I particularly see it on Grand Strategy games, where the comments will have people who freely admit they don't even understand the game in question, but because their favorite youtuber is playing it, they still bought it. Some people just latch on and mimic behavior. I very often see comments in youtube videos that people have bought the game because said youtuber is playing it, regardless of its quality. Which is to say, we could largely simply do without them entirely, but at the same time, if you found a 'trusted' source, those same reviewers can save you a lot of time and money. IMHO, video game reviews were born out of the same world/cloth that film/movie review is. Its far more useful than game criticism or its degenerate review offspring ever was. Its easy to find videos of the actual gameplay experiences and find out if its something that appeals to you (or not). Now, game coverage, on the other hand, is important and probably better than its ever been. (And I can usually see enough of the UI to form my own impression. Fun, level design, UI and story coherence are basically the only things I want to hear about. Both things you've listed I can see for myself in a video, so if its in a review, they're wasting my time. Now, as for your objective elements- personally I couldn't care less. What's left of criticism has been swallowed by reviews (the degenerate offspring of criticism), and most 'mainstream' gaming sites don't even bother to pretend to do criticism anymore.

Justin Heckert (Vanity Fair) received the prestigious Knickerbocker Award for Best Games Journalism, and Phil Spencer (CEO of Microsoft Gaming) was named as the 2023 Andrew Yoon Legend Award winner.I mean, specifically game criticism, or game coverage?Ĭriticism is basically a dead genre that very few people know how to do anymore, so you get either squealing fools or bitter complaining, and neither have much to do with the actual product, but the marketing hype they did or didn't swallow. Elden Ring was awarded this year’s Big Apple Award for Best Game of the Year and received the Statue of Liberty Award for Best World. The New York Videogame Critics Circle (NYVGCC) celebrated the best games, actors, esports athletes and journalists this evening at the 12th annual New York Game Awards.

Video game critics