Video game reviewers used to provide a valuable service. Back when all video games were Nintendo expensive, we needed trustworthy reviewers to guide us towards making the correct purchase. Paying the inflation-equivalent of $100+ for a single video game made a single bad purchase really hurt.
Nowadays, people log on Steam and scroll through hundreds of previously purchased (never played) games they picked up for a few dollars each during a Steam holiday sale 3 years ago. They can just click download and start playing anything that tickles their fancy!
Plus I’d also add that many gamers have found games that have enormous replay value (especially multiplayer games like League of Legends or Hearthstone or Fortnite) and they sink thousands upon thousands of hours into that one game.
What room is there for professional game reviewers reviewing new games every week and writing about them? Most gamers seem to have more games than they could ever want, plus single games that could last a lifetime by themselves.
The same could really be said for music reviews. People used to read magazines like Rolling Stone in order to get reviews of the latest songs from the hottest bands. Nowadays people just listen to the music themselves and decide whether or not they like it, no reviewers needed.
These explanations make sense to me, but they seem to conflict a little with what’s being said in the post, where it’s implied that game journalism sites get a decent amount of traffic but it isn’t worth as much because advertising as a whole is collapsing somehow:
It doesn’t matter how many millions, or even tens of millions of people are reading a website if the means of financially supporting that writing are evaporating.
I think there’s a lot of explanations for the decrease in value of the ads:
I’ve heard YouTube video ads pay a lot less to the creator than they used to. A lot of creators are struggling and feel pressured to release a lot more videos and more consistently. But this can all be measured by view counts where the numbers drop off as engagement disappears.
One of the worst things a YouTube creator can do is completely change the type of videos they make. This often gets people to stop clicking videos and YouTube’s algorithm takes this as a sign to stop recommending that creator, causing their views to drop off a cliff.
I wonder if there’s a similar issue with the ads on game review sites today. I have seen some YouTube video reviews that include a sponsored segment for a game I’d never in a million years consider playing (which has no relevance to the video at hand). Maybe if people are reading reviews the ads aren’t relevant to the games they’re playing so they never bother with them?
It’s so crazy to me that ads pay less and subscriptions cost more.
Are these AI bullet points, lmao?
I never use AI. Can’t stand it. Wish it would go away!
I also think it’s completely stupid and overhyped. I took a course in 4th year on building and training neural networks with PyTorch. I know how it all works at an intimate level. It’s not going to lead to a singularity any time soon (as so many people think).
A more apt comparison would be with film reviewers. Before the internet, knowing what a movie was about, if you didn’t care about spoilers, would require either someone watching and telling you, or reading a piece on a newspaper (or, in some places, watching TV). It’s almost the same with “professional” game reviews and how they completely lost space to random dudes on the internet.
Also, watching a video usually feels more like entertainment, whereas reading a review or walkthrough feels more like doing some research.
theneverfox@pawb.social 1 week ago
You’re also missing a big piece… You can’t fucking trust the reviews any more. Steam reviews are great, and game reviewers have been trying to insist “no, this trash game is actually great, don’t trust your fellow gamers” for years now
At this point, it’s blatantly obvious you can pay for good critic reviews, and there’s no walking that back… Especially since there’s better, more honest, options