Reviewing Games Journalists Reviewing other stuff

For many years I subscribed to the unofficial Xbox magazine “xbm”. I basically used it as a buying guide, as it was my only source of information about new games apart from word of mouth. I enjoyed reading the in depth and humorous reviews, which had a sense of honesty and less reliance on a game’s overall “score”, and more about the games unique features and a more personal explanation of their playing experience. I eventually ended the subscription as the price was gradually rising, and I was beginning to rely more on game websites for news and reviews. After the transition from printed media to gaming websites, I began to use the media in a very different way, I began reading the articles less and less, partially because of the new video content, but mainly because of the dull subjective writing styles. The old style journalism can be forgiven in news articles, as facts are simply being regurgitated, but in the original content such as the reviews, the writing was just charmless and dull, ending up making the score the only valuable information to ascertain. Whereas with game magazines, I’d read reviews and previews of terrible games id never play, purely because of the sharp and funny writing it would be worthwhile to read the entire magazine, but this couldn’t be said for many mainstream video game websites. Id also read more articles in magazines it because I had paid £3.50 for it admittedly, so I might as well, but now the web has created a sense of throw away content due to it being free. The fact you don’t directly pay for the content also makes a new problem, as it needs to get most of it’s revenue from advertising and, it being a game website, advertises new games, which will be being reviewed at the same time, creating uncomfortable situations where a journalist may have to bite the hand that feeds in order to create an honest review, or alternatively lie in order to fulfil a contract with a publisher. This situation must undoubtedly occur all of the time, but one well documented “uncomfortable situation” was with the website Gamespot. It involved The Editorial Director Jeff Gurstmann, reviewing Kane & Lynch: Dead Men, which was simultaneously being heavily advertised all over the website. The game universally received disappointing review scores, and being a respectable journalist, Jeff scored the game appropriately to his opinions and gave it a 6/10, but then found that his employment had been terminated afterwards. The obvious assumptions were made and rumours spread fast around the internet, prompting Gamespot, and their parent company CNET to publish their denial that he was fired due to the review, but could still not give information on why. Subsequently Ryan Davis, Vinny Caravella, Alex Navarro and Brad Shoemaker, all fellow editors for Gamespot left, Due to their lack of trust for the company, and that they had given into corrupting pressures. A few months later Jeff Gurstmann and Ryan Davis joined together to set up the gaming blog “Giant Bomb”, which later became a full website. Vinny, Brad and Alex soon joined the team, which now frequently post entertaining video features, articles and podcasts. Because of the main team being comprised entirely of ex Gamespot employees, they intentionally try and avoid the old journalism style of Gamespot and other large gaming websites, and try and make much more engaging content in a more open-minded and witty way. Giant bomb features a game related wiki, which champions user generated content, in addition to users being able to submit their own articles and reviews. User generated content can have vastly different results, its sometimes interesting to read differing opinions on games, or get news from different sources, but other times, and admittedly most of the time the content is utterly worthless apart from being able to laugh at how bad they are. This is demonstrated perfectly with the user created review of prg3 from Eurogamer by the user named boomboxdan. He may either be very young, or have something wrong with him, so what I’m about to say may be very offensive, but for the point on this blog post ill just assume he’s just a few mushrooms short of a Mario game. My favourite quote is when he’s describing the graphics, saying “Every location in the game has been rendered superbly, even London looks nice, and when night falls they look superb with lights and all that...”, it’s true even the dive of Westminster or the oversized broken council house that is Buckingham palace looks good. It’s ok to be a bit crap when writing for the first time, but try and not write anything offensive to over a million people lets say, well at least for your first review anyway. Also we need to consider why users feel the need to make their own content, it’s either they think their own opinion in unique and needs to be heard, or will be found very helpful by fellow users. This is where another great piece of user generated content is found, where users review reviews, with the feature: “did you find this review helpful?”, where nobody has said yes. The precise style of this review is quite ambiguous, and probably wasn’t even considered when it being written. For my personal writing style I’d write in a style closer to new journalism, as I’d find it a more engaging and natural way to write in the way I speak about games, And the experiences I have playing them.