Thoughts on game reviews

[Gamereviewgod]

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.

Why have random people review stuff for the site with no training to speak of when the sites you mention already have user reviews? They would be the same ones reviewing it for the site. Those reviews exist because people were willing to do it in their free time. Asking someone to work for free from a site that large? It's should be considered offensive and honestly illegal. Fan sites get away with it based on their nature, and user reviews work more like extended comments. IGN and Gamespot have major dollars behind them. They have taxes, payroll, etc. They're big business.

Never mind that user reviews are beyond warped because people begin to justify their purchases. That's why a lot of reviews have backlash, people offended they bought a $60 coaster so they rant and rave, "It's at least an 8!" In the case of a paid critic who gets the game for free, no, they don't care. They have no investment in it. A bad game is a bad game, something that takes time away from other things.

You seem to have this idea that reviewing games for a living is all cookies and roses. It's not. Very few publications (if any) have dedicated critics, which is another problem all together. You need to be multi-faceted, so your time is split between previews, news, reviews, uploading new screens, reading PR, interviews, etc. How much time is left after that to actually review something? Not much, and as such, only the stuff the site's specific readership cares about gets reviewed.