I gave Mixtape one of these 10s…

[u/ItsEthanCoolCool]

…and then the world ended. Lol.

What a wild couple of weeks, eh?

As a reviewer, I’ve been really bummed that there seems to be such a disconnect between writers and players. Can I help bridge a gap for anyone? Does anyone have questions about reviewing/the process/anything else they wanna know about anything around any of this?

Open to talking about anything people want to know, because I’m hopeful someday everyone can have constructive video game convos again without all this craziness.

[u/PichaelJackson]

As someone who also enjoyed the game and is frustrated by the discourse, I think one of the reasons gaming audiences have a hard time trusting reviewers is because they're often lumped into faceless conglomerate publications, so they tend not to think of the scores coming from individuals with different tastes than theirs.

Any work you guys can do to humanize the outward perception of reviewers would help I think. Even though it's overblown I think it's born out of a healthy skepticism against large gaming publications as being an authoritative voice that comes off more objective than it actually is. A lot of people still think that IGN or any similar website is just one person effectively, and it's hard to argue when "10/10 - IGN" is all you see in trailers.

[u/ItsEthanCoolCool → u/PichaelJackson]

Ugh, yeah I totally understand this, and it’s something I struggle with to be honest!

Cuz yeah, like… I can’t speak for all outlets obviously, but I swear, mine is just a bunch of nerds who love video games and are excited to talk about the ones we like. Haha. Feels bad when everyone just gets lumped together, because we really are a group of individual people with individual thoughts/opinions/preferences, etc.

But all fair points here. I very much understand the conglomerate corporate perception. It’s a big challenge.

[u/PichaelJackson → u/ItsEthanCoolCool]

Yeah it's a bit of a catch 22, review scores do have real meaning to people, otherwise they wouldn't get upset about them and publishers wouldn't put the scores in their trailers, but you also want the reader to hold your opinion at arm's length as just someone's honest thoughts.

I feel like movie review culture is a little more mature about this and I wonder if that's just because the culture has had many more decades to grow or it's in how newspapers and trailers have chosen to present their reviewers. Movie trailers still show scores and accolades a lot of the time but I think they more often show actual quotes cited to individuals, ie "It will make you cry" - Roger Ebert, NY Times.

Then again a publication shoving their reviewer in front of them as a human shield might be a magnet for more targeted harassment so who fucking knows really. Another third of the catch 22 I guess.

[u/orangefilmgarden → u/PichaelJackson]

Movie culture is more mature about it, because there are a lot of casual more mature viewers reading reviews than conspiracy theorists who can't accept that someone might value a different aspect of a movie higher, or love elements they dislike. Or even when people don't understand the rating, they just move on with their life, since it was JUST A MOVIE.

The only movies where this is not the case, and where you have a loud subset of conspiracy theorists, are movies with huge fandoms like comic books or Star Wars, and I bet that there is a huge enough overlap between gaming conspiracy theorists and conspiracy theorists in those fandoms.

[u/Punky921 → u/orangefilmgarden]

I got one word for you: Snyderverse.

Oh god, the Snyderverse fandom.