While there are bad reviewers I think as a whole reviewers get a raw deal. They’re rarely judged on the quality of their reviews.
They get judged on wether the reader agrees with their review or not.
Write a negative review on a game the reader likes and you're pandering to whatever subsection of people the reader doesn’t like, obviously didn’t play it, etc, etc.
Write a negative review about a game the reader doesn’t like and it’s a great review.
Write a positive review about a game the reader likes and again it was a great review.
Write a positive review about a game the reader doesn’t like and you’re taking money, pandering, didn’t play, etc.
Say the game has bug and the reader didn’t experience any and you’re obviously computer illiterate or are playing on an ibm xt 286.
Say the games stable and reader has bugs well then you’re getting paid again.
Reviewers know this. It’s not surprising that the girl in the video says they care more what their peers think of the reviews than players. Peers are more apt to judge the content of the review rather than if they agree with the content.
I don't think it's like that and I will dismount it point by point, using myself as an example.
If a reviewer writes a negative review on a game I don't like, I take into consideration what parts of it they didn't like. If it's a roguelike and the review says as a negative thing "It's too punishing and when you die you have to start over keeping just some a fraction of what you earned in your whole previous playthrough", then yes, he's a shit reviewer that doesn't know what roguelike games are about. If the game has complex combat layers and about 50 different creatures but the reviewer says "the enemies are always the same, and you basically just move and attack the whole time", then yes, he's a shit reviewer that didn't bother to play the game beyond the first half hour. Especially if you compare with other reviews that know what they're talking about and while they may have similar scores, they at least played the game they took a responsibility of reviewing for the people who will read it. If the reviewer mentions parts of the game that I've noticed to be faulty, but I personally put up with them because for whatever reason it's worth "suffering" through it for me, then I'll say it's a fair review, even if to me, the game would deserve a tad higher score.
If the reviewer writes a negative review about a game I don't like, I don't know why I was reading a negative review about a game I didn't like. I don't waste time on those. But I suppose you know what you're talking about by personal experience?
If the reviewer writes a positive review about a game I like, I'll find a certain degree of empathy. We all love to find people who have similar tastes with us, even here on these boards, people keep posting opinions about games they like, hunting for that one moment when someone sides with them, as if that gave validation to their opinions. I honestly don't think it makes the reviewer better, just as it doesn't make me think better of you or anyone when they share my opinion of a game. It just means you agree on something.
If you write a positive review about a game I don't like, again, it depends. If it's a good game from a genre I don't touch, I accept it. I dislike sport games and heavily scripted action games, but I do acknowledge that FIFA 20** and GTA* they are very well done games for their target audiences, and thus deserve a very high score. It is different if say… someone gives a 10/10 to garbage like The Outer Worlds just because they want to shit on Bethesda by exhalting their newborn competition. That's a bad reviewer that just says what he thinks people want to hear to get upvotes and clicks.
In general, most reviewers are as someone mentioned a couple posts ago, self-centered individuals that just want to position themselves in a niche where they'll get a portion of the cake in the form of followers/subscribers, so that they can live of off their shitty, unqualified job, for which they never studied or went to any university for. And as such, their credibility rounds up to about a total sum of zero.
There are exceptions, of course. There are real journalists with prestige and earned respect in the gaming industry. Few and far in between. But we're talking here about the bulk of them, and that's what this post goes directed towards.
