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The Sad Unusability of Video Game Reviews (bottomfeeder.substack.com)
submitted 15 hours ago* (last edited 15 hours ago) by inlandempire@jlai.lu to c/games@sh.itjust.works
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"So I was trying to write reviews of a bunch of hit indie games I played recently. Then I got overwhelmed by the pointlessness of video game reviews these days and had to take a long nap.

And, I mean, pro reviews are pointless, right? If a game has a big enough budget or following and isn’t actively on fire, it gets a 9. If it is a competently made but low-budget indie, like mine, it gets a 7. If you read the actual review (nobody does), it’s a collection of facts about the game you could easily get from watching the trailer. Throw in a couple of comments from the reviewer about whether they like this genre or not, mix in 3 or 4 ham-handed political comments, and you got a review! Hit send!"

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[-] inlandempire@jlai.lu 4 points 15 hours ago* (last edited 14 hours ago)

read the article, there's other points raised

[-] ryven@lemmy.dbzer0.com 5 points 13 hours ago

The main point seems to be that individual reviewers don't have recognizable voices anymore, but honestly I don't really buy the idea that reviews ever "worked" in the way that this writer seems to want them to. Any individual number was always meaningless except for knowing whether a specific person liked the thing at a specific moment in time. Maybe some people were lucky enough to know a reviewer who reliably predicted how they'd feel about the product, such that they could just look at the number and be good to go, but IMO the "feature list" has always been the most interesting part of the review, and it hasn't gone anywhere.

[-] inlandempire@jlai.lu 4 points 12 hours ago

I do think the author missed an opportunity to study how critics work and how they're perceived in other fields, media literacy is a lot more prevalent in other art forms like cinema or literature, which leads to more value being given to reviews, which is lacking in the video game industry imo

[-] mysterious_cake@feddit.nl 0 points 14 hours ago

Why do you assume I haven’t?

[-] Rhynoplaz@lemmy.world 1 points 13 hours ago

To be fair, you may have read it, but I bet most of us didn't.

this post was submitted on 17 Jun 2026
63 points (92.0% liked)

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