Ok, last post from me because my exam the day after tomorrow won't be passing itself
Nenjin, I appreciate you having inside knowledge, but you should consider this - video game journalism has little to nothing to do with writing video game reviews. Journalistic integrity is because journalists are supposed to bring us the truth about events. Video game criticism *should* be dealing with stuff like systematic approach and disassembling video games for our convenience, but it's not. It's about blasting an exclusive review of new stuff before the competition in order to gain traffic to the website and profit from ads.
I'm actually inclined to consider almost all reviews of "art" as pointless, because I'll be damned before I let some moron tell me whether or not I should like a movie, but then along comes stuff as Red Letter Media's utter and total deconstruction of the Star Wars prequels and that has so much "insider" info - like camera work, character development and stuff that it proves me dead wrong. But that's a rather rare occurrence, sadly.
Gamespot could take the time to play the game seriously but it won't be of any help at all, because any one of us can do that. We probably have even greater competency on the subject. The only thing they can do is save us the time to personally wade through every single game out there. Sure, we all hope to get at least some useful insight from reviews, but whereas, say, video card reviews get into the design of the hardware, the limitations of said design, the used technologies - all stuff most of us either know from reading a lot about, or work. Compare an average review of a video game - there's nothing exclusive about the review, in fact, after playing most of us probably prove the reviews we've read wrong on a number of points. We read them to get a general idea of the game, and I think a lot of people file the games they've read about in four or so categories - "shit I won't like", "shit I might like", "good game I might like", "good game I might not like".
Come to think of it, though, it might be because I'm writing from the point of view of a nerd. But, hey, we're on the DWARF FORTRESS forums. If a nerd remains misunderstood here, what's the world come to
Oh and I disagree - facts aren't subjective. They wouldn't be "facts" if they were
Consider a fact like "XXX game has better graphics than YYY game". There's nothing subjective about that. Or "XXX is better optimized than YYY". Again, nothing subjective.
And about Yahtzee - there's no way he says "fuck it" to professionalism, since there IS no professionalism in video game criticism
You're contradicting yourself - if everything about games is subjective, even facts, then there's no way his opinions are wrong, and thus - a big punch in the face. And I personally have said numerous times why I consider him the best in current video game criticism.
Oh, and I like reading too! And writing, too, but I haven't had time for it lately