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Poptopic: IGN and Kotaku Reviews Aren’t Influencing Game Sales Anymore

CrippledGod

CrippledGod

Banned
Separately maybe not but metacritic score still has a little bit of weight. Overall it's all about Marketing, pre-release coverage and then review scores.

Like Concord didn't have a chance because Marketing and pre-release reception was just so poor, no amount of reviews would save it apart from universal acclaim which didn't happen.

And people now flock to Youtube influencers and Twitch personalities much more. Those guys have one thing that IGN will never have - they appear genuine. On IGN a single score doesn't mean anything as a review for two similar games in the same genre can be written by different people. So what's the damn point?
 
peek

peek

Member
Arachnid said:
Good. The less, the better. Those fuckers costed me Alien Isolation 2.

yRtgxgX.png
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God youre right, shoulda been lower. They saved the publishers some money 👌

As far as the topic, I think IGN still has huge sway in terms of public perception on youtube tho. They still get big numbers vs their website. I think in general written media is dying out in gaming news. Its all videos n shit now. Which is better anyway.
 
Humdinger

Humdinger

Gold Member
They lost me with the opening line:

There was a time when sites like IGN and Kotaku were the gatekeepers of gaming culture. They were the trusted voices every gamer looked up to
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I've been gaming 25 years, and I don't remember a time when that was ever true. I agree that their credibility has gone into the toilet over the past decade, but they were never "gatekeepers of gaming culture" or "trusted voices every gamer looked up to." Please. Gamers have always been an ornery, opinionated, and individualistic bunch. They have never "looked up to" gaming journalists.

The rest of the article is fine, but the first line threw me.

p.s. I once heard Mat Piscatella say that unless a review is 9.0 or above, it doesn't appreciably affect sales. So I'm not sure review sites, even the big ones, have any real impact on sales for most games.
 
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Arachnid

Arachnid

Member
peek said:
God youre right, shoulda been lower. They saved the publishers some money 👌

As far as the topic, I think IGN still has huge sway in terms of public perception on youtube tho. They still get big numbers vs their website. I think in general written media is dying out in gaming news. Its all videos n shit now. Which is better anyway.
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Personally, I prefer written in that I can just quick scan for the points I want to read about and then get the conclusion. I still mostly do videos these days for good reviewers like ACG, but it'd be nice if they had more succinct written versions so I didn't have to spend too long on videos seeing gameplay I'd rather experience.

You are right about written media dying out though. I'm still kind of sad about Game Informer going under.
 
diffusionx

diffusionx

Gold Member
this is what happens when reviews are not written by gamers, but weird people with a social agenda. Hobbyists can pick out fakes and cons, it’s why I read say Guitar World magazine and everyone there is a guitar player.

It sounds really simple but the game writing industry lost sight of it.
 
JayK47

JayK47

Member
When game reviewers at these sites went from reviewers to activists, I stopped going to their sites. I used to go to Gamespot daily. I now maybe go a few times a year. I could care less if they disappeared off the internet at this point. I suspect that will be the case any day now.
 
T

TropicanaTwista

Member
CrippledGod said:
Separately maybe not but metacritic score still has a little bit of weight. Overall it's all about Marketing, pre-release coverage and then review scores.
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This is what I came to say. Reading the article, it isn't really clear if they mean ALL gaming "journalists" or just IGN / Kotaku. If they just mean IGN and Kotaku, I agree. They have obviously pushed more into ideologies of the game instead of just reviewing the actual game at hand. Overall though? I still think all of these sites, aggregated into metacritic still holds a decent amount of value. I know from personal experience if I think a game looks decent but I'm not sure, I'll look up the metacritic score. Its not perfect, but most of the time if a game scores like shit, it's shit and if a game scores great, it's great
 
Tiago Rodrigues

Tiago Rodrigues

Member
Reviews in general, no matter what medium are on their way out. Hell even Pitchfork is broke and it was a website that was well regarded in terms of music reviews.

In a time people have access to everything from day one either on subscriptions or influencers playing games live...there's just no need for professional reviewers to give their opinion that's mostly not even a good one. They just want to be the fastest ones to release their reviews and mostly don't even mention any problems like frame rate issues, etc. Most of them are completely uneducated regarding these issues.

If anything i'd love it if metacritic just vanished. Putting a number on a product and calling it a day is just not enough nowadays. I no longer believe critics for anything when i can experience "everything" day one. Many AAA games i can even try through PS Plus on those trial things they got.
 
EDMIX

EDMIX

Writes a lot, says very little
? who cares...

They haven't for some time.

People are generally tired of being told what to like, what the hate etc.

Its why Hogwarts still sold, Far Cry 5 and Valhalla still sold and its why even last year the "worst reviewed" Call Of Duty still moved millions of units outselling Zelda.

kotaku.com

Worst-Reviewed Call Of Duty Ever Has Already Outsold Zelda: TotK

The new Modern Warfare III wasn’t a hit online with critics or fans, but it is still selling like hotcakes
kotaku.com kotaku.com

No one fucking cares folks, when you get to a point of making dumbass petitions and every game releasing has some bias attached to the point where you need to google shit AROUND the game answer why someone is giving something a 10/10 and exaggerating it to holy hell and why someone is giving another game a 2/10 or a 4/10

Its time to unplug.

giphy.gif



I don't care if I like the game, I don't care if I hate it, a review at this point is almost worthless to me as I've seen as many folks hyping up 5/10 games acting as if they are 10/10 based on some um "world view" as I've see 0/10 or 2/10 reviews of perfectly fine games and the review is literally nothing but culture war crying shit.

Can we get back to fucking reviewing games for actually being games?

When we can get back to that, I'll take a review seriously, at this point, none of em can be trusted and this year, next year and the foreseeable future, I'm just buying games based on what the fuck I want. I should not have to google why the fuck someone is claiming a fucking game is 2/10 or 4/10, only to hear some dumbass culture war shit is why they are review bombing a game (same goes for the exaggerated 10s to counter this). Ignoring real issues to shill for some company or world view is just as fucking bad.
 
CLW

CLW

Member
I could not name a single “journalist” working at either site unless Hatfield is still at IGN I think he was still there a few years ago
 
C

Corian33

Member
The site we lost that hurts the most to me was Rock, Paper, Shotgun. Used to go there every single day for the well written articles that were almost always interesting to read even if I didn’t care about the game. Then at some the social/political commentary bug came around and the articles gradually went off the rails. Eventually it felt like a website that only had authors who hated games and gamers.
 
R

RyRy93

Member
Bullshit article desperately trying to criticize IGN for likes and shares.

IGN gave the game they hated so much (Wukong) an 8/10 and the games they gave “glowing reviews” to received 7/10.

I also doubt Outlaws sold badly.
 
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D

dragonyeuw

Member
I don't even read reviews anymore. What determines whether I buy a game nowadays is a combination of gamwr feedback on sites like this( or reddit) mixed with watching footage on YouTube.
 
L

LazyParrot

Member
I swear at this point Kotaku is being kept alive by people who refresh the site all day so they can be the first to make a post or Youtube video bitching about their latest article.
 
s_mirage

s_mirage

Member
Something I suspect has changed with gaming journalists is the reason they get into it.

Now, I might be completely off base, but the impression I get is that writers back in the old magazine days generally got into it because they loved games and felt privileged to get paid to write about them. The idea that they would get do the thing they loved, as well as go to trade shows, etc, seemed like a fantastic opportunity. To be fair, there were always writers who didn't give a damn about games at all and were just looking to build a journalistic resume (e.g. Jeremy Clarkson), but they seemed like a small minority.

My suspicion is that the same isn't true of a lot of modern game journalists. Maybe they aren't doing it because they want to play and write about games, or even because they want to be journalists; they're doing it because they see it as a stepping stone to a job inside the game industry and/or PR.

The problem with that, if true, is that it creates an immediate bias. If you're after a job with the very people you're supposed to be critiquing, it's likely to make you quite loathe to throw them under a bus. The same is true when it is clear that there's a disconnect between what gamers in general want and what the game industry is trying to push. If you're trying to find work within the industry, it's might not do your job prospects a whole lot of good if you write articles that side with gamers against the very industry you're trying to break into. The same is true if you're after a PR job: you want to show how effective you are at selling something, controlling the narrative, etc, not giving honest criticism.

Again, I might be completely wrong, but it's just the impression I get.
 
H

Hookshot

Member
s_mirage said:
Something I suspect has changed with gaming journalists is the reason they get into it.

Now, I might be completely off base, but the impression I get is that writers back in the old magazine days generally got into it because they loved games and felt privileged to get paid to write about them. The idea that they would get do the thing they loved, as well as go to trade shows, etc, seemed like a fantastic opportunity. To be fair, there were always writers who didn't give a damn about games at all and were just looking to build a journalistic resume (e.g. Jeremy Clarkson), but they seemed like a small minority.

My suspicion is that the same isn't true of a lot of modern game journalists. Maybe they aren't doing it because they want to play and write about games, or even because they want to be journalists; they're doing it because they see it as a stepping stone to a job inside the game industry and/or PR.

The problem with that, if true, is that it creates an immediate bias. If you're after a job with the very people you're supposed to be critiquing, it's likely to make you quite loathe to throw them under a bus. The same is true when it is clear that there's a disconnect between what gamers in general want and what the game industry is trying to push. If you're trying to find work within the industry, it's might not do your job prospects a whole lot of good if you write articles that side with gamers against the very industry you're trying to break into. The same is true if you're after a PR job: you want to show how effective you are at selling something, controlling the narrative, etc, not giving honest criticism.

Again, I might be completely wrong, but it's just the impression I get.
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Nah I think you are right. There was a guy called Matt something who left to go work at Nintendo and all his peers cheered this and said well done to him. No one in the business seemed to think it was odd or wrong, they all wished they could have the same happen to them.
 
Bernardougf

Bernardougf

Member
Reviews and fake Awards by the mainstream media are circle jerking and fart smelling in the modern woke acces media .... anyone still taking them into consideration should have their brain checked
 
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Fatmanp

Fatmanp

Member
I feel that the only time I have ever felt that one particular media outlet had the capacity to sway my purchase decision not named Digital Foundry was the OG Gamespot with Gertsmann and Kasavin.
 
A

Aguero9320

Member
Strange article that discredits itself in numerous ways while losing its broader, probably valid point. IGN gave all three of those games 7 - hardly ‘glowing’ and there is no evidence Outlaws has flopped.

You could write an article making the exact opposite point using the exact same points - IGN being lukewarm about games directly influences them performing poorly which means IGN has a strong hold over the community. Stupid.
 
Melfice7

Melfice7

Member
the casual market never cared, casuals see the new fifa and buy it, gaming sites were always for the hardcore gamers, and most hardcore gamers today realize how dumb journalists and reviewers are so of course they are now irrelevant
 
SF Kosmo

SF Kosmo

Al Jazeera Special Reporter
Metacritic scores definitely have an influence, still. Obviously there are other factors and you can always find outliers but if a game is getting a 65 on Metacritic it's not gonna sell as well as a similar game with an 85.
 
SF Kosmo

SF Kosmo

Al Jazeera Special Reporter
RoboFu said:
IGN died like 10 years ago really. I remember the big site update that made advertising 90% of the site. I stop viewing at that point.
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All written content on the internet started withering around then (really it started more like 15 years ago). People stopped visiting websites as destinations, as everything moved to social media and aggregators and hubs like YouTube where clickbait became the only way to survive.

I was around in game journalism for this shift, the mandates went from writing these detailed retrospectives and well researched interview pieces to just finding a way to bang out grabby headlines about whatever was trending. Those that were able to elevate their personal brand maybe got to hold on with the help of podcasts or YouTube channels, but writing for big sites like IGN stopped being fun.
 
{insert code here}

{insert code here}

Member
Legacy media. It's all irrelevant. They're catering to a shrinking demographic of 30+ year old folks. TikTok and Discord have taken over and it's so much better this way.

OT, I've got some steam keys for RE:Rev 1& 2 if anyone wants them just send a DM.
 
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U

ungalo

Member
There was a time when sites like IGN and Kotaku were the gatekeepers of gaming culture
Click to expand...
How could that even happen ? It would mean players (at least for some genres, i would say single-player console gamers) didn't know what they were talking about either. Those outlets were always shit.
 
SyedDanishAnwar

SyedDanishAnwar

Banned
I wanted to share my experience rather history about how we made decisions in the stone age era - i.e. 80s and 90s. Back then it was all peer pressure. If a kid in the class has it, all of us wanted to play the same game. There was not much thought process involved. And in majority of the cases the games turned out to be a hit.

The second source of influence were the TVs. I clearly remember seeing Movies, Games, and Videos and later CyberNet that used to air on Dubai TV when I was a kid. Magazines did little to influence our decision.

Fast forward to today, I still have the habit of being influenced by other gamers and videos as it's an old habit.

Peers are now replaced by user comments on forums esp. Metacritic, Steam and Reddit, and TVs by video reviews. I don't like reading reviews on IGN and Kotaku as it seems to be the preference of a single author.

I believe an independent mass survey should be carried out about the buying behavior of gamers today. I am curious how most gamers make their decisions to buy games today. Does user comment influence them or are there other factors?
 
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StueyDuck

StueyDuck

Member
Good I suppose, it's pretty easy to see what's a good game and what isn't prior to launch though, without any influence, everything has been done before and most games are just rinse repeate the same slop. We just need to know the technical aspects these days, does it run well.

Reviewers are a waste of space. Just a bunch of slacktavists thinking they are changing the world from their San Fran offices. They lost touch with the gaming community many many years ago.
 
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Shubh_C63

Shubh_C63

Member
I have never been wrong about a game I am not been able to judge in 30 mins of a Youtube video. Metacritc score does affects the sale, though Steam Reviews which are highly accurate should influence more.

IGN scores are meme scores. Nobody is buying based on them but we all (including me) still wanna know what they gave.
 
I

Imaginary_Fiction

Banned
I pay 0 attention to IGN reviews. They mean nothing to me. Time and time and time again if seen them be paid schills for companies like Microsoft and Ubisoft, especially on social media where they aren't reporting news so much as framing advertisements as "news".

And kotaku? They went to absolute shit many many years ago constantly just cross referencing stories from their other sister sites, constantly putting in ads disguised as news, their blue haired and progressive and social agenda "journalists" just push woke garbage and nonsense out, and they have no value because they spend more time lecturing than talking about games. That site died about the time snaktaku went away like 10 years ago.

Gaming journalism on the mid and main stream levels on the whole is a joke. It's been invaded by advertising and social agenda screechers.
 
AJUMP23

AJUMP23

Parody of actual AJUMP23
IGN guilty of yellow journalism. Looks like their political agenda turned them into unaware racist.
 
Bond007

Bond007

Member
There used to be a time when i felt IGN reviews really lined up with my opinions and if it didn't, i could justify why and understand someone else's opinion. EGM even before IGN.
Good scores were nice to justify you purchase or continued fandom- but reading the words and opinions so long as they mirror mine is usually what i look for in "translating" a review for ME. I still do this by cutting out any opinions on why i should hate a game based on external factors or blow off things they hate and i have experience enjoying.

That being said, reviews hold some weight and general consensus and that's ok. We all get excited to know more and see how something turned out in the eyes of someone else. I disagree with the idea that low scores always equal bad games though.
 
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yanhash

yanhash

Member
Criticism is just
the dude your opinion GIF

Plus 90% the vast majority of gamers even their detractors agree with kotaku/ign 90% of the time, so this makes no sense
 
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