Kotaku: Reviewers

Stand Aside Yahtzee, Anne Diamond Stole Our Hearts

Mark Wilson — Fri, 28 Mar 2008 12:00:00 MDT

We're always on the lookout for the next entertaining review talent...even if it's not meant to be funny. These parental reviews from British TV personality Anne Diamond are absolutely perfect Friday reading. It's her sincere, unadulterated disgust for the content that makes her reviews so fantastic. Hit the jump for a bonus review.

Bravo to at least one parent taking the ratings system into their own hands and actually playing some of the games that otherwise go blindly criticized by the mass media...if only for the purpose of this one news article. And if you enjoyed the reads, make sure to hit up Daily Mail for the full set.

Anne Diamond gives her chilling verdict on the violent video games that are to carry age ratings [Daily Mail via WiiWii]

Game Reviewers Scientifically Proven to be Useless

egauger — Wed, 20 Sep 2006 16:20:36 MDT

Following outcry against similar results of a smaller study conducted last year, Susquehanna Financial Group's Video Game Journal once again took to the facts to try and find a correlation between game sales and the opinions of game reviewers.

And once again, with an even larger sample than originally taken, their data indicates that there is no reason to believe that anyone cares what reviewers think, after all.

...a theory (that game ratings matter) that fails under scrutiny is accepted as conventional wisdom. Conventional wisdom is wrong. And we have not even addressed the causation argument - that a higher rating causes a game to sell better. There is no reason to argue causation, because while correlation does not equal causation, the absence of correlation means no causation in our case.

WHERE IS YOUR LESTER BANGS NOW? Eliza Gauger

Game Score-to-Sale Theory Again Disproven [Gamasutra]

Firing Squad's Five Problems With Game Journalism

lsmith — Fri, 27 Jan 2006 09:46:30 MST

Firing Squad outlines some beef with game journalism in an article they posted today. The five problems (in this diagnosis) are Innovation Bias, Reviewers Have to Rush Through the Game, Not Enough Time to Think Before You Write, Selection Bias and a Distorted Sense of Value. Check out the Firing Squad piece, see if you agree or disagree with it and come back here and tell us what (if any) problems you think plague video game journalism.

Problems with Video Game Journalism [Firing Squad]