No comments at all? This is some interesting stuff. In case you're too impatient to get through the whole essay (and it's only about 4 pages in a book), I'll quote the parts relevant to videogame reviewing.

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THree of these books deal with subjects of which he is so ignorant that he will have to read at least fifty pages if he is to avoid making some howler which will betray him not merely to the author (who of course knows all about the habits of book reviewers), but even to the general reader.


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All the stale old phrases - "a book that no one should miss", "something memorable on every page," "of special value are the chapters dealing with, etc., etc." - will jump into their places like iron filings obeying the magnet, and the review will end up at exactly the right length and with just about three minutes to go.




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It not only involves praising trash - though it does involve that, as I will show in a moment - but constantly *inventing* reactions towards books about which one has no spontaneous feelings whatever.





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None of this is remediable so long as it is taken for granted that every book deserves to be reviewed. It is almost impossible to mention books in bulk without grossly over-praising the great majority of them. Until one has some kind of professional relationship with books one does not discover how bad the majority of them are. In much more than nine cases out of ten the only objectively truthful criticism would be, "This book is worthless," while the truth about the reviewer's own reaction would probably be: "This book does not interest me in any way, and I would not write about it unless I were paid to." But the public will not pay to read that kind of thing. Why should they? They want some kind of guide to the books they are asked to read, and they want some kind of evaluation. But as soon as values are mentioned, standards collapse. For if one says - and nearly every reviewer says this kind of thing at least once a week - that King Lear is a good play and The Four Just Men is a good thriller, what meaning is there in the word "good"?




I decided to quote that whole paragraph since it's all important, but bolded the more important sentences for the impatient.

I think that all of these things are directly analogous to videogame reviewing.

That many reviews are written before the game has been finished, and many bear hallmarks of trying to be written having played as little of the game as possible, just so the review isn't obviously false.

That reviewers, generally, write with old, stale phrases, but in gaming's case, they are things like, "eye-popping graphics", "a must-play [or must-have] game", or "immersive".

That reviewing games has lead to a vast overpraising of games.

In my experience, my most common reaction when finishing a game is, "Eh, it was okay. I guess." This is a reaction I have never read in a review. 8 out of ten times, reviews are postive, and 2 out of ten times they are negative. The most common reaction, I would think, would be of simple disinterest, which I have never seen expressed.

That when a brilliant game is called good, and a game which is merely useful in killing 2 hours of time somewhat pleasantly, the word "good" becomes meaningless. Few game reviewers care to discriminate between those standards.