Psycho11Edge said:
I don't see why this would be such an issue to anyone who is a gamer. A lot of people on here have already said a lot of great examples as to why this shouldn't be an issue, using other industries as reference. But still, this is ridiculous.
I'm not a game reviewer of any sort, nor do I want to be, because I don't like to push my opinion, subjective or objective, onto a product as not everyone feels the same way I do. I may like something, other may not. I may have thought something in the game wasn't done as well as it could have been, others may feel it was done well. And the idea of sitting through games I might not like or are complete crap doesn't appeal to me. Sure, every so often I might get a review copy of the next Elder Scrolls, and I play it, and I like it and write a review, but then the next thing I get is a review copy of something I don't like, such as the next Gears of War, and I would have to sit through that and play it to review it fairly, even though I wouldn't want to.
I'm glad there are people out there who will play as many games as they can so that they can tell us if the game is actually worth the money to buy it. I have made the mistake of buying terrible games, only to look up the reviews afterwards and finding that it scored lowly all around by many reviewers. I use reviews to help me decide on what games I might buy if they are of a new series I have never played or are the newest in a series that I have started to not like, and if the reviewers couldn't get a copy of these games to review because they had to buy every single one of them out of their own pocket, then I'm stuck with the risk of buying a shit game. That's not to say I rely on reviewers to make my decisions for me, I merely use them as a reference if I use them at all, I'm just happy to have them around so that they can help me to avoid wasting my $60 on Aliens: Colonial Marines or something.
Them getting free stuff before launch to do their job is absolutely okay to me, especially when they are trying to review day one titles before they come out, as I'm sure you don't want to go in buying your new PS4 and games only to find that the games you decided to buy weren't as good as you thought, and then maybe a week later the reviews come in saying they aren't really all that good.
Another reason I wouldn't want to be a reviewer is I have a bad habit of writing run-on sentences. Sorry about that to anyone reading this.
Well, I doubt many people read the huge post I threw out on the subject, but as I was saying the problem is institutional corruption, that is to say the entire system, and the way it works, is totally borked. The arguments being made only make sense if you accept a fundamentally poisonous practice to begin with.
At the end of the day the game industry wants reviews for games to come out before their release so they can get the press, and grab most of their profits off of a title more or less immediately after the game comes out. This also allows them to control the narrative to an extent as the copies of a game sent to reviewers ahead of time, might not be indicative of the final product being released. There have been many cases where we've been told something was different in a review copy, or that a review score was higher than it should have been because an error in the game was supposed to have been corrected by the final release version, and it never was. Ideally reviewers shouldn't be doing the reviews early, but at the same time the games come out, using the same exact version of the game that consumers are going to get. This will ultimately mean that most people would wind up waiting a few days after release for the reviews, and the industry will be forced to delay it's gratification and also have their product judged by what is actually there, on the market, as opposed to the various smoke and mirrors games that can be played under the current system.
I'd also argue that being a game reviewer should be a job like any other, as opposed to the pseudo-celebrity thing it is now, with people working out of their own homes living off of this kind of thing. That would solve a few of these problems. Right now the argument that a game reviewer can't afford all the games or hardware he needs to review and thus shouldn't be criticized for being "gifted" them only makes sense unless you consider that if this was like any other job he'd punch into an office, go to some soulless cubicle, rev up a console owned by his publisher, and play a game purchased by the publisher that it wants reviewed.
See, the problem right now with the gaming media is that the guys watch dogging the industry have become dependent on it. The reviewers rely on the company to provide them with games and hardware. The publishers have become dependent on the industry for advertising and revenues. This makes it increasingly hard to divide the critics from the group they are criticizing, which is why it's so noteworthy when particularly hard to get hardware if gifted to the reviewers individually. What's more it can be argued that this was just the reviewers Sony approved of (as critical as they might be) there are doubtlessly many reviewers that didn't get one (hey, I've written some off the cuff game reviews, and have been incredibly critical of games and the industry, nobody sent me a "Therumancer" engraved PS4!). On top of these these watchdogs who are generally "internet famous" at this level get invited to industry events, some of which seem to be pretty posh, where their favor is curried by the industry, things that most people can't attend (closed to the public) or afford to attend like say E3.
I covered this better in my last post. But my basic argument is that while I do not think every reviewer is corrupt, I do think the entire system is tainted, and calls even the good ones into question from time to time. Ideally I feel it would involve some belt tightening, but games reviewers and their publishers should maintain distance from the industry they comment on. A site based on game reviews should not sell ad space to video game producers, but instead generate revenue from other aspects of things like selling the ad space to snack food companies, hardware manufacturers, and the like even if this means less money. The reviewers themselves should also not be receiving gifts, justified as "professional tools" or not from the industry, something they need to remain separated from as they work. Ultimatly the publisher should wind up purchasing and providing the materials, and in many cases that means game reviewing becoming like a real job as opposed to the fairly sweet gig it is now (sure, game playing might not be as fun when it's your job and you have deadlines, but honestly it's bloody posh compared to the jobs most people do, when is the last time a game reviewer got his face stepped on by a couple of drunk hoodlums when backup during a shut off wasn't fast enough... or injured on badly repaired machinery... or any one of a dozen other things most people deal with), even if it is still pretty easy and probably shouldn't be that profitable as a result. Go to work at your publisher, head to a cubicle, use the company console and whatever game they purchased, and do the review there. I mean just working out of your home and not having to commute is bloody golden by the standards of most people. Under no circumstances should reviewers who are supposed to remain focused on the games as they are released be present during events like E3 or other major Expos, since the job is to be critical, not seduced by the best face put forward by the industry.
Of course I'm again rambling about ideals, what Jim is responding to is criticisms that this whole think reeked of corruption. It does... of course taken as things are, as opposed to how they should be, it's really no big deal because there are so many problems within the entire system. That said, the guys who got their PS4s could have been a bit classier about it, Jim and I both seem to agree that they brought it on themselves, deserving or not.
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