GTL: The Place of Reviews in Today's Video Game Industry
By Twin Galaxies Editorial Staff ·
God of War director Cory Balrog is overwhelmed by the game's positive reception, while Rockfish Games crashes and burns with Everspace influencer marketing. Plus, armchair experts and review bombing on Steam threaten the legitimacy of game reviews.
With the powerful reaction from God of War Director seeing the massively positive reviews of the title to the recent influencer controversy of Rockfish Games' Everspace and the ability for anyone to be a critic on Metacritic, Steam and social media, the legitimacy of game reviews in today's video game industry has been brought into the spotlight. On this episode of Game Talk Live, host Mandie Roman discusses these issues with an expert panel including Ray Carsillo of Machinima, Shane Satterfield of SIFTD and video game industry media commentator Marcus Beer.
With the extremely popular viral video of Director Cory Balrog for the recently released God of War game being overcome with emotion after seeing the majority of positive reviews for the title, many members of the community have begun discussing how important game reviews are to a game's success. The panel discusses how in the past few years how reporting based on just the news itself as fallen compared to reporting based on opinion, which has seen a rise in popularity. Each panelist also gives their thoughts and opinions on why they believe people seek out game reviews, whether it be to validate their own opinion or to get a first-hand account of a game that they can not play themselves currently.
Discussion also covered how outlets and platforms can weigh reviews from specific outlets or individuals higher than others, how developers and consumers use reviews as validation and how the various forms of review scoring that are currently used in the industry hurts the legitimacy of game reviewing.
"I don’t know that different scoring systems are really the issue. I think how they’re translated on a website, like #Metacritic, is the bigger issue." -@Dinfire#GameReview #videogames #gamers
— GameTalkLive (@GameTalkLive) April 27, 2018
Watch Live: https://t.co/v2SNDNiDDG pic.twitter.com/JpM7UjW3Xw
With developers and publishers using influencers from the likes of YouTube and Twitch more than ever to promote and review thier games, the panel discussions the positives and negatives that the role of influencers have on game reviews as a whole. While the potential benefit of having an influencer show your game off to their masive audience is great, there is always a risk that the influencer you are paying a great deal of money will not enjoy your game or that their audience will not enjoy it or find any interest in it.
Each panelist goes on to give their thoughts on how the massive influx of influencers who often do not have formal training, professional journalistic experience or a entity guiding them has hurt game reviewing as a whole, as some of these individuals do not prepare to play the game they are reviewing and are not adequetly prepared to give an objective view.
Finally, Game Talk Live tackled the notion of how social media and public review platforms, such as Steam and Metacritic, have given way to the idea that everyone is a critic and can potentially hurt the image of games due to negative comments and reviews being left unfairly when no real effort was put into the critique.
“[One #influencer] made $20,000 to play a game for 2 hours. He [didn't] even...learn about the game! Or, hey, maybe play another space game so you at least have a working knowledge of the genre!" -@Dinfire, on sponsored reviews for @everspace_game
— GameTalkLive (@GameTalkLive) April 27, 2018
Live: https://t.co/v2SNDNiDDG pic.twitter.com/vBNSNAzoiy
This episode of Game Talk Live has wrapped up, but you can see it in its entirety in the video above. Be sure to catch up on the previous episode of Game Talk Live in which experts look at how developers look at how cryptocurrency and blockchain technology look to affect the future of the video game marketplace.