My Discord:
We have a crisis in the gaming world revolving around access journalism that defeats the purpose of game reviews in providing honest opinions and views on games. Games are expensive products and ought to be treated as such but the current state of affairs where so many are bought and paid for all the while demanding constant positivity defeats the very purpose of game reviews: to bring honest impressions to potential customers.
In this time and age you can go to Youtube or Twitch as soon as a game launches, if not earlier, and see for yourself if you like a game or not.
I am glad u pinpoint the fact that games are products! And they are still people spending lot of money on mobile games, not realizing that they are addicts. Last month a gamer from my Clan, told be he will stop buying that month, cause he just spent 2700$ on it and was a bit broke. I was like omg, the actual Hell? How and why? And guess what that very same game was Own by EA! We are cash ready to get robbed. That what the gaming industry is all about! When they realized how much money they could make, it was all about stats and data, and the art and authenticity disappeared! And business people and advocates of certain political positions, took over!
When it comes to DA: The "V", i still can't believe they release gameplay footage with glitches/bugs covered intentionally or not by lot of fireworks! not even 3 minutes in!
The big platform reviewers became an extension of the AAA game developers/publishers and as such they will never be neutral.
Their reviews are not based on the game quality, but on how much DEI content is in the game, which is sad because some of these big game reviewers used to be very good, I still remember Witcher 3 getting a score of 10 from gamespot, nowadays I am pretty sure they would get a 4 or a 5 because of lack of DEI content
There is a point of making a review and lie about it – money. Game journalists are just outsourced marketers now, and they need to do their job well if they wanna maintain access.
Independent reviewers are a mixed bag, you gotta watch at least a few of them to be sure you’re not relying on a shill. Honestly, i think any reviewer that got early access or any perks and benefits is compromised.
0.03 no you cannot trust them
The only ones i thrust are those of angry joe
That gameplay of the male Qunari, it just makes me laugh.
What we as a publisher used to do, is pamper the press with invitations to swanky hotel events in exotic locations, where we’d showcase them our new games. All expenses were paid for, so the journalists basically got a free mini vacation for up to 3 days out of it. That was enough to make them write favorably about our products, because they wanted us to invite them to future events for our upcoming games too. This mild form of bribery is considered normal in the game industry and it’s something every major publisher still does.
The Political Economy of the Gaming Media. Okay, Chomsky. 😉
Who pays for the advertising which funds the game sites? The publishers (and hardware makers etc).
This does create a similar incentive structure for, say, YouTube critic channels and negative opinion.
Meh. When was it ever different? I guess it is perhaps more acutely true nowadays, now that gaming magazines are defunct (and no longer include physical sales in their revenue) and so depend heavily on online advertising for finance.
Also true – (1) IT/Tech does nothing better than it does hype. (2) Gamers are often a dreadful, toxic and entitled group chronically swayed by fashion. Oh well.
I feel opposite of the youtube reviewers, most of the time they give negitive reviews of pretty decent games, I just don't trust any reviewers anymore. I think part of the problem is that they review so many games they naturally compare them to thier favorite games. So they might say a game has a horrible story, when the story isnt that bad, cause they have played so many games all stories sound borring to them. Atleast in my opinion.
Unfortunately, this is what happens when your play testers are "community panel members" who are "paid in exposure".
All those game journos are obviously biased, by getting exclusive deals with BW they are getting basically "free" content for their vids, interviews, websites and they wouldn't want to bite the hand that feeds them by being in any way, shape or form honest and even slightly critical about DA:Veilturd. But what gets me the most are all those goddamn spoilers we've been getting about Solas Silverhand, companions, their quests and the Evanuris from all that "exclusive journalism"… how they in one of the vids casually mentioned the true nature of the Blight… Sigh.
I have a feeling they're going to ruin Solas as a character, via all those "memories" of his that Rook will be able to view/relive? Just like they ruined Anders going from DAO:A to DA2, you know, how he suddenly stopped talking about "female bosoms" and stopped flirting with anything and everything that was female and moved? Heck if you played a femWarden he'd kind of flirt with you, too (and you could mention Zev/Alistair/Leliana if you were involved with them, which was a cool touch). Then in DA2 not only he suddenly was into dudes too but Karl was his first ever romantic interest? That wasn't the Anders from Awakening and I noticed it immediately (and sadly, let it go, put it out of my mind until now), and you can't blame his merge with Justice for the sudden change too cause Kristoff (the Warden whose body Justice "possessed") was a married man and there was even a quest involving Kristoff's wife.
Now to Solas, I got a feeling that in those "memories" they will make him bi, too. Which goes against everything he was in DAI, you couldn't romance him as a male Inquisitor, not even as a dalish dudeQuisitor, he only reciprocated dalish fem Inkys. Heck maybe even Solas will be somehow romancable by any Rook, too.
Have you guys seen the clip where the team working on DA Veilguard doesn’t even know who Zevran is? This game is going to flop so hard.
I agree, your take on this is perfectly reasonable. I also agree about the aesthetic of the game.
If it was only on youtube, reddit and twitter is the same thing, with all the excuses, the game change every sequel and blabla, the community deserve the flop this game will be.
I write game reviews as a hobby to a finnish gaming site. I don't know about bigger gaming channels, but we don't review games on the bases that "developer likes us, we must be nice to them" – that would be silly. The devs don't leave reviewers just because you give bad reviews to their games, that would also be silly. Some devs try to make up rules, like "you have to be positive about the game" but we just don't review those games, and it's usually easy to see when reviewers have taken such a deal.
We should also remember that in the end a review is just someone elses opinion of the game, and to a certain degree, are based on personal taste. So should you blindly trust that you'd like the game if the reviewer liked it? No.
What annoys me is that games are nowadays so broken before release / right after that, that we nowadays mostly review bugs, not games themselves. And nowadays some studios let gamers play the products days before release for extra money. Most of the time it won't be a nice experience.
It’s really simple: the game hasn’t been release yet. We’ll see what we’ll see when it’s released
IGN out of ten.
Honestly this game is probably objectively going to be a 6 or 7. Much like Andromeda. I’ve only seen extremely positive or extremely negative coverage of this game.
But to me, this similarity with andromeda is too big to ignore. Fun combat, mediocre to bad everything else.
Gameranx is the only reviewer I kinda trust, everything feels pretty genuine with them
Full of wisdom. Loved your take on this issue. Please do share your review when it comes out.
You can always trust them on the front of untrustworthy.
No. And this DA looks like it was made in 2010. It's lost all of what mad it such a great experience.
You can't trust reviwers just as you can't trust youtube grifters.
The hair animation @1:20