It’s Halloween evening, I have nothing better than keeping an eye out on masked people that may come in the convenience store, knife in hand, to get the content of my cash register, so might as well have a palette cleanser and just ramble about games journalism.

Okay. It’s not really better but I swear it’s an improvement.

Games journalism have become a really big subject lately, even if in the end, I’m not sure that people will say this is even what’s being debated anymore. But many review sites, most especially Polygon, have been getting a lot of flak for various things which may or may be not related to ethics. We’re talking about reviewers getting free copies of games, someone on staff having an acquaintance at the game studio… all sorts of little details that may change a review’s score favorably or unfavorably.

The lowdown of all this is simple. It doesn’t matter one bit.

When was the last time that you got excited over a video game because you went “Oh my god, that one guy at Gamespot gave that game a 9 out of 10?!? I have to check out that game now!”? The answer is that it never happened. Instead, a lot of people will read a review not in order to learn about the game, but in order to see the reviewer say and write everything that they wanted to see. Based on what? Based on all of the videos and any other PR that the publisher of the game have let out.

I’m surprised that no one even talks about the publishers in this story. Is it because if we start questioning their methods, they will outright stop making video games? Is them delivering the product to the consumer what makes them so sacred? It’s okay. Developers are regular people too, who have families, friends and whatever you want. Just like reviewers and just like you, the consumer. The developers’ job is to make a product, under certain constraints, that the public want to buy. They also have to give their potential customer base reasons to buy their products. That’s why there are previews, trailers, teasers and whatever other word ends with -er. With this info, they can turn their potential customers into a frenzy and they’ll buy the game no matter what happens.

So what does the reviewer do in all of this? I see the reviewer as a middleman that is here in order to try to either temperate or escalate all the hype that the game has got. He has the harsh job or trying to say to people “now look, this game is not as good as you may have thought, but it’s still pretty good”. And other times, the reviewer is just as ecstatic as everyone else is. But in the end, he’s not the factor that will make a game sell more or less copies. If anything, negative reviews got me to buy more games than positive reviews ever did. But it’s mainly all about the impressions that the developer has cast to its audience.

As an example to this, I bring forth a grand classic in video game reviews: Jeff Gerstmann’s review of Twilight Princess. The 8.8 score. Just google it, it won’t take you long to see all the death threats he got because of that. Now, in the grand scheme of things, 8.8/10 is pretty damn good. Also, as an added bonus, the review was well written and showcased what he liked and didn’t liked. However, because the customers expected nothing but perfection, that review was perceived as a slap in the face. Because one person in the world thought the game was just “pretty damn good”, the world of a few dozen people stopped dead in its tracks.

How could he do this to Nintendo? We refuse to stand for it, this game will be amazing! Man, you can tell this fat asshole wants the Wii to die. Don’t worry guys, I will assassinate him.

And so on and on. I’ll spare you the other replies.

So what was the point of even reading the review if you knew right off the bat you’d disagree with it? What’s with people simply saying “fuck this reviewer for giving the game a 8” even though the article itself was close to nothing but praise? Is there anyone who even reads reviews anymore? Hell, are professional reviewers even still necessary in this day and age when it’s so easy for everyone else to be a reviewer? Nowadays, you get review sections on almost every platform and site out here. Every game on Steam will have user reviews. Metacritic has user reviews. Gamefaqs. People will even go and do Youtube videos to review games. The list goes on. You want reviews, they’re everywhere.

Additionally, one must not forget, a review isn’t a de facto statement that everyone must abide by. It’s an opinion. We all have those. Some are all right, some don’t really make you care, some will make people think you’re a weirdo. It’s up to the reader to use his/her intelligence to sort out what the reviewer says and make up their own mind about the end product.

Paying reviewers to get a good score is deplorable, but why would the journalist be the only person to get the blame? Once again, do anyone even remember the Kane & Lynch scandal? Jeff Gerstmann gives game that is being heavily advertised on Gamespot a review lambasting the game for being mediocre. A few hours later, Eidos gets him fired from Gamespot. You think the reviewer here has any saying on how game reception should go? If anything, they’re the first ones to get shit from everyone. Publishers want their heads if they give a bad review. Gamers will say their review was shit because it gave 8/10. No one’s happy with them. I kinda feel sorry for them because they’re doing one of the most ungrateful jobs of the gaming industry. I’d rather be filling coke machines for a game developer than write reviews for a professional web site.

Hell, some other times, the reviewer will heavily praise a game and it’ll still go unnoticed. Back in 1999, Looking Glass published System Shock 2, a revolutionary first-person shooter with RPG elements that was innovative and very atmospheric. Game got multiple 9s, 10s, Game of the Year awards and so on. And you know what? The game still was for the most part a commercial flop, the studio soon disbanded and the game faded into obscurity in legal limbo for many long years until Night Dive Studios managed to bring the game back to a customer base.

There’s always a few interrogation marks as far as reviews go and one of those would be the Gone Home reviews, where people could argue that giving the game a perfect score may be questionable. I have a few reasons for thinking so myself. For instance, does a game like this have any replayability? It might offer a good story, but replaying it would be like the equivalent of reading a book or replaying an interactive novel like Phoenix Wright. It offers only one truly meaningful playthrough. It’s a great experience but you can never come back to it or enjoy it the same way. Some will argue that it’s unfair of me to say a game like this have no lasting value whereas I’ve read the same book many, many times. And you know what, it’s just my opinion! I prefer playing games for the gameplay they offer, the story comes very, very far after. I’m used to video games being a poor storytelling medium for the most part so I don’t really care. I’d rather read a book again over playing a video game which is nothing but a story.

Therefore, many reviewers just state with their review that they enjoyed their experience with the game due to it being different. I don’t agree with 10s because truth be told, I don’t believe in perfection at all since it’s impossible for any form of media to find universal acceptance. We all have different tastes and values so we can’t possibly enjoy every genre of games, movies, music and whatever else you like. Don’t think that because a game like Gone Home got glowing reviews, the Call of Duty crowd will all buy this game and suddenly become bookworms and such. Despite the media attention it has received, it remains a niche game and I doubt that it will be a game genre that’d be easy to imitate. It would be incredibly easy to fuck up and would probably sound hollow and fake. On the flip side, you can badly copy a successful shooter and there probably will still be enjoyment to be had with it.

That brings me to the whole GamerGate part of the story, where people are campaigning using the boogyman of corrupt journalism to lynch whoever stands in their way. They’ve used reviewers in order to highlight their points (which would soon disappear as they now mostly attack random women in the industry because) but as I’ve already showcased, reviewers are mainly a non issue. They don’t really have any power, who gets the last word in the end is the publisher and customer. The publisher makes the game and the promotion material, the customer shows with his/her wallet that’s what people want. All the reviewer does is say “okay it’s good but” and gets told to shut up.

You think giving game reviewers a copy of the game is corruption? Then a lot of critics would be professional frauds because this is how every industry works. How else do you want people to give free publicity for your event or media? If you just want them to buy it themselves, chances are they won’t bother. Sure, you’d have perfect integrity, but at what cost? Chances are if you worked that way, you’ll retire when you’ll be about 80 years old or so. When you have to play every game that comes out, watch every movie or listen to every album ever made, it digs a huge hole in one’s wallet. No one would be doing this job because they still wouldn’t have any respect in their living and they’d also be starving. That’s a lose-lose situation we have here.

Remember that back in the 80s and early 90s, game reviews weren’t a thing. Or in the least, they were found in magazines that you had to buy. You had Nintendo Power, but it put more emphasis on being a mini strategy guide for games than being a review source. But for the most part, people only had access to hearsay to tell if a game was good or not. You were buying/renting a game without any knowledge on whether it’d be good or not. Was that really much better than what’s going on right now? You’d think that with the readiness of information we have thanks to the Internet, people would use this knowledge to further make more reflected decisions. Instead, we get people attacking others, digging up their personal information and call them on their phones to tell them to get raped. Cute.

So that’s all it is. To GamerGate, reviewers are just one of the many scapegoats they have in order to deflect their criticisms of them not being good or smart customers. It’s always easier to blame others around you for your failings instead of yourself. In the meantime, we’ll probably have more AAA buying off journalists with money, laptops, phones and other goodies, but remember, it’s always the journalist’s fault for accepting those gifts. The publisher has no part of blame in this.

The video game reviewer is dead, long live the video game reviewer.