Reviewers reviewed
Gamespot, in an enlightening moment of lucidity, ran an interesting article that examines who gamers are, what they do, and where they turn for information about gaming. The Zelos Group, a think tank focused upon predicting the role of interactive services, ran interviews with 1,000 gamers and discovered, amongst other things, that they ignore the professionally created information available to them and turn to word-of-mouth when purchasing games. Online game journalists have been a source of derision for some time now, referred to by Bill Kunkel (co-founder of Electronic Games) as “cheerleaders for the industry” in a 2003 article questioning the ethics of the industry. Even pushing Schwag and pro-mo’s aside for the moment, our journalists are failing the average gamer in many ways.
Games are reviewed by people who want to review games. If someone on your staff is a football fan, you're going to give them NFL 2K4 to review. If they’re addicted to FPS games, they get the new Half-Life. Neither of these reviews will reflect the opinion of the person sitting on the fence wondering what to buy. How will the guy who loved every other Legacy of Kain game feel about the new one? Why, he'll love it, and give it a 9.7. “Greatest Game Ever.” This, of course, doesn't help anyone. Nor does it enlighten or entertain. It gives the publisher juicy quotes for their promotional campaigns, but that’s about it.
When said reviewer gets their hands on the game, they will devote unnecessary pages describing features in detail which serve little or no purpose in a review. The new hyper-realtime plasma chain-combo burst processed fighting style may allow for short-forward-roundhouse (but not fierce) combos on everyone but Dhalism, who has a short-jab-fierce setup, but what relevance does that level of detail have in a review? While parroting the publisher’s choice of marketspeak, reviewers frequently delve more deeply into details than is necessary to decide if a game is worth buying or not.
Readers generally won't go past the initial two paragraphs in an article… This is a well-known fact of print media and is the time afforded an author to get a great hook in. Many gaming sites don’t appear to realize this, and have the annoying habit of starting an article by reprinting the publisher's press release. They do this without even bothering to strip out the obvious factual mistakes... like declaring Grand Theft Auto 3 "Only for the XBox!”
Part of the problem is definitely the quality of writing in online gaming journalism. People grew up dissing or hyping one game or another, and carry that style into their professional lives. "How did you like such-and-such a game?" "I loaded it up with anticipation, but it sucked. 7.9" This personal style can be interesting (when done well) and reach a lowest-common-denominator reading level, but it leads to a superficial understanding of the situation. Furthermore, it leads to juvenile descriptions of what the reviewers would like to do with the female character's breasts, long-winded sidetracks onto subjects which have little to do with the matter at hand, logorrhea, and plain old fashioned bad grammar. Going to film school is a prerequisite for being a film reviewer. Going to a journalism academy is a prerequisite for becoming a reporter. Sadly, all you need to be an online game journalist is to spend most of your time playing games, and a grasp of English not substantially worse than the other journalists already in the field. Without formal training in the art of writing, journalists make many mistakes that cost both credibility and readership.
The most useful part of the old print magazine was the section where 4 reviewers constrained themselves to one paragraph and a score, combining directness, succinctness, and judgement. Losing your audience was not an option, as you had very little space within which to formulate an opinion on a game. And no matter how many people you had on staff, you were unlikely to have 4 that happened to be huge soccer game fans. Hype was often balanced by objectivity or downright dourness, and overall the impression left behind of the game was pretty solid.
Sadly, such varied formats have been whitewashed by the world wide web, where page constraints have disappeared. In gaming publication's heyday, there would be a special 4-page section for upcoming buzzworthy games, a 1 page section for upcoming games that may or may not be cool, a "quick clips" page for small releases, 1 or 2 page reviews of released games, the 1 paragraph condensed review galleria, a 1 page perspective piece on the industry, a rumors page, letters, and an in-depth strategy guide. Now, sites stick to a formula of 4 page reviews, a largely vacuous daily news section, and strategy guides for subscribers. Only the games that everyone already knows about make it to the front page (Legacy of Kain has been sitting on IGN's front page for about a month now), and smaller titles get lost in the shuffle. So much text is generated that the signal is lost in the noise.
If online 'zines are to be relevant again, they need to re-think their formula. People want condensed information, available now, from passably eloquent sources. Don't tell us what we already know, don't tell us what we don't need to know. Introduce us to great games we might not have already seen, and give us links to demos where appropriate. With the flexibility of the medium, experiment with formats and artificial constraints. Give unique games more prominence. Bring perspective to the table. Force your journalists to take writing courses at night.
People go to sites to get new information about either games or about gaming. If all they're fed is a bland diet of bloated hype, they'll move on.
Why trust an incompetent, parroting professional when you can trust a friend?
Games are reviewed by people who want to review games. If someone on your staff is a football fan, you're going to give them NFL 2K4 to review. If they’re addicted to FPS games, they get the new Half-Life. Neither of these reviews will reflect the opinion of the person sitting on the fence wondering what to buy. How will the guy who loved every other Legacy of Kain game feel about the new one? Why, he'll love it, and give it a 9.7. “Greatest Game Ever.” This, of course, doesn't help anyone. Nor does it enlighten or entertain. It gives the publisher juicy quotes for their promotional campaigns, but that’s about it.
When said reviewer gets their hands on the game, they will devote unnecessary pages describing features in detail which serve little or no purpose in a review. The new hyper-realtime plasma chain-combo burst processed fighting style may allow for short-forward-roundhouse (but not fierce) combos on everyone but Dhalism, who has a short-jab-fierce setup, but what relevance does that level of detail have in a review? While parroting the publisher’s choice of marketspeak, reviewers frequently delve more deeply into details than is necessary to decide if a game is worth buying or not.
Readers generally won't go past the initial two paragraphs in an article… This is a well-known fact of print media and is the time afforded an author to get a great hook in. Many gaming sites don’t appear to realize this, and have the annoying habit of starting an article by reprinting the publisher's press release. They do this without even bothering to strip out the obvious factual mistakes... like declaring Grand Theft Auto 3 "Only for the XBox!”
Part of the problem is definitely the quality of writing in online gaming journalism. People grew up dissing or hyping one game or another, and carry that style into their professional lives. "How did you like such-and-such a game?" "I loaded it up with anticipation, but it sucked. 7.9" This personal style can be interesting (when done well) and reach a lowest-common-denominator reading level, but it leads to a superficial understanding of the situation. Furthermore, it leads to juvenile descriptions of what the reviewers would like to do with the female character's breasts, long-winded sidetracks onto subjects which have little to do with the matter at hand, logorrhea, and plain old fashioned bad grammar. Going to film school is a prerequisite for being a film reviewer. Going to a journalism academy is a prerequisite for becoming a reporter. Sadly, all you need to be an online game journalist is to spend most of your time playing games, and a grasp of English not substantially worse than the other journalists already in the field. Without formal training in the art of writing, journalists make many mistakes that cost both credibility and readership.
The most useful part of the old print magazine was the section where 4 reviewers constrained themselves to one paragraph and a score, combining directness, succinctness, and judgement. Losing your audience was not an option, as you had very little space within which to formulate an opinion on a game. And no matter how many people you had on staff, you were unlikely to have 4 that happened to be huge soccer game fans. Hype was often balanced by objectivity or downright dourness, and overall the impression left behind of the game was pretty solid.
Sadly, such varied formats have been whitewashed by the world wide web, where page constraints have disappeared. In gaming publication's heyday, there would be a special 4-page section for upcoming buzzworthy games, a 1 page section for upcoming games that may or may not be cool, a "quick clips" page for small releases, 1 or 2 page reviews of released games, the 1 paragraph condensed review galleria, a 1 page perspective piece on the industry, a rumors page, letters, and an in-depth strategy guide. Now, sites stick to a formula of 4 page reviews, a largely vacuous daily news section, and strategy guides for subscribers. Only the games that everyone already knows about make it to the front page (Legacy of Kain has been sitting on IGN's front page for about a month now), and smaller titles get lost in the shuffle. So much text is generated that the signal is lost in the noise.
If online 'zines are to be relevant again, they need to re-think their formula. People want condensed information, available now, from passably eloquent sources. Don't tell us what we already know, don't tell us what we don't need to know. Introduce us to great games we might not have already seen, and give us links to demos where appropriate. With the flexibility of the medium, experiment with formats and artificial constraints. Give unique games more prominence. Bring perspective to the table. Force your journalists to take writing courses at night.
People go to sites to get new information about either games or about gaming. If all they're fed is a bland diet of bloated hype, they'll move on.
Why trust an incompetent, parroting professional when you can trust a friend?
posted by Chris at
10:03 AM
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