The Value of Written Reviews in 2021 (And Beyond!)

To start things off, this blog entry is 100% inspired by Jeff's awesome review of Halo Infinite and also reviews in general, which I strongly encourage reading first. It got me thinking about how I prefer to consume video games-related critical works, as well as what I hope to get out of them when all is said and done. In the interest of avoiding a rambling post (EDIT: too late), I'm going to break it down into three sections, starting with...

Part One: Why Written Reviews, Specifically?

Short answer: my brain prefers it. I like to write, most of which I don't share because thanks anxiety, and reading criticism of video games gets my own juices flowing. When someone is an expert writer, I could read anything they type out and get more out of it than another medium can give me. I've known for years that this makes me a weirdo outlier, although reading the comments in that review made me feel a lot less like one. I've tried other sites' podcasts and video content after breaking in with their articles, and I've slid off each and every one of them in time. This has gotten worse during the ongoing pandemic period, as I think I watched too much video content early on, and as a result I've become less and less interested in watching other people play through games.

Even before becoming a parent, audio and video formats were more difficult to find time to enjoy. This is mostly because I've tended to read / listen to stuff during work hours, and until the pandemic, that meant video had to wait entirely until I got home from work. And even when I get a task I can plug through automatically, my attention drifts when it's a bunch of voices talking for several minutes or more. I end up rewinding or kind of just zoning out when I feel like I missed something. Written reviews always command my attention, and I end up re-reading them once or twice for games I've had my eye on. I have yet to listen to any full podcast episode of anything twice, outside of a second run through of The Adventure Zone back in 2017. My best time to listen to anything is while playing "podcast games" or driving, neither of which I do with all that much frequency anymore. So I end up just missing out on a lot of good criticism because I'm not interested in listening to another 3-4 hours of podcast.

So yeah, my silly brain prefers to look at things in writing, got it.

Part Two: Reviews in the Era of Subscription Services

As Jeff pointed out in his review, game reviews have often been used as a way for consumers to figure out what's worth their money. I've been fortunate enough to afford a console and be able to buy most of the games I'd ever be interested in playing. I currently subscribe to Game Pass Ultimate, after hearing this site tell me to subscribe to Game Pass enough times. So yes, I don't need to read reviews in order to determine that a game is financially worth it for me anymore. However, this need has been almost perfectly replaced by a different limited currency: time.

Anyone who has a Game Pass sub (on- or offline) has said at some point that they get selection fatigue. There are at least a dozen games each on my PC and console that are waiting for me to open them for the very first time. I get a couple hours at most each night to play something, assuming my partner and I aren't watching a thing and I'm not preparing TTRPG material for an upcoming game. Sometimes I stare at 4-5 things for which I've heard variations of "you should check it out if you have Game Pass", and I end up playing some game I've already beaten instead. Admittedly, video reviews are just as good for breaking me into that first play session as the written word is. But since I've already expressed preference for reading over watching reviews, it's written criticism that keeps me more invested in playing a game out past that first time.

This all leads into my final collection of thoughts, entitled...

Part Three: Why I Like Reviews

One thing that personally drives me crazy about criticism in any art form is when people bemoan the lack of objectivity on a review. Usually it's a bad-faith move to gripe about the author's personal politics differing from some readers', but it's also an absurd idea on its own merits. The ex-Gamespot crew has discussed how restrictive score formulas were back in the mid-00's. A lot of sites have abandoned review scores entirely, to the delight of some and to the frustration of Metacritic-addled console warriors. But the subjectivity is a selling point for me. The reason I love the writing that's been on this site and on other outlets is because I like those people('s public personalities) a lot. When Austin Walker writes about a From Software game, I know what he's about and am extremely eager to find out what he has to say, whether I ultimately agree with him or not. When someone has a writing style I vibe with, I could read just about anything they put out there, even if I lack context for the subject. That's the kind of content that rattles around in my head in a way that audio or video content does not. And a noticeable passion (or lack thereof) for a game tells me more than a number score can.

So what do I want to see in reviews? Well, whatever the hell the author wants to put in them. They don't have to explicitly say "this is / isn't worth your limited time to play" at the end; that's something I can decide for myself after reading an article about a game. They don't even have to be timely (see: part two for me being time-poor). I should be explicitly clear that I don't mean this all as some counterpoint to a potential end of reviews on Giant Bomb. If the staff doesn't want to write reviews or articles, then I don't think they should. But I don't need those reviews or articles to be crafted for some explicit determining purpose; I just want to keep reading stuff written by smart people that are at least tangentially related to a hobby I enjoy. My favorite piece of writing this entire year was Scott Benson's brilliant GOTY list. It made me want to replay Kentucky Route Zero, which I'd already finished by that point, just to give new context to the game. If someone feels enough of a way about a game to write those thoughts out, the mere act of doing so helps resolve the roadblocks I encounter in the subscription era.

Since this post has gotten longer than I originally intended, I think I'll leave this last part here. The point is, I like reviews, I think they're still valuable in these Game Pass times, and I just happen to prefer writing over other formats. I'd be bummed if they're done for real on the site, as that's what brought me here as a free user many years back. But true to form, I read a review this morning that got all this stuff lodged in my head, and I thought it was a good example of why I find reviews valuable in this day and age.

Writing is a unique medium and written reviews can present information in a way that no other format can. For one thing they are by far the fastest way to communicate information, since most people read faster than even a podcast playing at 1.5 or even 2x speed. For another they allow people to easily 'sequence break.' If they want to just skip to the end and see what's said there and decide based on that if you want to read the rest of the review then you can. If you want to go back and read an earlier part to see how it relates or leads to a later part...you can easily do so. Of course you can scrub back and forth in a video or podcast but you're less likely to do so and it takes longer.

As for the idea that written reviews are no longer valuable in days with game pass...I'd say that it's actually hurt videos more. If you want to spend 30 minutes checking out a game you can just play it instead of watching a Quick Look*. Written reviews can be consumed at times when you cannot play.

The reason written reviews fell out of vogue is not because they weren't valuable to consumers but because of the way advertising works on the web. It's possible that nobody reads written reviews on Giant Bomb, but Giant Bomb has long been a site focused on audio and video so it's not surprising that people don't come here for writing. There are still plenty of publications that focus on the written word and seem to do fine.

Facebook is to blame for a lot of this because they lied about video metrics for their own horrible reasons and caused a massive media pivot to video on the web that has never been undone, even though it was based on lies.

*People watch Quick Looks for other reasons than just seeing how a game is, of course, but that's a different issue. Also note that writing allowed me to put this aside in an end note rather than interrupt the flow of what I was saying. Yay writing!

The value of a written review is in writing it. If you don't catalog your experiences they get lost to time. I remember playing the fortnite beta when there were like 2 outfits. I was pissed. Do i remember how pissed I was? No. Was i pissed more than I would be if i bought a mountian dew with a cool design thinking it was a new flavor only to find out it is a Zero or Diet version? Or was it somewhere around the pissed that i got a parking ticket but glad i didnt get towed kind of pissed? If i don't account for that as it happens it gets lost and then the experience fades to the point that you have a false recollection of events. Also, you can see that we are way past the 2 outfit chains of our oppressors.

There is something about reflection. In all of its harms a cigarette smoked by someone on a smoke break is reflection that you just dont get from staring at a phone composing this message or just staring into the void. Smoking is very contemplative. Writing is very contemplative. If it wasn't for the record of play that achievements/trophies give you I really couldn't be sure of all the experiences i had.

My most played game of 2017 was Bioshock Infinite was news to me when i searched my xbox museum in 2021 it was absolute fact in 2017. When i was buying games for my Switch that factoid was reason enough for me to buy the collection for my Switch. I can go back to my review spreadsheet and see how i felt about my experience. I can play it again and see how i have changed when the game has not.

As far as a for profit website writing reviews. I think we are here because we enjoy knowing some of the hosts nuance. Listening to a podcast helps us understand knee-jerk reactions. But a written review requires you to tell the truth to yourself and by proxy us. You write the review. I read the review. I listen to the podcast and listen to deviations. Written reviews is the last bastion of focused reflection. We are marching towards reviews of everything being a youtube thumbnail in content and breadth. Thumbs up, or frowny face, "you won't believes," and "not the review your expecting" type bullshit for everything including governement policy. So please write folks. Someone is reading this stuff.

I think I agree entirely with Jeff's article. I'm sad there's less writing on the site, but he's correct that the boilerplate "is this worth $60" consumer-advice style of review is worthless today. What's much more interesting (but harder to monetize in a traditional, corporate, ad-revenue driven sense) are thoughtful longform critiques or essays on games -- not for a specific opinion, but to see how the writer's mind moves.

I'd love to be in a world where GB still employs Austin Walker or Alex Navarro, and they're still writing weekly columns on the site. But I doubt there will ever be sufficient incentive to see writing on the site again.

That being said, users are still posting great essays, and it's been really enjoyable sharing my dumbass thoughts in writing with y'all lately!

I personally preferred the "restrictive" gamespot scale. Especially as a teen with not a lot of disposable income it was an easy way for me to get an idea on if something was worth my time and money.

That said, I don't dislike reviews nowadays, I just wish they would stop labeling them as such. A review, in a traditional sense is SUPPOSED to be objective. Judging something based on its own merits, that's kind of the point.

I like reading people's personal thoughts on a subject, and what certain things about a game made them feel, good or bad. And thoughts people have beyond "do i like this game".

Game pass has only further complicated things as pretty much anything that goes on there and looks mildly interesting, unless I've just heard God awful things I'll download it and try it out.

Live service games also have made writing reviews complicated. I don't think reviews aren't useful to some, I just don't think it's generally worth putting time into nowadays to keep an audience.

I think more writing on the site would work extremely well if they just steered away from "reviews" all together. I would love just more general articles about topics related to games/game philosophy/game related topics.

@reap3r160: The one thing this site is missing is retired or lapsed industry professionals. We are only getting consumer's version of games. The most spiciest of uninformed takes. I'm not saying get Mark Pachter in front of a green screen but someone that literally worked on A GAME would be a massive get for this site. If giantbomb endures our next 2 hires are likely going to be youtube and twitch darlings which some of the previous staff has been and the world has enough of. Not everybody that has shipped a game is part of the 1%. I'd bet a good amount of them have shipped a game had a family and are at a place in their life that talking about the things that got them in the industry would be cathartic for them and must watch/read content for us.

NDAs are one thing but this staff is fully capable of talking around review embargos as crafty as any defense attorney. Maybe someone that owned their own studio. The post developer roadmap is not always a house in a guilded mansion. People move on for whatever reason pursuing whatever passion. My favorite thing about these boards is that someone may be a person of note in the industry that hasn't figure out their theres from there's and posts anonymously here. If they're not here WTF are they? Amazon? Metacritic?

Most of the conversations i tune out for everywhere else and sometimes here are the ones about "game developer should have done this," and "this is game would be great if it wasn't for that." We need a foil. Badly!

It's probably been over a decade since I've seen any value in the consumer focused "should you buy this" type of review. I generally know what I'm interested in, and in cases where something turns out to be surprisingly good or surprisingly bad, I feel word of mouth gets around on that stuff pretty quick. There's just no need to sit down and read a review product style review to decide if I want to buy a game.

That's not say I don't value reviews at all, far from it. However, the review I'm interested in these days are the critical deep dives. These are the types of reviews you engage with after you've played the game yourself. I find critique and analysis far more interesting than a bullet point product review where you're obliged to talk about graphics, sound, etc. in a rigid fashion.

I completely agree. I'm also at that age and position in life where I can comfortably pay for $60 games, but don't have the time to play all of them. I personally find it easier and faster to read a written review compared to watching a video review with the same script.

Written reviews without ratings to a major website like Gamespot are dead in the water. The point about having reviews with ratings used to be (or maybe still are) for publishers to advertise their games. I think Jeff mentioned it in one of the many Bombcasts, that the GameSpot ratings were primarily for clueless parents/relatives who need to make a quick purchasing decision for their kids. They were never meant for hardcore gamers. I think the two reasons reviews got so wrong is when publishers started incentivizing bonuses by a game's Metacritic score and when people got vitriolic because the game they loved got a poor rating, in both cases neither party probably read the actual reviews.

Video reviews are popular because they are easy to monetize and hard to plagiarize, but even that is going the way of the dinosaur. I feel that it is now trendy for people to make their game purchasing decisions on whatever their favorite influencer or streamer is playing.

I don't think GamePass has killed reviews, because reviews are still important to reduce decision fatigue. But GamePass has weakened the overall incentive to read/watch reviews for new releases, due to how to easy it is for people to just try out the games themselves.

GamePass has also been inadvertently a boon to parents, especially this year and with these chip shortages. Instead of reading or looking for reviews of specific games, parents can get a XBox Series S and a yearly GamePass subscription for their kids and probably still save money compared to buying a XBox Series X or a PS5 from scalpers.

Writing reviews as a non-monetary activity is still viable. I find it fun to record my thoughts on what I thought about a game at that time as well as reading what people wrote about it especially for games that receive multiple patches or are live-service games. I think from a business perspective, reviews don't generate much ad revenue since they are only important in the first few weeks of a game's release and if said game is coming out for free on a subscription service it doesn't exactly encourage people to go and seek out said reviews.

A big thing to me is depth. How many games come up on a podcast, get talked about for a few minutes at most, and then disappear forever? The same applies to Quick Looks to an extent, though we get a lot less of those currently. A review is the "final word" on a game, where the writer puts their whole focus into it. It's a more permanent record that stands out from other content. I know that there's live games and patches now, so even that point is flawed because a game can look totally different in six months or whatever. I'm not really trying to change anyone's mind, just putting it out there why I still enjoy reviews.

My piece of mind is that review can still tell me whether the game is worth my time or not.

@yyninja:

Thirded. I think Gamepass further exacerbates the issue of limited time. I know there are a lot of good games on Gamepass that I haven't played yet, but that very fact makes the prospect of picking one and committing time to checking it out less enticing. Longform reviews are extremely useful because they let me read a polished, crystallized take on what, exactly, a given game is trying to accomplish and how well it executes on that concept. They provide an overview of why I might care about a game and also serve as kind of a guarantee that it won't completely shit the bed once I commit to trying it and get a few hours in.

Podcast impressions can sometimes serve to interest me in a game, but they're often conveyed while folks are still working their way through the game, and there's still the possibility that things might get substantially worse before the credits roll. Especially with how bloated and long games have become in recent years, there's a lot of room for a generally positive impression at the five-hour mark to sour considerably. If I have a limited number of hours each week to play games, I don't want to sink time into a game that I'm going to end up abandoning halfway through. I could be playing Dota with that time, goddammit!

It's nice to see all these different reasons that people appreciate written reviews. I kind of agree with a mix of most of them. Reviews can be pure entertainment, a place for deeper critical thought, a way to process your time with a game, or simply a recommendation from a trusted source. The whole Gamepass question is just another kink--along with like, do you have to beat the game to review it, what do you do about early access or constantly updating games, etc.

Part of what I like about written reviews is that they're so accessible. If you have a computer or phone there's places to post writing, and as many places to read it. You don't need to spend hours editing (well, you might), a camera, or video footage to share your view. OP mentioned the value of subjective reviews where the writer is deeply knowledgeable, but total outsiders sharing their feelings can also be interesting. I think everyone should write reviews! I use backloggery as my game tracker, and it has an area for writing whatever, with a 500 character limit. I always write at least something since that limitation keeps me from babbling endlessly, and it serves as a time capsule for my thoughts if nothing else. It's cathartic as a small sendoff for whatever I completed and I don't have to stress because no one else will ever read it.

One thing I think we can do without is so many reviews of the same huge AAA games. Jeff's review was totally right about how most people know if they're going to get the next big game or not. For games like that, writing deep criticism as more of an art piece is much more interesting, unless there's huge issues, or if it's the GOAT and should be played by everyone. No amount of reviews could really tell me that I would love Ghost of Tsushima and dislike Horizon Zero Dawn. Straight recommendation style reviews mostly benefit games that fly under the radar or are niche.

@snaketelegraph: You should post your reviews. It's a judgement free zone because nobody is really reading. If you get featured in the community spotlight for the week it still doesn't trigger the vitriol that the same review would get on reddit. I think most come to giantbomb for the video but the writing is secretly the best part. I'm just tired of video production as it is. Lens flare, shot composition, and graphics are no longer novel. An IRL waterfall still gets the feels going so hopefully we never get to a real life versus virtual life review.

I think videogames are probably the only things besides relationships, homes, school, or cars that get a memorable "sendoff." I know i existed at some point in the past because i absolutely plugged in a gamecube to a CRT tv and played certain games. Don't ask me what else was going on other than relationships, homes, school, or cars. Music, movies, and sports are so numerous they kind of lose meaning. Gamepass is nice and all but if i had bought a boxed/digital copy of the Ascent i would have finished that game. A game i don't finish is kind of a waste of time because it doesn't really get a sendoff. It's more of a castoff. I have enough in my collection to just ploy through the backlog and just buy what i think i will like (not buying halo single player for that bloated price.... i'll do a trial on my 2nd xbox account to beat the campaign,

You should write because there are so many talking heads. I've been around giantbomb so long that i really don't listen to anybody, past or present, reviews of games as reason enough to play a game. We are well beyond the 7 year itch in this relationship. I'm sticking it out for the kids. The only time i take into account anybody's reviews on the site is for the final game of the year discussion, which this year on don't think has strong enough personalities to have the 7 day bite and daily anticipation that it has in the past. So the collective top 10 i dont care about. The individual top 10s. Well those are the titles i pick up when i catch a sale and remember Alex liked this or Austin liked that. I can come to a game years later and think to myself that we were strangers on one accord just at 2 different times.

I'm the sort of person that pulls up RateYourMusic and Metacritic while listening to an album, or Letterboxd and Rotten Tomatoes while watching a movie (at home - I sure hope theaters never die, where I wait until I've left the screening to do the same at a bar!) and, full disclosure, once was a music critic as well. I love to read others' thoughts on things so long as the environment in which they're being shared promotes thoughtful - or at least funny - discourse.

But I can also understand Jeff's position. I wrote music reviews for about a quarter of the time Jeff wrote video game reviews, and while I put in as much work as I could in terms of repeat listens, taking notes, writing rough drafts and so on I know that reviewing music is nothing compared to reviewing a 20-80 hour video game. Eventually, it gets harder and harder to turn our hobby/passion into work, particularly if it feels like the entire world is changing around that work. When I started out, we received actual CD copies with liner notes and artwork as far out as three months prior to wide release - in just six years, the industry had almost entirely shifted to either heavily DRM'd, proprietary software you had to download and were granted limited access (like, say, five full front to back listens without rewind, pause or fast forward functionality during playback) that was provided a week or two before release to full on "we know you have a membership to OiNK/Waffles/What/Redacted, just download the leak there" to "we're gonna surprise drop this at 11PM on Thursday night and if you don't have a review by Monday, the SEO will crucify you" and it became, frankly, infuriating work.

I had jokingly mentioned wanting a RateYourMusic or Letterboxd for games in the comment section of Jeff's review and was quickly pointed to Backloggd, where I've made an account and so far find it to be quite pleasant and most intuitive. I know Giant Bomb still has a user reviews section, and maybe I'll try to migrate the writing I've done over there in the past two days back over here, though I do enjoy the further cataloging of start and stop dates, hours played, etc. even if it seems only visible to you. Ultimately, like Letterboxd and RYM how much I engage with it is going to depend on the quality of the other users on the site (I've come across a couple good reads, but compared to the others it's woefully lacking in real and would-be-real critics and comedians so far) so if any of the GB faithful are on the service, I'd love to follow you!

Long live the written word!

I understand Jeff's point of view but I also think he's getting a little too hung up on written game reviews as purely utilitarian. Like you, I also have also largely enjoyed reading game reviews for their own sake - I don't think I've actually once used a review to guide my decision to purchase a game. If the reviewer is an excellent writer and I like their personality then I'll pretty much pore over anything they write. The actual opinion isn't even as important as the way it's developed. The review is the product, not the game it's trying to or trying not to recommend. If Greg Kasavin started writing game reviews again and focused solely on mobile match 3 games, I'd probably still read them just because of how deeply enthralled I've always been with his eloquence and the grace with which he's so easily able to express him opinions.

I also just kind of don't get why this is such a sticking point for Jeff when it's not like every other piece of the media on giant bomb has been the best tool to gauge whether I want to purchase a game either. Like I'm not watching the Mario Party Party videos to see if I want to go on ebay to pick up a used copy of Super Mario Party.

Honestly, the cynic inside of me just feels that Jeff just doesn't actually want to write game reviews anymore (either because he simply doesn't enjoy writing them or would rather be doing something else more personally fulfilling, or any other reason really) and is just really trying to justify to himself why it's okay not to write them anymore. Which is totally fine - obviously, I don't want him doing things he doesn't actually enjoy doing. But I really feel like he's overstating written game reviews as archaic when I have a feeling there are still plenty of people who would love to still have them around.