Gaming journalism is one of the most corrupted and dishonorable industries in the entertainment business. You don't need a degree in fucking anything, you don't need credentials, you don't even need noticeable skill in the writing field. You just have to be familiar with the video game industry by browsing /v/ on 4chan, gamefaqs and reddit for a month, you have to be able to conjure up the most controversial articles, whether poorly or well written, and you have to be able to rate video games based on unfair prerequisites (how popular the developer/publisher is among your fanbase, how popular the website you're writing for is---if it's fairly popular

You can't give unpopular opinions because that would be breaking precious social rules, how much the publisher bribes you, how much you like the given intellectual property or its characters, etc.). Or, if you're a hot girl, you literally don't have to have ANY skills-just apply and be able to read off of a teleprompter.

Depending on how hot you are and how discreetly you can read off of said teleprompter, your career can escalate and escalate until you're reading off of teleprompters on G4 for national television and voice acting in popular video games (which is situationally hilarious when the gaming website you're reading off of teleprompters for has to review the game you're voicing--how can they accurately and fairly review a game they're literally a part of?). Take the stand, Jessica Chobot.

This results in 20-something community college drop outs that can't write for shit to be hired for a gaming website and sell out their popularity to companies by writing extremely shitty and highly subjective reviews on popular games while giving mediocre reviews to any game that isn't a triple-A console sequel.

These reviews aren't even discreet in their preconditioned bias. The reviews are so fucking terrible you can literally imagine the writers trying to conjure up bullshit to make the game look better and the website can even be littered with ads for the fucking game.

For example: how can you take the Dragon Age II GameTrailers review seriously when literally every ad on the website was about the game and the reviewer was an avid Bioware fanboy who's review was based on entirely subjective things (eg.: "the combat is good," without explaining why the combat is good, "the story is deep" without backing with evidence)?

Face it, the infancy of the gaming industry causes it to be ignored by true professional critics, leaving the gaming journalism business to be thoroughly assfucked by amateur kids that can't write their biased reviews for shit.

Woah, what's with the hostility.?There's a lot of really bad reviews and reviewers out there, but there are some good ones too just like any other field in existence.

At the very least, it just kind of sucks to be called an assfucking amateur by a random stranger on the internet because of your job.

Am not the op, but will respond.

Balance is fine, whole thing is meaningless, but no-one posted what you interpreted.

Respond to what you read, not what you interpret. Not trying to be an ass, just works better that way :-)

Indirectly publisher funded reviewing is obviously an issue, but I think equally at fault is the gaming community at large. If you look around pretty much any major gamng forums the community is awful. Arguing with baseless points, extreme logical fallacies, presenting opinion as fact. I think anything more in depth than 'x is good because it is' would ostracize them and drive them elsewhere. Same thing with playing multiplayer with randoms online, sometimes I find it hard to believe I'm playing with actual people. I don't see too much of it here, but I don't think the majority of the inhabitants of these particular forums are generally representative of the community.

Given it's in the reviewers interest to drum up interest for their site then obviously they're going to play on what appeals to the masses, and unfortunately inflammatory, one-sided nonsense is often the flavour of the day.

To horribly butcher a famous quote, the gaming community gets the reviewers it deserves, and the gaming community is toxic for the most part. I wouldn't expect it to change, but to look at other avenues for reviews of games, such as just watching gameplay videos or reading blogs/opinions of other people which aren't doing it to make a living. It sucks, but at least you're a member of the shrinking percentage of people who can articulate why it sucks.

edit to add: reading through I wasn't too clear, and after reading the other comments I should add that I'm not talking about every single reviewer, but mainly the ultra popular ones. I just feel like a large part of the reason they're so popular is because of the high percentage of gamers that actually like the style they write in, as they assert their own baseless, biased views towards things.

Gaming journalism isn't journalism. Much the same way people reporting on wrinkly knees in the Mail Online aren't journalists. Real journalism is when someone is nearly blown to bits in a crater in Syria. I like to think of gaming "journalism" (or indeed movie "journalism" or music "journalism") as games writing. That's all it is: writing - four or five paragraphs of words that ultimately provides zero benefit to humankind or even the games industry itself.

How else was I to interpret "leaving the gaming journalism business to be thoroughly assfucked by amateur kids that can't write their biased reviews for shit." Seems like a pretty straightforward quote. I agree with you 100% for the most part. But I'm not exactly sure the industry deserves the reputation for being publisher funded. While there are definite examples of underhanded corruption in the biggest ones, advertising is how sites make money. Lots of film review sites run banners for new movies, but they can still turn around and criticise the movie if it's disappointing.

But yes, generally the only people interested in reviewing games are the exact people who have no business reviewing anything, which is why proportionately there's way more shit to sift through. But it's pretty unfair to lump every single game critic together.

I have it on good sources that they don't get bribed, at least not directly. What does happen is that publishers that would have sent you an advance review copy of their latest game or invite you to some showoff may not be so willing if your publication has reviewed some game in a way they deemed unfair. So there's some conflict of interest there, since getting review copies and getting into the latest demo showoff will give your publication more readers...

All else you said is largely spot on, game journos are awful in the way they review titles and in the way the write. Half the times I can totally see the 20 year-old idiot simply through their lack of coherent, or even high-school-level, grammar, the things they praise and their complete lack of perspective on the industry + ignorance of anything that came before 2005.

Also, I would actually like to have more fanboys reviewing games. I constantly find myself reading reviews where the dude is talking about some sequel even when he had never heard or played the other games in the franchise before (sometimes they acknowledge it at some point in their mangled text), and personally I would much rather have reviwers who know the franchise. For example the up and coming X-COM by Firaxis SHOULD be reviewed by people that played the original to death, in what proportion of reviews will that happen? 5%?

Let me see here.

Argument valid, could play games refuting minor statements, but see no need to prolong.

Perhaps I should read first, my salute :-)

Statements were valid, but not in this instance.

All of the above is why I went into prostitute journalism.

How is that working for you? I am delving into reefer journalism and plan on trying out Polish women journalism.

You still get kickbacks from their pimps.

Look up the Kayne and Lynch Gamespot incident

Personally I think the whole "games journalism is shit" thing has been beaten to death for the past 5 years, and I don't actually have a problem with reviews including subjective things Also I honestly don't give a shit if videogames are ever taken seriously enough to be reviewed by "professional critics". A lot of the sites are fine, It's true that there are some horrible sites out there, but I find lumping em all together as ignorable garbage to be pretty silly. I actually wonder if people that dismiss it all as garbage actually spend a decent amount of reading the non-big name gaming sites , or just assume it all sucks because it's the cool thing that everybody is doing nowadays, and they think it makes them look smart



So I rate this topic as just OK if not totally unnecessary

True, but that is one incident on one site. While Gamespot might be a slimy business, there are dozens of other sites that get slapped with the same label who do nothing wrong.