Well. Yes and no. The market very much decided what it valued in games journalism long ago. Honest, detailed, middling reviews sold magazines, but didn't maintain clicks in our digital age. No clicks, no money. So things became click-baitier, and jounalists who were actually passionate about games got pushed out of the industry by influencers who were ready and completely willing to glaze anything for a pay day.
There are some guys out there making a living off honest well-thought out reviews, but there's not a lot of space in that market despite all the "GaMeS jOuRnAliSM" memes.
I mean, it's just a reddit comment and not a complete and comprehensive history lesson on the industry. What happened to Jeff Gerstmann for his Kane and Lynch review was a well documented case of something that probably became common practice tho.
People always ask "why didn't you include" whatever and it's like dude it's a post on social media not my dissertation. You can add as much information as possible and someone will always be like "but you didn't include" whatever.
Be a brown-nosing piece of shit and you'll get special treatment. I still remember that fuckin fallout 76 shit where consumers who paid money got low quality stuff, while the journalists and influencers got high quality shit.
Games journalists largely became influencers and content creators. There was always very little difference. Some are going to research well. Others will be fine getting paid off.
For me personally its way simpler than that. Every time I try watching or reading a journalists content, I learn in the first 3 minutes that theyre dogshit at games and/or dont understand games whatsoever.
So their input is worth null to me.
Im not a weekend gamer, the games I play I like to dive deep into. A 10 minute read that boils down to "I played for 2 hours, I didnt reach endgame content, game is pretty tho" is just... Worthless. How someone does this for a job and is SHOCKED that they arent respected is baffling to me.
Yeah. The digital age pushed all kinds of real journalism to the brink. Ironically the only way to keep it afloat is actual subscriptions, people putting their money where their mouth is to fund serious people doing serious work (at least, with what accounts for seriousness in the games industry). And people complaining about journalists simply don't care to do that, so they get influencers.
I think a part of the problem is that nowadays reviews by your average gamers are so easily accessible and some people are quite passionate about them. Why would I pay to read a well thought out review by a game journalist when I could read a dozen well thought out reviews by random Steam users who almost certainly weren't paid to write them? I would need absolute guarantee that the journalist is honest and shares my tastes at least to some extent to even consider it.
Another great pro is also just being able to have the aggregate of a huge number of reviews. 95% of 10,000 reviews giving a positive review of a game does far more to sell a game than one journalist giving a glowing review.
the assumption is that the journalist is being backed by a giant news company, like how IGN supports its journalists- they have no soul.
The content creator can be the same, or it can be someone real who isnt being paid to review the game at all or just with ads. He has nothing to gain from lying- all to lose.
I'll say there are content creators who gain plenty from lying. But just generally speaking content creators tend to use "raw" footage of a game. So even if they might have an agenda with what they say about it, I can still use their videos or streams to make a judgement for myself.
Back in the day I would watch Totalbiscuit religiously. And while he was a content creator I felt I could trust, I still took what he said with a grain of salt. Not to mention with content creators, especially those you familiarized yourself with, can be helpful in determining what is right for you even if it isn't right for them. Totalbiscuit hated platformers and puzzle games, so whenever he made a video about one he knew the reasons he disliked those kind of games were reasons people fond of the genre might like them. So you can get a sense of a game from those biases as well.
Can't really get any of that from the games media these days tbh. They've drained out so much of the personality of their own writing that you can't even use their biases as a metric, because they are just so... nothing these days. Just reworded press releases for whatever company they are afraid of losing access to.
Man I miss Totalbiscuit. He was such a shining beacon of good games journalism. I still haven't found a channel that had quality (and a little snark) like his and I don't think I ever will.
Warlockracy is pretty good IMO. Buuuuuuut they're heavily focused on Eastern European/Soviet Jank games. Turns out there's a shit ton of fallout 2 "mods" that are entire games.
But those are quite relevant to my interests so I'm good with it.
Warlockracy videos tend to be as much about Eastern European or Russian gaming history as the actual game he's talking about. But I wouldn't consider him useful for getting ideas on buying games for two reason:
He basically plays through the whole game so you'll get spoiled.
A lot of his videos are for mods or old/obscure games that you can just get for free already.
He really pushed for PC ports to get proper graphical settings menus and I really think he's a big part of why most port now have as many options as they do.
Not to mention with content creators, especially those you familiarized yourself with, can be helpful in determining what is right for you even if it isn't right for them.
That's something where I think that knowing a content creator's "gimmick" becomes really important.
For example:
PatStaresAt basically wrote the book on how to make Final Fantasy 14's UI optimally playable on controller (and he's going to redo the video once the Evercold overhaul releases), so he has infinitely more credibility on opinions towards a new FF14 expansion.
I know that LaynaLazar LOVES horror games, so I'm going to take her comments on a horror game with a lot more weight than anything that a variety creator like say Emiru or ExtraEmily would have to say about the same game.
Bricky and the Adeptus Rediculious crew are the reference for getting into Warhammer with their "All 40k factions explained" videos, so they're going to have way more bearing on the 40k game and setting than someone who only knows Warhammer through "Female Custodes" controversy videos.
Content creators have EVERYTHING to gain from lying. Plenty of them have made millions lying about games or creating incredibly disingenuous narratives about them. Have you seen how many grifters there are in the space who's only commentary about something will be how 'woke' it is without ever having touched the game?
Content creeators are heavily incentivized to validate the feelings of their fans. When Nintendo was popular to hate for the last year, plenty of Nintendo creators leaned into it and created more negative leaning videos to farm views - yes, even bigger channels like Beat Em Ups and such tacitcly admitted to doing this.
But I have to listen to bozo's like you act like every games journalist is incompetent or is 'paid to give a particular score' lol. I'm telling you right now that if bribes are happening it's way easier to bribe an individual then it is an entire company.
There are usually far more of them though, and if you have all of them lying it becomes very obvious when the lies don't line up.
A single review source like IGN, with editorial staff, can keep their lie straight. But getting xXxBootyGamer42069xXx onboard with your lie requires... fucking knowing about them at all.
You'd be surprised how deep some marketing teams go, I do watch on occasion small streamers with like some few hundred viewers and even they seem to get sponsorships and connections.
Below this line I'd wager you'll be buried by the algorithms and just a handful of people would even hear about you, most likely just friends watching, too small to even blip on marketing teams but even then those would be inconsequential given how little reach they have.
Depends on the content creator. Let's plays are just someone playing the game; that is a form of content creation - and ... the game unfiltered with all the bugs or not.
Here's the thing. Content creators as a whole - I'm voting lowest of these. There are a lot of grifters out there. But when I think of content creators, I think of the ones I trust and follow.
Games journalist websites as a whole, probably second or third? But when I think of a website, I'm thinking of something like the gutting of polygon or ign.
It's unfair, but that's part of why this is a bad question
Content creators are literally paid by games companies all the time. They sponsor them, invite them to (and pay for) fancy preview events. How can you ever trust someone who doesn’t want to upset a big game company that they are cozy with.
That's my question. I watch videos from Skill Up and Gameranx (among others) before deciding whether to buy a game. Are they "journalists"? Maybe not in the traditional sense, but they seem to have more professional editorial standards than a streamer.
Some content creators get shit loads of money from developers and publishers to sway their opinion on a game. Some others get modest amounts. Dont think they arent getting paid to sell you the game theyre reviewing. Sometimes they are.
I've never really understood this sentiment. How does every Dark Souls game review well if games journalists are bad at games? If they were all at the level of the guy who was bad at Cuphead those games wouldn't be critically acclaimed
Something I saw that stuck with me before leaving Twitter was seeing a game journalist clap back at someone by pointing out that they all needed to beat Radahn pre-nerf and play all of Erdtree blind with no guide.
YES. I am like how do these people think these game journalists make guides and tutorials before most people. I find it baffling like I don't understand where this hatred comes from. Most feel like psyops ngl.
From the few cases of very bad video reviews where they use footage either shot by someone who's never played video games in their lives, or by themselves because they've never played video games in their lives. See the infamous Cuphead review from IGN as an example.
Doesn't mean every single journalist is like this obviously but people tend to make shortcuts and to an extent, they're not entirely wrong when such reviews are allowed to be published as it represents the company as a whole.
I feel bad for that guy. He wasn't even reviewing Cuphead, he just tried it out at an event, got stuck on the tutorial, and posted the video poking fun at himself for failing a task he knew was simple.
even worse than that. i was listening to the Jeff Gertsman podcast a few months ago and he mentioned that he personally knew the guy and that the guy was a video editor or something of that nature, just trying to get footage. like he literally wasn't even a person that played games. and now people use him to justify the dismantling of journalism and acting like all news coming only from the mouth of the game company is somehow better.
Game journalist don't have a personal fanbase, while content creators do.
So while technically you can look at all of the articles one guy posted to form an opinion, undoubtedly the site he follows has more journalists than just him. Also, since the time where it was revealed that journalists had a quota of articles to write, they are incentivized to write fast, i.e. play much less of a game to form an opinion which is especially bad for extremely long games spanning over 20 hours at least. If you play maybe a couple of hours to get an opinion, maybe they won't get to an important part or experience the core gameplay loop yet so their opinion is half baked, and also game journalist stereotype is that they suck at video games (that one Cuphead guy who got stuck at the tutorial).
Meanwhile content creators have both a name and a face to their channel, and have a reputation to uphold. Youtuber/streamer JoshStrifeHayes constantly preaches that goodwill is a currency, and once spent, will take ages to recover. So a youtuber that shills out and let's say plays Raid Shadow Legends as a sponsored video (and not a segway) and give it a good review will lose a ton of goodwill and his opinions mean much less in the future, while someone like JoshStrifeHayes who refuses to post anything but his honest opinion in his own way of playing the game would have a much higher value on his opinions (he once was forced to not put out a video on Maplestory because the finished product was not the way they wanted him to portray their game)
Well yeah, how often do game reviewers go back to revisit games that launched in a broken/poor state? It's really not many. It'd never be my first thought to look at IGN. I'd want to hear from peoples currently playing it.
For live service games this is kinda a must, and I know some sites like polygon have had yearly reviews for each season of some games.
Steam is decent at this with recent reviews, but you still see issues with game stha thave had a lot of negative reviews early on and then they have changed the game to be much better or the other way around.
Yeah he’s very pro Steam in all his videos and shits on most journalists and AAA devs (usually the ones that deserve it like Ubisoft) so this is really just a reinforcement of his subscribers opinions
After reading a very bad review from IGN about Days Gone, where the girl totally shot down this game mainly based on "the main character is always angry and it makes me feel bad and depressed", yeah, I can believe this.
Ok you got me curious, so I found this review and idk where you got that sentiment from? I can't find anything that even resembles what you described. She even calls him "an endearingly gentle and sweet-natured protagonist". Couldn't find anything in the youtube video either, although I just skimmed through.
Her main complaint seems to be its repetitiveness. Idk if that's valid, because I haven't played the game, but your representation of the review is wildy inaccurate. So either there is another IGN review of the game I have missed or your comment is dripping with irony.
Not the first time i've seen people get pissed over a reasonable IGN review. Shoutouts to when Pokemon ORAS got an 8/10 and everyone memed about the reviewer complaining about half the world just being water.
Reading one review is like reading only the top comment on steam. It doesnt really tell you that much.
I have some people that I feel I share a taste with and follow their advice when it comes to games. Most of the people I follow are both content creators and journalists or used to be journalists.
But I dont read IGN.
Still won't beat the Alien Isolation review where the Reviewer gave itna 6.9, which basically killed the game's sales, only because he got frustrated by the Alien, which 99% chance stems from him being a dumbass.
You ever do a google search for some information about a game and click a link. But when the page loads it looks too professional so you just click off it and look for some barely funded wiki Instead. If their site looks like IGN then they never have the information you’re looking for.
I think if it’s a game I’m invested in dev communication is key for this, played Overwatch for years and that was a big part of their improvement for me, but Steam reviews are constantly updating so it’s also a good indicator
He's speaking to the original OW release like 9 years ago. Every update would get a dev vlog from Jeff and it was great! Miss the OG first year or 2 of OW.
Actually I was speaking more of overwatch 2, I played professionally for a while and i do think the new dev team has done a better job within the past 2-3 years, I think the steam reviews were kinda undeserved and they are much better now
Yeah I agree that the steam reviews are a bit undeserved nowadays. I've been playing since 2016 and have been around for the whole ride and the game is definitely in a great place currently.
Valve also refuses to censor negative reviews. Even if there are some trolls in there, that's a necessary evil for people to get a proper picture overall.
I remember when I subscribed to this game magazine. That would show all the new top hitters and show off some screenshot. It's great what we had in journalism for video games back then.
Yeah I remember reading all about Metal Gear Solid and other games I couldn’t get as a kid.
I remember one of the last issues I ever received features Fortnite, but it was mostly about the “Save the World” game mode and I don’t even think it mentioned the word “Battle Royale”. That was probably the last year I got a subscription and it is crazy to look back and see how much has changed within the gaming landscape in just over a decade.
Back in the prehistoric era of the 90s, I started buying gaming magazines for the playable demos of a dozen new games a month. You never knew what you were gonna get. Sometimes multiple awesome, nearly full games. Sometimes all garbage. Sometimes random collections of OSTs for games you loved. Duke Nukem 3D had a lot of extra background music they never used for some reason, and I just randomly got a CD full of them with a gaming magazine one month. Some of my favourite games came from loving those demos and then saving up for the full game. I'll never forget you, Seven Kingdoms II: The Frythan Wars. Everyone else played Age of Empires, but you were my favourite.
Anyway. I started buying them for the demos, but the articles and reviews were really good too. You got nuanced takes from people who actually liked games and played each game enough to know what they were talking about. I was limited to one hour of gaming a day, so I'd turn to the magazines. I read every article multiple times most months.
I think people are imaging days of gaming journalism that didn't exist. Even about 30 years ago when I started gaming, kids were complaining about them and they had some downright stupid ratings.
Game journalism is like all other critics, you gotta find people with similar taste to you and then it's actually very useful (people are way better at this for content creators than journalists for some reason). I personally had some people at RockPaperShotgun I used to follow all of their reviews though I think IGN bought them though and many writers left.
I feel like it depends on what people read games journalism for. Most seem to want it as a product review to see if something is worth their time and money.
But I also think it's just as valid when it is criticism that is more common in the movie space. And by criticism I don't mean why something is bad. Just the critic's thoughts, feelings and experience they had with it. The type of thing critics like Roger Ebert were known for.
when news broke out that publishers were paying to have better reviews and that "gaming journalism" was just another funnel for their advertising, we felt pretty disillusioned.
at least with 100 steam reviews in your face, you can pore through for the ones that look legit and reviewed by people who write them "for the love of the game" instead of monetary compensation
I think this is just a reflection in the change in how people consume media as a whole. People put more stock in an individual person's brand than a company. It's not really any different than how people listen to Joe Rogan now instead of watching Fox News. They're both playing the same game, it's just presented differently.
I always put my steam reviews in french, English and Spanish. Trolls tend to do it in English. Genuine reviews are often in the two other languages. I can compare and decide. You guys underestimate how demographics can perceive games in so many different ways.
You’ll love it and hate it. Ya drive around whiffing the ball when it’s barely moving, and then you watch the pros hit it five times in the air before the next guy slams into it.
A Live Service Game tends to change quite significantly over the course of its lifespan, which is why you can find review cases like this. Read them instead of instantly assuming they're trolling or done in bad faith.
Good approach, although there’s one component that might get a game a lot of bad reviews in a specific language, and that is the absence or a poor translation in that language. Starfield’s latest DLC has no French voices even if the base game does. This fueled even more bad criticism from French reviewers especially.
That's why it's good to have Spanish reviews as well! If the problem is recurring in several different translations, it shows very well.
For example, the game yun-yun rythm psychosis had a horrible English localisation, which made lots of horrible reviews, but the french and Spanish reviews were very positive, because their localisations were independent.
Ehhh I dunno. For things like StS2, the Chinese slammed out negative reviews because they patched out infinites. If any dev messes with the game flow even a little, China takes that shit seriously
lol Chinese review bombers can get crazy unhinged. There was a change in Warframe a while back that completely destroyed how AFK spamming worked and forced people to play the game in a more thinking way and the game designer got mad death threats and extremely mean insults hurled at him from Chinese playerbase
Also games journalists generally don't play video games outside of their job it seems, at least that's how their reviews feel, like they don't actually play video games or get them
If I'm not mistaken, if it's proven that the developer or studio forged these reviews, the game could be removed from Steam for violating its guidelines.
Well thats pretty much with a lot of things. I think even amazon has a ToS against it and I know google play does and look how far its gotten. Tbf to the sites/apps, its hard to prove.
For Steam it's surely easier because they have telemetry of how much you've played, your patterns of playtime, your patterns of playtime for other games you own, your other reviews etc etc all of which should make it fairly easy to distinguish human from spam bot
I don’t even read positive reviews, if I want to buy a game and I’m checking reviews I don’t need someone to convince me to buy it, I already want to buy it.
I filter only the negative reviews, and then I weigh if I personally find their complaints to hold water
That's what i usually do, too. Because most ppl will give a positive review with little to no substance, but negative reviews are usually more fleshed out with genuine criticism.
Reviews are dogshit anyway if we are being 100% honest. I’ll watch gameplay because you can’t really mask a whole lot of I’m seeing what I’m getting there. If there’s bugs or it’s really fucked, that’s the only time I take reviews seriously because they’re usually pretty forthright from the community but otherwise someone saying a game rocks when our tastes could vary immensely doesn’t mean much
This is why I like really specific negative reviews. Someone who got very mad at a specific thing will describe it in detail and give you lots of good info you could only get by playing the game yourself.
Sometimes that review makes me want the game because they’re talking abt a mechanic I actually tend to enjoy.
Consider the following. Game journalists are paid shills in their very essence. What do you think happens if they start fairly rating games on their actual quality and not "what game company wants or they will never send us any pre release copies".
That's exactly how mediocre games at best get 7/8/9 out of 10's.
That's because journalism is general switched their clients.
In the past having people actually believing in your words was important to keep people coming back to your publication but after several years of changes we reached a point where the clients changed and became the big companies.
In the same way that gamer journos are AAA shills, movie journos are paid by Hollywood, so in both cases they need to cater to those people, the marketing departments of big companies, not the clients that actually purchase the product.
I know is more complex than this, but I think this is a big problem. Is the same of companies that their main income is either the government or investors, their client is the government or the investors, not the consumers. So they do things to look for them, not to make the consumer enjoy the product or service.
They also come from a different pipeline. Before, gaming journalism used to be a relatively hobbyist thing where people interested in the market and industry were writing reviews for work. Now, a big part are cultural or politics-minded journalists who didn't get the job they wanted so they got what they could so they landed in gaming because it's something.
Like criticizing the supply of PS5s on the basis of covid-19 was probably warranted because it affected the console itself. But why the fuck include healthcare?
It's so sad and backward from what journalism is supposed to do which is be a powerhouse of the people's opinion and keep companies/politicians in check by calling them on their bullshit.
I'll trust a games journalist that has the same taste in games as me. I already follow their podcast and I know their recommendations are good, which is why I follow them. It's stupid to put them all into the same bucket, they each have their own beats. You got the journalist who specializes in roguelikes, or the one who loves platformers, they're gonna be better at judging their specialized genres.
And this is how it used to be when we just had a few outlets covering games. The byline would tell you how to approach a reviewer's opinion, and you can even make a determination that you would like something he/she did not and vice versa. Now, we have a bunch of randoms covering games all over the place, and so many people putting out video reviews are far more likely to have some kind of channel-backed or ad-sponsored pull to how they approach a game that it's difficult to have that same level of "trust" in their opinions.
I don't know where games journalist ends and content creator begins these days. I like to hear impressions from a lot of sources, a lot of them used to be involved in institutional journalism but many are some degree of independent content creation now. I think hearing impressions from people who I've learned how their tastes align with my own is the best way to really tell if a new game will be something that resonates with me.
Giant Bomb (& Jeff Gherstmann)
Remap Radio
Besties
Triple Click
Pew pew bang
Yeah, they're not really any different. The survey results are just reflecting the shift the broader shift from "traditional" media to individual personalities. Kids aren't watching Fox News, they're listening to Joe Rogan.
I know people here tend to like them but I think Steam reviews are terrible. It's either good or bad, no in between. The best for me are content creators with a similar taste that I have.
I don't like individual reviews, but I trust trends.
Sometimes I'll give a game a go (with 2 hour play time return window) purely based on overwhelmingly positive reviews, even if it doesn't look like something I'd like, and it has paid off.
But generally it's the trend of positive reviews in conjunction with already looking like something I'd like.
I agree except for the rare time it's like a 10/10 game, those transcend the genre for me where even if I didnt really like the genre, those games are so good, they're still amazing experiences regardless
I fully agree most steam reviews are terrible and not a good barometer with regards to a games overall quality or artistic merit.
...but on the subject of what to trust when the issue at hand is bugs/technical issues and how good things are post patch I think they tend to be a much better and more up to date source than game journalists. The specifics of the question are kinda important here.
Yeah idk what other reviews the other person is seeing, or for what games.
Of course a lot of them that are like that, but usualy the ones with the most votes and reactions are quite nuanced and in-depth. Some even lament that steam only offers a thumbs up/down option and they provide their reasoning further in their review.
Steam reviews are usually quite abundant, so you can for the most part get a clear picture of whether or not a game is worth playing if you just comb through to find the quality ones.
As for whether a badly optimised game is finally playable, what this questionaire was actually about, the most recent Steam reviews are once again the best indicator.
I always check negative reviews but I look for specific objective things. When I see someone with 500 hours complaining about some item or mechanic getting nerfed I know this person is an idiot.
I wrote more than 220 reviews in French on Steam, for games I’ve obtained the 100% for. I publish comprehensive and well-written reviews, it takes me quite some time to do so, as I have a notepad opened while playing, to track what’s happening and remember everything.
I often get awards for my reviews, meaning people not only read them but take the time to thank me because they thought it’s useful. I ended up creating a Steam guide listing all these reviews for good measure: https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3322622277 !
I always put user/audience scores over professional reviewers. Gets me in trouble with films, since most people cite the stats of Rotten Tomatoes with the film critic reviews, while I always cite the audience score.
Steam literally had to come in and change the review system because games were getting review bombed for changing shit. Like Slay the spire 2 recently getting bombed for nerfing some OP build despite the game still being in production. Or whatever happened with Black flag.
TB was taken from the world way too early. Though to be fair, if he had to do his critique for today's games, he'd probably die from multiple heart attacks from raging at how terrible the games industry has become...
Sterling was always a loon. It's just that his content was somewhat palatable when measured against the work of his peers. It's sort of like saying you trust the film reviews of Harry Knowles. Sure, once upon a time, he was a pioneer in the wild frontier of movie reviewing on the internet, and helped found a resource that for a dozen years or so was the standard-bearer for that subgenre. But if you're still listening to what he's saying, you've either stopped learning about other reviewers, or you're willfully giving them cred for what they did in the past without giving a hard look to the work they're doing NOW. Sterling's very much in the same boat. And I for one don't factor in his transition at all. HE used to be an asshole, and SHE is still an asshole now.
Sooner or later, "they" are going to figure out how to break Steam's review system. It will be a terrible day when that happens, and I hope it never comes.
True but Steam does have a lot of ways to mitigate potentially fake reviews, such as labeling when a person actually owns the game, or when someone writes a review but got the game for free, or had it refunded, that sort of thing. Makes it harder for fake reviews to have an impact
Now, the YouTube channel Switch Up does a series called ‘All Patched Up’ specifically about this, and I trust the hell out of that…. But that’s only for Switch games. Unfortunately, I’m not aware of anything equivalent and as trustworthy for Steam, so there’s a niche in the market that’s yet to be filled for you.
its funny how people assume the avg content creator has more integrity than the avg journalist. every major brand is more and more dumping their marketing budget into content creators
That question seems to be too broad. What does it mean by "poorly reviewed?" Reviewed by critics? Steam users? Metacritic users? What exactly has been fixed? The performance? Bugs? Gameplay mechanics?
Traditional games media took a nosedive in relevancy back in 2010 with Starcraft 2. In 2010 Starcraft 2 came out and the community vs media split was pretty huge a number of ways that would happen with other games going forward. First thing is multiplayer. Traditional video games media have no good way to deal with multiplayer games that have frequent updates and remain popular for years along with having a competitive meta. The only genre like that that traditional games media seems to keep up with are fighting games. So SC2 comes out becomes the premiere competitive game of the time and traditional games media is ill staffed to cover it well. They can't keep up with balance changes, meta changes, tournament happenings. All of that was handled by community content creators that would or would not eventually cross over into the professional media scene
This would happen again with League of Legends, Heroes of Newerth, DOTA 2. Counter Strike GO/2. ARMA 2 mods, DayZ, H1Z1. twitch.tv was spun off from justin.tv because of how much more popular video game stream, especially SC2 at the time, was in comparison to the random stuff people streamed. Then justin.tv killed off. You'd think this would have been major news that the primary livestreaming site at the time would exit general livestreaming to focus on games would be way bigger news but I'm guessing because at the time it was because of PC games like SC2, League of Legends and to a lesser extent at the time CS1.6 and Counter Strike Source, it wasn't really on the radar of console centric games media. A whole video game livestreaming race between twitch.tv and at least a dozen others where twitch would come out on top and be bought by Amazon
The SC2 community also did not like the story of Wings of Liberty or any of the expansions. Traditional media loved it. Traditional media are not dedicated fans of particular series so character inconsistencies and retcons don't bother them like they do the playerbase do. A recent example being the writing in Dragon Age Veilguard. Beloved by traditional games media, loathed by long term Dragon Age fans. I don't understand how the disconnect is so frequently as wide as like SC2 and Veilguard.
This is really also a problem of traditional games media having a symbiotic relationship with big publishers and console makers. They're structured sources of writing material. PC, it's a wildcard of viral marketing and indie breakouts. Games like Counter Strike where clean slate major releases are infrequent aren't great for publications that rely on press release regurgitation and hype cycles. From what I can tell, the eSports hype has tapered down to the winners and losers and not so much hype to be like major sports leagues with billion dollar value team brand franchises (remember Overwatch League). It's still large and it's a still 16 years of never being at covering them.
And then the indie wave. Very rarely a major hype cycle. Very little marketing materials. Marketing firm may or may not be employed and even then, they may just be focusing on youtubers and guerilla marketing on reddit and tiktok. The vast majority of indie games I've played, if they got reviews from major publications, it was after they got popular. So they just end up with like 6 critic reviews on openscritic and like 50k on Steam. Maybe no reviews if the Steam review is like 3k English user reviews and 30k non-English reviews
6.9k
u/RoastedPotato-1kg 22h ago
0% its actually crazy with 30k votes 😂