9 Crippling Problems With The Video Game Industry (And How To Fix Them)

6. People Don't Trust The Gaming Press

The Problem: You can extrapolate this out into people getting incredibly sick of any old sensationalist headline proclaiming "The end of the world is nigh!", but in gaming, we've really got an issue with audience autonomy, and the importance of critics.

Thanks to the GamerGate debacle of 2014 and everything about No Man's Sky being the second coming, yes, review scores and critical opinions still carry weight, but you're more likely to pick something up off a friends' recommendation or a forum post than read a long-form review.

The Solution: If you never want to be disappointed to led astray again, start paying attention to authors more than headlines. Find sites you like the tone of, and find writers who both speak their mind in a way that lines up with your own.

Guys like the Kinda Funny crew, Giant Bomb, Jim Sterling have all gone above and beyond to project their personal subjectivities to the masses, and have accrued a loyal following of likeminded gamers in the process. The issue is with sensationalism across the board, but once you develop a taste for who to trust and how to see through how a lot of online journalism works overall, you'll be better off as a consumer in the long run.