This post has not been edited by the GamesBeat staff. Opinions by GamesBeat community writers do not necessarily reflect those of the staff.
Message boards, blogs, YouTube videos, website comment boxes, Twitter and Facebook feeds, podcasts, and instant messaging are but a few of the ways the internet allows gamers to connect. Each of these mediums has their benefits and drawbacks. For example, an added dimension of communication through one’s tone of voice, website speed, visual aid by video, or the worth or validity people may place behind a well thought out message board reply as opposed to a Twitter post may be what draws people from one form of a gamer’s expression to the next.
So I’m curious to find out which of these forms of communication you find most useful when we’re inundated with so many decisions in this modern age of technology.
Personally, I prefer it when people use message boards, rather than making horrendous YouTube video reviews or blogs no one visits solely for the purpose of cluttering up the internet. In an earlier post, The Average Gamer’s Claim to Fame, I analyzed how coveted the limelight that game journalists bear is among gamers. People seem to be willing to do nearly anything to stand out as a blog or YouTube video. To a lesser, nearly microcosmic degree, it’s like a gamer’s way of wanting to become the world’s next movie or music star. And this is to the internet’s detriment — because so many gamers seem to think it’s easy to write an opinionated, rather than concrete video game review, and that that single poorly verbalized opinion is likely to achieve infamy, or an internet persona. Thus, we are forced to wade through user reviews that we may have previously considered reliable or more google results than we previously intended because those users think attaching every relevant popculture reference is likely to grant them a meaning in life.
Call it wild speculation gone horribly wrong… Bah.