Final Fantasy XV now ships 6 million units

[Scruffington]

So he's right, pretty much every professional game journalist and critic is unreliable because they have a huge financial incentive to not tell the truth about bad games. Does that mean they all lie all the time? Probably not. Does it mean their review scores are largely meaningless and they may have to be very careful about tearing apart bad games from major publishers? Absolutely. The present way that game journalism works is an incestuous relationship between the people reporting on games and the companies they're reporting on. The former can't really afford to exist without the latter. I see no way that a person can know that without taking everything they report and every review they write with a pretty hefty bit of salt. And again, I'm not saying they're bad people, but they're in a pretty smurfed up situation that does not lend itself well to keeping up ones professional ethics.

At least with user reviews, especially for big titles and despite the possibility of there being some fake reviews or trolls eviscerating a game for no reason and fanboys giving it a 10 because they love the series so much, I'll get thousands of people who's only financial connection to the company is that they bought the game saying what they think of it rather than the views of a few dozen people who have plenty of reason to appear biased whether they are or not. Personally, I'm going to give more weight to the 20,000+ that review a game on the steam store than to journalists.

But then, I've worked as an auditor before and one of the things you learn is the appearance of bias or unethical behaviour (taking money from the people you're supposed to report honestly on) is just as bad as actual bias because everyone outside of your head will never e able to truly tell the difference between the two. If you want to be credible as a game journalist, you've got to be independent from the game advertising. It doesn't work otherwise.

If you want to wear a tinfoil hat and believe that every review is paid for, that's on you.

There are dozens of examples to the contrary -- including one just recently where an indie developer threatened to not give more game keys to a reviewer if they gave the game a bad review. The reviewer publicized this threat.

Even beyond that, there was a report just recently about how there is a steady decline in games with 90+ review scores on Metacritic. Clearly reviewers aren't afraid to give games the scores they deserve, as you seem to suggest they are.

The ironic part about your argument is that the example FinalxxSin cited was a reviewer speaking their mind and giving their honest opinion about a game, which they thought had an overpowering water element and gave it a score of 7.8 / 10. It was clearly not a "paid review" as you seem to suggest most are, yet he made fun of the reviewer anyways.

Honestly though, I don't put as much stock into reviews as my posts would indicate. I originally just used review scores as a way to argue that the game was worse received than XIII -- at least by critics. The only opinion that matters to me about any piece of media is my own. Of course it's always nice when others share your opinion, but if they don't...that's okay too.

[Slothy]

If you want to wear a tinfoil hat and believe that every review is paid for, that's on you.

I'm afraid you've missed the point of my post.

There are dozens of examples to the contrary -- including one just recently where an indie developer threatened to not give more game keys to a reviewer if they gave the game a bad review. The reviewer publicized this threat.

Indie developers are rarely advertisers because they rarely have money. This example doesn't contradict anything I've said.

Even beyond that, there was a report just recently about how there is a steady decline in games with 90+ review scores on Metacritic. Clearly reviewers aren't afraid to give games the scores they deserve, as you seem to suggest they are.

Seeing as the majority of critic reviews score in the 75-100% range regardless of how bad the game is I'm not sure why I should care that the last few years have had a few less over 90. Particularly when the last few years have had series like Assassin's Creed release games that were actually broken at launch, and we're seeing fewer massive triple A franchise titles every year with the skyrocketing of development costs in the last 20 years. In fact, all your link is evidence of is that there are fewer games getting over a 90% average. Whether it's because reviewers are more honest or there's simply fewer games is not something you can discern from that metric alone and it's silly for either of us to try and read any of that into it.

The ironic part about your argument is that the example FinalxxSin cited was a reviewer speaking their mind and giving their honest opinion about a game, which they thought had an overpowering water element and gave it a score of 7.8 / 10. It was clearly not a "paid review" as you seem to suggest most are, yet he made fun of the reviewer anyways.

Considering I didn't look at his cited review or use it to support my argument it's not really ironic at all.

Honestly though, I don't put as much stock into reviews as my posts would indicate. I originally just used review scores as a way to argue that the game was worse received than XIII -- at least by critics. The only opinion that matters to me about any piece of media is my own. Of course it's always nice when others share your opinion, but if they don't...that's okay too.

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?

[Scruffington]

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?

I wasn't suggesting you were wearing a tinfoil hat...I should have worded that more clearly. My mistake.

My point with the indie game example is that some reviewers do have integrity. Sure you can say "well it wasn't a AAA developer bribing them" but it is still a scenario of a reviewer with some degree of honesty. I also do feel that the reason fewer games nowadays have 90+ reviews is twofold: there are fewer good games and reviews are becoming more legitimate. That's just my take on it.

I think there's actually a lot both you and I agree on. I definitely side with you on the fact that reviews shouldn't be the sole motivating factor for someone to buy a game on. They should be met with skepticism just as someone should be skeptical of user reviews. All reviews -- professional or not -- are simply someone else's opinions. I also agree with you that some reviewers are definitely under pressure to be lenient on games that otherwise deserve poor scores.

However, I don't think it's as bad of a problem now compared to the past. A lot of games that are getting low to mid 80s might not have received the same score years ago. I do think reviewers should be harsher on games that truly deserve it, and I think we are moving in the right direction.