Behind the scenes: gaming journalism

[CmdrGoob]

Here's an interesting series: Behind the Scenes: Gaming Journalism. Part 5 [http://sorethumbsblog.com/post/52029173/gamingjournalism5] is here, with links to the previous parts. Some juicy bits:

During the call, the producer revealed that he wasn't quite happy with the game at that point in its development, and I quoted him on that in my article. [...] Then [magazine PR guy] Stockhausen showed [magazine editor] Semrad that quote and told him Konami saw it and called him up pissed. Semrad's reaction upon reading it the quote/article right there and then: "You wrote what?? You need to use your head!" He was not happy that I made this producer look bad to his development team. I guess he was friends with certain people at Konami at the time. [...] Even though Semrad eventually offered Konami an extra two pages worth of happy preview coverage as an apology for my "actions," I thankfully never learned any bad habits from this incident.

Sometimes, the "indirect bribe" works on a wider level. A few days before Assassin's Creed was due out, we started seeing online reviews appear well before the explicit embargo date. OK, if one review hit early, that's fairly typical. That outlet obviously got an exclusive. But then a second review hit...then a third...and we asked Ubisoft what was up, because we were steadily losing traffic to all these early reviews. Because our 1UP score was a 7.0, we still had to abide by the original embargo date, but we learned that if the score was high enough, Ubisoft was allowing outlets to release their reviews early. In other words, give the game a great score, and you're rewarded with an early, higher trafficked review (all three early reviews were 10/10).
[...]
So we tried to do a fair, objective news story about this to explain to our audience why we were one of the last websites to have an Assassin's Creed review out and why there was this selective release of reviews...and, well, this is a longer story best saved for another day. But the short of it is, this all lead to Ubisoft's blacklisting of EGM and 1UP, and even so, our parent company Ziff Davis Media didn't allow us to publish that story anyways because it wanted to stay on Ubisoft's - a huge advertiser - good side

I've told stories in my EGM editorials before about how companies offer advertising dollars in exchange for cover stories. One PR contact of mine told me that it was an easy thing to do - just set up a meeting between the game company and the magazine publisher, offer to buy a certain amount of advertising, and voila, free cover story.

OK, then...how about the World Series? Or the Super Bowl? I've been offered free tickets to both from game companies that are either just being friendly and buttering me up (Microsoft = World Series) or that have games in that respective sport (Sega = Super Bowl).

On the ride there, however, I did observe something that bugs me to this day. All of us guests were in a van on the way to the game, and one out-of-state editor yelled out to the Sony PR guy up front, "Hey, when are you going to come out to ___________ and take us out to a ___________ game?" (I had to leave out the city and name of the baseball team out because then you'd know exactly who's in this story.)

Here was this editor who just outright asked Sony to treat them to a baseball game...in front of a bunch of his peers, no less. Was this just accepted behavior in my industry?

 

[Good morning blues]

It's disgusting, but it doesn't surprise me at all.

You can't make a video game review site; you need to make a web site like this one that just comments on the industry. Reviews are probably better suited to print media, where long lead times prevent a lot of this sort of dirty shit.

 

[TOGSolid]

It's disgusting, but it doesn't surprise me at all.

You can't make a video game review site; you need to make a web site like this one that just comments on the industry. Reviews are probably better suited to print media, where long lead times prevent a lot of this sort of dirty shit.

I don't trust professional reviews anymore. If I want to get a feel for a game, I go read the actual community buzz like on the forums where most of my online buddies hang, or here.

 

[Flour]

This is new?(not the link, never knew about that site, but the knowledge that professional reviews can't be trusted)

I've been saying this for years, and nobody would believe me. Now with this link I hope I'm finally able to convince some people to stop quoting a "perfect" gamespot "review" as if it says something about the game.

 

[TOGSolid]

This actually reminds me, I need to clean up some of my slapped together reviews from my other board and toss them in the user review forum to see what people think.

I can't actually recall anyone I know using website reviews as credible sources. The most we've ever done is use it as an excuse to spam /FACEPALM all over the place.

 

[TsunamiWombat]

Huh, maybe I should go back to reading EGm and 1up.

 

[Altorin]

I was going to ignore this.

and then I saw who the article was by

Shoe!

Oh Shoe...

*reads*

 

[searanox]

I still trust reviews, especially opinions of specific individuals, but I tend to look at a game's general reception to figure out how good or bad it is. A lot of people like to avoid anything under the dreaded 8.0, but I find that usually games in that range tend to have tons of redeeming factors that get overlooked simply because there's a few bugs or the presentation isn't quite up to snuff. Similarly, the "best of the best" also tend to be wildly overrated due to pressures from advertisers. Anyone who doesn't realise that professional games journalism sites are just glorified advertising needs to step out of his or her bubble and just take a look at the whole Gerstmann debacle - it's incredibly telling of the nature of the industry these days, but there's plenty more cases if you look for them. Any time you see an early review, exclusive preview, etc., chances are that it's being paid for. Videogame advertisers know how their customers think, and they construct a very meticulous, cunning web by playing right into that.

Meanwhile, journalists themselves, who were once idealistic gaming fans, get caught in the middle between their integrity and the pressure from their employers and advertisers. That's the reason why I decided I didn't want to be a games reviewer (along with a few others): I just didn't want to have to put my ethics on trial with every story I wrote.

 

[mark_n_b]

some journalists and sites are above the board. But in general, games journalism is a farce on journalism and one of the primary reasons no one gives a crap about gaming culture.

In all honesty publisher and developers are as huge a contributor to this problem as the games journalists. The Journalists fall prey to bribery and publishers tell any journalist that doesn't bend over and take it proper to fuck the hell off. What magazine you gonna buy / site you gonna visit: The one that has a full Mirror's Edge Preview with developer interviews and new screens or the one that's reviewing Mercenaries 2?

 

[implodingMan]

I remember when GTA4 came out and IGN was one of the first websites to have a review up. They gave it a 10/10, which they hadn't done since I think Ocarina of Time. The highly anticipated nature of the game combined with the ridiculous score made the story hit the front page of digg.

So its reasonable to assume that the review was read at least 10,000 times.

Think of all that ad money.....

 

[jay-ell]

The reviewers are very independent in certain places, like, for instance, popmatters.com. It's an upstart, so they don't get a lot of attention from game houses one way or another. But this sort of thing (the bias and bribery) isn't surprising at all to anyone who has been paying attention. I mean, pick up a copy of Game Informer sometime and tell me it's not absolutely paid for by the game devs and retail outlets. I'm honestly very shocked that PC Gamer is as independent as they are, it seems like they're the last bastion of sanity among the mainstream rags. Sure, they sometimes value graphics over gameplay, but who isn't a graphics whore at one time or another?

Disclaimer: I am a regular contributor to popmatters, don't hurt me.