One of the major questions plaguing film reviewers these days is whether or not they really matter. Plenty of films that are critically panned, and are disliked by even diehard fans, make millions of dollars, like Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen and Terminator Salvation. Does the same go for video games? And especially games for families and kids?
Over at What They Play, John Davison writes that "game reviews are pretty much useless for families." According to Davison, parents don't read professional game reviews and more often rely on feedback from sites like Amazon. He has a very good point that some video game sites review games for kids poorly or not at all, writing, "game reviews aggregation (the practice of pulling together multiple review scores and generating an "average" score) is pretty much useless for families too." This is definitely true, especially because so many kids' games are not reviewed at all or reviewed poorly because the writer isn't the target audience.
On the other hand, sites like What They Play, PlaySavvy, USAToday's CyberSpeak with Jinny Gudmundsen and others are tapping into the growing audience of parents who want to know what their kids are playing and even want to join in the fun themselves. And, I might argue, as people who are gamers themselves and/or in the gaming industry begin to have families, they will be more inclined to get involved with developing, reviewing, or creating family gaming sites themselves.
As Davison points out, even hardcore gamers are becoming jaded with reviewers and gaming journalists, much as filmgoers are, and it's easier to share our own opinions to a larger audience simply through Twitter, Facebook, or other social media sites. So the bigger question is, do any reviewers matter?
