Gamers certainly not listening to press reviews, says Curse exec, suggests sites are dwindling
Are heavyweights like IGN and Gamespot in danger of becoming irrelevant? That's the topic discussed by Curse's VP of sales Nathan Lindberg, who feels that gamers aren't listening to game reviews and typical journalistic sites, but their friends, community personalities and other forms of new media.
The interview went down over on MCV, during with Lindberg - whose brands include N4G, Gamepadia and the Minecraft forums - said, “Gaming is drastically different now than it’s ever been."
He cautioned, "The industry is focused on triple-A titles because they are more expensive to make, but they pay out more in the end. The success is in aligning with those franchises and fostering content and community around them. It is no longer unveil, preview, review, move on.
"There is an extremely important post-launch phase that traditional games media companies have just ignored. The ‘launch it and forget it’ mentality is gone and with that comes a lesser reliance on reviews. Media firms need to find ways to give the community what they want, when they want and how they want it.”
Reviews are certainly becoming moot, according to Lindburg, who continued, "Consumption habits are changing drastically, especially for this new millennial generation. They’re not going to general news websites, they’re going to communities where their friends are. They’re not watching TV, they’re on video-on-demand websites and they’re certainly not listening to reviews – they’re instead of listening on their friends and fellow gamers.”
All in all, reviews are problematic, due to questions raised about publisher royalty, bribes and so forth. Lindberg explained, "We don’t have to deal with the ugliness of reviews. That’s an area we are so glad to be out of, because of all the problems it creates with your user base and your advertisers. At the same time, that advantage is a weakness, because partners don’t always understand our value proposition. Being a foreign concept to someone doesn’t invoke a ton of trust early in the relationship.”
According to MCV, Curse is now a third behind Gamespot in the Comscore site ranking tables, so clearly, it's doing something right.
What do you make of the above? Are press reviews becoming pointless? Let us know below.