I once aspired to. I still aspire to write about games because I believe I have something to say about them that others do not. However, the dream of writing about games professionally has long been destroyed. Let us go back to 2006; the year that The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion came out.
How many of you said something along the lines of: "I'm allready my 50th hour in and it's still amazing"?. Everyone knew that game would get a 9.0 before it got out, whether it deserved it or not. Add the label rpg (which is basically literature amongst games if the rpg is any good), and people think they're somewhat sophisticated as well.
Let us look at the game now; without hype surrounding us and it. Oblivion had a busted ass engine that couldn't do anything without a hiccup. The game was butt-ugly save for the dungeons (truly kudos to this as I haven't seen more atmospheric dungeons so far). You could go everywhere, but not really do anything except kill. Seldom were you given a meaningful choice. Seldom did you meet deeply developed characters, in fact, if I remember correctly, the game is absolutely devoid of deep characters. Boring quests, boring dialogue, boring characters, pretty much everything is there to -not- make an rpg. But above all the game was devoid of any feeling of realism save for it's physics system.
There was a supposed demonic invasion which needed to be stopped. Well there was no invasion, just portals wich you had to travel through where the enemy was waiting behind meekly for you to arrive and kill them, which wasn't hard at all because everything was scaled to your level.
However, it did not change a thing, the game was still widely received as the best rpg to hit the world, when in fact it was more like a half-broken action game. Correction, a half-broken action game filled with unused potential. The only thing oblivion ever did great was combat (mechanics wise), but even that was boring due to previously mentioned level scaling.
Who is to blame? Were the journalists massively caught up in the bethesda hype machine? Indeed they were, just look at the positive previews from day one. Another fact to consider is how their audience expected the game to score high. They would certainly view their source of a lesser quality if their expectations would not be met, and could/would indeed leave (e.g. people threatening to leave gamespot if halo 3 would not score high). Wwhen there are other sources who have allready let the game score high you're at the point of no return. After all, the more people say something, the more it must be true, right? WRONG, or are you saying that not so long ago the earth was indeed flat?
However, there is also Bethesda to blaim for showing things before the game came out that were not found in the final product. Anyone remember the famous tea-party video to show off the radiant AI? Nothing of the sophisticated AI they showed there was found in the game, so the conclusion: The ai is not sophisticated, but the script they used in that video probably was.
However, with the above posted, who in their right mind would want to become a journalist? This is not a bash to GiantBomb, its editors, or journalists in general. In fact, I salute the ones who are motivated to bring truth about games, and have to put up with this crap on a daily basis. GiantBomb I view as an individual amongst gaming websites. Stepping out of the gamespot/ign/gamespy/etc. ring to do its own thing, and I'm glad I have the oppertunity to witness it.
I will at one point write regulary about games on a blog, newspaper,or if all else fails: toilet paper. I still have that dream, but on my own time, and more importantly, on my own terms, independant of popularity. And I mean this; if nobody would ever read my reviews then fine, it wouldn't stop me from having fun forming thoughts, refining thoughts, and jotting them down ;).
This is half off-topic. But I never really vented about the destruction of that dream, and this seemed like a good oppertunity.
Posted 1 year, 3 months ago
