I was having an argument with a friend the other day about a game i was currently playing and enjoying, he'd said his favourite streamer(don't remember the name) had said the game was terrible and that I should avoid it, now being someone who was actually playing the game and was impressed by it(The game in question being CoD WW2) I was a bit puzzled as to why someone who hadn't played the game was trying to tell me it's bad based on someone elses opinion and this is a problem iv'e ran into multiple times, asking friends if they want to try out a game and getting "Nah totalbiscuit said it was shit so im not gonna buy it".

Cults of Personality.

As a game reviewer and commentator i toe the line between subjective and objective experience every time i put out an article but one thing i try to do is give people the ability to make up their own mind about the game i'm reviewing and if i find a game that I absolutely hate I just don't review it, because as i said my experience may differ hugely to yours, but now with the advent of YouTube and Twitch we have cults of personality that pop up every day, essentially controlling how people view games before they've even been released.

The cult of personality is a dangerous thing because you are never getting the truth with a gimmick, people like total biscuit and angry joe are gimmicks in the industry that people come to expect a certain level of entertainment from and will base their opinion on games before they've even seen the trailer, some times it can be helpful but a lot of the time it's hurtful to a game that's just finding it's legs or a game that the reviewers don't see eye to eye with.

I can understand people trying to get some information on the game like if it runs properly, has bugs or is worth your money however the vast majority of these reviewers never give you just that, instead they'll nitpick something that like/dislike and try to sell you on that, I'm partially guilty of this as well but i attempt to stay as neutral as possible when reviewing something as you can see on my blog and i ALWAYS urge that people play the game regardless of my opinion, i'm not the god of video games(yet).

But on the other hand you also have terrible games slipping in because a reviewer may personally enjoy them I remember i fell for this with a certain game(not going to say which and piss people off) but needless to say the glowing review of the game was nothing more than a fans personal opinion and the game turned out to be pretty average but he touted it as the second coming of Half Life when in reality it was more like a fan fiction mod for Half Life 1.

Obviously i'm rather biased against some of these people as i have my own ethical guidelines i stick to and seeing people break them annoys me but in the ultimate scheme of reviewing, i.e the art of reviewing the main goal should be to remain objective and neutral when reviewing something and give people the hard facts about a game, not an opinion or two(I understand the hypocrisy of what i'm saying but shutup)

Some people are the Kardashians of the gaming world.

There are a lot of people out there that have earned their place in the gaming world, who have worked for years to build up a fan base and provide quality content, unfortunately with things like YouTube and Twitch skill and quality is no longer a prerequisite, any female with a DD cup can wear a low cut t-shirt and get 1000 subscribes and any dude can get really angry and break shit on stream and that works for a time but it doesn't really add much in the way of gaming quality, there's an example i'd like to use that might piss some of you off but stay with me.

Pewdiepie is the biggest example of a kardashian, he made his money and channel by screaming nonsense to 12 year olds who ate it up, and over the years created a massive following, now lately he has been shifting towards more quality content and a more adult style approach but the "damage" was done, it gave rise to 100's of impostors who copied him, now i applaud him for making a successful and very lucrative market for himself but ultimately screaming at minecraft isn't exactly hard, thankfully though Pewdiepie has always been more of a gamer than a reviewer but my point stands.

There's an experiment you can do right now, go to YouTube and type in "Call of Duty Bad" and "Call of Duty Good" and you will get a hundred pages of reviews based on what you typed and if you watch some of them you can see what i'm talking about, people take their subjective opinion on the game and transfer it into either good or bad, there's a very very large discrepancy between the two as well, as most people will argue over a certain thing and try to convince you of their position rather than give you a standard opinion and let you make up your own mind.

Sadly the gaming review world is filled to the brim with these types of "arguments" which don't really serve a purpose other than to get people to click on them depending on how they feel about the game going in (clickbait) and a lot of reviewer personalities know this and will actively give the people what they want, regardless of if their information and review is of any value, it's a dumbing down effect that affects the entire industry as a whole so that people out there working hard and giving honest, quality content reviews are often left in the dark while a dude on webcam screaming will get 500% more viewers for 500% less work.

Games made specifically for reactions.

I'm not a fan of the indie market, i'll just get that out there now, some titles from indie devs are fucking amazing and worthy of being called triple A titles, but there is an insane amount of games on the market today that are there solely to be played in front of an audience for comedic effect, once again I understand the market and there is a demand for these games but again it's a dumbing down effect, it may seem like sour grapes and it possibly could be, but I believe that reviewing should have a criteria that's met for every thing that's reviewed and it's damn near impossible to review a game that only gets fun in front of an audience.

I'm not opposed to these games on principle but they do have a habit of becoming a culture inside the gaming world and there's a lot of them out there now, you can go to twitch and do even a small search and come up with games you've never heard of being played solely for those reasons, i think the worst offenders of this are those indie "horror" games that are nothing more but jump scares and loud noises, again I don't really have a massive problem with them but there are hundreds of these out there that lead to developers creating "games" for this sole purpose.

The main problem

The main problem i have with this is pretty simple, it stops gamers from just being gamers, I can understand wanting to see what your favorite reviewer has to say about a game but you shouldn't hang on their every word or even worse, wait for them to review a game before you get it, on the off chance i'm someone's favourite reviewer please don't wait for me to a review a game til you buy it, while i'm flattered you respect my opinion, it's not worth more than yours when it comes to a game, it's almost always entirely subjective and something i enjoy you might hate and vice versa.

The over arching theme of my blog has always been to pick up the game first and play it and to try and ignore outward influences until you do, no one is ever going to have the same opinion as you and putting too much stock in someone else's opinion makes yours obsolete, I know a lot of people enjoy game reviewers on YouTube and Twitch and the like but enjoy it to a point, don't invest your enjoyment based on there's, it's fine to check out what's going on with the game and if it works as intended but there are very few reviewers that actually do this anymore.

I'm not saying to stop enjoying this people, but i'm telling you to enjoy your own experiences more and don't color your world by letting someone else tell you what is enjoyable no matter how entertaining or endearing you find them.

Pick up the game and play it.

Thanks for reading my article, if you have enjoyed this feel free to up-vote or resteem, got a comment or question or something to add? please leave it below and i'll respond to you as soon as possible, thanks!