Speaking primarily about video games, because that's where I'm most familiar:
I think your item 3 is a big part of the puzzle, possibly the biggest. Reviewers nowadays seem less interested in games and much more likely to have undue incentives then they used to be. However, since that's been discussed by other replies a lot I'm going to focus on an element I think is relevant that hasn't been mentioned yet.
I think a part of the decline in review usefulness is the shift away from reviews being a product of a single person and towards reviews being the product of large publications.
I've found the most useful reviews focus on how an individual saw the game and how much or how little fun they had with it. If the reviewer decides to rate the game lower because of some minor element that seriously detracted from their game experience, that's perfectly okay as long as the reviewer makes it clear so readers who might care less about that element can take the score with an appropriately-sized grain of salt.
Nowadays, at least for the bigger names in games reviews, it seems like the intent is to put out an objective score. I think that has led reviewers to stop looking so much at their level of enjoyment with the game, and instead focus on non-opinion criticisms. This way of reviewing games feels like reviewers start with a default of a perfect score and take points off for flaws, and "I didn't have much fun" needs to be translated into an objective flaw or it can't be used.
This kind of review tends to favor big companies that produce technically well-done games that are lacking something hard to define over ambitious smaller studios whose games have significant flaws but really nail the critical part of their product.
p
Speaking primarily about video games, because that's where I'm most familiar:
I think your item 3 is a big part of the puzzle, possibly the biggest. Reviewers nowadays seem less interested in games and much more likely to have undue incentives then they used to be. However, since that's been discussed by other replies a lot I'm going to focus on an element I think is relevant that hasn't been mentioned yet.
I think a part of the decline in review usefulness is the shift away from reviews being a product of a single person and towards reviews being the product of large publications.
I've found the most useful reviews focus on how an individual saw the game and how much or how little fun they had with it. If the reviewer decides to rate the game lower because of some minor element that seriously detracted from their game experience, that's perfectly okay as long as the reviewer makes it clear so readers who might care less about that element can take the score with an appropriately-sized grain of salt.
Nowadays, at least for the bigger names in games reviews, it seems like the intent is to put out an objective score. I think that has led reviewers to stop looking so much at their level of enjoyment with the game, and instead focus on non-opinion criticisms. This way of reviewing games feels like reviewers start with a default of a perfect score and take points off for flaws, and "I didn't have much fun" needs to be translated into an objective flaw or it can't be used.
This kind of review tends to favor big companies that produce technically well-done games that are lacking something hard to define over ambitious smaller studios whose games have significant flaws but really nail the critical part of their product.
More options
Context Copy link