The Gaming Review Review

Lately in the MMO-sphere there’s been a bit of to-do over reviews and what a proper MMO review really constitutes. The most recent and visible example was Eurogamer’s review of Darkfall, which generated quite a bit of angst and outrage, even straight from the developers, about the practice of proper gaming reviews. Looking around at where gaming sites placed recent MMOs, I stumbled upon a review of Aion on Eurogamer – one which immediately drew the usual ire from dedicated players looking to discredit the review for being lies and chicanery.

To be perfectly honest, I don’t really see a need to be upset over your favorite game getting a bad review from someone else. I’ve always shrugged off reviews for the very simple reason that, boiled down, they are essentially someone’s subjective opinion about their experiences. The only difference between reviewers and us as players is really where the paycheck is coming from. Don’t get me wrong – we can’t all be Roger Ebert – but Ebert and his peers in the movie reviewing biz, along with their counterparts in the gaming industry, have simply come up with a framework for a review that might or might not be helpful to someone’s decision about something.

Getting bent out of shape and wanting to burn a reviewer at the stake for a supposedly poor review is just kind of silly to me. I mean, in the end, what really matters is how you yourself are experiencing the game. If the worst-reviewed game in the world is a game that you play for 6 hours straight a day, who’s to say that you’re wrong for enjoying it? I do think that people should relax and understand that when a reviewer gives a game a bad or not-ideal review, they aren’t telling you how much you should enjoy a game. They’re simply sharing their own, inevitably biased opinion about that particular aspect.

Besides, “professional” reviewers have to acknowledge that Joe Schmoe who has a blog that some people might regularly follow is starting to gain credibility. It’s why Evony is so bent out of shape over Bruce and his articles on Evony’s practices. A person who writes with little to no journalistic or reviewer training can create the same kind of resonance with readers and influence them much like a reviewer can. In that respect, the opinions on a particular game are potentially so numerous and so varied so as to further reinforce what I’m saying. Reviews are just opinions, and unlike assholes, they aren’t an inevitable part-and-parcel to our function or motivation to be gamers.

I read reviews to get a second opinion and ideas on my own feelings about a title. But in the end, I control what I like or dislike, be angry or happy about, whether to have waffles for breakfast or not, and other such significant and important decisions. I’m just happy that we can get such a variance of opinion on any title, no matter how well-reviewed it is by professionals.