Thursday, March 4, 2010

Game Reviewing... is it Journalism? Part I

I recently read a rather disturbing article on www.escapist.com that discusses some of the ways video game reviewers cut corners to finish an article by deadline. Now I always knew that this was a business prone to being bribed and influenced by hype, but I never thought there was this much poison in the system. Simply put, most game reviews are examples of bad journalism.

Now I can completely understand the problem with getting these articles done on time. Some games are so large it can take as long as 100 hours (but usually between 20 and 40 hours) to experience everything it has to offer. Movie reviews take about 2-3 hours to watch before you begin to write. This presents a large obstacle for publishers and websites who want their reviews up ASAP.

What constitutes a good video game review? Is it unethical to cut corners when reviewing? Do publications and websites lose their legitimacy when they are exposed as being "influenced" in their reviews?

Let's start with what constitutes a good video game review.

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