Definitely. When you get deep into something, you start to take it seriously. That can lead to myopia or elitism. I actually insulted someone I work with the other day unintentionally by asking him why he was buying Alien Vs. Predator on the ps3, because I hadn't seen a price drop, and thought that he was joking with me. I didn't realize I was judging him based on his tastes, when there's really nothing wrong with what anyone plays so long as they enjoy what they're playing.

It's also hard to love everything and be enthusiastic. It's equally as hard to hate everything. We want to appear balanced and fair, so there's a tendency to add in a plus for every minus, or vice versa, in our criticisms. That's a symptom of the "checklist" style of game criticism. Once you go beyond that, you're fine. Studying film reviews can help us see where we need to be.

@Michael Well said and I completely agree with you.

Funny, I would have reacted the same way to that game for full price at this point too.

I must say, that I've completely gone in the opposite direction. I've almost completely divorced myself from games media entirely out of being bored and frustrated with the tropes and demands of keeping up with games reviews and critisism and trying to figure out where I stand vs popular opinion about a game.

I ultimately grew fed up because games reviewers often treat subjective opinion like objective fact, and their audience follows. So dispite the fact that I've never finished a grand theft auto game, despise the constant restarting of whole and part missions I have to do in them due to trial and error prone gameplay, and find the storylines trite and without character (not to mention much too long) , I am 'wrong' for not really liking them much because a whole bunch of other people gave it a 10 because it filled a niche for them that I didn't need filled.

So how I treat reviews, in the times that I bother to do a review, is as an entertaining editorial, and an attempt to present opinions that I feel are under represented in the gaming populace (such as Batman: Arkham Asylum not being that good). I prefer to write reviews for people who have played the game to look at another person's (probably) different experience with that game and think about how games are often times more about how the game matches your personal playing habits and needs rather then what is good or bad from some kind of perfect nirvana 'one size fits all' standard.

....but I don't get paid for what I do so take that with a grain of salt, important people. LOL.

I have a hard time calling so many in the "press" elitists when they can't even write a proper sentence or deliver a fully formed argument. 

@Jason - I was kind of going in that realm with sarcasm by calling the negative "mentality" many care on with and the callous attitude they look at the industry with as thinking they are elitists.

Nice piece, Tony. I certainly think that writing about games develops another perspective, but I don't think it needs to override "the gamer in us." More on this I'll save for something I've been working on which now may have to turn into a response piece, damn you. :P

I enjoyed this article, very well done.

Nicely said. :D I've been thinking about this a lot too because my two favorite hobbies—writing and gaming—both include staring at screens (except for handwritten notes; i type everything). When I'm working—screens. Relaxing with a videogame—screens. Reading news, games-related and otherwise—screens with a 10 percent chance of newspapers or magazines. It's exhausting on my eyes and general being, which is why I think there definitely needs to be some kind of balance in how much screen-staring I'm doing and having other interests outside of that.

@Meghan you've got the main theme I was really going for and that is TURNING OFF. Every once in a while I feel we need to tune out in order  to gain that new perspective again. Thanks for your comment.

So, if you could change the way that the gaming press looks at games, what would you do? How would you review a game to give a proper depiction of what the consumer is about to buy, while also staying true to your inner gamer?

@Nathan By simply disconnecting every once in a while to get back some of that passion that may have been dissolved with over saturation.

@Tony While I agree with your point, "Disconnecting every once in a while" doesn't appear to be an option. It's a bit of a Catch-22: game writers need to constantly play and write about games to make a living, but that constant playing and writing is what's watering down their product.

The system is broken, but instead of overhauling it - which is risky and expensive - the game's writing industry is just trying to grin and bear it until their financial situation gets better, which may never happen.

I don't know the answer, but more experiments like Bitmob need to be happening until we find something that works for everyone. Hell, maybe Bitmob IS the answer and it just needs more time to develop.