By: Mark H. Walker

There’s a dollar on my wall. It’s hung head high, just above my computer, framed in cheap, imitation wood. Scrawled to the left of Washington’s face are two lines: “December” and “1992.” It’s the first dollar I made as a professional writer. Since then I’ve written 38 books, damn near 100 features/editorials, and well over 400 game reviews. From Avalon Hill’s Advanced Squad Leader to Konami’s Spanking new Ring of Red,  I’ve clacked out plenty of opinion. But lately, I’m wondering who reads them and what my reviews are good for. Frankly, I’m wondering if reviewers have any idea who *ever* reads their reviews. Do gaming journalists stop to consider their audience or is the interactive press running scared of message board nit-pickers, ducking heavy-handed editors, and feeding their egos?  Or to put it another way, have reviews become too critical for all the wrong reason?

You betcha.

First things first. Understand that I’m not trying to step on toes, bruise egos, or dent reputations. We’re all at fault, and the semi-specifics I’ll cite are representative of a greater problem. Nevertheless, the number of hypercritical reviews seems to have reached a crescendo, and it’s time we asked why.

No doubt the message boards, which permeate the Internet, are an influence. Populated with highly opinionated netizens and fueled by flame wars, no reviewer likes to be called to task in message board  “threads” for missing a clipping problem in the back room of the secret add-on to level 42 (or whatever), let alone --horror upon horror-- for being too easy on the game. Accordingly, I see where editors and writers refer to their magazine’s message boards before writing review/articles, citing problems raised in their message board threads.

Edit Out the Editors?
Editors are another part of the problem, but of course the freelancing corps has known that all along. Seriously, I know of specific instances where gaming portals and magazines have, without prior consultation with the journalist, lowered the score a reviewer gave to a game. Ostentatiously, the lowering is to bring the score in line with similar games. And there is a logic to the lowering: presumably magazine editors are exposed to more games that the typical reviewer, hence the editor is better qualified to assign a grade. Unfortunately, the reviewer has more “seat time” with the game. That seat time make’s the reviewer’s opinion the one that should count.

Ego. We all have it, and the competitive field of gaming journalism brings it to the fore. There’s a line of folks waiting to write every review, every strategy guide, every feature. All journalists have is their name. Unhappily, to make that name, many of us have been guilty of writing outlandish things, slamming good games, dissing gaming personalities --anything to create a buzz. Hey, it may make good reading, but it doesn’t make good journalism.

But bottom line, we write needlessly critical reviews because we don’t understand our audience. Message board denizens number in the hundreds; a smash hit sells over a million copies. Obviously, the folks posting messages are a minuscule percentage of those playing the game. Editors may give us the work, yet they are not the audience, but rather a conduit to the audience. We, and our attendant egos, are not the audience. Rereading my latest review may bring a smile to face, but that doesn’t mean I conveyed a byte of information to my readers.

Remember the Audience
The audience is the gamer -- the true, casual, everyday type of gamer boy, girl, man, and woman. Our goal should not be to hyper-criticize games, spending our time searching for minor problems that matter not, but to pop in the game, play it, and answer two questions: What’s this game about? Is it fun? Armed with that information, our true audience can march to the store and confidently buy a game.

John Romero once told me that, “Just because someone can play a game doesn’t mean he knows how to write about it.” We’re all players.  Let’s stop needlessly smashing the games we so enjoy, and find a way to honestly convey that enjoyment --and when necessary, the disappointment-- to our real audience, the gamer.

If you'd like to send feedback on this article, please write to Mark H. Walker.

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