How much would you pay for better games journalism?

[kortin]

I wouldn't pay anything. I'd make my own. I'd start my own channel and do my own game journalism. We shouldn't expect these people to fix themselves, we should stop giving them views and money and start our own.

 

[MysticSlayer]

Besides, there's still no real evidence of widespread corruption. People like pointing to the Kane & Lynch fiasco or some review score of two games on IGN, but those seem to be isolated incidents, and that's assuming that they all were actually due to corruption. The occasional wide difference in review scores on Metacritic also isn't evidence of widespread corruption in game reviews, as it not only rarely gets as bad as games like Rome II, but it also could be more of a problem with the gaming community than the critics (e.g. Call of Duty).

Careful with this. There doesn't need to be any explicit or direct act of corruption for a magazine to lose legitimacy. Very often AAA publishers can use their money to indirectly pay for news in the form of, for example, launch events. A video coverage of a game's event is essentially paid publicity. By most other industry's standards, E3 is a travesty that wouldn't exist without some serious overhauls. And that's just one example.

Are you saying that covering an event that gamers would be interested in counts as corruption or at least something similar to it?

 

[Bellvedere]

None really. People's opinion on games is entirely subjective. A reviewer giving favorable scores to games (that don't deserve it) to appease a publisher or a reviewer just having an entirely different opinion to me on what makes a game good/bad doesn't really matter because in the end it will achieve the same thing - me not checking/disregarding any reviews by that person.

Even in the total absence of professional game critics, there's still going to be discussion between regular people about the quality of games. I've been playing games long enough to know what kind of criticism I see of a game is going to matter to me and what kind of praise isn't.

 

[Something Amyss]

Yeah, the hilarity of the accusations leveled at reviewers that they're all-too-willing to get into bed with publishers isn't lost on me when there's historically far more evidence that points towards publishers trying to shut out reviewers they perceive to be "not on their side" (such as with Jim and Konami) out of spite. EDIT: To clarify since those two things aren't necessarily mutually exclusive in the way I've worded it, I mean the accusations that reviewers are going to be biased towards a game because a publisher is trying to bribe them.

And to be honest, I've had an issue with the idea of NDAs and review embargoes in gaming ever since I heard about them in the first place. I understand them on a fundamental level, but this is video gaming, not the CIA. But unfortunately there's not really much the journalists themselves can do about that. Refusing to play ball with a publisher just means that in the future their competition will be more likely to get their viewership on products by that publisher, and it puts a black mark on the reviewer/website in general as being "unreliable" (hilariously enough; even publishers don't trust games journalists, you'd think that would be reason enough for the gaming community to have a little faith).

It really must suck to be a games reviewer, thinking about it. If your score is too low you're a hater or paid off by the competition, if the score's too high you're a fanboy or paid off by the publisher. Too low a score or too critical review gets you attacked not only by fans, but sometimes the creators and can less commonly get you completely blacklisted from those games. Failure to comply with what should be absurd terms means you're screwed, and you probably get paid as much as other reviewers so you can't really afford to go buying all your own games (unless you have another source of income). I'm not saying other reviewers/entertainment critics or journalists don't get it, too, but they don't get it on anywhere near this level. Gaming just seems to be overall highly toxic on almost every level.

In fact, if you scale back Phil Fish's rants, he kind of has a point. Even if he only meant designers, it applies here, too.

And yeah, NDAs are kind of problematic. The number of preset conditions just shows the dominance of one side of this.

 

[TristanBelmont]

I don't even care about the money. I just want it to be less garbage.

Heck, I've been subscribed to Game Informer for almost a decade now but I have finally come to my senses and realized I get all the news I need on a daily basis from my friends and the interwebs.

I pay for my internet provider, does that count?

 

[Johnny Novgorod]

Wouldn't pay a single penny for game journalism.

 

[JagermanXcell]

How much would I pay? Depends, how much bread do humans eat?

Ok, minus my bad attempt at referencing Dio, nothing. Honestly, we should just start ignoring "gaming journalism" until it's stops being dumb corrupt wank offs... well my dreams are more or less crushed with that statement considering journalism as a whole has always been dumb corrupt wank offs that has officially become a satire of itself.

AAAAHHHH well, nothing of loss. Back to playing video games.

 

[veloper]

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.

That's a reasonable way to look at it.
One thing I need to clarify is that I was NOT talking about extra bribes on top of the ad revenue, free games and other goodies already received. I don't think bribes must happen, when the typical relationship of game journalists dependent on publishers, is close enough already to trigger reciprocity in most people.

It's not hidden, but going on in plain sight. When you have a review for a new COD game and ads from Activision right next to it, viewers will question the integrity of the reviewer and the review mag.

Anyway, a completely independent online game mag that is above (reasonable) suspicion, would be harder to pull off, but I don't think it would be impossible.

 

[shrekfan246]

It's not hidden, but going on in plain sight. When you have a review for a new COD game and ads from Activision right next to it, viewers will question the integrity of the reviewer and the review mag.

Yeah, fair enough. Personally, I've got enough faith that as long as any and all of that stuff is above-board and shown to their viewers, their articles will still be "untainted", so to speak.

Besides, like I said earlier in this thread (I think?) the way I see it is that even if a reviewer gives "biased" coverage for a game, the worst thing that's going to come of it is that I purchase said game and end up not really liking it. Not exactly an apocalypse scenario to me.

 

[veloper]

It's not hidden, but going on in plain sight. When you have a review for a new COD game and ads from Activision right next to it, viewers will question the integrity of the reviewer and the review mag.

Yeah, fair enough. Personally, I've got enough faith that as long as any and all of that stuff is above-board and shown to their viewers, their articles will still be "untainted", so to speak.

Besides, like I said earlier in this thread (I think?) the way I see it is that even if a reviewer gives "biased" coverage for a game, the worst thing that's going to come of it is that I purchase said game and end up not really liking it. Not exactly an apocalypse scenario to me.

Sure it's only $60 down the toilet at worst and hardly the end of the world, but it's also enough for me to seek reviews elsewhere.

 

[shrekfan246]

It's not hidden, but going on in plain sight. When you have a review for a new COD game and ads from Activision right next to it, viewers will question the integrity of the reviewer and the review mag.

Yeah, fair enough. Personally, I've got enough faith that as long as any and all of that stuff is above-board and shown to their viewers, their articles will still be "untainted", so to speak.

Besides, like I said earlier in this thread (I think?) the way I see it is that even if a reviewer gives "biased" coverage for a game, the worst thing that's going to come of it is that I purchase said game and end up not really liking it. Not exactly an apocalypse scenario to me.

Sure it's only $60 down the toilet at worst and hardly the end of the world, but it's also enough for me to seek reviews elsewhere.

Well, at that point I would argue that you should've been seeking reviews from multiple sources in the first place.

No matter how much you trust or agree with the general opinions of a reviewer, it's never really a good idea to base your purchasing decisions off of the word of a single person. Me? I said it in a chat a few days ago, but if I'm going to be spending more than $20 or so on a game and I'm not sure that I'm going to like it (most often due to previous experience with a developer/publisher), I'm going to be looking up multiple reviews and watching gameplay (actual gameplay, not promotional material) to solidify my decision.

And while this is mostly unrelated, I have a hard time putting a lot of credence behind the claims that the gaming community makes when most often their complaints stem solely from "I don't like that review". The Jeff Gerstmann thing on GameSpot was a legitimate sign of corruption in a games journalism website. It's also the only one that has actually happened in the past eight years or so, to my knowledge. Hardly enough evidence for me to start believing that the entire games journalism industry needs to be burnt down and rebuilt from the ashes.

 

[GloatingSwine]

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.

I don't know why people still think this is a thing.

When a games reviewer gets a free copy of a game to review he isn't getting a present, he's getting a basic tool he needs to do his job.

Likewise they might get a free console well whoopee-shit they got a basic tool they need to do their damn job that they would otherwise have gotten through their employer and written off as a tax expense anyway!

Games journalists get all sorts of free tat that they will never possibly be able to make any use of and probably largely don't want or need. Seriously, go to a trade show sometime and see how many armfuls of free tat you can end up with, doesn't matter what the show is for, you'll end up swimming in free plastic tat.

 

[veloper]

It's not hidden, but going on in plain sight. When you have a review for a new COD game and ads from Activision right next to it, viewers will question the integrity of the reviewer and the review mag.

Yeah, fair enough. Personally, I've got enough faith that as long as any and all of that stuff is above-board and shown to their viewers, their articles will still be "untainted", so to speak.

Besides, like I said earlier in this thread (I think?) the way I see it is that even if a reviewer gives "biased" coverage for a game, the worst thing that's going to come of it is that I purchase said game and end up not really liking it. Not exactly an apocalypse scenario to me.

Sure it's only $60 down the toilet at worst and hardly the end of the world, but it's also enough for me to seek reviews elsewhere.

Well, at that point I would argue that you should've been seeking reviews from multiple sources in the first place.

Which is something I usually do BTW.

No matter how much you trust or agree with the general opinions of a reviewer, it's never really a good idea to base your purchasing decisions off of the word of a single person. Me? I said it in a chat a few days ago, but if I'm going to be spending more than $20 or so on a game and I'm not sure that I'm going to like it (most often due to previous experience with a developer/publisher), I'm going to be looking up multiple reviews and watching gameplay (actual gameplay, not promotional material) to solidify my decision.

And while this is mostly unrelated, I have a hard time putting a lot of credence behind the claims that the gaming community makes when most often their complaints stem solely from "I don't like that review". The Jeff Gerstmann thing on GameSpot was a legitimate sign of corruption in a games journalism website. It's also the only one that has actually happened in the past eight years or so, to my knowledge. Hardly enough evidence for me to start believing that the entire games journalism industry needs to be burnt down and rebuilt from the ashes.

I think the Kane&Lynch debacle was only the tip of the iceberg. It was pure luck that one came to the surface.
There's no reason for any of the parties involved to open up, since the current affairs benefits both the publishers and the game journalists and the end result is subtle (general score inflation).

When you have little to go on, 'follow the money' is always a good rule. The guy who pays, usually gets his way, so in this case it's the publishers who should have control.
It's not enough to accuse anyone (except maybe GameSpot), but it's still enough to be wary.

 

[veloper]

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.

I don't know why people still think this is a thing.

When a games reviewer gets a free copy of a game to review he isn't getting a present, he's getting a basic tool he needs to do his job.

Likewise they might get a free console well whoopee-shit they got a basic tool they need to do their damn job that they would otherwise have gotten through their employer and written off as a tax expense anyway!

Because even if something isn't considered a fun toy and just a boring tool, it may still have monetary value and even small favors deserve small favors in return. Reciprocity is a powerful thing.
Then there's the ad revenue, which is a big thing.

 

[shrekfan246]

I think the Kane&Lynch debacle was only the tip of the iceberg. It was pure luck that one came to the surface.

See, I'm not really sure about that.

Our Grey Carter said a few days ago, and it remains pretty relevant, that there are a lot of silly and dumb people involved in games journalism. Websites like The Escapist, Destructoid, and Kotaku are all direct competition to each other, so why should they care about the bottom lines of the other sites? (Beyond the fact that the internet is paranoid enough to start questioning "their" gaming website even if that is the one which reported on how terrible "the enemy" website was.) The Escapist, Kotaku, Polygon, et al have pretty long-established histories of posting "click-bait" articles at this point, what reason would one of them have to logically cover up a scandal that would make them a month's worth of ad revenue in the space of a few days (as evidenced by the thread which has been allowed to thrive in Off-Topic)? And, even more so, how would someone logically prevent all of the trigger happy journalists from covering it in the first place?

I mean, games journalism has problems. That's undeniable. But I think the gaming community is far more paranoid about it than it has reasonable doubt to be. Plus, they always focus on the wrong things. If I could even remember how many there may or may not have been, I could probably count the number of threads related to NDAs/embargoes I've seen on these forums over the past three years on one hand. And hardly anybody actually brings up those silly "press events" whereby developers/publishers do actively pay to fly out reviewers/critics in order to wine&dine them and show off their games in the best possible manner. Jim Sterling stopped covering events like that precisely because he felt it could potentially create a muddy atmosphere in his subsequent coverage of a title. Maybe it's just because people want a centralized argument to internalize, but it always seems that they come back to saying reviewers directly received a paycheck to raise/lower the score, and that's kind of just a silly thing to think. And you and I can debate the specifics all day long about how the argument goes much deeper than that (because it does, clearly), but at the end of the day the majority of the complaints on the internet remain, as usual, that shallow, and the number of people who bother to delve much deeper are sadly far too few.

 

[veloper]

I think the Kane&Lynch debacle was only the tip of the iceberg. It was pure luck that one came to the surface.

See, I'm not really sure about that.

Our Grey Carter said a few days ago, and it remains pretty relevant, that there are a lot of silly and dumb people involved in games journalism. Websites like The Escapist, Destructoid, and Kotaku are all direct competition to each other, so why should they care about the bottom lines of the other sites? (Beyond the fact that the internet is paranoid enough to start questioning "their" gaming website even if that is the one which reported on how terrible "the enemy" website was.) The Escapist, Kotaku, Polygon, et al have pretty long-established histories of posting "click-bait" articles at this point, what reason would one of them have to logically cover up a scandal that would make them a month's worth of ad revenue in the space of a few days (as evidenced by the thread which has been allowed to thrive in Off-Topic)? And, even more so, how would someone logically prevent all of the trigger happy journalists from covering it in the first place?

Lack of hard proof will keep them away.
The only person a games journalist might indict, is himself, saying 'yeah I got free games, ad revenue and some nice trips to game events all-paid-for, just like everybody else and I also had this understanding with some suits that I would ignore bugs in my review and hand out atleast 7 out of 10s'.
Nobody in their right mind is going to come out like that. Everybody else, including the publishers, could still easily deny everything and the noose would be for big mouth alone.

I mean, games journalism has problems. That's undeniable. But I think the gaming community is far more paranoid about it than it has reasonable doubt to be. Plus, they always focus on the wrong things. If I could even remember how many there may or may not have been, I could probably count the number of threads related to NDAs/embargoes I've seen on these forums over the past three years on one hand. And hardly anybody actually brings up those silly "press events" whereby developers/publishers do actively pay to fly out reviewers/critics in order to wine&dine them and show off their games in the best possible manner. Jim Sterling stopped covering events like that precisely because he felt it could potentially create a muddy atmosphere in his subsequent coverage of a title.

+1 for Jim Sterling, but it doesn't say much good about the rest of them.

Integrity starts with not accepting such gifts in the first place, like Jim.

 

[Laughing Man]

Nothing, Youtube, Steam, any gaming forum on the internet has a mass of people reviewing games they have bought for no price whatsoever.

The question isn't how much would you pay for better game journalism it should be how much would you pay for unbiased and honest game journalism and again the price is nothing. If they need to be paid to do their job right then they were never worth paying for in the first place.

 

[WindKnight]

[quote="shrekfan246" post="9.858810.21301940"

Yeah, the hilarity of the accusations leveled at reviewers that they're all-too-willing to get into bed with publishers isn't lost on me when there's historically far more evidence that points towards publishers trying to shut out reviewers they perceive to be "not on their side" (such as with Jim and Konami) out of spite. [/quote]

Going back to print times, there's the time Eidos took offence to PC Gamers running joke about the lateness of Daikatana and yanked all advertising from the magazine, almost killing it. They may not be trying to influence reveiws, but their prepared to be childish and nasty if you irk them.

 

[RicoADF]

Well it is such a shame that no mainstream news outlet would dedicate a 1 or 2 minutes, or a portion of a page (if not an entire subsection) to videogames despite doing so with older media, such as film, television, and music.

I don't know where you live but here in Sydney (Australia) the local paper I read, MX, has a page for tech and another for games including reviewing the latest major release. I don't read the other papers so cannot comment on them.