Before taking another step, I should say that I don't have an answer to this question. I'm not trying to tackle this from some sort of authoritative position on high. It's just something that I've often seen over the years, and want to articulate my own thoughts on it while also hopefully engaging whomever stumbles across this article, generating a little bit of discussion in the process.
But yeah, reviews.
It would seem that a lot of gamers really care about these things. REALLY care about these things. Of course, reviews are important in helping us determine whether something is worth investing our time, money, or llamas in. Even I check reviews before deciding whether I want to buy a game, see a movie, read a book, or whatever. It's just nice to have some basic idea of what to expect from the thing in terms of its quality. However, in the realm of gaming this seems to be the central focus of so many. Game X comes out, there's the Day One Reviews, and people flock to them.
Sure, there's a lot of people that are thinking of getting the game, and want to know if it's worth the purchase, and I'm certainly sure that there are a decent number of fanboys that pile onto these things as well (armed with their fair share of preconceived notions for or against said product), but I don't see this on anywhere near as large of a scale in other mediums. Movies, books, and albums all get reviews, and there's a decent number of people that check these things out. However, the reviews aren't pursued so ravenously, and they're just one part of a much larger publication that, amazingly, does all sorts of other articles. More importantly, these articles are held in just as much if not more esteem than the reviews are.
Meanwhile, on game sites and magazines the reviews seem to get the lion's share of the attention. Also, whenever games journalism as a whole comes up on a message board or blog (really, these seem to be the two hotbeds for criticism of it), the focus of the conversation quickly shifts to the reviews aspect of the field. Very little time is spent examining the interviews, post mortems, op eds, and so forth that are published. I wonder why this is.
Do gamers at large really much care about these non-review articles? Obviously some people do, or places like Gamasutra would have shut their doors years ago, but one doesn't see a huge amount of discussion among gamers regarding all of the other aspects of games, nor do we see a lot of publications trying to put out articles that present these subjects to readers.
So, which is it? Do gamers not really care about much in games writing outside of the Reveal, Preview, Review cycle that dominates games journalism? Looking at our own traffic, I wouldn't be surprised if that were the case, and a quick perusal of major gaming forums seems to cement the assertion that it's usually the reviews threads that get the majority to the discussion.
With all of that, I'm still left wondering why this is the case. Why do gamers focus so much on reviews? Are they just not being presented with enough options to explore the hobby more? Is there not much interest in the creative process or business aspects of our hobby? Certainly some people are interested in that sort of stuff. This isn't meant as some massive blanket statement that all gamers everywhere care about nothing but reviews. Nonetheless, it always strikes me as strange that reviews are such a big thing in gaming.
I just can't put my finger on why (and I'm really trying not to get all cynical and shout, "Because they're all a bunch of bloody fanboys!" :p ).
What do you think?
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