I don’t expect Keanu Reeves will review the game or play it for hours on a public stream all while going on about how he’s gonna kick it honest with his viewers.
I know I’m old man yelling at clouds about this, but I’ve never liked the booster gifts or swag for reviewers.
Not trying to pick on you or make a statement here, but I genuinely don’t know how you have the spare energy to notice or care about this right now. I can’t even appreciate the momentary return to frivolity.
I have an abundance of persnickitiness!
Don’t most review sites have rules about gifts over a certain monetary value? Obviously this is not relevant for people with their own youtube channel or twitch streamers or whatever, but I’m pretty sure accepting that chair would be a big no-no for an IGN employee, for example.
As long as people aren’t sitting in that chair giving a scored review for the game, I don’t really have an issue. It’s a trivially cheap (in relation to the marketing budget of a project this size) way to build some hype and good will amongst “influencers”, and almost certainly has a good ROI as far as their marketing dollars go.
I don’t care about chairs or other free things for streamers, reviewers, whatever. Journalism in gaming has never been real journalism, it’s just a bunch of people talking about (grown-ups) toys so I never expected the rigours of journalism from them.
I only care about gameplay and I hope they improved it compared to the Witcher games…
I really don’t get this, for grown-up toy reviews to be in any way useful they need to be honest to their own subjective opinions. If they aren’t, there’s no way to read them and get any insight into whether the gameplay has been improved compared to the Witcher games, for instance. Noone is expecting game reviewers to uncover the next watergate, but they really should not be corrupt. It’s a low bar to clear.
With that said, anyone watching a stream or lets play in this day and age and expecting a completely impartial assessment is almost always setting themselves up for failure. Part of it is economics, there just isn’t enough money to sustain a living for 98% of people interested in doing this work. So they accept help whenever they can get it, and gravitate towards games that can attract viewers whether they like them or not. You just need to go into a lets play / stream with that in mind.
We just have different views. I see gaming journalists as influencers, not journalists. Some reviewers blatantly try to sell the game they are reviewing. Others are more sophisticated in promoting it. And others offer their honest views. It’s up to me to decide who is full of shit and who isn’t(in the words of the great George Carlin “takes about 8 seconds”).
Because they’re not cool, and it takes away from the experience of the game (for me)? I would hate if they put Ninja and Shroud in there as well.
What I don’t get with the chairs and the influencers is that this is just CDP wasting money. The game is hyped beyond belief already, so they don’t need to do this shit. Thy’re basically flushing away the €60 I paid them for pre-ordering the game, and personally I’m not a fan of it.
I don’t know of any business that would say “Welp, I think it’s hyped enough” and stop hyping as they get closer to release.
Counterpoint: Uploading the digital likeness of a streamer shill into your electronic videogame is 100% immersive cyberpunk.
And even cyberpunks need to sit somewhere?
Just you guys wait, for all we know Tom could be in this, probably teaching Keanu Reeves how to play a boardgame in the game. ;)
Company uses ads to attract customers. Outrageous. Did not this ship sail a hundred plus years ago. Is it the medium of ad? Fun fact my kids only want to watch streamers, they have no idea what network “wait until a specific time for your show” television even is. I am not using hyperbole.
Indeed, it is cyberpunk as fuck.
Same for mine, except they are too young to be let loose on YouTube or twitch but Netflix managed to thoroughly spoil them for a la carte tv. They just won’t stand for that shit and consider it cruel and unusual punishment to not be able to choose what they watch.
The fuck off my lawn.
No, he should be Tomsplaining how the game works in the tutorial.
Hell my kids are watching PBS right now, but on the PBS Kids app for the Tv, so it is shows on demand.
They can’t stand watching OTA broadcast scheduling.
I would draw a distinction here between journalists and critics. Critics in all fields are influencers. It’s not their job to do investigative journalism (though there is some crossover), it’s their job to offer a well-reasoned opinion on a book/movie/game/album/whatever, and to be a general expert in the field. Even in gameland one would like this work to be done well and honestly.
As for uncovering the next Watergate, yeah, there’s not a lot of that kind of Woodward and Bernstein journalism going on in the game space. Most people who work for these sites are not trained journalists; they’re just gamers who can write well. There’s been a bit of evolution in that sphere, though there could certainly be more.
Games Industry dot biz is on the journalistic side rather than the critic side of things as one example.
Kotaku dig deeper than most on some stuff…
I liked the “New Games Journalism” “school” of writing that flickered, roared, and died during the W Administration. It was passionate and sentimental, and tried to lead the reader into the subjective view of the writer’s head. For explaining the worth of a pastime, this was more effective than an objective “X game sold Y copies and each player collects Z rat skins”.
(This link is updated and was what the first post in this thread was pointing to. Though only two of the original links in that article still point to the articles.)
Edit: though, to Gordon’s point, sure, these critics came down on the Influencer side more than the Journalist side.