-depth experience with them.  By reading the
reviewers experience, we might see things a little differently or
maybe try something new that was out of our comfort zone before --
gaining a new appreciation for a game or a new angle on it.

And, that is diminishing (at least in its previous form).  It's not
gone, by any means.  There are plenty of great authors/reviewers out
there who put their honest opinion out on their blog as a simple
hobby, with no marketing angle at all.  The problem is that there is
nothing inspiring them to do it regularly (like a salary for doing so)
and there is nothing that compiles all these works into one
easy-to-subscribe-to place (like CGW).

PC Gamer is still a valid resource.  I appreciate the fact it is still
available in print, a reasonable effort to quality of writing and
humor is invested, and just having it arrive in my mailbox
occasionally (even if I do little more than flip through it these
days) brings back good memories.

But things are not what they used to be, that much is certain.