To Review Or Not To Review, That is the Question

I think that, more often than not, most gamers are happily ignorant of the internal machinations of the gaming industry. More to the pont, most gamers really don't care about the reviewing policies of gaming magazines and websites. So, when an editor is fired and rumours crop up that the editor was cut because of pressure from the advertisers on the site then ... well, who really cares besides game industry insiders and hangers on? This is a problem that is occurring across the wider spectrum of the media too. Ultimately, most people don't care that their journalism may be tainted in some way.

Let's face it. Most gamers don't really jump on the internet and read gaming websites every day and, besides a few well known names within the industry, they aren't particularly conversant with the comings and goings of different organizations associated with the gaming press and developers. So, when allegations like this are made who really cares besides journalists within the industry who are out to make the point that the capitalistic developers control the so-called independent media and then you have the hangers on within the industry filled with people like myself. Gamers don't really care. Gamers don't particularly care about the integrity of the gaming media, just as they don't particularly care about the integrity of journalists in general.

Consumers are apathetic to this type of information on a large scale. The more that we see consumerism progress the more we see consumers become apathetic to the products they buy and the industry which promotes them. Just as you may think that the media is controlled by its advertisers there are also examples that they may not. As a case in point, Assassin's Creed was reviewed by ign.com and it received three completely different reviews from reviewers around the world. UK: 6.5/10 US: 7.7 & AUS: 8.7. Of those three scores the Australian market would be the most insignificant of all the worldwide markets and it was within this region that the game received the highest score. You would not consider 6.5 out of 10 to be a great score for a game that Ubisoft might consider to be a little bit awesome game and, considering they are a massive worldwide developer you would think that they would have some weight to throw around in order to influence such a score. But the game still received a low score. I wouldn't consider one example to provide a good cross study, but it is does make you wonder if all of the soothsaying and hype around the sacking of an editor is just that.

The reality is that games are made for gamers. Gamers, or the end user, don't particularly care about the machinations of the industry meant to report on games. Maybe if we could create a tabloid type publication which followed the lives of developers and hyped up their existance in the same way that women's magazines and other tattler type rags do then gamers might care. I don't really look forward to the day that this type of fluff publication becomes popularly accepted by gamers.