NGJ (New Games Journalism) the term used for game reviews (Source 1) has been around for almost as long as the games themselves. Whatever happens in the world, people want to know, and game-wise people want someone to tell them what games are the best out there and which ones aren't worth the money. But the idea of telling someone what's good and what's not is a tricky one. How do the reviewers do it? How do they decide what to tell people in their magazines? How were particular games portrayed? Reviewers have some of the most difficult jobs when it comes to pleasing their audiences but different reviewers have to choose different things to write about depending on their audience.
When it comes to reviewing games the question is whether or not you are trying to promote a game in order to get the audience to buy it or if you are telling the truth or are just trying to completely destroy a game.
Game magazines are digests of reviews and information on games and they are often produced in a very short amount of time, 19 days for some (source 2) so 19 days to write around 150 pages of reviews and information on games and then over and over again after it is published. This is a very short amount of time for an entire magazine to be produced, and produced in the way the audience wants. The reviewers are paid by the wages their magazines make so making the right impression on their audience is very important. Of course this means that different magazines will write differently, so often a PS3 magazine will bash xBox as its competitor system and magazine. This is the problems game reviewers have to face; if they are sent in a game to review that is rival to something else they review, chances are that they won't review it well because their audience won't like it. This is where the controversy lies; do reviewers lie in their reviews just to please their audiences and make money?
This brings me to my next point of subjective and objective reviews. Subjective, meaning from a single person's opinion and objective meaning from many different opinions. Having a subjective review will most likely mean it is biased and written to please the audience if it is in a magazine, an objective opinion will vary and is more likely to have lots of different opinions in it, even if they are trying to make the same point, they will still be different. Online reviews are often more subjective but do it for their own opinion more than trying to please an audience as they aren't often being paid to do it, anyone can access it as it's online so the reviewers have more freedom of what they say, often saying either how much they love a game or how much they hate it (source 3)
NGJ writing I find is sometimes bias and unfair, if you read a magazine solely for PS3 they are surely going to big up all the big new PS3 games and compare them (and how much better they are) to the new xBox games. They will also belittle the not-so-great selling PS3 games as well as other console games because they know that if someone buys a PS3 magazine, they will almost definitely be a PS3 user. (Source 4) This seems unfair, the reviewers are writing for an audience and what they want to hear, not telling their actual feelings a lot of the time. As a PS3 user myself, I surely wouldn't big up Call of Duty if I was writing a review on it. It's a popular game for all platforms, including the PS3 but that doesn't mean I personally love it. I however feel that if I was writing for a PS3 magazine I would most likely have to write about how amazing it is, even if that isn't how I really feel. This is why I think that game magazines and the reviews within them are most likely biased; they are being told to write these things for their audiences. The qualities of NGJ therefore are most likely biased. Ranking games, like ranking films via stars can also be biased in a sense, but the same problems will arise as when it comes to bias reviews.
All in all, I think reviewing games is biased especially in magazines and the reviewers themselves are pressurised into writing what society wants instead of what they actually feel.
Source 1: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Video_game_journalism
Source 2: http://gillen.cream.org/wordpress_html/assorted-essays/how-to-use-and-abuse-the-games-press-and-how-the-games-press-wants-to-use-and-abuse-you/
Source 3: http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/egrr_550_62798
Source 4: http://gillen.cream.org/wordpress_html/assorted-essays/the-new-games-journalism/
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