commish said:
Game "journalists" give their opinions on games. That's it. Their opinions. "I like this game." "This game is fun." Are you going to take a game journalist to court and sue them because they said a game was fun and you disagreed? Even though there are 50 other "experts" you could "consult with" regarding a game, all in about 10 minutes time? And you compare a guy giving his opinion of a game with a doctor who is prescribing you medicine so you don't die? What? And who the F calls a game reviewer an "Expert"? What makes them an expert over you or I? Do they have some knowledge of the game that we can't possess? They only edge a game journalist has is that he played the game and I haven't. There is no secret set of skills they have that makes them any more of an expert than anyone else on GAF. Oy.
Before i reply, i'd like to qualify my response. I've been a doctor for about 8 years now, so i know a little bit about the ins and outs of medicine. You might be a doctor too, and if you are, i'd like to hear your take on it, but here is mine.
Medicine is all about doctor's opinions. Yes, we go through years and years of training, but at the end of the day it's not as simple as finding the answer in a text. You read studies, journals, texts, all giving you the authors opinions on which medicine is the best for a treatment. And yes, you do take those into account, but at the end of the day, you are giving your qualified opinion on the matter. The key word here is qualified. Yes, a doctor can give an opinion that comes out of their ass, has no basis in fact. And then they can be sued for it. But when a doctor gives an opinion based on evidence, the strongest evidence being a meta analysis, and the weakest evidence being their expert opinion (eg i tried this medication on 10 patients and it worked nine out of ten times), and (most importantly) they informed their patients of this, then they are well and truly justified.
In that similarly STRICT vein, game journalists have the same role. Forget about you and i. In the games industry, we are just as expert as game journalists. If we weren't, we wouldn't be on GAF right now! In that sense, we are doctors too. I'm talking about the 'patients' of the game industry, the consumers. They don't have a slight idea of what is good and what's not. So Joe Bloggs will read a videogame review expecting a QUALIFIED opinion on what is a good game, just like they will go to a doctor to get a qualified opinion on what they should do to help them feel better.
As to what skills a videogame journo should have, i'd argue that the most important thing they have over consumers is exactly what you mentioned and more; EXPERIENCE. They know what a good or bad game is because they have played enough games to know the difference. Sure, they have their internal biases, just like doctors do, but they're more likely to be right than Joe Bloggs, because of their experience. Sure, you could argue that they need something more to make them an expert, but if you noted above, the most important role of a doctor is to give their patients all the information and let them make an INFORMED decision.
If you put all that aside though, i think the most important point that i was trying to make is that there needs to be a system to maximize consumer ability to make a TRUE, INFORMED decision. And if there are external biases that might even be influencing a game journo, how can anyone claim that they are giving consumers the ability to make an informed decision? That's why we need a governing body to sort this out. It's just the ethical thing to do.
I'm sorry if my example was not to your tastes though, i am a doctor, so i can only use examples of what i know!
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