Gaming Journalists’ Views On Games Are Stupid and Don’t Mean Anything
Posted on March 5, 2012 by Austin(@NE_Austin) in Features, General Nintendo
Part 2!
I’ve tried starting this article a bunch of times now and I can’t quite strike the right tone so I’m just going to reveal the punch line right away instead of doing some drawn out build up because I’m supposed to: Game reviews are stupid, and gaming-related articles are stupid. The whole façade that we (us gaming writers) know what we’re talking about is stupid, and it’s just that; a façade. Every single person who sits in front of a keyboard to write about video games has a job to do, and that’s to make their readers think they are smarter than them. I’m here to let you know that they’re not smarter than you. I’m not smarter than you. Hell, I’m probably way dumber than you, and that is okay. I just want to make you feel like your opinion is worth more than any game journalist’s.
The case where this is most prominent is when you read reviews. Now, I write reviews sometimes. I feel bad when I do, but I have absolutely written some reviews I’m very proud of fairly recently, and I’m sure I will write more of them in the future. There is, however, something inherently wrong with reviews written by game “journalists”, and that’s that readers must accept that what they are reading is either inherently intelligent or inherently unintelligent. And it absolutely goes both ways, contrary to popular belief. “Why must it be this way?”, you ask? Let me break it down for you:
You can read a review for one of two reasons. Firstly, it could be to inform yourself about a game and to take someone else’s opinion as your own to help you decide whether or not to make a purchase. This is both a blessing and a curse, because it can certainly help you waste your money less often, but it can also cause you miss out on some truly fantastic gaming experiences. I’m going to use Fragile Dreams as my example again, because every time I say the name of that game there’s a group of people here who come and compliment me on loving that game so much. And I love compliments.
I also love great games. Like Fragile.
So anyway, if I had used reviews before buying Fragile, guess what I would have not done? Bought Fragile. The reviews for that game were fairly abysmal and ended up averaging around a 6.5 or so. Critics were harsh on gameplay to no end, and if I read that I would have been like “Darn, cool concept that turned out poorly. Oh well.”, and I would have skipped a purchase missing out on a game that has had a truly profound effect on me both as a gamer and as a person. This is why using reviews for determining purchases is bad. So please, don’t do this. Use videos, gameplay footage, screenshots, concept ideas- anything but reviews.
The other reason to use reviews is to get an opinion on a game you’ve never played so you can either hate on it or love on it (?) while arguing about games with your friends. If you read part one of this article series, you’ll know that this is dumb on multiple levels. First off, you don’t actually know whether you will have enjoyed a game until you play it (like with Fragile), so basing an opinion off of a review is stupid for that reason. It’s also stupid simply because arguing about games is stupid. If you want me to elaborate on that, here’s a link to yesterday’s article.
Now, all of this stuff I’ve said about reviews also applies just as strongly to features and opinion columns. We read them for one of the same two stupid reasons, we believe them because there’s a façade that people who post on a websites are smarter than people who don’t, and we then legitimize our own points using facts we didn’t think up on our own. Again, please don’t do this. Don’t think that you need some guy who happened to get lucky and score a job writing for a website to tell you what’s right and what’s wrong. Do your own research. Form your own opinions.
I’m not gonna lie; it’s a little bit scary that I’m quite literally writing an article that completely de-legitimizes my entire existence as a writer about video games. It’s a very real possibility that you could read this article, go “Holy shit, this dude is right.” And never read another one of my features ever again. That would be okay. I would absolutely not blame you if you did that. But I guess the other half of it is that I’m hoping my honesty and trust in you guys earns me some trust in return, and that you now have more desire to read my work so you can objectively decide whether I’m smart or dumb without basing your opinion on things I’ve said in the past. And perhaps that’s the key to reading gaming articles; being able to form strong opinions about topics yourself before reading any articles, so that- whether you read features or not- your opinion about a subject that really doesn’t matter stays the same throughout your life. Or something.
Man, I make less and less sense to myself the more I write. But I hope this made a little sense to all of you. Thanks for reading, and thanks for your cool support of this cool site that Valay is responsible for. Really, he’s doing all the work here, not me. I just write stuff about stuff that doesn’t matter.
Cheers,
~Austin
