#oneaday Day 211: Word of Mouth

I've seen several posts from my writer comrades on WordPress recently that have something in common: they find themselves contemplating the value of critics, the obligations and responsibilities that professional critics have, and whether or not that "professional" side of things is truly representative of various forms of media today.

From my perspective, although I've worked as one of those professional critics in the past, I personally don't particularly ascribe value to the work of professional critics today. In fact, I'd even go so far as to say I actively avoid the work of professional critics today. This isn't down to any of the accusations that sometimes get thrown around — "paid reviews" and the like — but quite simply because in terms of the media I'm interested in, the gulf between how professional critics approach things and how I approach things has become too wide.

Conversely, I now tend to make my media decisions based on a few factors. Top of the heap is quite simply whether or not I instinctively feel like the work in question is something I will enjoy. I know my tastes pretty well by this point, and I haven't steered myself wrong on many occasions in the past. I don't look at reviews of something that catches my attention; I just pick it up and make my own mind up before looking anything else up on it. If I'm writing about it, I'll write about it before I read anyone else's work on it — with the exception of anything I stumble across during research, and there I'll tend to emphasise factual articles and interviews over opinion pieces and reviews.

After that, I'll tend to seek out the thoughts of people I know and whose opinions I typically respect, even if they don't always line up exactly. I enjoy the work of people who give things a chance even if they're popularly regarded as "bad"; I wrote a while back about this being a particular reason I enjoy Game Grumps' work on YouTube, but it also applies to people I have a bit more of a personal connection to, such as bloggers I know on WordPress or people I've encountered on Twitter, Discord and the like.

And that's about it. I don't give a damn what the Metacritic score of something is, or whether [x] publication gave it [y] score. For me, scores are meaningless, and have been for a while; some of my favourite games of all time have sub-60 Metacritic scores, which is regarded by some as a kiss of death, but I just don't care. I support what I enjoy, and I'll continue to tell people about the experiences I've had, and the interesting things I've learned while finding out more about the sources of those experiences.

This is why I don't consider the things I write on MoeGamer to be "reviews" as such — although one thing I've learned from interacting with the broader anime blogging community is that the definition of "review" varies somewhat from person to person, with not everyone regarding it as "judgemental piece with score at the end" — and why I don't think I'd even really describe myself as a "critic" in the same way that writers for the big sites of the day do.

I just write about games. I play them, I take the time to find out more about them, I occasionally have the good fortune to be able to talk to the people who made them… and then I write about them.

I love what I do!