Originally Posted by
Vivi22
Fair enough. But I disagree with the idea that all game journalists are professional enough to separate their financial incentive to give good coverage from their evaluation of a game, or that their editors and superiors would let them publish anything that was too disparaging. The simple reality is, and this is the point I was making, so long as such an obvious and significant incentive to go easy on big game publishers exists with nearly every media organization out there, we can't say whether their reviews are reliable or not with any certainty. They may be, but there's plenty of reason to think they wouldn't be either. And if we can't tell whether they let that financial bias sway their opinion then the only choice we have to protect ourselves, as customers, from bad information is to assume that they can't be considered reliable and read anything they publish with that bias in mind. It doesn't mean everything they say is worthless. A preview of a game where they show or describe how it works is probably pretty reliable at least in so far as telling you what the game is supposed to be like. But it's foolish in my opinion for anyone to spend money based solely on the word of professional critics.
It'd be like a politician who got most of their campaign money from the oil industry telling you that what the world needs is fewer environmental regulations around the extraction and transportation of oil. Are you going to take that politicians word for it that less environmental regulation is in everyone's best interests when they're literally being paid by people who would financially benefit from such laws? Of course you wouldn't. So why assume that every reviewer is credible when the companies they review are literally paying their salary?
Reply With Quote