First off, an ethics policy. Once which details based on the ethics of journalism prescribed by major outlets, and a common-sense approach to proper product reviews and editorials. For instance, of course every reviewer may have an opinion and be allowed to recieve a free copy of the product they are reviewing. But, it isn’t appropriate to review a game made by your friend, because your opinion now is not only clouded by your own personal opinions, but also by the fact that you’re friend made it. Ethics in reviewing means reducing natural biases as much as possible, or disclosing those biases so people can make a more informed decision. Most of this is common sense. I won’t go into great detail on this since it’s becoming common practice. However, is practice, an ethics policy should be made fully transparent to its readers — not tucked away in a page you never see in a tiny link at the bottom. And it should always be open for discussion. Especially since ethics for reviews aren’t set it stone. This doesn’t mean they don’t exist. Simply means you rely on your consumers to know what they want to see in terms of fair reports.

Next, somewhat related to ethics, is dual reporting. This is more related to reports on controversies or editorials with two sides. An issue commonly faced now is many sites will publish one side of a story and then refuse to publish the other side. The hashtag #LetMarkSpeak arose after the tech site VG247 published an article critical of his petition (I’m being nice here) and then refused to let him publish a counter article. Sure, that’s their right. But it doesn’t change the fact that it’s morally irresponsible and decietful to try and paint only one side.

This is why an ideal site would have policies which REQUIRE that you must at least try to cover both sides. If someone wants to cover the latest EA fuckup in an editorial, they must also find someone who perhaps, disagrees. Now, if that person doesn’t respond or doesn’t want to write a counter, then the original article can still be published — they made their decision. But the opportunity should be made available — an article should never be denied when a counter opinion to that article is present.

Next up, features. Lots of sites do this admittedly, but there isn’t much counter to it. Either it’s based solely on popularity, with no concern for quality. Or it’s left completely in the hands of the editor, leaving room for biases. An ideal site would be a combination of the two — leave the opportunity for people to blog their own reviews and opinions, then offer features to blogs which are both considered helpful by the community AND considered quality content by editors. Oddly enough, deviantArt has the most ideal system for this — they showcase no only artwork strictly based on popularity but also feature systems for lesser seen works of good quality as well.

Also, and this is incredibly important, featured writers have to be compensated if their work is put on the front page. It doesn’t have to be a huge compensation, but it should be similar to regular writers on a per click basis. They are driving traffic to the site after all, they are reporting, they are doing a service. However, since they are being compensated, they are also bound to the ethics policy above where other blogs would not be. Meaning before a piece is featured, editors have to vet the piece and make sure there are no biases that need to be disclosed.

The rating system for some is the bane of gaming journalism. A system wherein if a game isn’t 9–10, you’re basically gambling on whether it will be good. And of course, this subjective number doesn’t tell you anything about WHICH qualities are good. The number exists for a reason — a quick and easy way to indicate quality. But it isn’t quick or easy when the number is mostly useless and you have to read the reviews to actually get a sense of what the game is.

This solution is two-fold: one is introduce another aspect which breaks down WHAT is good about the game. I called it ColoRate, because I am an incredibly imaginative person. The concept is that a game would be reviewed based on five aspects: Story (not just the actual narrative but the characters, background, lore, etc.), Graphics, Mechanics, Content, and Enjoyability. The idea is that just because a game is lacking in original mechanics or the graphics are eh doesn’t mean it isn’t still fun because there’s a ton of content and the story is awesome. As well, let’s be honest — there are some games that are absolute crap but you still find yourself recommending them to everyone because somewhere in all the horribleness it is just an insane amount of stupid fun (your Tommy Wiseau games). Each aspect would have a color assigned to it, and then when rating a game, you would get not only a number, but a color based on the strongest aspects of the game. So say a game with a 7 has a strong story (represented by the color blue). It would be giving a blue label. Games with two strong aspects (say story and content, which is green) would be given a label mixing the two colors. Games with more than three strong aspects would get a rainbow sticker, more preserved for especially excellent games. Games with absolutely nothing going for it, a black sticker.

The other portion of this is standardizing the numeric rating system. Right now it seems to be completely up to the reviewer what these numbers mean. That’s ridiculous. Instead it would be a straightforward rubric: 1–3 are games with few or no redeeming qualities, absolute don’t buys, mostly black stickers; 4–6 are games with some decent qualities, potentially strong aspects, perhaps overpriced, only to be bought if you’re interested in its strongest aspect; 7–9 is for games which are generally excellent and worth the price but have problems which some may not enjoy, or may not be for people who don’t enjoy their strong aspects; 10 is only for the most perfect of the perfect games with multiple strong aspects, well worth the price. It would be more detailed than that, but that’s the gist of it.