Refugees from other social media platforms, talking about games and geekery.
How long does it take a reviewer to play a game?
I was reading a MEA review and the author mentioned that he'd spent 80+ hours in the game.
That led me to wonder if reviewers ought not let you know how much calendar time they spend with a game.
I guess this comes from me just spending 72 hours in HZD over 20 days and feeling like my entire life was consumed by HZD. I have to assume the reviewer didn't have 3 weeks to cover his game, so he must have played for 6-8 hours/day to get it done in a timely fashion. And don't you think that would impact your feelings towards a game?
It could be positive or negative. Like a story that you experience over a week might not be as impactful as a story that you experience over 6-8 weeks (because you might forget details over time). On the other hand, a UI weirdness that drives you nuts when you're playing 8 hours a day might not be a big deal when you're playing 1-2 hours a day and only encounter the UI quirk once or twice a night.
I don't know what reviewers get paid today. Back when I was an editor we paid, iirc, $1200 for a full length review and $700 for a quickie 1 page review. Hopefully those figures have grown since then (it's been 15 years or so) but even back then it was nearly impossible to review enough games to do it for a living, so you'd have to have a day job, which makes 80 hours seem even crazier. Or if the reviewer is on staff I guess s/he works on just that 1 article for 2 weeks...




I hadn't thought about it, but that makes sense. When playing a game becomes your job, that can definitely color your opinions.
As much as I love playing games, I don't think I could do it for a living. If I were asked to review a genre that I hate, I would resent every second that I was playing that thing and I know it would show in my review. It might actually be a good game but...dang it...I had to play the stupid thing and, try as I might to be fair, it would be difficult to not have that bleed over.
Yeah we used to have freelancers that each had their own genre or genres that we'd assign games to. So y'know, one guy was the sports guy. One was the adventure game gal. One was the hardcore wargamer guy, etc etc.
That would also drive me insane. These days, I can play a game for a few hours, but more than that and I usually end up with a headache. Some games (as I have mentioned) stress me out and I'd probably die of a heart attack if I had to subject myself to unending stress like that XD
I've never taken a game review at face value for this exact reason. I can't take the opinion of someone who rushed through a game or was forced to play it for 10 hours a day for a full week seriously. There's just so much wrong the in the way games are meant to be consumed. This goes for both people who do reviews for a living as well as those consumers who just fly through a game to be the first to finish and then complain about lack of content 2 days later.
Unfortunately too much of our video game culture and the mentality behind game dev caters to this relatively small group because the group has too much reach.