Integrity in video game journalism

When big games like Call of Duty,Battlefield, FIFA,Halo,etc come out most big websites ignore many of the game's faults and never even mention it in their review and give it a 8/10 or 9/10. Take Eurogamer for example they gave battlefield an 8/10 yet recently published this article.http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2014-10-15-battlefield-4-the-redefinition-of-early-access

How can they call the game an unplayable mess and yet give it an 8/10 ? Its shameful how many of the big video game sites give the readers false reviews just for money.If for example they had given it a 2/10 then so many of the victims would have been spared.When every major website gives a incomplete buggy and unplayable game a good score its natural to have their integrity called into question.This goes for all major gaming websites why cant they be fair while reviewing games and not hide faults and giving even terribly buggy and unplayable games good scores? Millions of gamers decide which games to buy depending on the reviews but all of them are mislead and given false information and hiding the truth just for money. This is the thing which i hate the most.Please share your opinions.

Well reviews are largely opinion, for instance if a certain aspects of a game are so good it may get a reviewer to look past it's flaws. Also most major releases are not an unplayable mess so yeah. It's kind of hard to demand the review you want beyond simply writing a review yourself.

@mohit9206: I hardly think Battlefield 4 deserves a 2/10. That game had a solid core to its actual gameplay, it was simply wrought with technical issues at its launch that made digging into that gameplay problematic. But, as the saying goes, don't throw the baby out with the bathwater.

Moreover, there is only as much bias and conflict of interest in games journalism as there is in any other kind of journalism, especially any kind of enthusiast journalism. Yeah, I think the true "average" review score from most media outlets should be a 5/10 rather than a 7/10. But that's about my biggest complaint when it comes to reviews specifically. Personally, I desperately would like to see games media journalism start putting forth more serious, literary discussion of games as an art form; but the sentiment I get from a lot (not all) of gamers on that point is that they don't give a shit; games are just supposed to be fun so **** all that other stuff; I think this is a small-minded way of looking at things, but whatever. Beyond that, games media DOES need to criticize more sternly the type of sexist, anti-feminist behavior that has surfaced during these past months of "Gamergate" or whatever the hell you want to call it. In general, the gaming community at large needs to get its act together, grow the **** up, and stop thinking this and similar behavior (the disregard for the feelings of others online, instances of unwarranted aggression and online bullying, etc.) is in any way acceptable. Elements of the gaming community and culture at large are more deserving of criticism than games media outlets specifically.

That being said, ultimately, any discussion of the entire games media apparatus being wholesale unethical or untrustworthy is total rubbish. There is no proof of any widespread corruption, and there is likewise very little evidence of even individual cases of corruption. I think every journalism outlet period should be held to certain standards and concurrently keep a certain degree of transparency in their inner workings. But generalized accusations of some sort of conspiracy throughout games journalism media as a whole are precisely that: the worst kind of conspiracy theories, lacking fact or reason or justification of any kind... in other words, bullshit.

@JyePhye:

But how do you explain Eurogamer giving a game an 8/10 and at the same time a year later calling it unplayable mess.As far as logic goes an unplayable mess should not be getting an 8/10 in the first place.So what about this double standards? I am having a hard time grasping this situation.How come big games from big publishers are judged lineantly while smaller low budget games are judged "fairly" ?

A. That's an instance of dumb journalism, not corrupt journalism.

B. You've only provided one example so far of anything questionable in games journalism, yet it seems like you're trying to foment a larger argument against the games journalism establishment as a whole.

C. I'm not sure I see what you mean when you say big games are judged leniently while smaller projects are judged "fairly". Please provide evidence to show this, as personally I've seen just as many indie games score in the 8-10 range in recent years as AAA titles.

>Journalism

>Integrity

lol

Well, you'd be right in this world not to take everything at face value, it's no different here or anywhere else.

Stick to the game sites to get some basic objective details, like when they announce such-n-such studio/publisher is developing such-n-such game, it's slated for whatever release date, it's of whatever genre and will feature blah-blah-blah type of gameplay. Or like "hey, we got the lowdown, here's some photos" or "we got an interview with so-n-so".

We still can see what they have to say but again don't take it at face value. Skepticism also doesn't mean you must conclude everyone is out to deceive and screw you, but they may be being economic with the truth.

We know for instance from experience not to get to psyched by vertical slice E3 trailers. Watch Dogs is a great example. And when the PC version didn't match up to the E3 showing people didn't buy whatever bullshit excuse the publishers gave, they deducted quite reasonably that the publisher force parity. It became even more evidence when Ubisoft announced parity on AC Unity.

It's not just game journalists you can't trust, it's gamers you can't trust either. Once in a while there's games mobs of gamers will be saying everyone must play, and many times those games will turn out to be shit.

When it comes to gaming, be your own boss. Watch some YouTube videos of gameplay, see if it looks like something you'll enjoy. Read reviews, read many reviews, try to look for consistent strengths and weaknesses among them to get a good idea about a game. Ask questions on game forums. Manage your own expectations about a game as well, nothing disappoints worse than how much you can hype it up in your own head, makes even decent games look bad in the end.

Reviews are opinions. As such it's silly to argue about them. You don't have to agree with them. And you shouldn't use a review score as the only source to decide on which games to buy.

start a website that reviews the reviewers.

I think claims of integrity issues in video game journalism are vastly overstated.

Pretty much. With games websites in particular it's solely about covering an entertainment industry, I wouldn't expect integrity. If you find an outlet you generally agree with (it's called Edge magazine) then go with that, the torrent of gameplay that hits YouTube after release, the deluge of opinion, we're in a better position to make decisions about what games we buy now than before.

As further evidence that "gamer culture" is more of the problem than games journalism, I present to you: http://thinkprogress.org/culture/2014/10/23/3583347/felicia-day-gamergate/.

I think the discussion we need to be having should be about how elements of the gaming community are apparently filled with worthless sacks of shit who deserve to go to prison for a solid chunk of the rest of their lives.

@JyePhye: oh Shutup dewd with that "anti feminist" blah blah blah are you sure you don't work for gamespot because that and this "games as an artform" push is all they seem to ever talk about. imo we need less of it because quite honestly it gets tiring going to read which games might be worth buying and instead being told that I'm bad for being male. No one cares about gender the person who's scored kingdom hearts was female and everyone loved it...that was 2002. Gamergate started because a terrible person who happened to be female f**ked a reviewer who was covering her game. She also cheated on her bf with 5 ppl including her married boss but that's irrelevant to me. Let's just not go too far and call her a "victim" because she's far from it. Also games always have and always will be an artform. Since the snes days but by trying to make every game compete for the oscars is only going to limit them as a whole. Does anyone really think the last of us is better then chrono trigger or oot? Because both of those came out way before everyone desperately wanted games to be considered "art", but were ironically more artistic and deeper then practically anything out today. Ok rant over

Old topic is old, and shouldn't have been here in the first place.