How to Get Your Video Game Review Noticed and Taken Seriously

If you have a passion for video games and the type of voice and tone that draw people to your opinions, maybe you should consider reviewing video games. With the gaming industry growing faster than the U.S. economy, now is the time to leap into the wide world of video game journalism and editorials. Although the internet and magazine mediums have no shortage of people vying to offer their opinions on the latest titles - and why not, once you generate enough of a following, video game companies will be more than enthusiastic to send you advanced and free copies of their latest games.

But one will have to make their voices unique in order to be heard or generate an audience - though perhaps just as importantly, one will have to avoid the common pitfalls that currently plague the video game review world.

Among the chief problems of late is blatant favoritism towards a specific genre or company - which severely hinders not only the credibility of the entire publication, but that of the author, and the specific article. For example, the Halo series has fundamentally locked itself into good reviews through clever marketing and the overuse of promotional merchandise otherwise known as "swag". With a multi-million user fanbase, it becomes remarkably tempting for a publisher interested in generating page views to try to play to the crowd, up-playing a title that itself offers very little to the gaming industry in general.

The constant high scores given the game, despite problems ranging from a mediocre story, generic game play, rampant graphical glitching, and overt bugs that severely hinders one's enjoyment of the game, is a testament to the fact that the basic credibility of most reviewers is remarkably suspect, therefore maintaining a consistent criteria of high and low ratings helps penetrate the dense fog of favoritism.

What types of things should you look for as a game reviewer though? Well first and foremost, one should really polish themselves on both basic video game history, and the traits of each of the major video game companies and studios out there. For example, one finds themselves pushed dramatically away from an article that declares that Half Life 2 was among the first games to pioneer survival horror mixed with first person shooter elements, while overlooking games like System Shock 2.

This very same problem is showing itself with reviewers of the increasingly popular BioShock, who often praise its revolutionary and new systems, while overlooking the fact that most of them had been present in the aforementioned System Shock 2.

But a loyal following of readers aren't the only ones you must appeal to, however, as you must maintain the overall quality of your blog, or review publication, in the eyes of popular game developers who may be reading. In many ways, video game reviewers act as the "voice" of many gaming communities, and when the kind of erroneous speech is used that many reviewers use is perpetuated, it hinders the advancement or improvement of future games.

Consider, for example, the many reviews of Lair - a game I personally found remarkably enjoyable, but many critics thrashed in the review. Indeed, on MetaCritics, it maintains a 53, making it a "mixed" game, though it's been considered a critical and financial disaster.

Among the review given the game were, "Lair is a tough game to rate. One on hand, the game is absolutely gorgeous and easily justifies the thousands of dollars spent on the latest home theater equipment. On the other hand, the gameplay is so fundamentally broken that it's difficult to imagine anyone sticking with Lair through its ending," by PGNx Media.

The loudest problem with this review is the use of the word "broken" - a highly derogatory term that has lost much of its luster because of criticisms like this. The term is used in the game industry to describe code or mechanics that literally fail to work, giving them the highest level of priority to "fix". Recognizing this, players frequently refer to something as "broken", even when it is not, many doing so in a kind of anger-filled way, in the hopes of insulting a particular mechanic they do not like.

This is the case with Lair, where referring to the controls as broken is little more than a slight intended to insult the developer in question. As someone whose played the game objectively, one can definitively state that the controls work as they are intended. That is, in order to turn left, a player tilts the Sixaxis PlayStation 3 controller to the left, in order to turn right, they tilt it right, and so on. If it is a question of distaste for the intent, then a careful reviewer should note that they did not like the specific control scheme chosen, but by referring to it as broken, designers will simply not take this type of review seriously.

Referring to something as "bugged" or "glitchy" are other common pejorative insults thrown at video games, often times unsubstantially. Unfortunately, regardless of whether or not the claim that something is "buggy" is true or not, once it's been published, there is no undoing the damage that's largely been done. Often times, references to bugs induce imagery of players running along and falling through floors, shooting a primary weapon only to find yourself shot in the face by said rounds, and shoddy pathing.

However, in truth, many of the "bugs" brought up are things such as an odd stretched texture in obscure places, or worse, are the result of the player attempting to exploit the game, only to find the code reacting poorly. An exploit, by the game industry, is defined as a player acting outside of the intended boundaries of the code to make it react against how it was intended - and in many ways, once a player begins exploiting, they've entered a no-man's land.

That being said, if you are interested in the lucrative career of video game reviewing, it's an excellent business to get into - however if you want to claw your way out of obscurity, you must be sure to make yourself sound both professional and unique, while avoiding the many pitfalls that plague other big name magazines and websites.