Quote Originally Posted by bangtango View Post
Who says a person has to get paid to review a $10 Wii fishing game or Ford Racing on the PS3? A web site like IGN, Gamespot or somebody smaller will have no trouble finding people who could write a good review, throw up a couple screen shots and do it for nothing just so they can have the opportunity to be published someplace and potentially get noticed.

That could include either an intern or a well-established member of their forums who has a good reputation.

I can understand some people who are there collecting a paycheck only having time to review Duke Nukem Forever, a new Call of Duty/Resident Evil entry, etc. but the lesser stuff on the market could be completed by "regular contributors" not on the payroll.

We may have to agree to disagree but I can't help but find it lame that to find reviews for over 50-60% of the modern games on the market that you have to wade through content with no capitalization or punctuation on Amazon.com or GameFAQ's.
There are already people being taken advantage of enough as it is, so I don't think we should encourage this. If people want to write amateur reviews, wonderful, but let them do that on sites that cater to that. The last thing we should do is ruin it for people trying to make a living by pushing their companies into using free labor even more.

Take the manga localization/publishing business. Back in the 90s, people could sometimes make over $10 editing a page, but Tokyopop decided they didn't want to play by the industry's standards. Unpaid interns were brought on along with newly graduated kids so desperate to get their foot in the door that they'd edit for $3 a page. This set a precedent that has damaged the industry since, and pay rates have been depressed across the board.