Why videogame reviews don’t matter
Slightly startlingly, GamesTM magazine reaches its 100th issue this month. It would seem we all really ARE that old.
As you'd expect, the 100th issue indulges in some retrospective pondering over the state of the games industry during the mag's existence, but it was an unremarked inclusion in the nostalgia trip that I found really striking.
The "Discuss The Decade" feature at the front of the magazine dedicates 10 two-page spreads to looking back at each year since its launch at the turn of the millennium, and one of the things that appears in all of them is a "Critics vs Public" chart, listing the 10 highest-scored games released each year alongside the 10 best-selling ones.
(The feature doesn't specify the source of the ratings, but presumably it's Metacritic or GameRankings, as many of the games were never reviewed by GamesTM itself.)
The consistent magnitude of the disconnect between the two is arresting. In three of the 10 years, none of the 10 best-reviewed games make the best-seller list. The highest number of critics' favourites ever ranked in the hit list is just two, a feat only achieved three times.
Even seven, eight and nine years ago (long before the Wii supposedly revolutionised the game-buying demographic in favour of the "casual" mainstream), so-called "hardcore" franchise titles like Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 3, Final Fantasy IX, Quake III Arena and Super Mario Sunshine were being beaten senseless at the box office by dire licenced releases like Who Wants To Be A Millionaire?, The Simpsons Wrestling and Monsters Inc – games that games magazines often didn't even bother to review at all.
FIFA took the top sales spot in five of the ten years (coming second in a further two, failing to make the top three just once, and making a stunning total of TWELVE appearances in the top 10 sellers over the decade – on two occasions, even the previous year's FIFA still managed to get into the top 10 alongside that year's incarnation), but doesn't feature in the highest-rated listings even a single time.
(Despite the fact that every review of every new year's FIFA invariably reads "They've really got it right this time!")
And in only three out of the 10 years does the No.1 highest-marked game appear anywhere in the best-selling top 10 – in every case, a Grand Theft Auto title. (The sole example of the No.1-rated game also being the best seller is GTA Vice City in 2002.)
Now it's only fair, of course, to point out that a game reviewed during any given year will almost certainly have only been on sale for a minority of that year. But since by far the biggest proportion of videogame releases and sales happen in the last few weeks of the year (making for a level playing-field), and as old games don't tend to stay on store shelves for long (except as pre-owned titles, where they don't count towards chart sales), it's still reasonable to expect a year's best-reviewed games to be among its best-sellers.
If, that is, anyone pays any attention to videogames reviews.
And it should be pretty obvious by now that they don't.
One of the most surprising things about looking back over the 21st century so far is – as touched on earlier – how little things have actually changed, despite the widespread perception that the growth of the "casual" market has been a more recent development.
But while categorising games as belonging to either side of the divide is a tricky and highly subjective business, it's hard to make any sort of case that 2009's best-seller chart (two FIFAs, two Call Of Dutys, Mario Kart and Assassin's Creed) is any more "casual" in nature than, say, the pre-Wii, pre-DS list of 2003, which featured The Sims, Eyetoy Play and The Simpsons Hit & Run.
Snapshots of the individual years emphasize the point, so let's take a brief overview. For the full lists, go and buy the magazine. I'm in it and everything.
== 2000 ==
As an aside, it's worth noting that the brave new millennium finished its opening year (or started it, depending on how hair-splitty you are about semantics) with what was perhaps the worst Top 10 of all time – Eidos' dreadful, cynical, lazy cash-in of Who Wants To Be A Millionaire?, three separate Pokemon titles that were essentially all the same game, a highly embarrassing two different WWF Smackdown games, Toy Story 2 and The Sims all clogging up the best-seller list alongside Gran Turismo 2 and FIFA 2001 (at a freakishly low No.8).
Critics' top 10 games in top 10 sales chart: 1
(Gran Turismo 2)
Best seller: Who Wants To Be A Millionaire?
Critical disconnect: Quake 3 Arena outsold by Toy Story 2.
== 2001 ==
Pokemon Red, Blue and Yellow had all found a spot in the best-selling chart the previous year, and this time it was the turn of Gold and Silver. Their twin appearances in the 2001 chart (at No.5 and No.7 respectively) marked the last time that handheld-exclusive titles would make the sales top 10 until 2007 was similarly owned by two Brain Training games for the DS.
(Brain Training and Pokemon releases – eight of them in total – have been the only such games to make the best-seller list this century.)
Critics' top 10 games in top 10 sales chart: 1
(Grand Theft Auto 3)
Best seller: Harry Potter And The Philosopher's Stone
Critical disconnect: Tony Hawks Pro Skater 3 outsold by The Simpsons Wrestling
== 2002 ==
The next year represents the closest similarity between the critics and the public across the entire period, but that's not saying very much.
While the former preferred dense, involved ultracore games requiring hours and hours of dedicated time investment from their players, either in learning insanely complex moves (Virtua Fighter 4, Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 4) or in sitting watching interminable cutscenes (Metal Gear Solid 2, Final Fantasy X), the latter preferred the more accessible and familiar fare offered by Harry Potter and Spiderman.
Impressively, the previous year's No.2 sales performer (GTA3) also managed to be the No.3 best seller of 2002 (behind its own sequel at No.1) – an incredible feat which has yet to be equalled, although GTA San Andreas would go on to reach No.1 in 2004 and No.8 in 2005.
Critics' top 10 games in top 10 sales chart: 2
(GTA:Vice City and Metal Gear Solid 2)
Best seller: GTA Vice City
Critical disconnect: Tom Clancy's Splinter Cell outsold by Monsters Inc.
== 2003 ==
The reviewers were full of Gamecube love in 2003, with Zelda: The Wind Waker and Metroid Prime taking the top two spots in the best-rated chart, but neither troubled the best-seller list despite the console being slashed to just £79. After missing out for several years, FIFA hauled itself to the pinnacle once again, where it would stay for almost all of the next half-decade.
Critics' top 10 games in top 10 sales chart: 0
Best seller: FIFA 2004
Critical disconnect: Soul Calibur 2 outsold by Enter The Matrix.
== 2004 ==
Everyone was so surprised at a Simpsons game suddenly being half-decent for the first time since Bart Vs The Space Mutants in 1991 – albeit a feat achieved by blatantly ripping off Sega's Crazy Taxi – that the game made its second appearance in the best-selling list, improving 2003's No.9 spot to grab the No.4 position. The Simpsons Hit & Run, then, is the only standalone game (that is, not part of a series of similar titles or bundled with hardware) ever to have garnered such a distinction this century.
Critics' top 10 games in top 10 sales chart: 2
(Half-Life 2 and Halo 2)
Best seller: GTA San Andreas (FIFA 2005 – No.2)
Critical disconnect: Burnout 3 outsold by Driv3r
== 2005 ==
The DS made its presence felt for the first time in 2005, with Advance Wars Dual Strike and Mario Kart DS both appearing at the best-reviewed table, but neither made it into the cash rankings. Despite (or perhaps because of) it being a non-international-tournament year, football dominated 2005's game charts, with FIFA 06 and Pro Evo 5 filling the top two spots, and FIFA Street pimping along behind at No.6.
Oddly, the public weren't so keen on taking up the critics' recommendations of Ninja Gaiden Black and Splinter Cell: Chaos Theory, or indeed a single one of the reviewers' favourite 10 games.
Critics' top 10 games in top 10 sales chart: 0
Best seller: FIFA 2006
Critical disconnect: Metal Gear Solid 3 outsold by Peter Jackson's King Kong
== 2006 ==
2004 and 2005 were the most "hardcore" years of the decade, and 2006 – year of the Wii's debut – saw the mainstream fighting back hard. Yet it wasn't Wii or DS games that raked in the bucks – Lego Star Wars, The Sims 2: Pets and Cars all notched most of their sales on the more traditional formats, and no Wii- or DS-exclusive games made the top 10.
GTA maintained a six-year run in the best-sellers list in the shape of Liberty City Stories on PSP, the only game for Sony's little-loved handheld ever to make the chart.
Critics' top 10 games in top 10 sales chart: 0
Best seller: FIFA 2007
Critical disconnect: Gears Of War outsold by The Sims 2: Pets
== 2007 ==
The Wii and DS finally made their impact in this year, with Brain Training, More Brain Training and Wii Play joining Halo 3 in the ranks of single-format games in the top 10. (Although Wii Play was undoubtedly boosted hugely by being available in a cheap bundle with additional Wiimote controllers.) Otherwise the public's fascination with FIFA, Pro Evo, The Simpsons and WWE Smackdown games continued unabated.
Critics' top 10 games in top 10 sales chart: 2
(Call Of Duty 4: Modern Warfare and Halo 3)
Best seller: FIFA 08
Critical disconnect: Bioshock, Super Mario Galaxy, Call Of Duty 4: Modern Warfare and Halo 3 all outsold by More Brain Training
== 2008 ==
Wii Play climbed from 2007's No.8 to 2008's No.7, and this time Nintendo machines hosted every single-format game to make the best-seller list, as Wii Fit, Mario Kart Wii and Brain Training again (this time down to No.8 from the previous year's No.2) all joined it, along with another Lego game, another GTA, another FIFA and another Call Of Duty.
Surprise hit of the year, though, was 2K Games' actually rather splendid Wii budget title Carnival Funfair Games, which proved that "casual" didn't have to mean "rubbish". The critics, of course, had panned it, in favour of snappy videogaming fun like World Of Warcraft: Wrath Of The Lich King.
Critics' top 10 games in top 10 sales chart: 1
(Grand Theft Auto IV)
Best seller: FIFA 09
Critical disconnect: Metal Gear Solid 4 outsold by Carnival Funfair Games
== 2009 ==
The rise of the Wii continued last year, with the world-crushing "kiddie" console filling an unprecedented FIVE slots in 2009's sales top 10 with single-format titles. Wii Play couldn't hang on for another year, but Wii Fit, Wii Fit Plus, Wii Sports Resort, Mario Kart Wii and Mario & Sonic At The Winter Olympic Games all stepped up (in some cases for a second year), and two FIFAs and two Call Of Dutys left only a single spot for anyone else, which was filled by the excruciatingly dull Assassin's Creed 2.
The reviewers, meanwhile, urged gamers to rush out and besiege game stores for copies of the Japanese RPG Shin Megami Tensei: Persona 4 on PS2. Oh dear.
Critics' top 10 games in top 10 sales chart: 1
(Call Of Duty 4: Modern Warfare 2)
Best seller: FIFA 10
Critical disconnect: Street Fighter IV outsold by Wii Fit Plus.
There isn't a lot of room to argue about the conclusions. While the games industry continues to humour, flatter and indulge the specialist media (largely to maintain its primary purpose as a breeding ground for new PR minions), it does so in the secure knowledge that nobody really cares what it says.
Speaking as someone still loosely a part of that media, that's a bit depressing, if not exactly a new revelation. But it's only when you look at the trend over an extended period that you realise just how irrelevant and doomed the videogames media is.
While print magazines scrabble ever more desperately to find the last few people still prepared to hand over £5 and above every month for six-week-old news and worthless reviews, websites are increasingly reducing themselves to unthinking press-release aggregators whose meaningless and empty functions will soon be entirely automated.
Videogames reviews may within a couple of years simply not exist any more, certainly not in any professional sense. Will anyone miss them? The evidence seems to point to "No".
Oh dear. So GamesTM are taking a leaf out of Edge's book and self-referentially wanking themselves into oblivion?
Agreed, but haven't music, film, theatre, and even car critics been in the same boat for decades?
Shit, Roger Ebert has spent the best part of fifty years recommending films nobody saw and the Academy Awards usually go to the kinds of movies which never see the inside of a multiplex. Regardless, a good film review can inform and entertain, and – at best – shape the way you interpret the film.
Games criticism is irrelevant as a buyer's guide, sure, but that's not to say it's without function or value. The trick is finding the value in it.
How many critics actually find the value in it is another matter, obviously.
Hasn't it always been this way though? Many of the best Zzap! and Crash reviews didn't chart, but licensed tat always made its way to the top of the charts. See also, well, pretty much anything in media.
The single-sentence reviews found elsewhere on WoS; I didn't stumble upon them until after you'd stopped updating them, which I found to be a shame. A game review is regarded for the score at the bottom of the page, as any fule kno. Sometimes, someone might scan the body text out of boredom, distraction from constipation or due to a late bus. The text is often seemingly disconnected from the score.
Y'remember that "The future of game reviews" or whatever it was called, back in Amiga Power? Suddenly, a score + a single quote actually seems like a more relevant and applicable review than was mockingly intended then. After all, it's all you see if you look up a game on Metacritic. Bad for journalism, but does it otherwise even matter anymore? You article suggests: no.
"Agreed, but haven't music, film, theatre, and even car critics been in the same boat for decades?"
To some extent, but I'd argue that videogames have far less of an "arthouse" culture/sector, certainly until the last couple of years when indie developers have started to do some stuff that's quite interesting (while of necessity becoming less gamelike).
The vast majority of games are produced at great expense by huge multinational corporations, something which is still significantly less the case in other forms of culture (though this is changing excitingly with gaming since the advent of the App Store), so the disconnect ought logically to be quite a bit less pronounced.
As I say in the piece, though, the thing I found surprising was how little anything had changed over the last decade, when we’re supposed to have experienced a massive upheaval in favour of the mainstream.
The fact that professional reviewers and the buying public like different things could alternatively be a sign of the maturing of the videogame media though? No one complains that the films with the best reviews in say Sight and Sound or a broadsheet paper aren't the biggest at the box office. Nor if The Wire's annual top 10 doesnt contain Susan Boyle (or whatever the best selling album is). I'm not saying that there are any gaming media outlets with the same quality of writing out there right now, but the purpose of a magazine isnt solely to direct people to the most popular, or even to lionise things that appeal to the majority. If a good review of say, Persona 4 resulted in a few extra sales then so much the better. Just because Carnival Games sold better it doesnt follow that mags should only cover indie or niche games surely?
Games (and books, films, music) aren't Fridges or TVs where people want an objective review to tell them what is the "best" to buy. Or maybe I'm just being naive.
I'm not sure you can say anything is "maturing" if it's always been the same as it is now.
I think one of the interesting things is that while the specialist media aspires (badly) to be the "broadsheet" coverage of videogames, there isn't a notably tabloid one. Films and music that sell well have usually been covered and praised widely in red-top newspapers, but where's the videogame coverage for the mainstream/"casual" market?
It's not in the less-specialist media like lad mags, because they tend to like the same bloated triple-A space-marine nerd rubbish that the games mags do. Who championed Carnival Funfair Games or Wii Sports Resort or Simpsons Hit & Run?
Critical disconnect: Comparing the sales performance of games with mass media appeal to the sales performance of games likely to be of interest to the niche market of videogame magazine purchasers.
Not epic, but fail.
That's silly. Mario and Zelda have mass market appeal – they're two of the biggest-selling gaming franchises ever – yet Super Mario Galaxy (released on far and away the most popular console, remember) got spanked at the tills by "niche market" titles like Assassin's Creed and Halo 3, while Zelda Twilight Princess ran not only on the Wii but also on a legacy platform, yet was nowhere to be seen behind WWE Smackdown and Need For Speed Carbon.
*EDITED
"they're two of the biggest-selling gaming franchises ever", but they are just that – gaming franchises – and will never have the mass appeal or media penetration of titles like WWE/F, Brain Training, or FIFA.
The people who go out and buy a FIFA game probably won't go out and buy Zelda or Mario, but the people who buy Mario or Zelda might go out and buy FIFA. The people who buy Halo 3 probably won't go out and buy Mario or Zelda, but the people who buy Mario or Zelda might go out and buy Halo 3. The people who go out and buy FIFA or Halo 3 probably won't go out and buy a videogame magazine, but the people who buy a videogame magazine will probably buy Mario and Zelda.
It may not be arthouse, but a large section of gaming is still niche, and videogames magazines and websites cater to it and will always be relevant to it, because mass media won't.
"Zelda Twilight Princess came out on BOTH of the most popular videogame platforms"
Sorry, for whom was the Gamecube the most popular videogame platform? I vaguely recall that it was all but gone from high street shelves by the time that Toilet Princess came out. Worth noting also that the Wii Toilet Princess was at one time integral to playing dodgy stuff on your Wii, but that this apparently had no effect on sales.
Unrelatedly, I wonder how the pre-owned market has affected those figures.
I'm not sure that you can say the biggest-selling videogames ever don't have "mass appeal". That seems obviously, self-evidently wrong. And "media penetration" is neither here nor there – all the column inches in the world count for nothing against cold hard sales.
(And since these must be UK sales figures, saying WWE has mass-market media penetration is daft. It's a minority interest "sport" in a subscription niche of a pay satellite channel.)
Similarly, I'm not convinced there's any kind of reason to believe that Mario fans would buy Halo but that the converse wouldn't be true. Why wouldn't it?
Assassin's Creed is – by ANY rational measure – a more niche title than Super Mario Galaxy, and it got worse reviews, yet it sold more. Trying to say there's nothing odd about that, or that it doesn't raise questions about the relevance of reviews, makes no sense.
"Sorry, for whom was the Gamecube the most popular videogame platform?"
Whoops. I got all confused by the fact that everyone I knew was playing it on Wii due to the magic of backwards compatibility (and because the Gamecube was effectively already dead at that point). My bad, will edit.
"Zelda Twilight Princess (EDIT: ran) on BOTH of the most popular videogame platforms"
I am baffled by your edit as asides from the Wii I can't think of another TP-friendly platform besides the Gamecube, which we both agree was dead. Do you refer to being able to play the Gamecube version on the Wii? Or was there a DS version that crept out in silence? Sorry, the bank holiday has left me denser than usual.
Man, this is confusing. There were two distinct SKUs of Twilight Princess, one for GC and one for Wii.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zelda_twilight_princess
I'll re-edit for clarity, since we're all over the shop on this one. Is it important, anyway?
I think Stu may be confusing one of the DS Zelda games for a port of TP which I do not believe exists.
Blimey, I'd forgotten how ridiculously successful the Wii was/is. Sure, developers mostly treat it as a worthless platform now, but I doubt the Nintendo execs are crying into their pillows stuffed with cash about it.
One slight issue with this breakdown is that multiplatform games distort it a bit. But I don't think breaking it down to single platform lists will make much difference to the overall conclusion.
Interesting to see that new, this generation franchises make very little showing – only Bioshock, Assassin's Creed and Brain Training making any appearance. Franchises from the previous generation put in a pretty good showing though.
And is also perhaps forgetting there was actually a Wii RELEASE of TP.
“One slight issue with this breakdown is that multiplatform games distort it a bit. “
Yeah, where possible I tried to compare like with like when it came to multi-platform and single-platform stuff.
"Is it important, anyway?"
Not as such, I was just left excitedly wondering if I'd missed some kind of awesome Gamecube emulator that was compatible with the DS or something. Ah well.
Your understanding of marketing is astonishing. I can only assume that by "loosely a part of that media" you mean you work at WHSmiths.
Clearly there's no point writing about Atelier Rorona, because more people will still buy Halo Reach, and the people who'll buy Halo Reach will buy Halo Reach whatever the media says, so there is clearly no need for the media to say anything at all. I therefore cede defeat, and accept the demise of the videogame related media as inevitable.
Excellent.
I'm always bemused when people get all huffy when you politely ask them to explain their beliefs. When did Super Mario Galaxy morph into Atelier Rorona, whatever that is?
To be fair, theres a difference between a small effect and no effect. If an arthouse film get critically championed it can make a lot more than if it hadn't be. We've seen this with games, in particular darwinia and world of goo spring to mind.
I would be surprised if reviews had a negligible effect on consumer behaviour. They are not, in fact, the most important factor- brand awareness seems to be the key signifier, but saying they don't matter? I find it implausible.
Indie games are something of a special case. When your sales expectations are basically zero, then any coverage anywhere is likely to have a disproportionate effect. But then, few mags bother to cover indie games. I wish they did. I wish you could read about Xbox Indie games in Xbox mags, but as a rule you can’t, because they have no advertising budget and therefore games mags aren’t interested in them.
"360" review around 2 or 3 indie games per issue (sometimes as many of the 'proper' XBLAH games, a lot of the time). Yes, there needs to be more reviewed in there, but it's a decent start.
Commendably even Edge have started reviewing the better 360 indie games. Apple Jack and Ancient Trader have both received glowing reviews in the past two issues. Don't recall seeing any in there before, mind.
Best-selling and mass appeal are two very different things.
"All the column inches in the world" have a direct effect on "cold hard sales", as demonstrated by indie games, and the games industry in general.
WWE/F merchandise somehow transcends the 'sport' itself. It's a mystery to me, but it's there.
Mario is family friendly. Halo Reach is not.
Assasins Creed: Hype Works: http://bit.ly/cL6kOE
I'm not in a huff. I just don't think you know enough about the subject to have an intelligent discussion.
"Best-selling and mass appeal are two very different things"
Er, no they're not. If you have true mass appeal you sell a lot.
""All the column inches in the world" have a direct effect on "cold hard sales", as demonstrated by indie games, and the games industry in general."
Every fact in the article disproves that assertion. You can get page after page after page of coverage and 10/10s across the board and still not sell as many as Cars.
And amusingly, the page you link to with regard to Assassin’s Creed immediately follows the paragraph on “Hype works” with one headed “Scores don’t matter”.
But you can be a best seller within your own media type without having mass appeal. There are best selling games that appeal to gamers, and there are best selling games that appeal to non gamers. Just look at Amazon's current bestseller list. Just Dance AND Modern Warfare 2? Do they both have mass appeal? Do either?
If a game has mass market appeal, like Cars, then it will get column inches and it will sell whatever the scores are. Practically all of the people who buy it will base their decision on seeing the film. Practically none of them will be the kind of people who buy GamesTM first to see what a reviewer thought. The hype is created and the sales follow.
For the rest of the gaming market reviews make a difference, because people are spending real money and they don't want to do it blindly. There is no 'I liked the film so I'll probably like the game', and people want to know they're not throwing their money away. It's why review sites exist, it's why metacritic exists, and while it's not a perfect system, because gaming is such a subjective experience (unless, apparently, you are a reviewer for Edge), it is a benchmark people use.
Their will always be the mass market, who will follow the hype, and the scores won't matter because they won't ever see them unless they're part of the boxart. And even some of those who do read the reviews will follow the crowd. I bought my kids WALL-E…
But their will always be the niche gamers too, who will buy a game like FFXIII because the reviewers said it was good, and leave a game like Nier because the reviewers said it was bad.
So tell me, why are all of the niche gamers suddenly going to stop caring about reviews and start making purchases based on hype and advertising budgets?
Who said they were? I never mentioned hype or advertising budget, directly or by implication.
Wii Play always makes me laugh. It metacritics out at about 58% and yet in North America alone sold over 10m copies. That's quite a lot of people paying no attention whatsoever to reviewers.
If I recall, Wii Play cost as much as a Wii Remote, and came with a Wii Remote.
Not the same, but only about a fiver more than the cost of the Wiimote alone.
Great article RevStu but I'm inclined to think that games/movie/music review media are purely for people who have a strong interest in that media anyway. A niche market in a vast industry. Their reviews are not necessarily there for the mass public but for guys like me (or "hardcore gamers" groan) who give a flying toss about not buying complete drivel with their hard earned dosh.
If games reviews weren't around I wouldn't have purchased some fantastic games. Games like Katamari or Parappa or Ico or Fallout 3 were brought to my attention. All major publishers, sure, but not vastly advertised or praised anywhere else.
So the general public don't buy some great games in their masses…as long as I, and other passionate gamers are well informed and managed to blag some of the best games around…isn't that what these mags are for? Guys like me? The mass public will buy any over hyped movie/cartoon/pop idol tie in. What's new? And it's the same of movies and music.
Muse might get the best reviews but I wouldn't put my money on them outselling Westlife at Christmas. It doesn't mean the (good)reviewers don't know what they are talking about, it just means they have taste
You could buy Wii Play standalone too although we don't know how many sales that version accounts for. It still likely supports the hypothesis of millions of games being sold with nobody paying the slightest attention to review scores. I find it hard to believe that the combined fifty million sales of the Brain Age games and Nintendogs were driven by what some mag or website said. That's the interesting dynamic at the moment, the disconnect between what the mainstream gaming media is covering and what folks are actually playing.
I was always of the mind Wii Play should never have been allowed into the software chart in the first place, the RRPs may be a fiver apart but that's never been reflected seriously at retail.
And indeed even now when I check, ShopTo will sell you a remote for £24.99 or Wii Play for £25.85…
To repeat an earlier comment, the disconnect between box office take and critically acclaimed films is equally wide. In 2005 Brokeback Mountain had the 22nd highest box office gross, Capote was 93rd. The winners at the box office were Star Wars, Narnia and Harry Potter, and it looks like Potter was somewhere over 25th on the critical list (hard to tell as re-releases like Taxi Driver top the critical list). [Source: Metacritic / Movie Times]
That's not so much a critical disconnect however, in as much as it was only critical opinion that got anyone to see Brokeback or Capote. They wouldn't have placed at all if the critics hadn't championed them, and looked at that way, the critics were a success. Similarly in the world of videogames, games like Deus Ex might not have had any sales at all (dated graphics etc) without being championed by critics like KG. I wouldn't have bought Outrun if you hadn't gone crazy about it, or Bangai-o, or Wario Ware…
The critic shouldn't be there to say that whatever is popular is great (Avatar best movie ever!?!!?), and it's unlikely a critic will ever be able to stop people from seeing the latest romcom or action blockbuster in favour of artier affair, so they can only really have moderate goals, like having a small influence on getting good films to a wider audience, and making sure some people stay away from some of the popular-but-bad films.
The thing is, Stuart, your 'evidence' doesn't prove that review scores have no effect on sales, or that they have a negligible effect on sales. It proves that there isn't a close mapping between review scores and best-sellers lists. This is not the same thing.
It certainly doesn't empirically prove that, no. But it suggests it pretty strongly, particularly if you consider the tiny audiences of print mags and the still relatively-tiny audience of most websites.
Readers neither trust nor need critics any more, and the degree to which that's true is far higher in the games field (and the music one) than anything else, because it's far easier to get hold of games or music illegally and thereby assess them for yourself.
The availability of illegal copies of new-release movies, for example, is massively overstated, but being able to obtain a perfect 1:1 copy of a new game or album before it's in your local shops is child's play. So why would you heed the opinion of some tool from Official Xbox Magazine who probably hasn’t even played it?
As has been pointed out above, reviews in general don't matter to a lot of people. A shitty example of any medium will still sell well if there's enough of a recognisable licence behind it or hype/marketing or brand recognition or any of the other things that cause people to disregard quality as a factor. And by 'people' in that last sentence I really mean 'stupid people' because, although you don't need to take any review as gospel and should have your own opinions, only stupid people rush out and buy licensed crap without even stopping to check whether the product in question has been univesally panned and thus whether, just maybe, they should think twice before handing over hard earned cash for the experience. The other side of the fence though is people like me and, I'm willing to bet, everyone else reading your blog who do actually give a shit about whether they're getting something good for their money and these people will pay attention to reviews (whether that be for games or films or music or whatever) purely in order to avoid rewarding a company for making some goddawful shovelware piece of shit. So, um, where am I going with this? Mostly really to point out that you're not really making a case for "Why videogame reviews don’t matter" but more "Why reviews in general don't matter to idiots." And stupid people doing stupid things with their money and free time isn't exactly news.
In addition, I don't really agree with what you're saying in your last comment there. You imply with your "any more" there that somehow people en masse used to trust critics and that's changed for some reason, but where's evidence of that? Licensed over marketed shite has always sold more units than quality products (that aren't licensed or over marketed) due to the aforementioned stupidity. That hasn't changed because people haven't changed; there's exactly the same amount of stupidity floating around as there always was. Also you're somewhat twisting reality to suit your own needs with the talk of how pirating games is easier than pirating movies. Even my most tech-illiterate family and friends could take a good stab at downloading a film (whether it's a new release or not is immaterial), but pirating an Xbox game is some pretty difficult stuff and it's currently impossible to pirate PS3 games at all so it's all about as far from "child's play" as it's possible to get.
Interesting stuff, and just sounds as right as can be. Hang around a games shop for a while in a school holiday (ahem) and you'll see the way kids/teenagers' minds work – it's all about image, which may occasionally encompass something that's critically acclaimed (GTA or MW2) but it's not because it's so acclaimed. So long as there are some Hurggh, yeah gun scenes in there, the game's desirable.