For whatever reason, video gamers tend to, on the whole, place more stock in professional reviews of works than fans of any other medium. Only arguably second to news, reviews of the newest games are the main attraction of most gaming sites and magazines. In fact, review scores are just as likely to be used as personal opinions in ConsoleWars debates or to argue which of the newest {{Killer App}}s is the best.

This is why EightPointEight situations occur with such startling regularity. Of course, while there's nothing wrong in placing some stock in the opinions of others, review scores shouldn't be regarded as authoritative, simply because reviewers are, like everyone else, human beings with their own personal tastes and preferences. Not to mention that reviewers are [[FourPointScale not exactly always trustworthy]]...

One could say there's some logic behind all this — after all, purchasing a fifty dollar game is a much riskier endeavor than buying a book or movie ticket, so it makes sense that many people might regard professional reviews higher than they should. However, over-reliance on reviews is just as common in areas where software piracy is ubiquitous. Another reason perhaps is that video games as a medium demand more time and attention from us than most other entertainment forms, so most of us need to be discriminatory in the games we play.

Culturally speaking, this deference has existed for awhile, as aftershocks from TheGreatVideoGameCrashOf1983. One of the big problems of first and second generation video games was the general absence of any review infrastructure. This leads to many, many upset consumers who had to guess whether a game was any good and quickly became frustrated to discover they just put a lot of cash down for a very poor port or imitation of an arcade game they thought they liked. This is the reason for the "Nintendo Seal of Quality"- which wasn't supposed to mean "awesome game" so much as "playable game" as well as "Nintendo has licensed this game to be sold". (The 1st and 2nd generations also had games that were not licensed by Atari, which was part of the problem) The seal's importance greatly diminished with the advent of modern video game journalism, since third-party reviews ultimately serve the same function, only with more detail.

This mentality has started to decline in recent years, at least with the video games, after companies like Ubisoft have been found to be fixing reviews and paying money to sites and magazines in the forms of advertisements. There are hints that this has started awhile ago with magazines and sites saying that "7 is the lowest we can give this without Sony pulling advertisements" and how in general, a lot of very hyped games received a much more detailed review than games without that much advertisement. The Advertisement as well as copies of games being withheld has been mentioned before, especially after the ''KaneAndLynch'' and ''AssassinsCreed'' scandals.

Also said to be a phenomenon among fans of live theater. Indeed, reviews can influence the act itself over time, replacing actors or modifying scenes slightly.
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!!Examples

[[foldercontrol]]

[[folder: Professional Wrestling ]]

* [[SmartMark Smart Marks]] following Dave Meltzer's (of the ''Wrestling Observer'') reviews of matches. There are only a few instances (in the US, at least) where he gives a match a five-star rating.

[[/folder]]

[[folder: New Media ]]

*In the IGN.com comments (and probably every other gaming web site) on reviews of games that have either not been publicly released yet or have JUST been released on that very day, you'll often see about a hundred comments' worth of arguments between people who "know" the game deserves more than the review score and people who "know" the game deserves either the score it got or lower. All this bickering from people who haven't even played (or come close to finishing) the game yet is an example of EightPointEight and ComplainingAboutShowsYouDontWatch, but it seems to be rooted in a near-religious belief in this trope. People try to refute or defend the review as if it's a scientific experiment. One that ''they haven't done yet'', to boot.
**Let's also not forget IGN US's disatrous review of Football Manager 2009, where the reviewer tried to compare it to Fifa 09 and PES, demoting the game because you couldn't play on the pitch...
* GameSpot, while not reviewing ''Backyard Baseball 2009'', mentioned it in an article where they criticized the ''child announcing''. The article has been defended by many people, mostly after seeing just the article and not playing the game. But child announcing has been in the [[BackyardSports series]] since the beginning, and the first game came out one year after GameSpot started. So have the writers of GameSpot been hiding under a rock for 12 years, and are the people defending them ''complete idiots''?
* Mny people take Yahtzee's reviews seriously, despite his known aversion to [[AccentuateTheNegative praising any game, including good ones.]] It was shown by the backlash to his ''Psychohaughts'' review, and in his review to ''BioShock'' he said, "nobody likes it when I'm being nice to a game" at the very opening. (He even said Bioshock was perhaps worthy of the "Game of the year" title, showing that he actually ''did'' like it.)
** This sadly has lead to a lot of people who were somehow [[ComplainingAboutShowsYouDontWatch experts on games and genres they admit they have never played or even owned]] and often carbon-copying opinions about a game when the obligatory discussion(s) came out after he reviewed a game. (This for some odd reason even lead to people accepting [[ElderScrolls Oblivion]] - whereas saying anything positive about it beforehand would get the fans [[FanHater savaging your intelligence and sexual orientation]])
* Averted with the reviews on GameFAQs, which are not seen as "Professional".

[[/folder]]

[[folder: Television ]]

* For awhile, people would often take the reviews of ''XPlay'' seriously, despite their ''heavy'' bias.

[[/folder]]

[[folder: Music ]]

* Pitchfork. Period. It lacks an editorial policy, and has been known to take part in some very unethical practices. It does not state for the record how its ratings systems work, though the best guess of many is that 7.0 is the de facto standard of what is considering a "good" record or album, let alone one that qualifies for the prestigious "Best New Music" badge. Further, many of their reviews are questionably written. Any hipster will use their logic to deny ''reading'' it, let alone influence their record-buying/pirating decisions, especially after it began its partnership with ABC. But ever since the Arcade Fire's ''Funeral'' LP, any time Pitchfork gives a "Best New Music" badge to an album from a new and upcoming band, that album's sales/downloads will significantly increase, and the band's rep will increase exponentially. It's very difficult to deny that their reviews are considered influential over the hipsters to some degree.
** Keep in mind that Pitchfork reviews mostly obscure bands, though; sure, The Very Best may have gotten a boost from the positive review, but that's just because few people had heard of the album and decided not to buy it beforehand. Now, if they review the new Alice in Chains album positively and that gets a large boost, that's a different issue.
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