veloper said:
shrekfan246 said:
veloper said:
Here's a better idea: if you want a website dedicated to videogames and you also want to avoid all suspicion of corruption, accept ad money only from industries related to geek culture, like comics, film, boardgames, cards, etc. and from computer hardware vendors, just as long as you don't take money from videogame publishers.
Then for reviews you'd have to actually buy the games.
This might work, if the site content is good, earning a reputation and attracting more views and thus more ad revenue.
That's more a problem of practicality than anything else.
A lot of video game reviewers, at least on sites smaller than IGN, don't make enough money that purchasing the games themselves is a viable option. Not
all of the games they're reviewing, at least. Them receiving video games from publishers/indie developers is more a job necessity than anything else, and that's how most reviewers seem to treat it. They're not "getting a game for free", they're getting a stack of papers slapped on their desk and being told to have it done by next Monday.
I wonder how terribly expensive it could really be. When a core gamer can easily have a couple hundred games in his Steam library, then why should it be so much money for anyone actually making a living out of playing games?
We geeks and nerds can afford it, so surely for a small business it wouldn't be more than a tiny investment that should earn itself back in no time.
It's worth bearing in mind that many, many gamers don't buy those hundreds of games at $50-60 a piece. In fact, most of my own Steam titles were purchased at below $10. It's a significantly smaller investment. And, while I unfortunately cannot provide and sources or citations, from what I understand the average "salary" of a video game reviewer is much lower than most gamers seem to believe it is. It's certainly still enough for them to get by, but they're normal people just like you and I. They have bills, families to support, occasionally employees to pay themselves (especially in the case of Youtube personalities), and their own hobbies. Plus, they only get games for free; consoles, PC hardware, sound equipment, peripherals, that's all stuff which comes directly out of their own pockets. I don't know about you, but most gamers I've seen tend to only buy a single console at a time or even wait a while until the price drops because they're just too expensive to buy all at the same time. Reviewers don't really have that luxury, unless they're on smaller, more niche sites.
Reviewers, by the nature of their job, would be forced to purchase every game being covered at full price, because they need to get their coverage out as soon as they can; view numbers for articles/videos which come out "late" are drastically lower than those released as soon as possible. And, given the fact that
Borderlands: The Pre-Sequel and
Civilization: Beyond Earth are currently two of the top sellers on Steam, I'd be willing to bet that putting your faith in the patience of gamers isn't a very good idea.
Now, I mean, arguably a reviewer can just cover less software. There's not really any harm in that, many games slip by under the radar these days anyway because there are simply so many games released every single day that it's impossible to expect them all to be covered. But the developer/publisher providing a game to a personality is to their own benefit as well; when a reviewer or critic covers a game, it gives that game exposure (good or bad). Good exposure means more sales of the game, which means more money to the developer/publisher. It's a symbiotic relationship, of sorts. And I suppose, to relate this all back to the topic of the thread, that's probably where the assumption of "paid off" reviews came from to begin with, but as has been pointed out many times over the years, many reviewers simply wouldn't take a "bribe" in the first place, because it's career suicide if it ever got out (and this is the internet; it
would get out).
Now, to assassinate my own point, there are reviewers who purchase their own games. In fact, I'm relatively sure that our very own Yahtzee Croshaw personally purchases all (or at least most) of the games he covers in Zero Punctuation. But he's not really living it up rolling around in cash, partying in mansions all weekend long (and he makes money as an author and co-owner of a gaming bar, as well). Though that brings up another point; many reviewers and critics don't make their salary
solely covering games. Jim Sterling does Jimquisition, as well as Movie Defense Force, previously Rhymedown Spectacular, and currently Uncivil War (also with Yahtzee). TotalBiscuit streams on Twitch, covers e-sports events, and creates opinion pieces related to the gaming industry. Even Adam Sessler is (or was) quite the busy man when it comes to covering the industry. I think I'd be hard-pressed to name a video game reviewer/critic who makes their living solely covering video games.
...
I'll stop rambling and TL;DR it -
Could reviewers purchase their games personally? Yes, probably, at least many of the better-known ones. But I don't think they'd be able to do it without making some concessions and compromises toward their other hobbies/spending habits. And I'm not the kind of person to ask them to do that just for my potential benefit, myself.
