🚀 go-pugleaf

On Sunday, July 19, 2015 at 8:55:01 PM UTC-7, Rin Stowleigh wrote:
> 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.

I generally agree, but you need a large number of non-professional reviewers.  It works for computer games as there are enough people reviewing things.  It seems to work fairly well with amazon if there's enough reviews.  I find the same on rotten tomatoes, you have to look at audience scores, the reviewer's scores are not to be trusted.  

However I keep trying to use Yelp, and have been repeatedly burned by places that have high reviews, even with mid 30 numbers of reviewers. Horrible burger places, chinese food, and repair shops that get very high reviews.  Still trying to find a better way for the local stuff, but doesn't seem to be possible, there just aren't enough people able/willing to review to overcome the astroturf.

- Justisaur