Todays word of the day* is OPINION. Let us begin with the formal definition provided by Dictionary.com.
o·pin·ion [uh-pin-yuhn]
–noun
1. a belief or judgment that rests on grounds insufficient to produce complete certainty.
2. a personal view, attitude, or appraisal.
3. the formal expression of a professional judgment: to ask for a second medical opinion.
4. Law. the formal statement by a judge or court of the reasoning and the principles of law used in reaching a decision of a case.
5. a judgment or estimate of a person or thing with respect to character, merit, etc.: to forfeit someone's good opinion.
6. a favorable estimate; esteem: I haven't much of an opinion of him.
I will be using the second definition while discussing this topic. A personal view, attitude, or appraisal. Why am I mentioning this? How does it apply to the gaming world? Does anyone really care? Probably not, but I do have a point. I think.
We see opinions every day on this site. I have an opinion, you have an opinion, and of equal importance, game reviewers and analysts have an opinion. What is of certainty is that no two people will always have the same opinion. Take the blog section here. My opinion may differ from PRONE nero's about the importance of sales numbers, but that doesn't mean that either one of us is wrong. Likewise, two gaming magazines may have rated a game differently. Is one of those two sources dumber then the other one? No, but I will admit, if the opinion is not an intelligent one, the possibility is there.
So who's opinion do we listen to? The easy answer is the one that most agrees with what you do. To only listen to one side, though, has its risks. By ignoring one side you will probably not get the whole picture. One opinion may focus on, say, the visuals of a game, and rate it poorly because of it. Another site may have a different opinion based on gameplay, and give it high marks. Both sites may be right, but which one is right for you. In my opinion, listen to both places and make up your own mind. I'm big on people thinking for themselves. I will never agree with one side or another without listening to both sides. The only way I can do that is if both sides have a coherent and logical argument. I mean argument in the form of discussion, not trading insults or other such nonsense.
Which leads me to the point of this article. Fanboyism. Now this form of opinion is often entirely biased and ignorant. This type of opinion is the only one that I will completely disregard out of hand. To blatantly say that the 360, or the PS3, or the Wii is the best one just because you like it more, just shows how small minded some of these people are. I'm not saying all fanboys are bad. I happen to think the PS3 is the better system, but I'll be willing to back up my claims with facts, not just feeling. Unfortunately, ignorant fanboyism has been with us since the early days of the arcade and will continue as long as there are competing consoles.
In closing, I am not making any demands here, it's just my opinion.
*Disclaimer: In using the phrase "word of the day" I am not stating that I will, in fact, write about a word every day. It just sounded better than "word of the week" or "word of the whenever the hell I feel like writing about a word".
Square Enix will release the PC versions of Kingdom Hearts HD 1.5 + 2.5 ReMIX, Kingdom Hearts HD 2.8 Final Chapter Prologue, and Kingdom Hearts III + Re Mind via Steam on June 13, the company announced.
Awesome though i hope the collection is around 30/40 dollars as any higher would be unfair for those of us waiting for the anti gamer EGS exclusive deal to expire.
IGN Entertainment has acquired the Gamer Network family of digital brands for an undisclosed sum. As a result of the acquisition, some redundancies have been made across the UK-based organisation.
Well this can only mean one thing... more job layoffs even in the publication industry.
“Layoffs occuring“
Yep. IGN now has a monopoly in the gaming media.
“As a result of the acquisition, some redundancies have been made across the UK-based organisation.”
“Gamer Network's publications are GamesIndustry.biz, Eurogamer (including six local language editions), Rock Paper Shotgun, VG247 and Dicebreaker. The business also holds shares in Outside Xbox, Digital Foundry and Hookshot (which operates Nintendolife, PushSquare, PureXbox and Time Extension).”
“IGN Entertainment is the division of Ziff Davis that includes IGN, MapGenie, HowLongToBeat, and Humble Bundle. It has acquired the websites from PAX and New York Comic-Con organiser ReedPop, which initially bought the Gamer Network business in 2018.“
All this means is a collective hive mind when reporting the news
They’ll discuss with each other how to handle topics and what kind of headlines to go with so they can fire round after round of whatever point they want to make
And the sad thing is over the many years even to the old GameGate days they love making gamers look bad as a collective. Anything for a hit piece.
Narrative control. I don’t like this at all.
Independent reviewers will be more important than ever.
Probably Microsoft's fault!
They surely gave IGN the idea.
What's next IGN Pass?
But joke aside let's hope that this makes the news better compared to some of IGN branches
Microsoft and IGN work quite closely so it isn't a stretch to say this is a move to control the gaming press to get everyone singing from the Microsoft hymn sheet. Not a good look at all. It is transparent stuff like this which is backfiring in Microsoft's face. First they want control of all the games now the media.
While there's obviously a desire to preserve add revenue and early access to review copies, I doubt there's the level of conspiracy here that you imply. I mean there's no direct link between MS and IGN right?
You're probably right!!!!
Here's MS evil plan
1) Make sure that Hellblade 2 receives inflated reviews.
2) Fire all the ppl across UK who gave Starfield the justified 6/10 reviews
3) Make sure that Game industry.biz stops giving Sony's president a tribute to spew their lies and have them talk to Sarah Bonds and Todd Howard only.
4) Control the majority of players for the GOTY award so MS wins from now on.
PPL needs to know about this!
@crazyCoconuts The world has moved on from "direct links" as companies were easily caught doing that. These days corporations can merely operate as a cartel through shared mutual interest which is not strictly kosher either but is also more difficult to prove. It's the fundamental flaw with big corporations in the US economy today and no one in power is addressing it.
Oh boy! If we've learned one thing about recent news, corporate shrinkage of an industry via buyouts from those at top only leads to good things for employees and consumers!
Ummmm not sure that’s a good thing that all these review sites are under the same umbrella. There’s no guarantee that they will maintain a non-bias opinion not paid for by the highest bidder.
Ouch, that does not sounds good for Eurogamer.
With so much of the industry media that will more or less follow the same editorial line, it will be harder and harder to distinguish PR from actual journalism in a couple of years.
Thinking about it, may it explain their review score for Hellblade 2?
***harder and harder to distinguish PR from actual journalism in a couple of years. ***
The age of gaming advertorials.
You're right all of this is just to promote Hellblade 2 and inflate the score.
Also the why cuts are indeed coming to Eurogamer and other UK branches because they only gave Starfield an average score.
Dark Envoy Director's Cut is an update of 2023's magic and steampunk sci-fi action RPG with elements of CRPG tactical combat mechanics.
