Critical reviews have an already consolidated role in journalism, especially in the field of arts. Considering the evolution of the videogame in its technical qualifications as a narrative platform, it was a natural trajectory for journalism to start looking into this “new” medium and making it an object of coverage. In fact, despite the fact that the editorship originally linked to it is technology, it is the cultural editorship that most resembles it. Thus, it became natural that videogames began to be critically reviewed, technically analyzed within their competence, from the proposal to what was executed.
With the advent of the internet, this role of critical journalism came to be questioned — it could, nowadays, not only critical journalism is questioned, but the entire practice of information gatekeeping itself. In the past, it proved useful because of the scarcity of information flow. The magazines were used to find out more about the new games announced through visually impressive low-poly images and in very low resolution for today’s standards, with preview texts with information brought with one or two months of delay, accumulated throughout the entire process. pre-release or simply with opinions from privileged journalists who managed to play a preview build in some international event.
In case we were still in doubt, we would wait for a review with the opinions of the said about the newly released product. I was too lazy to read, just go to the end of the text and take a look at the final grade given to the product, which often accompanied a summary with the pros and cons.
Well, nowadays, the player is much closer to the companies themselves without needing this information gatekeeper. Nintendo and Sony hold their own virtual showcases and journalistic scoops have become increasingly rare as a result. Consequently, the player does not need a written text explaining the feeling conveyed by a game: he himself can see the gameplays themselves on video or, better yet, the ease of the internet and virtual markets allows us to test preliminary versions of the titles ourselves.
That said, what is the real rationale behind the reviews?
Sure, from the developer’s point of view, several vehicles talking about the game will serve as a buzz strategy, almost like an Agenda Setting, whose theory, if described superficially, implies that the media guides the current issue to be discussed in the sphere Social. On the other hand, and from the audience’s point of view, since they are much closer to the releases and the intermediate becomes unnecessary?
In 1998, The Economist published a kind of poll with the artists participating in the Edinburgh Music Festival, in Scotland, about what they would change in their performances already made in the previous year. The survey found not only that critics, in general, were in agreement with each other in their criticisms, but also showed that 80% of the comments made by the artists themselves about what they had corrected in their shows also matched the criticisms made. [1]
That said, criticism has the fundamental role of bringing alternative and often technical points of view to the point of making the reader think about aspects that he most likely had not thought about. The opinion of the critic, the good critic, is not just a “liked” or “didn’t like”. In fact, the critic’s opinion itself should not matter, since the argumentation within the theoretical concepts, when applied, should determine the quality of the product, also valid for the video game.
Despite the fact that the specialized press critics are at a low morale in the 21st century, it is important to emphasize that, in fact, the role of critics only had a punctual reformulation in the era of alienated opinion. Just as the modern neologist definition of the word Fake News refers to news strategically fabricated in order to agree with an individual’s non-rational and often erroneous opinion, criticism today has acquired the meaning of ego massage.
Thus, it is not the vehicles that are most followed by their criticisms. They are influencers with their own audience. This audience specifically follows their favorite Youtuber simply because both parties often have concurring opinions, even if technically erroneous and lacking in content. The brands themselves have realized this kind of gold mine by co-opting the right influencers that will reduce the analysis to a like or dislike and reach the audience much more forcefully.
More than that, the public today doesn’t follow reviews to form their own opinion or think more about the product. The public follows reviews to know which ones are according to their own formed opinion. Again, these are opinion bubbles centered and directed in one direction. There is no conflict of ideas and concepts that could intensify the debate and, thus, generate a new meaning for an eventual video game.
That’s why, despite being controversial, aggregators such as Metacritic and Rotten Tomatoes end up serving as a thermometer to analyze the technical consistency of the pieces that are analyzed. They follow the logic built by the example of the Edinburgh Festival, despite reducing them to the good/bad dichotomy or a scale from zero to ten that says little about the specifics of each work.
Reviews, therefore, went through a kind of reframing and recentralization, moving from the press to influencers in opinion bubbles. Obviously, much of the value is lost in the technical aspect of the analysis, as while the reviews had a restricted space in the few vehicles in circulation. With the internet, reviews operate in massive numbers and technical expertise — which in cinema even had some immortalized names, like Joel Siegel, Roger Ebert and Gene Siskel or, in Brazil, like Rubens Ewald Filho — ends up fading to the detriment of superficiality promoted by a “like” or “did not like”.
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And then we got the resistance
Resistance towards large specialized vehicles even reached the level of “because”. One example is the emblematic case of Pokémon Omega Ruby/Alpha Sapphire. In it, one of the cons pointed out by the review about the game is the excessive existence of water routes where it is necessary to use surf to cover them. IGN does, in fact, have its many problems as a vehicle.
In this case, however, the debauchery was somewhat gratuitous because “too much water” was always a problem pointed out for the third generation of Pokémon and, consequently, it also applies to their remakes, as it is a conceptual error in the idea shared by both titles (original and remake).
In other words: there was an agreement with a defect that was always pointed out by fans – like the Edinburgh Festival, once again. Selflessness towards criticism in its traditional form is enough to make your own audience change their minds just to make it wrong.
Overall, the role of reviews may seem demoralized and unimportant, but it’s still there. You don’t buy a Steam product if the users’ opinion is negative, for example. If your favorite influencer doesn’t recommend it for whatever reasons, well-founded or not. It’s in our nature to want to know more about what we consume, the difference is that we analyze with much less critical sense the expert’s own criticism and let ourselves be carried away by the emotion of our own opinion bubble.
And that’s when we again start to question the technical expertise for that, in this era of mass reviews. Not to mention the issue of hype that influences these guys and the aspect of outsourced PR that affects game journalism, but these conversations are for another day.
[1] Piza, Daniel. “Jornalismo Cultural”. São Paulo: Editora Contexto, 2013.
Images by mcmurryjulie and mohamed Hassan
