Are Professional Video Game Reviews That Bad?

the current state of gaming is pretty confusing on one hand you have great releases that will be remembered and played by a lot of people and on the other side you have a series of disappointing releases by formerly praed Studios that used to deliver exceptional games sacrificing gameplay and user experience for Revenue generic mechanics lack of detail terrible map design buggy releases and these are some of the problems that have infested triaa gaming as of now fortunately though video game reviews have helped us consumers understand whether a game is worth it or not or at least that's what its original purpose was now you see more and more hesitation and distrust towards the so-called professional gem reviewers some disregard them completely and prefer to read what the overall Community says on platforms like steam metac critic or Reddit but what I want to focus here is how professional video game reviews have drastically changed since their Inception what was a point that led the community to listen to influencers in social media rather than the so-called professionals let's take a look at the history of video game reviews and try to understand if it really is true that professional game reviewing is Obsolete and if so how did that even [Music] happen now the first traces of video game journalism can be found all the way back to 1974 by play meter magazine who covered topics about music charts music programming technical news with more important unfortunately the entire coin operated industry that included gaming during the latter part of the 70s video games were a more Niche and nerdy topic some might even argue it still is but after the massive success of Space Invaders In 1978 video game journalism started to lift off publishing stories articles and discussions around the emerging force that the gaming industry could be every single release was blowing to minds of consumers and seemed to achieve the impossible and even then not many people could have predicted the massive popularity video games were going to achieve let's jump forward now to 1981 where computer and video games was established becoming the first dedicated video games magazine it covered topics such as news game releases rumors technical content like programming tips throughout monthly scheduling but more importantly some of the first fully Fletch reviews that would serve as a template for future journalists and critics just to show you how Niche game were back then I wanted to take a look at one of the earliest reviews I could find from CVG dating back to 1982 from the February release this is a review of SpaceX also known as moon crusta on the arcades you can see it was a very short but detailed explanation about the game's mechanics Graphics problems you may have and comparison to other titles at that time as well as giving some technical details like the memory needed and in which system to play on the October release in 1982 CVG introduced one of the very first iterations of a scoring system used to review games little do they know the amount of problems giving a number to a game with bring this screen system was composed of stream marks getting started referred to details about the game its instructions because believe it or not games not that long ago used to contain little pamphlets about the game that the player was meant to read before playing obviously almost no one did and that evolved into tutorial stages but it also covered difficulties and whether the game was easy to understand value was an interesting one since they assessed whether or not the money you were paying was worth the physical product and how it operated on the system this means performance was a key Point while reviewing the game a concept many companies don't seem to understand now finally playability is more akin to Modern reviews it was all about how original the game was was it fun could it keep attention basically how entertaining and replayable the game was reviewers will then give a score from 1 to 10 of each of these markers and then allow the readers to decide if the game was worth their money this is a key moment since revie stop being technical explanations but focus more on a buying guide concept reviewers and their scoring system would evolve along the years introducing new markers and an overall score they kind of even made reviews a bit more complicated than the they should have but they were not the only ones in the field other magazines kept it Prett simple like electronic aiming which had very lengthy reviews of the time detailing not just technical aspects of the game but also the noise from the communities around it and the impact they had on the industry in order to Showcase whether a game was really good they had as they called it the mark of Excellence they was put in games that had the superior design a movement started by the US national video game team to highlight games that the ser special attention by 1996 the review format changed for the better for zvg and this served as a great template that future reviewers would use later down the road the main Improvement was their scoring system no longer they were stacking category after category and honestly making it a bit confusing but now it was a very simple one to5 score where one was a very poor game in five was an excellent game besides the rating you can see that they started to incorporate more extended and critical reviews keeping up with the concept that the review should serve as a buying guide the review format changed a bit from writer to writer for CVG but the structure was quite similar the review of banjuk kazui for the Nintendo 64 which by the way the OG Vibes I got from reading this were insane huge props to the design team for putting such an artistic and colorful review back then going back to topic though the review contains elements we are all used to seeing in a modern revieww summary of the story interesting characters you might encounter platform the number of players the publisher tips when playing the game explaining core mechanics a very important new addition was the writer's opinion remember this one and the rating now I've shown you the positive reviews but what about the bad ones what was a bad game back then well hello hello brilliant nice to see [Music] [Music] you the Spice Girls came that came out to the PlayStation is an example of a terrible game that was reviewed at the time now back back then you would have the occasional disaster of a game that was more like a promo material for some big mainstream IP rather than the actual game and this was clearly one of those cases what I want to highlight here is that whenever a game was bad they just straight out to you they gave you pretty simple and clear reasons why the game was not worth it no matter the potential or good intentions the developer may have this is very important to understand because even even though game Publishers gave Early Access to reviewers and sponsored certain sections of a magazine at times reviewers not all of them had very high standards and were proud of their work concurrently other magazines were using their own format for reviewing some easier to read than others but the concept of providing an in-depth explanation opinion and rating to a video game helped many consumers decide whether or not a game was worth their money but not many of the pr-based media companies were prepared to face its biggest Challenger and later on an ally the [Music] internet you see back in the '90s web development was still in its early stages with HTML just being invented in 1993 by team burnsley HTML is a standard code used to theel websites that Still Remains a core foundation for modern web development HTML allow developers to finally have a standard way of coding a website while having a structure that other developers could easily understand this means that a lot of companies were able to have their own website and publish their content to the entire world welcome then to 1996 where alongside other four media websites that were fully dedicated to video game journalism as the name suggests n64.4 which was a big deal during those times J friendly neighbor Nintendo had other plans though and demanded a Rebrand of the site yes Nintendo V Nintendo days all the way back which ended up merging with the other four sites to form what you now know as IGN through a snapshot provided by Wayback machine we can see the main appeal IGN had at the time and somewhat still applies today was providing gaming news reviews and more content on a daily basis with an in-depth analysis as well as creating forums and FAQs that allowed people to build gaming communities that at the time wasn't as common no longer people needed to wait a month or a week to get the latest news from gaming no longer was little Timmy that played video games the entire day had no friends alone now he was able to reach out little Bobby that played video games the entire day had no friends to talk about games let's compare both IGN's and cvg's Mario Party review done in 1999 we're going to focus on the content of the review rather than the visual design since ux and UI were not even a thing a couple of points Stand Out IGN has a more serious and professional tone rather than the more enthusiastic and fun mood CVG uses they were both good reviews just written a big difference though is the release date of these reviews Mario party was released on the 8th of February of 1999 in na a GM published its review the 11th of February of 1999 while CVG published their review until the May issue of the same year keep in mind though that CVG was established in Great Britain and the game released on the 9th of March of the same year it basically took 3 days for IGN to release their review while CVG took almost 2 months this fact alone was a massive difference in ultimately one of the reasons for the downfall of print-based media both sources of media cover gameplay in a very detailed way but CVG and other magazines usually provided additional helpful tips and interesting locations you might find during your sessions while in a they were not really present these can be argued as a positive for spoiler sake but it's a noticeable difference nonetheless for whatever reason IGN scoring system resembled the ones CVG originally used establishing five different categories and independently grading them as well as providing overall score most noticeably though is the inclusion of sound as a category during the '90s soundtracks started to have a bigger impact in games and in some occasions they ascended into iconic and Timeless pieces advanc in technology allowed games to have bigger and more complex audio files that professional musicians could work with and use to their full potential one less difference is that by the '90s reviewers became more critical in the sense that they weren't as easily surprised at a game as in the 80s where a lot of video games coming out were full of hype either by the community or because they were introducing features never seen before with the rapid evolution of the internet and web development as well as the declining sales of print-based media many of the video game journalistic companies moved to the online space providing a very similar content format to the one displayed on IGN site and still to this day online review consumption is the main way consumers can assess whether a game is worth their money or not but before jumping into the current review format of big gaming news companies we have to address a new way of reviewing games that totally changed the landscape on how a game could be reviewed welcome to the streaming era [Music] [Music] with the rise of YouTube back in 2005 creating the first major video sharing platform through a simple interface that could work through any standard web browser it open a door for people from different backgrounds interest and ideas to express them creatively through a video on the platform it is conflicting finding the first online video game reviewer but some of the most notable have to be James rol and his character of angry Peter Game Nerd posing his first video on the 8th of April of 2006 introducing a totally different type of review where the tone was way less formal detailed and critical than your typical review but the selling point here was the entertainment value that not many reviewers had since the decline of magazine reviews his take was more of a rent about how bad the game Dr Jill and Mr Hyde was even providing some small footage of it which at the time was a big deal his video was very honest sympathetic and funny take on video game reviews but again the takeaway here is that video game reviews could not just function as a buying guide but entertaining content and similar to James we have other creators that built their own legacy with their own ideas like Angry Joe show or lazy cam reviews and with the rise of content creators and their unique ways of covering a game the community was shifting towards these creators for their personalities relatability Insight or entertainment value that was lacking on IGN's written reviews by this time cvg's was on the decline and he never really got back up so it was basically IGN's controlling the entire reviewing system for a while and with this comes the main question of the video what makes a professional video game reviewer and while researching online we can sum it up this way a professional game critic will usually have a degree could be anything from Communications to journalism or even history reviewers have to be good at putting their ideas thoughts experience and opinions in a feasible fast and entertaining way diversity of video games is a must since they need a deep understand understanding of video game genres Styles mechanics their history the community around it and current standards in finally they need a vast portfolio of reviews that showcases their skills passion and talents this last point is key since reviewers need a lot of consistency how many of us have seen a review from steam or meta critic from a random user that's very detailed passionate and with more knowledge than your average professional reviewer but the odds are that that user won't be posting review with that level every 3 days or a week but was rather passionate for that specific game let's look at Full Circle then and compare IGN's latest Mario Party review back in 2021 against cvg's magazine and IGN's first Mario Party the first point to notice is how fast reviews are now this Mario Superstars review was posted a day before the game's release it's definitely harder to read a modern review now since there are no real sections or categories but rather chapters that makes a couple of points in between for example if I wanted to read about mini games CVG did a fantastic job on making it easy to find where in IGN's modern review it kind of covers it in most parts of the entire review the most fundamental change in reviews now is that the writers mix their opinions and experience with the game mechanics and features as you can decide whether that is a good thing or not but reviews definitely take longer now to read and before since there's a lot of setup that writers put before explaining the game you might call it stalling others might appreciate it and that will be up for the bate and of course we can nitpick a very bad and controversial modern review to dramatize this video but after reading over 40 reviews not just from IGN but Kaku and metac critic I found a couple of takeaways EOS are definitely a think and critics take too much time to get to the point of the review some are way more blatant than others reviewers have a huge pressure of posting their review as soon as possible with sometimes very tight schedules that definitely impact their overall enjoyment and I mean who likes to R through a game since gaming back in the ' 80s and '90s was still somewhat Niche a lot of the content was very relatable genuine and you can read the passion behind the old school reviews but now since it's a business that needs to be pumping out content so fast and specifically to mainstream audiences modern reviews are just planned uninspired and rushed in my opinion the best way to dictate whether a game is worth money or not is through multiple reviews if you have a time or your favorite personality online if you're seeking some entertainment along the way I think people throw way too much hate of reviewers yet not all of it is unjustified since there have been a lot of distances of clear biases lazy and outright stupid reviews by professionals I definitely prefer old school reviews that were straight to the point and told you interesting tips or gimmicks as well as considering performance as a key aspect of game since that's a missing marker modern reviews have unless a game really struggles with performance so what do you think are professional game reviews really that bad do you even read them or watch them anymore I would like to know how you decide if a game is worth it or not in the comments down below thanks for watching

Channel: Hale

Views: 4,834

Keywords: gaming, reviews, fyp, printbasedmedia, history, games, commentary

Id: cI4pdjktccw

Length: 18min 11sec (1091 seconds)

Published: Sun Jun 30 2024