Jeff Gerstman fired from Gamespot

[Blarg]

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
Reviews are usually a joke, it's hard to find good ones.

[/ QUOTE ]I don't agree with this. Most of the reviews I have read for games I have most recently played have all been pretty spot on.


The big issue here is that it now throws the legitimacy of any review in question.

FWIW, this has been a problem with music reviews as well. Several record labels have threatened to pull advertising money from magazines or websites if they get bad reviews from them.

I say [censored] that [censored], [censored] POS companies. You think this is communist Russia? Worried about bad reviews? THEN MAKE GOOD STUFF!

[/ QUOTE ]

Since when haven't reviews been questionable though? This has been an ongoing problem since gaming mags and websites started. It's not new and it will never go away.

[AceLuby]

I've adopted the notion of reading the article and seeing if I would like it based on what they wrote. It's usually pretty objective. The number has really become useless IMO.

[Dire]

Another problem that hasn't been mentioned is that it's not only publishers who want inflated reviews. Many times it's also the readers. For example, when the extremely hyped Lair received a 4.9/10 from PSM - readers (who obviously had never played the game) were completely outraged and on their site there were numerous posts of people flaming and stating they were cancelling their membership. Obviously there's no way to know if anybody actually did (or if they were even subscribed in the first place), but it still shows the mentality - and yet another problem reviewers/sites have.

[JaredL]

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
I don't think it unrealistic that most games that are released are at least above average. I mean, why else would it have been released if they didn't think people would buy it? People won't generall just buy [censored]. A video game is not like a CD, where you can sell tons of pop crap because its popular. It actually has to be good for a lot of people to buy it.

[/ QUOTE ]

Maybe this is just semantics, but I equate average with the mean. So it'd be impossible, by definition, for the majority of released games to be 'above average'.

[/ QUOTE ]

You meant median I guess.

If there are 3 games with scores of 1,7 and 10 then their average is 6 and 2 of the 3 are above average.

[Jack of Arcades]

If you count up every game rated "good" or better that has another game in the series rated "good" or better, you end up with 377 games from 112 series.

If you just look at those as part of a big series (With 2 or more other games rated "good" or better" it's at 295 games from 70ish series.

So there's about 250-300 games "good" or better that were stand alone games or with [censored] sequels. A couple of more games are in series that cross platforms. Some others are debatable (ie, Bully, Arena Football). I'm going to attempt to make a final list of all ps2 games that fit a certain criteria of stand-alone games.

[Dire]

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
I don't think it unrealistic that most games that are released are at least above average. I mean, why else would it have been released if they didn't think people would buy it? People won't generall just buy [censored]. A video game is not like a CD, where you can sell tons of pop crap because its popular. It actually has to be good for a lot of people to buy it.

[/ QUOTE ]

Maybe this is just semantics, but I equate average with the mean. So it'd be impossible, by definition, for the majority of released games to be 'above average'.

[/ QUOTE ]

You meant median I guess.

If there are 3 games with scores of 1,7 and 10 then their average is 6 and 2 of the 3 are above average.

[/ QUOTE ]

You know what I mean. 5 games of 1 10 10 10 10 and 80% are >= the median too! Oh noes! [img]/images/graemlins/wink.gif[/img]

[Jack of Arcades]

Well, yeah, but when there are 1400 reviews the mean (7) and median (7.3) are pretty close.

[scotchnrocks]

[ QUOTE ]

Since when haven't reviews been questionable though? This has been an ongoing problem since gaming mags and websites started. It's not new and it will never go away.

[/ QUOTE ]

I agree. Video games reviews are a subjective thing. The reviewer is basically reviewing a piece of art. There's no hard quantifiable data to assist in balancing things out, it is purely the reviewer's opinion.

With cars there is horsepower, lap times, etc. Video cards have specs on their hardware that can help differentiate them, etc.

There will never be a perfect system for reviewing video games, our best hope is an impartial reviewer.

[ThaSaltCracka]

Dire, DVaut, you two Gents are correct.

In some ways this is like the rating scale for women.

Clearly 5 is the middle of the ground, completely average, etc... blah blah blah. But most people seem to say 7 is average, 8 is great, 9 is amazing, 10 is perfect. Its like numbers 1-6 are thrown away, or have equal value, which isn't true. So, yeah, those average games should be a 5, but come on, when they say 7, we know what they mean. Its average.

A rating on a scale means what people want it to mean. In this case, 7 out of 10 means average.

[ThaSaltCracka]

[ QUOTE ]
There will never be a perfect system for reviewing video games, our best hope is an impartial reviewer.

[/ QUOTE ] This is impossible though. [img]/images/graemlins/grin.gif[/img]