The Gamer’s Quagmire: 15th Edition
- Jamison DeLorenzo

Am I simply an advertising tool of the video game industry? Is anyone that simply writes or reviews games? It is a question that I have to ask myself sometimes. Often when some topic, act, or person is so deplorable we choose to ignore it completely in order to prevent lending any credence to it. In what has become an annual tradition, usually when there’s a lull in the release cycle, we have writers making comments about how reviewers are nothing more than tools of the industry.

This is a hard jab because it takes the work of reviewers that are paid by companies to make positive reviews and casts blame over everyone. One of the reasons I stopped doing video game reviews was because the officially recognized reviewers were not allowed to make negative comments about games as it was considered libel. Okay, there was also the part of not having enough money to review most of the games that came out every year. It’s sickening that you can sue someone for writing negative comments about games. When did we permit makeshift insurance for greedy companies so they could get away with producing absolute garbage?

I’d like to say this was all a huge tangent but this is part of the overall point. When reviewers want to say everything possible about a game but are not allowed to do so the consumers will never get an accurate description of games. If that were the case games like Devil May Cry 2 and The Hulk would have never made it to market. Returning games that suck doesn’t necessarily bother everybody, but there are cases where games are so bad that consumers should feel like they were completely ripped off. I’m not suggesting that we hold video game producers to the same standards as pacemaker producers but every industry does have a bottom rung of quality and there are games that definitely fall under it.

Believe it or not there are game store employees that understand what playing an awful game is like. If you go to a store that is managed by gamers as opposed to employees you understand the difference. The good employees understand the pain of forking over cash for a bad game. I used to be afraid to talk to people in stores about games because I had this vision in my head of the employees just wanting to make sales. Once you have a 2 hour conversation with an employee about The Sims (part of me wants to be ashamed for admitting this, but sharing it does have a different purpose) when purchasing a completely unrelated game you gain a different perspective on the matter. What I am trying to say here is that there should be no shame involved in telling someone that you considered lighting the case on fire with a blow torch, smashing it with a 20 pound sledge, or shredding it with a table saw but instead chose to return it. If reviewers were more honest with what they wrote these things would never happen.

Although it’s fun sometimes to say these things just to see how the person responds. If they start to act they’re personally offended and can take it then they are someone you can trust.

Preventing people from writing bad reviews through legislation is not the only avenue available. As was the case with Driver 3, perhaps one of the worst games ever sold, reviewers were given money to write positive reviews for the game. It even took reviewers 3 years to start admitting that Madden games simply weren’t progressing and that competing titles were better (yes, sometimes I make stretches in order to take pot shots at EA but it is worth it). What scares me is that we have no way of knowing how often this happens? Almost assuredly Driver 3 is not an isolated case, but when reviewers are paid to write favorable reviews by the game producers this supports exactly what I fear.

Being someone who is not paid anything to play games or conjure opinions (I really want to make an RPG joke here, but trying to make it a non-cryptic joke is too much right now.. just ask the undead) on them it is easy to be an idealist. If my sole job was to write reviews it could be entirely possible that my livelihood could depend on writing nice things about games with the quality level of Apex. As someone who just plays games right now I could tell you that this would sicken me to the point of inventing a new disorder, maybe something like reviewing-induced bullhemia. By the way, can we have a pill for that too? This is the primary agent that drove me away from writing reviews professionally. I liked writing the reviews the way I write columns now and didn’t want to have to change or answer to anyone (if you’ll permit another bad joke- scouts almost always gave good moral compasses).

When you write reviews for a living you always have someone answer to. Imagine playing a game you absolutely hate but work for a company that funded the game’s development as a parent company. There is a major conflict here. You almost have to force readers to read in between the lines with your numbers and your words. A 7 of 10 means the game really stinks. The controls are complex but workable means the game is impossible to control. The graphics possibly needing more polishing means that the visuals are hideous. Only software engineers and cryptographists should deal in code. When I originally wrote about Apex I said that it was a game that showed promise and in the end caused me to snap it with my bare hands that was a literal translation. I wanted you to envision the pain and aggravation involved that caused me to take that course of action. What is Game Informer, IGN, XBox Magazine, or any other professional reviewer going to tell you?

Critics criticizing reviewers, who are in a sense critics themselves, is an interesting read. It reminds me of how Internal Affairs interacts with the regular police force. Reviewers aren’t doing their jobs the way critics feel they should so every once in a while we have this blurb about how reviewers are nothing more than advertisers. I love smashing critics’ opinions to shreds but only doing so when I have my own opinions to share. Taking pot shots was a collegiate activity. I’m much more sophisticated now (which is a nice way of saying I’m even more cynical). Reading these articles enflames me a little because I feel like I’m being attacked also.

Some people have this thought process that the only opinion they can truly trust is their own. There are lots of interesting ways to look at this, particularly with PC security, but there are good reviewers who write because they want their opinions as a fan of gaming to be believed, trusted, and enjoyed. Maybe the only reviewers you can trust are the ones who write them for free because they’re not paid for writing them. Again, this is why I started writing these columns in the first place. I never viewed myself as the oracle of video game knowledge. Like any good critic I know how to spot lies and deceit and as long as I feel that companies are trying to rip people off I’m going to continue to write the way I do.

What’s more is that this will continue to remain true if you think I’m a shill or not. The most important thing to know about critics is that no matter how many different opinions fly around the only one that matters when you pick a game is your own.

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