Tales of the Rampant Coyote

Adventures in Indie Gaming!

Modern Game Journalism: The Movie (Trailer)

Posted by Rampant Coyote on November 16, 2011

Mega64 is at it again. Here’s the trailer to the movie you hope you will never see…

Modern Game Journalism: The Movie – The Trailer

Get More: GameTrailers.com, Mega64 – Modern Game Journalism: The Movie: The Trailer HD, PC Games, PlayStation 3, Xbox 360

 

It’s funny ‘cuz it’s true… painfully, painfully true. Sometimes Mega64 is just annoying, but this one cracked me up for some reason.

The subject of “game reviews” has been argued across the Internet so many times and with such vehemence by now it’s almost a joke all by itself. The bottom line is that any process that can be gamed (and that’s about all of ’em) WILL be gamed. Given sufficient motivation, people will game the process until it is completely useless and destructive to its intended purpose.

 

 


Filed Under: Biz - Comments: 8 Comments to Read



  • Califer said,

    “[It’s] almost like you’re being honest. *cracks knuckles* I don’t like that.”

  • McTeddy said,

    That movie looks amazing.

  • Silemess said,

    It’s a big problem. You have to find someone that makes reviews regularly, whose reviews you can trust. Or just wait three months after release and pick up any games that people are still talking about as “good.” Or simply forgo playing games at all except vicariously if you’re like me and running out of time daily to play.

  • Calibrator said,

    Who needs reviews and for what? 😉

    More seriously, most people buy games without reading them. This includes casual buyers and people generally unaware of gaming magazines or unwilling to spend extra-money on them.

    And then there is people like me who have dozens of years gaming experience. This may not mean that we are ultimate gamers – far from it! – but it means that we *know* games. We know how the state of games and what to expect. If we see some screenshots of a game and the metascore (which, in my book, doesn’t count as a review – others may see that differently) we roughly know what to expect. For me this is usually good enough. If I get to see video footage of the game, perhaps on Youtube or directly on the website of the game studio, then I *will* know if I want the game.

    Now, there is a difference between “I want the game because it interests me” and “This game got a high score so it must be good!” — and this is personal preference: I won’t spend money on things that don’t interest me, regardless how high the score may be.

  • Diogo de Andrade said,

    True… Uncharted 3 is completely overrated… 🙂 It’s like the damn game is trying to play with itself!

  • Calibrator said,

    But it’s so pretty!!! 😉

  • Barry Brenesal said,

    I remember giving a city builder many years ago (not SimCity, and no, I won’t divulge what it was) from a big company of the day a 60% rating in a magazine. It was simply a case that if you built any of a very lengthy city on one side of an island instead of the other, it was destroyed by one of the Greek gods. A full day’s gameplay wasted because of a faulty design decision, in an otherwise strong product.

    The editor in chief actually contacted me to find out why. This was, after all…an advertiser! I explained my reasoning and the magazine accepted it, but I didn’t get much from them after that. It was perfectly fine to give junk from a small publisher a very low rating, but to give a moderate rating to a big company was debatable at the time.

    I don’t think it’s even debatable, anymore. Just my take.

  • Rampant Coyote said,

    This isn’t the first time I’ve heard something like this. The magazine (or website) stands by its reviewer – maybe asking once to “double-check” an unexpected score (and invite reconsideration, naturally). But then work dries up, and the reviewer is assigned “lower priority” (and usually lower-budget) titles from then on out. Happened to a friend of mine too.

    I don’t know if there’s a solution to this. But it is definitely an issue.

top