Following some of our recent discussion on game reviews here at SVGL, I've continued thinking about it a bit. I said at the time that I don't think game reviews do as much to sell titles as the online popular opinion monster or the advance press machine. In other words, I think the average gamer's mind is about fifty percent made up after the first round of trailers and screenshots, and if there is a positively-inclined thread on his favorite forum, that goes about forty percent further. A favorable review will go the remaining ten percent of the way, but even if it's unfavorable, the gamer is still 90 percent likely to buy the game.Now, with a minor uproar surrounding the release of Assassin's Creed and its associated mixed reviews, I've had to rethink things a little. As I said in the initial post, I did consult the IGN point-system review to see the gritty breakdown of positives and negatives -- mostly the negatives, because from there I can decide how much they'd get in my way. But after hearing all over the internet all day about how the game was very much "eh", I'd pretty much decided, by 4:00 PM, that I could bump it down my priority list, if not wipe it entirely.
Then Gabe weighed in at Penny Arcade, and after explaining in detail why and in what way the site's opinions are not influenced by their advertisers, he discussed why he enjoyed the game, where he disagreed with the reviewers and why he thought they might have ended up with an unfavorable impression. Based on one person's informal post, not even a "review," technically, I found I'd changed my mind.
This is because Tycho and Gabe are game industry "tastemakers"; people who literally set the standard for what our community finds popular or favorable. If there's a tide of sentiment sweeping the 'net, tastemakers are those folks who made the first ripple. The gamer community, I feel, is more susceptible than other communities and fandoms to a sort of mob psychology; I devoted an entire Aberrant Gamer to why I think that might be. Regardless of whether I'm right or wrong, that trait of ours makes the opinion of a few key tastemakers equally, if not ultimately more influential to a game's cultural reception and, of course, its sales than reviews or media hype could ever be. I respect the PA dudes for a variety of reasons, even though I've never personally met or spoken to either of them, and I find that I listen to what they say about games (except Star Wars, because I will never like Star Wars as much as Gabe and neither will anyone else).
Lemme ask you guys -- if you're not sure whether you want to buy a game, what sources are primary in tipping your opinion one way or another? Which are secondary? And who do you consider "tastemakers" in the industry, whether that's industry people, community members, or (cough) games media?
