trickybeck wrote:
How is it going to be better than when I look up a game on Wikipedia and scroll down to the "critical reception" section. They have the little box that shows:
Reception
Aggregate scores
Aggregator Score
GameRankings (PC) 95.16%
(X360) 94.00%
(PS3) 93.95%
Metacritic 95/100
Review scores
Publication Score
1UP.com A+
Edge 9/10
Eurogamer 10/10
Famitsu 37 (10/9/9/9)
G4 5/5
Game Informer 9.5/10
GameSpot 9.0/10
IGN 9.5/10
PC Gamer US 94/100
Are all those publications corrupt? Are there games that breeze through those with all 9's because the slutty female developer f**ked the reviewer?
To continue where I was going before my trainee came back from the restroom: Ultimately, with what we've seen with the whole GameJournoPros thing, a lot of these people have been treating each other as coworkers more than as competition. So there's no guarantee that even if they aren't being influenced by devs that they aren't being influenced by each other. In such a situation, one person's agenda is more likely to influence a game's scores.
Another factor I like about Based Gamer over other options is that critics are often out of touch with the audience. Rotten Tomatoes has been mentioned and is a good example of that. There are tons of movies that critics pan but moviegoers find worth their money for the experience. I think we'd all benefit from seeing something similar with games, where you can see not only what critics think, but what the audience thinks. Ultimately, this is my favorite aspect of the site's potential.
Additionally, I like the Based Gamer system of breaking a game down so you can see exactly which areas a game does well and which it struggles with. Ultimately, I prefer a system with absolutely no scores on it(and Kudos to Joystiq for going to a scoreless system recently) in which you read entire articles before deciding whether you should buy something. I think that's best for the consumer. But I'm also a realist and know that people are lazy and want something they can get a quick look at to make an instant decision. And between having more input than just a small handful of critics(who can be easy targets for payola or can be more easily influenced by a friend or two in the industry) and having scores broken down into a number of more likely to be objective categories, I think the consumer benefits. That's why I'm tentatively excited at the possibilities the new site represents.
I have no guarantees that it will live up to my hopes, but it's nice to have something that at least has some potential to do so. Besides, if we're going to burn down those sites that refuse to address ethical issues, it'd be nice if we put something new in their place.
Uglysasquatch wrote:
The One and Only Poldaran wrote:
Will finish thought later.
Can't ******* wait!
I know you probably said it sarcastically, but you know you love me. We soulless gingers have to stick together, yo.
Uglysasquatch wrote:
Elinda wrote:
Presumably journalist do what they do because we they're educated and skilled in making the written word something of value for all us non-journalists to absorb.
Historically maybe. In today's world of blogs and what not, I'm not so sure anymore.
Every time someone at Kotaku gets called a journalist unironically, Walter Cronkite's corpse gets one step closer to leaping forth from the depths of the earth to slay us all.