• 17Aug 08

  The Gaming Industry is Being Run by Morons

  Recently the head of The Academy of Interactive Arts & Sciences (AIAS), the organization that holds the annual D.I.C.E. summit event and promotes video games by trying to gather all the heads of the industry under one roof, Joseph Olin has expressed his belief that "game reviewers are lazy" due to a reliance on scores and the desire to review a game quickly. His comments are as follows:

  "When I just see a score, whether it's a Metacritic score or 5 stars or 4 thumbs, that doesn't tell me anything, I am never surprised when there's as much as a 40% or 50% variance between Metacritic numbers and user numbers."

  "My pet peeve is that game reviewers are lazy," he said. "Not all, but in terms of the reviews [something like] 'This game isn't as good because let's compare it to that game over there and that game was great.' Who gives a, you know, *bleep*?"

  First off I would like to make it clear that I will not be going on an expletive laced rant, as that would accomplish nothing. Also I would like to point out that I will also not go on a defensive triad defending the gaming press. The reason for the latter is that the gaming press is being run by adults who can defend themselves. Instead I will express how troubling I find Mr. Olin's words. The troubling part comes from the fact that Mr. Olin is someone who should be defending this industry and trying to unite it during a time of indecisiveness, and in my eyes the above words that he has uttered have done the opposite.

  I have two issues with this comment, the first of which that I think we have reached a point with criticism of game reviews where we as a community have now lowered ourselves to name calling, in Mr. Olin's case calling gaming journalist 'lazy.' I think that we as a whole are totally uninformed when it come to how gaming journalism works. This as with all forms of journalism is a complex 'mechanism' that has many moving parts being controlled by various 'engineers' of sorts. In my opinion unless I ever get a job working in the actual gaming journalism community, I don't think I can ever really levee warranted criticism towards it, and I genuinely think the same goes for everyone else. Just as one cannot hypothesize on the anatomy of an organism without first examining the organism first, the same could be said about criticism levied towards journalism.

  My second issue is if the head of the AIAS genuinely thinks this is an issue for the gaming community, then he needs to swallow his pride and grow a set and start naming names. I mean is just the forums of NeoGaf that are levying unwarranted criticism, or is something wrong with our main gaming journalism outlets? Are the figureheads of gaming journalism part of the problem or is it just a handful of angry bloggers, who only trying to milk their fifteen minutes? If you genuinely want this problem to make a total 180 then give examples instead of general statements. General statements that are ambiguous as this cause the gaming community to speculate and spread rumors, which just makes the problem even worse, and as said before divides the community into various camps.

  Instead of pointing out examples Mr. Olin instead uses the current gaming scapegoat of Metacritic. Now I have seen the use of Metacritic as a scapegoat not only by gamers but now by industry heads, this just like Mr. Olin's' words I find troubling. Let me say this now so is that I can make it clear, Metacritic is a website that makes various reviews more accessible for consumers so is that they can more easily figure out whether or not a product is worth their time. It is not the end all be all for videogames, which is what many are claiming it to be. However trying to point out scapegoats to the public is both a difficult and frivolous affair, and maybe Metacritic will remain the John Proctor of the gaming community for some time.

  So what does everyone else think? Am I overreacting and mentally insane? Or do other video gamers find the comments of Joseph Olin, someone who should be helping the industry, troubling?

  • Posted Aug 17, 2008 11:00 pm PT
  • Category: Editorial
  • 1 Comment
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