Eh, I was more spitballing about who on Youtube would I personally be willing to pay that much money to for a review, if I had a game to review (and if I had that much money to spend on a review for it).
I'm sure there are plenty of people out there who (inexplicably) believe that TotalBiscuit or Jim Sterling or whoever else would be a fine source to pay for said review (just look at some of the comments under the PC Gamer article, talking about how TB and Sterling are the only ones they "trust"). It's just that, for me personally, there's not really all that many that I would trust enough for it. I'd maybe trust them to entertain me, at best (and in the case of TB or Sterling, even that much is dubious), but not much farther than that, and certainly not $22,000 worth.
In any case, though, more power to whoever it may be if they can get devs to pay them for reviews like that, I guess. But, even so, if I was watching a video from someone and it said that it was a paid review for a game, I'd simply disregard it altogether, just as I disregard banner ads and whatever else (the ones that somehow manage to slip past adblock, at any rate). Most likely wouldn't even click play on it. At that point, it's no longer a "review" and is just a commercial.
I'm even skeptical of the videos that I've seen lately that admit that their video was based on a free copy of a game that they got from a developer who asked them to make a video about it, even if they weren't paid money in addition to that. A few of the recent ones made by the SBFP guys and by Mike Matei on Cinemassacre have been like that. I watched those, but they just had a different... I don't know... feel... to them, sort of, compared to the ones where they just picked games of their own accord to make videos about. It seemed like they were trying harder to be positive about said games than they otherwise might have been.
Paid reviews just seem very hinky to me in general, which is part of the reason why I no longer follow "mainstream" video games so-called "journalism (http://kane-magus.livejournal.com/tag/video%20game%20journalism)" anymore, since that kickback shit is rampant there (e.g. Doritosgate (http://knowyourmeme.com/memes/events/doritosgate), or the thing with Jeff Gerstmann (http://www.gamefront.com/jeff-gerstmann-finally-talks-about-gamespot-firing/)[1], or other such bullshit). If this sort of thing spreads to Youtube LPers as well, then I'll just have to start taking their videos with a grain of salt as well, if I continue to watch them at all.
[1] - Oh, and it looks like GiantBomb was bought by Gamespot several years ago (http://gamepolitics.com/2012/03/15/giantbomb-acquired-gamespot-owner-cbs-interactive), or, rather, both are owned by the same parent company now. I had absolutely no idea that this was the case until today, when I looked at that article about Gerstmann that I linked up there. Welp, so much for GiantBomb being "trustworthy" as so many have claimed, I guess. I never bothered with GiantBomb to begin with, so no real loss for me, but this would have been much more disappointing to me if I had.
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timeasmymeasure
no subject
Date: 2015-09-14 05:16 pm (UTC)I'm sure there are plenty of people out there who (inexplicably) believe that TotalBiscuit or Jim Sterling or whoever else would be a fine source to pay for said review (just look at some of the comments under the PC Gamer article, talking about how TB and Sterling are the only ones they "trust"). It's just that, for me personally, there's not really all that many that I would trust enough for it. I'd maybe trust them to entertain me, at best (and in the case of TB or Sterling, even that much is dubious), but not much farther than that, and certainly not $22,000 worth.
In any case, though, more power to whoever it may be if they can get devs to pay them for reviews like that, I guess. But, even so, if I was watching a video from someone and it said that it was a paid review for a game, I'd simply disregard it altogether, just as I disregard banner ads and whatever else (the ones that somehow manage to slip past adblock, at any rate). Most likely wouldn't even click play on it. At that point, it's no longer a "review" and is just a commercial.
I'm even skeptical of the videos that I've seen lately that admit that their video was based on a free copy of a game that they got from a developer who asked them to make a video about it, even if they weren't paid money in addition to that. A few of the recent ones made by the SBFP guys and by Mike Matei on Cinemassacre have been like that. I watched those, but they just had a different... I don't know... feel... to them, sort of, compared to the ones where they just picked games of their own accord to make videos about. It seemed like they were trying harder to be positive about said games than they otherwise might have been.
Paid reviews just seem very hinky to me in general, which is part of the reason why I no longer follow "mainstream" video games so-called "journalism (http://kane-magus.livejournal.com/tag/video%20game%20journalism)" anymore, since that kickback shit is rampant there (e.g. Doritosgate (http://knowyourmeme.com/memes/events/doritosgate), or the thing with Jeff Gerstmann (http://www.gamefront.com/jeff-gerstmann-finally-talks-about-gamespot-firing/)[1], or other such bullshit). If this sort of thing spreads to Youtube LPers as well, then I'll just have to start taking their videos with a grain of salt as well, if I continue to watch them at all.
[1] - Oh, and it looks like GiantBomb was bought by Gamespot several years ago (http://gamepolitics.com/2012/03/15/giantbomb-acquired-gamespot-owner-cbs-interactive), or, rather, both are owned by the same parent company now. I had absolutely no idea that this was the case until today, when I looked at that article about Gerstmann that I linked up there. Welp, so much for GiantBomb being "trustworthy" as so many have claimed, I guess. I never bothered with GiantBomb to begin with, so no real loss for me, but this would have been much more disappointing to me if I had.