Why is game journalism so crap?

So many sites, so many magazines, so little quality.

Reviews are either bought and paid for, or they are worthless because the reviewree got a free copy.

Questions are never asked concerning the industry or retailers and the shady practices of either (season passes, pre order bonuses etc).

None of these people have the balls to ask tough questions of developers/publishers - for example, why a game like CoD continues to endure dreadful netcode, or why a bunch of Japanese publishers with barefaced disdain for international markets saw fit to release half a game earlier this year, etc?

You people are supposed to represent US. That's how you make a living. Yet all I see are hapless articles, biased reviews, and crappy gimmicky youtube clips (usually hosted by some pretty young woman obviously there to get the views).

I've owned a ps4 since November. I can count on the fingers of half a hand the number of games worth the price tag - and one of them was a ps3 game (TLoU). These products are overpriced and underdeveloepd and yet us plebs have zero chance getting anywhere pushing these issues with devs, despite their presence on social media (why do they bother).

In the vain hope that maybe one of you staffers is actually paying attention - DO YOUR JOB!

Questions were asked, but then it spiraled down the drain when the focus shifted to sexism for some reason.

Journalism in general is crap because it's all corporate sponsored. Journalist aren't paid to think or give an HONEST opinion! They are paid to carry out the agenda of the company or companies who sponsors them.

As usual, people complaining about paid reviews without offering a shred of proof...

This usually happens when one website or magazine gives a a game a high score, and another gives that same game a low score, angering fans of that game.

Just because you don't agree with a score a reviewer gave a title, doesn't automatically mean that reviewer was paid off... What is it about that that's so hard to understand? Would you rather every reviewer and every publication gave the exact same score and exact same viewpoint for each game? That would defeat the entire purpose of journalism.

Nobody says you have to agree with a review or an article. But don't spout nonsense because it contained something that annoyed you.

So a reviewer or game journalist is only doing their job if you agree with it? Good luck with that. Personally I've played numerous games that were just as great as many of the reviews have suggested them to be. I've also seen numerous shows and articles that were both entertaining and informative so for me most of these people are doing their jobs and doing them just fine.

You're concerned about "journalism" in the game industry? You should be worried about it in the real world.

Yes, because we all know if you don't like a game that good reviews, the critics were paid.

Why aren't journalists holding publishers and devs to account for shitty designs, bad decisions and customer unfriendly policies?

its not just a gaming problem.

one of the bad things to happen with the advent of dinternet is that people have stopped paying for the news. they dont buy mags, they dont buy newspapers, they dont subscrube to online services etc.

as the old saying goes if you dont pay for the product then you are the product (or something to that affect).

we are not gamespots/IGNs/Eurogamers customers. their advertisers are their customers. we are what they sell. thats the deal.

so....who would pay a subscription to gamespot in return to dropping all advertising and only reviewing finished, off the shelf games...even if the review was a week after launch (to give the reviewer the time to actually play it)? anyone?

the only way to change it is if journalists answer to us and people answer to their pay masters at the end of the day.

@osan0: that's a wise point.

It's probably similar to the general media nowadays... the aim isn't to inform the public any more, it's about ratings/page views.

I agree. That's what I'm saying: journos don't want to bite the hand that feeds.

I think gaming has taken a real nose dive. It's dominated by consumer unfriendly corporate decisions and dominated by attitudes that exclude the casual player as if being 'casual' isn't enough.

because Eddie Makuch secretly writes half of all video game journalism.

I have a feeling a lot of those in the industry don't have a formal journalism education.

DLC, Season Passes, Early Access are a thing because customers allowed it.

It must be hard being a writer in gaming since you give PR with little ideal of how the game is made so asking tech focus question like net code would get a RP answer since they would not know anything of value.

Worse is the other side that scream and complain about everything you write. "Why are asking about the new weapon improvement system when you should asking about their net code?. DO YOUR JOB!" "Why are you asking about the net code when you should be asking about the new weapons improvement system? DO YOUR JOB!"

this is my feeling as well. Lot of "semi-pro" writers, people that like games and write blogs, then get it into their head that they can write write, and apply for jobs.

I feel this is true for most fields, though; the amount of crap out there, especially politics, is astonishing. Objective journalism is all but dead now, and it sickens me; everyone (or every publication, at least) seems to have an agenda, and they will massage the truth or abuse sensationalism (aka "clickbait") to achieve it.

Sometimes I long for the days where I had a PC Gamer subscription, that was some good gaming journalism. And those demo discs!!!

Because anyone can buy or make a website and post his/her opinions about games these days. And on top of that, the websites we all used to consider credible in the past have mostly fallen to commercialism and greed, where in good ole days, gaming journalism used to mean something, and the writers had real passion for showing us games instead of passing along hollow hype.

Reminds me of news shows and how they have to have news 24 hours a day so they report on stupid ****.

I feel its pressure to get news out and clickbait titles.

Easy answer is because the young generation is either going for youtubers who have no education or knowledge about journalisme or for sites like gamespot that hire people with either no journalistic education or any education at all.

It takes more than being a wiz at writing to be a journalist. But then again noone really cares anymore about actual journalistic pieces.

Then why are you solely focusing on journalism? You act as if consumers are the victim here, you ask journalists to do their job, but a large part of the current situation is caused by those consumers. They expect everything to be free, they don't want to pay for content, they can lazily go somewhere else if they don't like something, because there's always some youtuber that resonates with them. Websites can't be critical or act independently, because their only possible source of income is the thing they're covering. But they're not really given much of a choice.

Consumers whine about paid reviews (which is mostly based on anecdotal evidence and speculation, by the way) and about a lack of critical coverage, but at the same time they want everything to be free, offered to them on a silver plate and not be too extensive because they don't like to actually read. The journalism you so loathe is the result of consumers being spoiled and lazy.

This is speculation. You can't generalize some anecdotal evidence of foul conduct into a given. There's no consistent pattern of good scores being given to horrible games and there's no damning evidence that any manipulation is going on a large scale. Unless you have the numbers and the facts, you shouldn't make these claims without explicitly stating you're speculating.

As someone else suggested, even if they asked hard questions, they wouldn't get an honest answer. All the content that journalists have access to is strongly controlled by publishers and PR people. Also, journalists have to be careful because they depend on the thing they're covering for revenue and access. That's all very sad, but it's not like they have a lot of choices. They have to juggle the interests of both consumers and publishers and neither seem particularly lenient in their demands. The material they have access to is limited, so there's not a lot of room to be critical without speculating.

That said, I think a lot of them are still pretty critical in their reviews or during podcasts and video shows. But a lot of the 'journalistic' content is indeed barebones, because the available material to work on is also barebones.

Define us. You're glossing over the fact that we're not all the same and we certainly don't have the same interests. The popularity of all that youtube content makes it abundantly clear that a lot of people don't really care about critical journalism. They just want something entertaining to watch or read. Or something to complain about. A lot of people couldn't care less whether content is sponsored or not, they just want to see some footage and judge it for themselves. I think in-depth and critical journalism is only desired by a minority, because in reality that's not really what you need to buy the right game. People can turn to all kinds of reviews and gameplay footage to make the right choice. And in the meantime we find enjoyment in biased complaining or being overly hyped, neither of which require proper journalism.

How can you be critical of biased and crappy journalism when your entire entry seems to consist of personal bias? Even the title of the thread is biased. You assume game journalism is crap based on nothing but your personal experience and then you expect others to confirm your suspicions. If you've really only played 2 or 3 games that were worth it, then I think that says more about you and your taste than about the industry.

So I think I can tell you why game journalism is so crap. It's because you think it is. And that's all that really matters. Maybe you should find another hobby, because I'm afraid that in your case nothing's going to change for the better.

I don't care how many writers there are or how good they are. If someone wants to start a blog, that's their business. What I want is for those representing this hobby to do their job otherwise what's the point. Noone said it was easy, but so what? You want to be in the journalism business, go be a journalist! The world doesn't need any more let's plays.

Because although there may be quite a few adult gamers, the vast majority are still kids and you can feed them whatever rubbish you want and they don't know the difference.

Because of sensationalism and poser critics

@osan0: Funny you should say that, I am building a gaming website that quite literally does exactly what you're talking about. No corporate sponsorship, all ads are minimalistic and non-obtrusive(also entirely optional). Any one can provide content, and all content creators get paid by the readers through patreon subscriptions. I built it because I wanted a gaming site to be all about the games, and not about who's paying the most advertising money this month, and the only way we can achieve this is by putting the control back into the hands of those who write the content, the journalists.

If you know any veteran or aspiring journalists send them my way.

@wishface: I felt the same way, but rather than just sitting back and complaining about it, I'm doing something about it.

It's not that they necessarily pay them off with actual cash but they take them out to these fancy places, wine & dine them, buy all this ad space up at the sites. In turn they're not gonna turn around and rip the games apart after that. Obviously this applies more for the big AAA type releases.

financial promotion and ad revenue. The destroyer of the media.

That, and any "journalism" on the internet exists solely to generate traffic, so if the writer has to "bend the truth" to get hits, it's expected of them.

Totally. Sometimes I think there needs to be an objective regulatory agency of some sorts, handing out "licenses" to certified journalists, fining people for [over]editorializing (some opinion is OK)...but that is a bit draconian.

Still...wouldn't be terrible. Outside of blogs about food, I really have not found a single worthwhile blog about anything else.

There's just so little you can trust these days, and I often hear my folks talk about journalism during the 50s and 60s and even 70s...wish that same integrity and high standards was common in my generation. Local papers are still pretty good, though, especially if you know the writing habits/leanings of the author/journalist.

@foxhound_fox: Can't say that I agree with the idea that "any 'journalism' exists solely to generate traffic". There are a lot of good journalists out there, they just get overshadowed by trash journalists.

@mrbojangles25: I agree with your last statement about integrity and higher standards.

I think both of you should check out my comment from 2 hours ago.

@suicidesn0wman The source of your website income will not matter. You will still get called out for anything. If someone does not like the score then they will still call you act for taking money.

@wiouds: Then it's a good thing we don't let a single opinion represent the site. I've already got a few games that have multiple reviews from differing opinions. If the users can find a single content creator who shares similar opinions on older reviews, they'll be able to trust that content creators opinion because they are so similar.

I generally agree with you, game journalism is much worse than the movie or music industry. I'm not sure if that is because gaming is a younger industry, or some other reason.

I also think including a numerical score is a worse system than rotten tomatoes basic like or didn't like. Numerical scores can work as a TL DR, but people focus to much on the number and not the content of the review, where the number is arbitrary most of the time.

Well, I'm not gonna pretend that it doesn't happen sometimes. Remember the Kane and Lynch thing a while back?

@foxhound_fox: Speaking as someone with a formal journalism education, which largely focused on style and mechanics of writing for journalism, the only benefit to such an education in an enthusiast media is a better understanding of how to build an audience.

Not saying that there aren't major problems with modern journalism, both enthusiast and general. I just don't think education is the problem on games media.

It does not matter someone will call you out for taking money or employing people who take money under the table.

@wiouds: If they feel that strongly about the opinion of a single person, they have the ability to write their own review. If it is good, the community will respond positively, it'll end up getting featured, and maybe even make that user some money if they've attached their patreon info to their profile.

They can cry all they want, but the simple fact is they have the same opportunity to post their own review as anyone else.

Also, I don't know that I will have any employees on the site. If it actually does make any money it'll probably be invested back into the site and some of the top content creators via patreon. Once the site has grown popular enough it is self sustaining I plan on stepping back into the shadows. Try to be just another gamer using the site, not a content creator.

In essence, claiming we're taking money under the table would be about as stupid as claiming reddit takes money under the table.

Because $$$$. Companies would rather hire fanboys who hype up this stuff because money. People who have differing opinions are classified as "haters" and bullied when there is nothing wrong with what you think. most people don't have that kind of integrity and are pretentious, sellouts and spineless man I don't know what to tell you. Just call it as you see it. I do. If people want to say crap to me they know where to find me. Most of these games are not as good as they are hyped. It's pretty obvious to me when there are maybe a handful of big budget publishers out there who decide what is released. Most people who see it differently don't really have a choice. Journalists are basically there to hype up this stuff. They want to be loved too.

The Kane and Lynch debacle wasn't about reviewers being paid for a better score. I'm not saying you're doing this, but people so often bring up the Kany and Lynch debacle as 'evidence' that game journalism cannot be trusted. Not only is the example anecdotal and outdated (closing in on 10 years ago), journalists weren't even to blame there. It was about management giving in to publisher pressure and firing a journalist who stuck to his score.

What exactly gives you the impression that games journalism in general can't provide you with what you need? I read some of the reviews on your site and they don't strike me as particularly different. As a matter of fact, the whole site doesn't strike me as particularly different. Now, that's not a bad thing at all, but it does make me wonder what it is you want to change. Is it simply the idea that you're not controlled by ads and publishers? I like the concept of pieces being written by writers who are paid through patreon, but do you think that's a viable option (assuming you want that site to grow and perhaps become an actual job)?

I guess my question is, is the current state of game journalism as some people perceive it not partly constructed and also caused by its consumers? This entire thread seems rather onesided in blaming journalism for being crappy, while it might in fact be the consumer who is at least partly to blame for it being so. How much do you think you can actually add to the current field of game journalism in such a context?

Wait is this one of the website where anyone can post a "review"? You know the sites that are pointless to go to.

You even have a lot of adults like Archangel that will suck anything down they regurgitate out. Dude is like the ideal consumer in the eyes of AAA publishers. There's a lot of adults that play also and it's more than just the kiddies that accept and enable the mediocrity and abysmal business practices of this industry.

Well as far as previews and reviews go, there's always talk of payments or favors, but there's no hard proof of it happening and even if it were. A review on the up and up is strictly opinion based, so things like bias are unavoidable anyway. My problem with the gaming media, as it is a business; are the articles created solely to generate traffic. I know the media has always been in the business of reporting on stories that they believe people are interested in. But the gaming media is especially egregious because they sell them as opinion pieces and it reads(or they sound like) they don't even believe what their selling; but its there because they know it will get people to click on it.

I don't really want too much professionalism... i rather have lots of info like stats on performance and gameplay details in reviews.

I couldn't care less if it has fancy words in it, yet this is what reviewers put in there when all i want is a geniune honest review with as much useful information i can use.

I see too many gamespot reviews which never even mention how smooth a game runs and what type of hardware they were running the games on. I see user reviews a lot of the time with really great information on what hardware they ran a game on and how well it ran and these types of things while giving a real description of the game they played instead of filling it with big words they looked up in a dictionary.

@bussinrounds: I buy what I like and don't give a rat's ass what you or anyone else thinks about it. I have a lot of fun playing a lot of great games. :)

I think it's because of marketing deals that they sign with big publishers. That's why we see soft spot for rehashed games from big companies every year but good games from smaller studios barely get any coverage and/or reviews (in best case scenario we get crappy review from freelancer reviewer after one month of release).

Then don't go to it. I won't miss you.

yeah dlcs and other crappy things are there because the consumer allowed it. along with the original comment most reviewers are corrupt and make their buck from the people making the game. the gaming industry has come a pathetic shell that imitates what every other industry is nowadays. like they always say.. the longer a industry exists the more stingy it becomes.

I've simply lost faith in these type of sites to give an honest opinion. I do not trust them. On top of that, there are a few 'journalists' on this site who write so poorly I wouldn't believe them if they told me they graduated from community college. I'm not saying there are not several really good writers out there. There really is a lot of good content here, but it's weighed down by low quality trash.

Mostly I just want gamers and content providers to be able to connect with each other. To make the process of writing and reading the content more personal, and hold the content providers more accountable. No more paid advertisement masquerading as genuine news, no click bait. Just gaming.

As far as the success of the site, as long as the site is able to support itself I will be content. I'm not looking to make this my job, I already have a nice job. And most of the money it makes will be put back into the site and the content providers. If we're making an extra $100 a month, all $100 will go right into the patreon accounts of our top posters.

I guess my question is, is the current state of game journalism as some people perceive it not partly constructed and also caused by its consumers?

The way I see it, I'm one of those consumers, and I did not like the way things were changing, so I built this site to give people an alternative. I think by putting the control in the hands of the content creators and consumers, we will end up with content that is higher quality, less biased, and way more informative. On the surface it will look like every other site, but built on a stronger foundation of integrity and honor. All I can do now is let others know it exists and wait for the site to be discovered. We'll see how things play out. If it's a success, great! If not, well, I tried.