A 7,400-word hyperlinked article on Computer Game Journalism.

Criticism of Computer Game Journalism

Then, as often happens in human endeavors, the wild-eyed hack comes along to snatch a piece of the pie. In the name of the quick buck and click the hack cares not for the endeavor, the creative process or genre legacy, but only of shortcuts, leeching and leveling down to the lowest common denominator.

This article was written by the author of 1990s Computer Game History and Computer Role-playing Games History.

The author's own computer game commentary is not perfect or above criticism. However, the author's computer-game commentary is some of the best on the planet, unlike the objects of the author's criticism.

This article criticizes contemporary computer game commentary as well as yesteryear professional computer game journalism.

The article then goes on to criticize computer game commentary and chronicling on reddit, YouTube, Metacritic, MobyGames Wikipedia and fan-wikis.

The object of this article is to identify and describe the problems associated with computer game commentary, both past and present. Several solutions are given to computer game commentators, such as:

Attain English language proficiency: Get Educated
Acquire gaming pedigree and aptitude: Get Good
Dedicate to honest coverage not click-bait: Get Real
Can't do that? Get Out.

The above went without saying in the 80s and 90s, but it evidently does not now. If it did, I would not be able to write 7,400 words of criticism.

No article like this exists on the internet; this article is original in both form and content. No computer game commentator has ever written an article remotely comparable.

And the reasons are obvious: the problem with the computer game industry is not the developers, it is not the publishers, it is not the games -- it is the critics and the commentators that have let down the industry.

The object of computer-game criticism is to set standards and lift them, not bring everything down. But computer-game criticism itself is in dire need of a wake-up call.

In the 2020s computer game commentary has reached levels of stupidity, ignorance and laziness never before imagined. We're talking three-decade lows that make you long for the days of monthly magazines. Computer-gamers would rather read one magazine per month than get a constant stream of drivel from rank-amateurs...
Present-day computer-game commentary is filled with blatant lies and obvious attempts to deceive:
It is primarily the fanatically fame-hungry e-celeb YouTubers that are responsible. Thus should their click-bait be written off on-sight.

First up, let's talk specifically about computer role-playing game commentary because it is the worst of the worst. After that we will talk about computer game journalism in general.

Computer Role-playing Game Commentary

The object of cRPG commentary is to assess computer role-playing games either as a whole or in one or more categories of their design.

Such commentary is characterized by constructive criticism of cRPG creations: it gives reasons for its assertions and it compares the cRPG with what came before as well as the genre-yardstick and Formalizer, Fallout 1.

Such commentary does not just evaluate cRPGs as they are in themselves but also in relation to their peers and predecessors, but comparisons are uncommon because most commentators lack erudition and experience, which they only affect.

Without the employment of correct terminology and expressions formal and authentic commentary on classic computer games is impossible. That means commentary should not employ memes, in-fashion or current gen ephemeral vocab or expressions in reference to classics and concepts.

Instead, the language of the era should be employed; a language that has been naturally acquired and refined over years of gaming in that era; a language that forever eludes the charlatan.

As it pertains to authenticity in classic-game commentary the form is as important as the content. And anyone seeking to undertake commentary would do well to remember that. And if you're getting into commentary just for the clicks your "content" isn't going to be worth a damn, though you will get the sheeple onboard.

If casual readers cannot understand your writing or relate to what you have written or said - that is king-tier commentary. Never stoop down to their level. If anything, seek to separate.

Criticism of cRPG Commentary

Have you noticed how excellent expressions such as "cheap knock-off", "cashgrab", "pale imitation" and "leveling down" are rarely employed in present-day cRPG commentary, even though they fit modern cRPGs like a glove?

How "casual" no longer has a negative connotation in gaming?
How utter mediocrity in game development is celebrated?
How meaningless buzzwords litter reviews?
How self-conscious or over-confident the reviews are?
Have you noticed the lack of English language proficiency in commentators?
Noticed the overuse of superlatives, qualified by nothing?
Noticed that no examples are given to back up contentions that RPG Games are masterpieces?
Noticed the lack of comparisons between the reviewed RPG Game and classic cRPGs?
Have you noticed how some developers loiter around, litter in and patrol public forums like they are trying to control the reception-narrative of their game?

That is how abyssally low cRPG commentary has fallen.

Though to be fair, it was never that good to begin with.

In comparison to independent cRPG commentary mainstream RPG Game commentary is an absolute laughing stock in both content and form; that is, what is said and how it is said.

Many so-called commentators don't communicate in an authentic cRPG language because they lack the genre pedigree required to do so. That is, in treating the classics they are commentating way out of their depth because they have no reference points and lack historical context:

They weren't there, they didn't play the games when they came out, they are playing them for the first time and have no idea what they are talking about.

Naturally, they also employ incorrect, misleading and inconsistent terminology that only serves to confuse readers.

Or they remain deliberately vague so as not to expose their blatant ignorance. They avoid examples because furnishing examples requires understanding of the subject matter. Rarely will any sentence begin with, "For example, ..."

Don't barely literate commentators realize how easy it is to pick apart and mock their scribblings?
Where does their boundless confidence come from when they can barely string two words together?
Has no one ever pulled them aside and said, "Uh, you can't write. Please go and learn English?"

Indeed, commentator literacy levels are laughably low. Thus the tendency of these twaddlers to take refuge in the more forgiving and informal video format in which marathon-length blabberings are not only par for the course but celebrated by viewers with room-temperature IQs and free time in alarming abundance.

But if one were to skim over transcripts of such videos they would discover that, more often than not, almost nothing of value was said over the course of three hours. And what was said could be put into a bullet-list and skimmed over in a few seconds flat.

But the problem is: that has usually already been done -- by the writer and original thinker.

Have you noticed how the top comment on many YouTube videos is an actual bullet-list that summarizes the video? This is done by normal people with common sense that want to help others, unlike the video-uploader. And it just proves how inefficient many videos are at conveying info to users that want answers: wasteful of time, energy and bandwidth. It just goes to show that a lot of videos are disservicing users, that they are not what users want to see but just what they are being led to see by biased search engine algorithms that favor tedious videos over the concise written word.

Mainstream RPG Game video-viewers are more impressed by rambling multi-hour videos than they are by concise writings that give them more information instantly. Possible illiteracy aside, that is because video-viewers are more interested in killing time than they are about being efficiently informed. Imagine having hours of your life to waste on listening to what often amounts to naught but drivel.

In addition, video-viewers often come across videos through mindless channel-surfing rather than concerted quotation-mark searching. Much like the video-uploader themselves, their interest in the subject is fleeting. (What is quotation-mark searching? It's when you "search for a specific string," such as that one.)

When the hours-long video finally ends the humble, self-effacing rambler often proclaims to have covered every aspect of the cRPG in its entirety, when in reality they took on the tip of the iceberg.

The fly buzzes from one game to another. It knows a whole lot of nothing about everything. And in covering everything shallowly, it covers nothing.

I also have to wonder if some of them realize how stupid they sound. And aren't they embarrassed by their ridiculous voices and graceless body language?

Criticism of Professional Computer Game Journalism

Even in the genre's 90s heyday much of computer game journalism was unfairly critical of complex computer role-playing games and blatantly promotional of casual, cinematic computer games. [1]

As a rule, the commentator of the 90s did not even begin to understand the cRPG. However, that is somewhat understandable since the genre was trailblazing new paths that were not well-understood by the arcade game aficionada aka Arcadians that dominated computer game commentary. And at least they covered the games in one way or another.

But in the 2020s too much RPG Game commentary centers around the feelings the reviewer has while derping about in-game rather than appraising the game itself; that is, the self-centered casual seeks an emotional and aesthetic experience above all else.

Which is exactly what Baldur's Gate 3 taps into; what it is by design.

Many current gen commentators have egos the size of Jupiter yet no gaming erudition or experience to justify such. Every aspect of the game is covered in reference to themselves; the game itself being naught but stimulus for self-aggrandizement.

But enough of Unlettered Egotists. Let us focus on Literate Professionals

While 80s and 90s computer game journalism can be criticized for this and that shortcoming, at least it led the way and broke new ground. Some of it was even great. In terms of form, content and integrity, 80s and 90s computer game journalism is head-and-shoulders above the gibberish that is all-too-common in the 2020s.

There is simply no comparison.

In fact, veteran gamers of the 16 bit era stopped taking computer game journalism seriously circa 2000, if not before. Truth be told, since circa 2000 I haven't met a veteran gamer who hasn't laughed or sneered when "journalism" is uttered in reference to computer-gaming.

And that is most unfortunate. Professional computer-game journalism should be putting e-celeb YouTube gibberish to shame, rendering it redundant. How do you do that? Literacy + erudition.

Highly literate computer-game journalism is lacking in erudition on computer games, but erudite computer-game commetary is lacking in professionalism.

However, there is indeed good computer game journalism in 2024. But the combo of highly literate + erudite is not easy to find. And this is not true of literary criticism or cinematic criticism, which I acknowledge for its refinement, professionalism and competitiveness.

The game journalists of the 90s would often write off complex cRPGs due to their bugs and incompleteness. However, in doing so they failed to enumerate the innovations made by such experimental cRPGs. It is very rare that one would encounter a complex computer game with zero merit. There is always something present that is worth elaboration even if the product ultimately fails as a complete package.

And in retrospect, such games have stood the test of time better than generic packages that took no risks (aka cult classics).

I mentioned above that arcade-game commentators were ignorant of cRPGs. Allow me to explain:

When you have been writing about shoot 'em ups for years on end, genre such as turn-based strategy games are simply out of your league until you give them the attention that you gave the shoot 'em ups (and vice versa).

You cannot bluff your way through a genre, and you cannot diminish a genre's importance based on the fact that you do not understand it.

Many a heyday reviewer began their reviews of cRPGs with --
"I don't usually go in for this sort of game, never really liked them, but"
-- and it is right then and there that readers tune out because if reviewers dislike and/or lack understanding of a genre, who cares what they think of one its games?

That would be like football journos writing about fencing or equestrian events. A football journo would not even have the vocabulary to write or speak about fencing or horse-riding (and vice versa).

A commentator without genre pedigree and aptitude has no business appraising a game of that genre.

Game Journo Unwillingness to Focus on the Game

Another odd trait of some 90s game journos was their propensity to go off on ridiculous tangents. So let's say they are reviewing a wargame. Well, instead of covering the basic mechanics of the game and its scenarios or what have you, the journos were often too busy talking about the historical era in which the game was set. But if I want to know about history I would read a history book written by a historian, not a computer game review.

It is fine to mention history in passing but not at the expense of game info.

Of course, these journos would ramble on about anything upon which a game was based. Combat flight sim? Ramble on about real fighters -- hell, dedicate half of the review to them! -- when anyone who wanted to know about fighters would (back in the day) read a military aircraft magazine, not a gaming magazine.

And in a sad attempt to elevate the status of their commentary, game journos of the 80s and 90s often referred to the great works, minds and events of history -- as if such had anything to do with the game being reviewed.

Probable reasons for this odd behavior:

Reviewer wanted to come off as knowlegeable (when anyone can affect knowledge via basic research)
Reviewer needed to pad the article out because they barely played the game itself

Readers could have been given much more info on games if journos would have actually bothered playing and writing about the games. But it is much easier to ramble on about subjects that have already been richly covered (such as world history) than it is to explain the ins-and-outs of a new game, isn't it.

Because to write about a new game one must first play it, then get good at it, and then write something that has been never been written before.

It is much easier to rehash than it is to write something original.

To meet their wordcounts in the easiest manner possible, journos also loved to ramble on about the lineage of each and every game as well as what developers thought of their own games, but such subjects are best covered in articles and interviews, not reviews.

Game journos put too much stock into developer intent and what developers thought of their own games, when what actually matters to the gamer -- the consumer of the product, the person that shells out their hard-earned cash -- is the game itself.

Indeed, the dev-cycle (how the game came to be) is also utterly irrelevant to the gamer.

Again, it is much easier to simply relay what this or that dev said than it is to play the game, get good at it, and then write about it.

Game Journo Ignorance of Hardware & Software Tech

Game journos were often ignorant of the computer hardware games were coded to run on. If you don't know the basic hardware specs of specific PCs, microcomputers and chipsets, how can you assess a game's mechanics, GUI, graphics or sound? What was passable on 8 bit micros and 286es was guaranteed garbage by Amiga standards. [2]

Amigans always wanted to know if the game tapped into the Amiga's custom chipset (and to what extent), since that is what separated Amigas from PCs, STs and 8 bit micros from 1985-1991 [3], but rarely did reviews provide technical info on games that revealed developer coding prowess in harnessing machine specs.

Likewise, game journos often failed to report on the absolute basics of games, such as their resolutions [4], perspectives and combat systems. Imagine reaching the end of a lengthy review yet you don't even know if the game is real-time or turn-based or isometric or top-down (back in the day many reviews did not have screencaps). But the journos never failed to tell you about the plot, theme and setting, which are naught but window-dressing in comparison to the nuts and bolts, but great for upping wordcounts that fill in that whitespace.

From Screen-scrolling in Computer Games:

[...] but most of those journos didn't know about framerates or polygons; they almost never spoke of geometric complexity or draw distance even in vague terms; they really had no idea about the graphics engines of computer games; they had no eye for such; no language for such; they should have been reviewing desktop publishing programs.

cf. Criticism of Computer Gaming World.

How to Spot Non-Gamer Commentators (who are legion)

Rather than treat the games themselves, they talk around the games.

Barely scratching the surface of mechanics or gameplay, they scribble away in long-form on merely the tangentially-related, most of which they scavenge from external sources while citing authorities whom they usually worship (and this they call "research"), such as the developers whose works they are supposed to critically appraise.

Whereas if they treated the game itself they would never need to cite externally or refer to authorities since in having played the game their word counts just as much as anyone else's (a factual article or well-argued opinion-piece).

In 2020s "retrospectives" they even stoop to citing journos of the game's heyday; that is, what journos thought about the games back in the day when they reviewed them (e.g., what "score" the journo gave the games).

Having no thoughts of their own due to an inability or unwillingness to play the games, their commentary mostly centers around what this or that person said about the games: parroting.

And to compensate for and conceal their lack of direct experience with the games, they write in a thick and heavy formal register that employs as many big words and obscure references as possible.

Shameless Present-day "Journo" Trawling of Game Subreddits

In 2024 there are mainstream game "journos" that create topics on subreddits in order to ask fans basic questions about 20 year old games for which they are preparing to write "retrospective articles".

Imagine needing to ask fans basic things about games before you can even begin to write an article. Imagine not just playing the game yourself but instead cobbling together the experiences of randos.

A retrospective is a looking back at something but in order to look back one must first have been. Haven't been? You can't look back. It's not a retrospective but rather a bluffer's guide written by a newbie.

I have written 20-part retrospectives on 20 year old games. I didn't ask a single soul a damn thing about the games yet these "journos" can't even write one article about a game without consulting a mob.

Bowing and scraping for tidbits before a rabble, what a disgrace.

Here is a novel idea -- if you don't know about a game and don't even want to play it, spare us your ignorant scribblings.

And that's the difference right there:

Real commentators write only about what they know through direct and extensive experience whereas the day-laboring hack leeches off the experience of others for second-hand info, and then pretends to know everything after the fact.

Imagine being such a hack that you think subredditors can inform you about a game. Imagine thinking that subreddits are even representative of a game's community or in any way, shape or form constituted by a game's experts.

Some PhD students conducting "reddit research" on isometric cRPGs do not even know what isometric means: they think 3D computer games with rotation cams are isometric. /facepalm.

Also, since the above stoop to tapping reddit imagine how much they leech from genuine commentators, without giving credit.

The Cattle-ization of Computer-game Commentary

Most people know what the internet has become for the masses. For the vast majority it's not the 1990s Wild West anymore, it's been "settled" by sealed-off sites that provide an outlet for hundreds of millions of normies that can't even use a search engine intelligently, let alone code a bit of HTML.

The sealed-off sites are agrarian, pedestrian -- and dominating. As it pertains to just the limited sphere of computer-game discussion, consider how many people hang-out on X, reddit, Steam, Discord and YouTube. Most of them never search for other sites or communities outside of those sealed-off sites. They don't use search engines, they click on bookmarks. To them, those sites constitute the sum-total of what the internet has to offer and there is nothing else under the Sun that is worthy of being graced by their towering intellects. Just read a tweet: these people are super-smart; you cannot even begin to fathom the depths of their genius.

Bear with me here. I have a point to make:

If subreddits did not exist for the subjects my blog covers, that paltry amount of views garnered by my commentary would be an order of magnitude greater, but that assumes I would not be competing with hundreds of other commentators that would spawn in the absence of reddit echo-chambers.

And if that were the case (as it once was), commentary diversity would be much greater than it is now; as it was before reddit came along to cattle-ize would-be commentators. All in the name of diversity in commentary, what they are actually doing is nipping independent commentary in the bud.

Back in the day each independent site looked different and had a different layout: individualized. Instead of just "reddit".

How does reddit cattle-ize would-be commentators? Think about it and look at the past. In the past there were thousands of individualized blogs and sites on computer games. They were referred to as "fansites", "shrines" and "FAQs". They loaded quickly even on dial-up because they were mostly text-based. These sites gave their visitors all the info they wanted and more; often, the content was written by experts and super-fans that delved deeply into the game's engine. But nowadays, those sites -- if they have not wholly expired -- are extremely rare and/or buried deep under mountains of mainstream spam. How many active, independent, single-commentator computer-game sites can you cite in 2024? And how many of those are big and well-known?

Only a handful of independent computer game sites can compete with sites that are written and populated by unwitting armies made up of thousands of lost souls.

These are big sites with 10 year histories that are made up of hundreds of posts, written usually by one dedicated and genuine commentator. Everyone else gets steamrolled until they put in the hard yards for years or get a lucky break somehow.

It doesn't matter how much you know, how well you write or how precise your commentary is: low-quality collective commentary wins even if it is completely wrong.

Super-simple illiterati-focused English wins. Click-bait wins, spammers win, and the leeches win as well.

It's not what you know, it's who you know. Same tired ol' story of the fake meritocracy.

Beware of employing correct terminology: the masses prefer vague and misleading terminology. Dumb down your vocab or your commentary does not exist for the masses.

This is how it works: Employ technically-correct and exacting terms? You won't be read. Employ completely wrong internet terms. You're read. It's just pathetic.

You may not lift the standards of discourse, you must adhere to the low standards of the masses or you will never be read.

That said, there are measures that can be taken to bypass much of such nonsense, but it is not the purpose of this article to go into them.

***

"This article is a stub. You can help Wikipedia by expanding it." In the meantime we'll leech as many views as possible with our stubs that rank above completed articles. *SMUG*.

Wikipedia and Fandom Wikis are prime example of soulless collective commentary, yet they benefit from search engine bias in that search engines often index their article stubs above actual commentary. Stubs are pages that contain zero content (just a URL and a Heading) yet stubs are often ranked above the labor of genuine commentators. For the past decade I have recorded thousands of instances: I keep detailed files.

How to kill off independent computer game commentary:
Rank useless wiki stubs above actual articles.
Rank throw-away reddit comments above dedicated articles.

How do you think many commentators respond? Just look around:

"If you can't beat 'em join 'em."

Or maintain independence but become like them: insipid and disservicing. Afterall, it pays off. It's rewarded by the algorithms that index and rank content.

Of course it isn't enough for fan-wikis to just rank first, that won't do, they must also hog the second spot as well. Given enough slack they may rank from first to tenth by 2025:

It's all about diversity of commentary in a competitive arena, you see.

What they do is create a second wiki with a different name, URL and layout from the first. That second wiki covers a broader or more specific topic, but a topic that is nevertheless inseparable from or strongly related to what is covered in the first wiki. In this way all the articles in the first wiki can be reapplied in the second, just with a slightly different slant that seeks to disguise the lack of individuation.

This is an example of unsportsmanlike behavior; of shameless info-systems greed (under the aspect of info = currency).

In fairness the second wiki should not cover first-wiki subjects (since it is duplicative), but they do anyway. And of course the wikis link to each other to ensure that non-wiki commentary can only achieve third rank at best -- a very distant third rank that is in essence akin to non-existence in mainstream perception.

Last year (2023) it was possible for independent commentators to achieve first-rank if they published an exceptionally informative article, but in 2024 the algorithms changed dramatically: reddit, wikis, rankers and YouTube vids started getting insane indexing boosts, burying independent written commentary under mountains of stubs, click-bait and shitposting. Don't expect the pendulum to swing back towards the center in the future; have no faith in rebalance -- the algorithms went the full nine yards this time.

***

In the 2020s -- and what a noble decade it is already shaping up to be! -- as if reading and writing have fallen out of fashion barely any developers or ex-developers blog in epic long-form. Instead, many of them prefer to hang out on social media or upload videos of themselves babbling a bunch of BS to viewers that are more interested in industry gossip than they are in computer-game design.

But if search engine algorithms started favoring the written word over the video, these developers would start hammering away on their keyboards immediately. Because they choose their platform based on popularity; medium of communication is an after-thought to attention-seekers.

If you want to read highly literate developer blogs you're looking mostly at 1980s developers. You know, 8 and 16 bit designers and coders that helped build the foundations of the industry. These guys still write in long-form in the 2020s; they are a completely different breed from the average 32-64 bit developer, most of whom have never penned beyond X-posting.

Criticism of Wikipedia cRPG

Imagine writing articles for Wikipedia and Wikis instead of writing articles for your own blog or site. Imagine being a lost soul that slaves away for mainstream sites.

cf. Criticism of Wikipedia's 1990s in Video Games Article.

Ever the authority on every subject imaginable Wikipedia calls cRPGs Role-playing Video Games. In 30 years of playing cRPGs I have never heard a soul refer to cRPGs as Role-playing Video Games, aka RPVGs.

Wikipedia is poor when it comes to basic cRPG commentary. Not only are the cRPG Definitions and categorizations distorted and poorly written, but the articles are often put together by people who want to spam their own content in citation footnotes, which is shameless, unsportsmanlike behavior. [5]

If you somehow find yourself reading Wikipedia or Fandom Wiki articles, you should ask yourself:

Who or what group wrote the article and why did they go out of their way to write the article?

Because no one paid them to do so and nor is the article their property, so what is their motivation?

Do you really think the average Wiki-writer is publishing articles out of the goodness of their heart?
Wisen to cynicism, son.
Many of them are spammers and propagandists.

For example, people that are genuinely interested in a subject (enthusiasts or experts) usually have their own platforms or write for exclusive platforms that give them freer rein on writing style and content presentation.

They do not spend their days reverting edits on Wikipedia articles, all the while quibbling about trivialities with others (such as which spammer gets cited in the footnotes).

Anyone can cobble together sources and then scribble out articles. And anyone can do so without having direct experience with the subject matter. Many of those who write for wikis and ranking sites are about as far away from "authorities" as you can get: unable to gain independent authority on subjects in the competitive arena of search engines ("the wild"), they sponge off pre-established ranking power instead. [6]

In so doing independent commentators become fewer and fewer, viewpoints become less and less nuanced and writing styles become samey and sterile. At that point commentary on a subject is all but dead. Pack up your bags and go home, there is nothing to see here.

Note that many Wikipedia game articles do not cite the correct game developer or even the developer at all. If it isn't easy for the "Wikipedian" to find out the developer (because looking at a gamebox or manual is too hard, let alone loading the game), they will sometimes just leave the developer out, cite the publisher as the developer or cite the wrong developer. What a joke!

If you don't know the correct citation, you don't cite. Integrity 101. But what does Wikipedia know about integrity? They just want views!

And note how hard Wikipedia begs for donations. I would never give that site a cent!

Criticism of Metacritic

A fave citation of Wikipedia articles the Fandom-owned Metacritic calls computer games "PC Video Games". In 30 years of gaming I have never heard a soul refer to computer games as PC video games.

I have heard of computer games, personal computer games, microcomputer games and home-computer games, but not personal computer video games.

According to Metacritic's authoritative sources the top two computer games of all-time are Disco Elysium and Baldur's Gate 3.
Metacritic's sources have Civ2 ranked at 12th and SMAC at 54th -- below all kinds of AAA trash.
Moreover, X-COM UFO Defense and other GOAT games are not even ranked highly.
Just one week after its release, Baldur's Gate 3 is supposedly the top-rated computer game of all-time according to Metacritic's authoritative sources.

That tells you all you need to know about mainstream computer game commentary: it is an absolute laughing stock devoid of credibility.

Criticism of MobyGames

MobyGames is another site that is widely considered to be an authority on computer and video games, yet much of its info is wrong because, just like Wikipedia, any slack-jawed yokel can contribute.

MobyGames entries are missing a lot of important info about games, of which I will not cite examples as that would help MobyGames get good.

MobyGames most certainly cannot be considered a trusted source for old IBM PC MS-DOS games. No data in those copy-pasta fields can be trusted.

MobyGames became popular because it puts the contributor's name "in lights".

Reddit karma upvote tallies ("I've got more upvotes than you -- I'm better!")
Forum post-counts ("I've posted more than you -- I'm better!")
Forum join-dates ("I was here before you -- I'm better!")
Special emoticons
Achievements

These sites all have their little gimmick that tickles the fancy of terminally online lost souls that can't string a single sentence of commentary together that is worth reading.

Even if a MobyGames page contains almost no info at all on a game (a stub), those discerning search algorithms rank it highly. Just like they do for wiki stubs. This ensures that, even if someone has published an informative game article -- one that is novel to the internet; one of a kind; never been written before -- it will not be read by those who would want to read it, if only they knew it existed.

You see, in this arena of healthy competition and good sportsmanship you should only read about games on Wikipedia and MobyGames; that is, when the lost souls get around to filling out those templates. In the meantime, F5 those stubs or watch an e-celeb corporate-plant derp around in the game on YouTube. The choice is yours.

MobyGames often favors the console versions of games over the computer-game versions. It often gives the console version priority even when the console version came out years later as a port of a historically-significant computer game. If the name of the game changed for the console version, that utterly irrelevant name occupies the Header and URL, not the original and famous name that everyone knows.

Note that Wikipedia links to MobyGames in thousands of its computer-game articles and vice versa. Gee, I wonder who put those links there? Maybe no one, maybe they're just auto-generated by a template... because, you know, these sites work together to ensure that actual commentary gets buried under their combined super-sterilized spam.

This is the internet you are getting now.

Criticism of Amiga Hall of Light

Atarimania, Lemon Amiga and Amiga HOL aka Amiga Hall of Light are MobyGames-like databases for Atari ST and Amiga games. However, as of 2024 many of their pages are practically stubs; that is, they contain almost no information even though the sites have been online for years on end. For example, many HOL Amiga pages list the developer as "Unknown" when even a cursory glance at the game's box or manual would make the developer known.

As with MobyGames, no database entry on Atarimania, Lemon Amiga or Amiga HOL can be trusted by researchers or historians; there are just too many errors and omissions. Besides, researchers and historians go directly to the ORIGINAL SOURCE (the game itself), not to unprofessional secondary resources that clumsily cobble together a bunch of "facts and figures" that can't be trusted.

So what are these sites good for? The commentator relies on the original source and the consumer relies on the commentator. So the answer is: Good for nothing.

Why are so many mainstream sites "publishing" what amounts to stubs, and why are stubs being indexed by search engines?

Imagine if every site acted like MobyGames, Amiga HOL, Lemon Amiga, Atarimania and other dopey databases that don't contain a single insight. Imagine what the internet would be like: Stubsville.

Here is an idea:

Instead of spamming useless stubs, only publish pages when they actually contain useful information. But I guess that means you can't leech search-clicks in the meantime, right?

Amiga HOL celebrates their collective uploading of thousands of generic screencaps; they proudly announce their spamming milestones; yet I have uploaded thousands of screencaps single-handedly. In addition, I have assembled and uploaded hundreds of complex infographics single-handedly whereas Amiga HOL just uploads screencaps.

This infographic is more useful to readers than a collection of generic screencaps:

Fake Computer Game Commentary: Leeching

Fake computer-game commentary refers to sites and channels that eschew actual computer-game commentary (such as reviews) in favor of spamming computer-game industry news and updates: they just copy-paste dozens of 3rd-party announcements on their own site in the hope that their regurgitation will be picked up by search engines. This is known as leeching.

They call themselves "newsposters", but they are actually spammers and leeches: they leech off the labor of others.

And since their site or channel lacks actual concrete commentary, spamming news makes them seem busy, up-to-date and well-informed, when in actual fact the opposite is true: mere noise-generators.

They may even have community members who are all-too-happy to comment on their copy-pasta spam. In fact, most of their "community members" are bots or lost souls that might as well be bots.

If they can get away with it some of these sites will also copy-paste lengthy "excerpts" of articles written by real commentators. Again, they are hoping the "excerpt" will be picked up by search engines; maybe they even hope the "excerpt" will out-rank the original author's hard work (because they know the search engine algorithms are sometimes too stupid or corrupt to prioritize original content above their leeching spam).

Most computer-game community sites and channels exist for one reason alone: to leech as many clicks as possible in order to generate cash-flow from ads.

Common Errors Made by "Experts" of cRPGs & Computer Games

cf. Computer Game Language.

It is cRPG, not RPG or RPG Game.
It is RPG, not TTRPG. You don't rename what came first based on what came after. You rename what came after based on what came first (cRPG).
It is computer game, not video game. There are computer games, there are arcade games and there are video (console) games. The existence of mobile phone games is not acknowledged by my commentary except in this sentence, which has just ended.
Only console gamers call cRPGs WRPGs.
You don't refer to microcomputers in terms of "first, second and third etc. generation." You refer to them by their microprocessors and chipsets (8 bit, 16 bit). "Generation" has no heyday employment, signifies nothing, and is a completely fake and manufactured current gen term that gaming veterans wouldn't be caught dead employing. When someone says "16 bit" everyone knows exactly what computers they are talking about. If a commentator employs "generation" you know right then and there how new they are to computer games.
Games with 3D cams do not scroll by definition. Screen-scrolling is exclusively a 2D screen-updating coding routine. There is no such thing as "cam scrolling". Cam movements are referred to with cinematic terms, such as trucking. Journos have incorrectly referred to 3D viewports as scrolling ones since the 1980s. Four decades later, they still can't get it right.
Black borders don't exist, only resolutions and aspect ratios do. The game does NOT have black borders. You are simply running the game wrongly, aka User Error.
It isn't THACO but THAC0.
It isn't Rouge but Rogue. This is not a typo but a consistent error symptomatic of lack of basic literacy.
It is avatar, not "toon." Don't read or listen to any commentator that writes or says "toon."
It is not elevation, but verticality (height and depth, up and down).
In Middle-earth and D&D, it is Elves and Dwarves, not dwarfs and elfs.
The plural of Drow is Drow, not Drows. And it is Duergar not Duergars.
It is dual-wielding, not duel-wielding. Example sentence: The dual-wielders are dueling. Likewise it is dual-classing, not duel-classing.
The abbreviation for Neverwinter Nights is not NVN, but NWN.
It is PC (Player Character), not MC (Main Character) or main.
It is "the original Baldur's Gate", not OG Baldur's Gate.
Warrior is not a class in most RPGs. Warrior is a general term that encompasses warrior-type classes such as Fighters, Barbarians and Paladins.
A class or build that primarily casts spells is a spellcaster. The only other acceptable term is Magic-User.
It is divine and arcane spells, not cleric and mage spells. Because Clerics are not the only class that can cast divine spells and Mages are not the only class that can cast arcane spells.
In round-based and turn-based games, it is DpR and DpT, not DPS.
It is turn-based combat, not turn-base combat.
Baldur's Gate is not a turn-based game just because its combat system can be set to auto-pause at round's end. Baldur's Gate plays nothing like TB games.
A damage-dealer is not a tank. Tank refers to AC, HPs, damage reduction and illusions (defense). Tanks can also "tank" spells (MR/SR). That said, a damage-dealer can be a tank as well. Tank is both a noun and a verb (a tank and to tank).
In AD&D 2nd Edition, the class is Mage not Wizard. And vice versa for 3rd Edition. Likewise Thief, not Rogue.
You cannot use D&D to refer to AD&D2. Doing so is just downright lazy, ignorant and wrong.
Civ games are not god games or wargames, they are general turn-based strategy games.

Afterword

To no surprise this article has been criticized more than praised. And all criticisms of the article have been weak.

I get it.

I got it a long time ago: Many gamers love their mainstream commentary and click-bait.

And many of them love it when the history of computer games is distorted by e-celeb YouTubers who did not even live through the eras that they "cover".

But this article will continue to be expanded upon regardless of its reception. For example, I added a section on the 7th of December, 2024.

Veteran Casuals

Several so-called "veteran computer gaming communities" have recently complained that the history of computer games is not being covered properly by commentators; that certain historically significant computer games are being entirely ignored.

But this was known to me long ago; it is one of the reasons I began writing about computer games. And the ignorance or glossing-over is not confined to this or that game, but actually extends to genre and even to platform: the Amiga and other microcomputers are largely ignored.

And get this: unknown to the veterans the "ignored" computer games they mentioned were already covered by me --- respectfully and with a touch of reverence.

But again, it seems that many of these veterans only read mainstream commentary and grossly distorted computer-game histories churned out by e-celeb corporate-plant YouTubers.

Such veterans are part of the problem, not its solution. They fell from grace long ago and no longer have a leg to stand on. Worse than stock casuals gamers, you can find such veterans wallowing en masse in any public computer-game forum, criticizing lone wolves and giving the Big Guns a free ride day-in, day-out and for decades on-end.

Footnotes

[1]

cf. The Cinematization of Computer Games.

[2]

And 3D games that tapped into math coprocessors were technically lightyears ahead of those that didn't. And even though hardware screen-scrolling existed since 1980, the tech was barely acknowledged by journos: choppy scrolling was deemed acceptable.

[3]

Unknown to many journos (and developers), "16 bit" did not automatically mean "better". For example, the sound, sprite and screen-scrolling capabilities of the Commodore 64 remained superior to those of the Atari ST and IBM PC long after journos and devs deemed the C=64 "obsolete". You don't just go by bits, RAM and clock-speed, but also by custom chips.

When reviewing hardware, game journos put a lot of stock in MHz. But consider:

MOS Tech 6502 clocked at 1 MHz comes in at 0.43 MIPS
Motorola 68000 clocked at 8 MHz comes in at 1.40 MIPS
Intel 80286 clocked at 12 MHz comes in at 1.28 MIPS

Thus, the C=64's 6502 is relatively superior. And stock Amigas destroyed stock 286es without even factoring in the Amiga's custom chips, which freed up its CPU even more, effectively giving it more MIPS.

I'm not saying MIPS should be taken as gospel either. In order to measure a micro's capacities, many factors must be taken into account.

You can see how the C=64 contended with more powerful computers via Shoot 'em up History.

[4]

Is it a square-pixel resolution or a disproportional abomination?

[5]

The same references are repeatedly listed in multiple-article footnotes (spam).

You will often see the same "sources" being link-cited in many of the game articles. Yes, I am sure that such "sources" are the authorities on all of these games. And who added all of these citations, I wonder? Gee, it wouldn't be the "source" itself, would it?

[6]

Why can't they compete in the wild, though? It is often because they can't write something original, engaging and thorough that would be picked up by search engine algorithms; they have no thoughts of their own. They can't put in the hard yards and build something from the ground up. Thus, they employ short-cuts, collaboration and other cheap and cowardly tactics.

cf. Critical Computer Game Commentary:

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Lilura1 cRPG

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