Have a look at the comments on that site about the Lionhead visit. (http://blogs.guardian.co.uk/games/archives/2005/06/07/black_white_war_immigration_and_the_next_three_games_in_the_seriesa.html)

GAMERS liked Black & White too.

Not reviewers paid to play games, not just Molyneux and his crew, but gamers, like me and maybe you.

(for the record, I hated it too… couldn’t understand what all the fuss was about… wow, a creature who poops… whooptido!)

But you can’t dismiss an entire website, an entire industry, just because you didn’t like a game and they did.

Remember, it was these websites that helped expose that god aweful mess that was driv3r, that challenged the notions of those magazines who gave it glowing reviews of 90+.

Was that some kind of abnormality? Some kind of glitch in the matrix?

I’ve been enjoying an argument that’s broken out in the States between bloggers and writers for mainstream videogame sites such as Gamepost and Gamespy. It all started with a post entitled The best review money can buy, which appeared on…

How so? What specific examples does he cite? What first-hand knowledge does he have?

As far as I can tell, he has an impression of how things are, which is easily refuted, point-by-point.

The GameSpy incident could implicate GameSpy, but extrapolating that single incident into a blanket condemnation of all editorial entities is the same sort of critiquing everyone is up in arms over about Matthew’s comments about Carnival of Games. Only now is peterb qualifying criticisms, like saying, “_as a whole_, the environment of the major gaming magazines is toxic to coverage of indie games.” Previous entries condemned everyone.

I have no problems with someone criticizing the general poor quality of game writing, or the ethical lapses, or the inflated review scores. That’s all true. But once you go to “all sites/publications are like this,” you’ve taken a leap that is indefensible. Or at least easily refuted.

Very clever. Regardless, it’s just another insult instead of a real argument. Have you actually made any substantive points today? Or, like research, is that something that you guys just don’t do?

Professional gaming magazines are are about things the editors feel will cause people to buy the magazine.

This causes a very significant divergence in what these two different publications choose to review.

I’ll give Matthew ten points for occasionally reviewing indie productions, and I’ll remove ten million points for not recognizing that this weblog is not the kind of publication that peterb is talking about, for attempting to refute the ills of an entire industry with a single counterexample, and for resorting to ad hominem when none of those weak tactics were even vaguely effective.

I realize that when peterb writes about review publishers you see him talking about yourself, but the truth of the matter is that his points are pretty accurate for the industry as a whole.

Please grow up and learn how to engage in civil discourse with people who hold opinions different from your own.

Yes, I was actually quite pleased that you reviewed _Settlers_, and considered mentioning it in the article. My point is not that each and every game reviewer never ever covers an indie game ever, but that _as a whole_, the environment of the major gaming magazines is toxic to coverage of indie games (and, as you well know, most of the indie games that _do_ get covered are those, like Gish, whose publishers are fairly media-savvy and work hard to get that coverage).

I will, however, give you extra cool points for covering Kingdom of Loathing.

And sure, we cover the non-indie games, too, like Forza. But I’m more than willing to say that our coverage of indie games is excellent, especially if you express it as a percentage of our output.

To some extent, I’m saying “mainstream game writing, on the whole, sucks,” and I feel like you’re saying, “I’ve written some (or many) things that don’t suck.” Even if everything you’ve written is absolutely brilliant, I don’t think that invalidates my larger point.

Thanks for your comments,

peterb

Wasn’t impressed. I’m pleased to find that you have a longer resume than was immediately apparent, but your initial comments on the Carnival were still ignorant, and I still have to go to Wired or gameblogs.org to get any interesting commentary.

Here are the links that got filtered out:

http://www.gizmodo.com/gadgets/software/gish-game-with-a-black-heart-018157.php
http://www.gizmodo.com/gadgets/software/pickup-games-the-reckoning-strange-adventures-in-infinite-space-016486.php
http://www.gizmodo.com/gadgets/software/pickup-games-vol-4-kingdom-of-loathing-016409.php
http://www.gizmodo.com/gadgets/software/pickup-games-vol-3-bookworm-016341.php
http://www.gizmodo.com/gadgets/software/pickup-games-vol-2-knizias-samurai-016271.php
http://www.gizmodo.com/gadgets/software/pickup-games-vol-1-inspector-parker-016197.php
http://www.kotaku.com/gaming/pc/wik-and-the-fable-of-souls-demo-020916.php

and

http://www.gamespot.com/gamecube/sim/cubivore/review.html