Tuesday, October 18, 2005 [ 12:45 PM ] ;
0 repliesRecently due to the end of promos, I've decided to consider taking up a new game to spend some time during the holidays. If not I'll be stoning throughout for half of november and the better part of december at least, which in my opinion would be better spent playing some game.
The game I've shortlisted is WoW, or better known as World of Warcraft. Frankly, there arent many eye catching games out there anyway. Despite the monthly payments, I would think that it can be a financially sound investment even though if I dun play it all the time. After all from the rave reviews WoW has received, it seems as though as it has redefined MMORPG.
But then again, this brings me to the main point of this post, the reviews. How should do you know the reviewer(critics) are not biased? The information given might be flawed? This critics are given free copies of WoW to try on, albeit the fact that they would have to pay for the monthly fees(although im not so sure about the fact here), and besides, what kind of relationship would they have with Blizzard?
This probably sounds like a familar argument to many, like in the cases of movie critics, book critics and not to even forget our very own history students. It's often a problem of access vs. independence and objectivity. For information to be obtained, some sort of access is often required, but then the reader might worry about a biased report(as in the case of WoW).
Trust is the word. Do you trust a particular source of information to balance her need for access to the story with the desire of her readers for her to remain as independent and fair-minded as possible? I believe that if we want better reviews, we need to be better readers and take a more active role in how we deal with information.
When reading, you should be asking yourself, is the writer being fair here? Have they been fair in the past? If the piece you're reading appears in the Straits Times or the Utusan Malaysia(history students take note here), how does the political orientation (if any) affect what gets printed in the paper? Are music critics biased in their reviews because they receive free review CDs in the mail? If so, does that make the reviews completely worthless? If they don't disclose things like personal relationships to their subjects, and the like, does that completely negate the review? Or can you adjust your opinion of the reviews to get something worthwhile out of them anyway?
Dealing with information has always been an imprecise science; there's no such thing as complete objectivity. With technology improving all the time, and the influx of information that comes with it, we have to learn to deal with it. As readers, we can encourage the writers whose work we read to be as fair as possible.
Written with help from kottke.org. Thanks Jason.
This might sound random, but I've heard from a girl friend that girls are much better kissers than guys.
