Magazines Faking Game Reviews?

lunchlady doris writes: "With videogames becoming a huge business and magazines having large lead times, something has got to give if they want to compete with web sites. Planet GameCube has a story where it seems that some magazines have decided that eschewing actual journalism is the way to go, with both Extreme Gamer and Request Magazine having reviews for Nintendo's Eternal Darkness, a game that is currently incomplete and is only expected to arrive in stores at the end of June."

Comments

In France...

[mirko]

Some years ago we had some similar situation when a journalist, Francis Rozange, got some acrimonious game reviews stolen, then corrected to please the announcers who would not spend a single cent for advertising in a magazine that would just let such disadvantageous reviews...
Actually, the French law allow a typical magazine to be classified as information-press if its percentage of ads remains lower than 66%.
Where that's becoming quite outrageous is that most "honourable" magazine maximize this percentage to 65% so that they get the bucks along with the status.
Now, the problem with the press is that the newspapers mostly belong to some big media lobbies ...
So, I wonder why one should be surprised of such headline...

Happens all the time...

[monkeywez]

Most games mags get "special" versions of the game at least a month before the game goes gold, along with a list of things that will be fixed before it hits the shops (frame rate improvements, bugs fixed, etc.).

The only time mags get final versions are if:

(a) The game is finished long before its release (i.e. they are delaying the game for the Xmas rush).
(b) The mag in question can't be trusted to ignore the faults in their review copy (mainstream "lifestyle" mags for example)

If you look carefully at the screenshots they use you will occasionally see how they are subtly different to the finished product.

Seen it at both IGN and Gamespot, too.

[MWoody]

I ran into a problem with folks not reviewing games when the GBA (Game Boy Advance for the un-anointed) first came out. My brother and I were trying to decide which games we should both get vs. which we should just share. Bomberman Tournament was the title we'd anticipated most, so if there was any possibility of increasing the gameplay value by buying two, we were gonna do it.

And, after a quick perusal of two of the largest gaming sites around - Gamespot.com and IGN.com - we decided two cartridges were the way to go. After all, in Gamespot's review, Frank Provo writes:

The game supports both multi- and single-cartridge multiplayer options, although the load times for single-cartridge hosting are somewhat excessive.

Sounds good, especially when paired with David Zdyrko's comments in IGN's review:

The only downside to the one-cart, four-GBA setup is that you'll have to deal with a tremendous amount of load time at the start of each contest, before the victory screen and before the start of the next battle.

This is only a minor annoyance, though, and can be remedied a lot if you happen to have a friend or more that also has a copy of the game.

So, we went and bought two copies, whipped those babies out, and set up a game. And, lo and behold - no multi-cartridge support. Yes, indeed, the single gamepak mode had lots of slow load times. But having more than one doesn't do you any good unless you lose a game in the couch cushions.

There was some moaning about this issue on the Gamespot forums, and as it turns out, the multi-cartridge support had not been brought over to the US version. Some of the reviewers had been given bad data by the company.

To which I first though, "OK, no big whoop. Shit happens." But the more I considered it, the more it bugged me. These two reviewers made claims based on information they got from the company that made the game - NOT their own experiences. They didn't test these features; they just threw them into the review.

I understand the most probable reasons: lack of time, only one cartridge to test with. But all I'm asking is for a simply "We didn't have two copies, so we can say for ourselves, but apparently..." Yes, it sounds a little wussy, but it makes the difference between journalism and an ad. At the very least, they could have corrected the error when they were notified; I'm aware of several people who have contacted both sites, including myself, and one Gamespot official even bothered to reply about it in the forums, but both still stand unchanged.

OK, this is a minor thing, I know. But it did cost me about 30 bucks, and it makes me wonder: how much else in these "reviews" is straight out of a press release?

Talk about an old chestnut...

[briggers]

'Exclusive' reviews of incomplete (or in some cases entirely non-existent) games have been around almost as long as computer games magazines themselves. I remember back in the glory days of the classic UK games mags of the 80s and early 90s - the likes of ZZap, Crash, Your Sinclair, Commodore Format, Amiga Format etc - the surprise was when a review of a real, *finished* game was published (it was not unusual to see rave, 95% reviews of games which were never even written :-)

UK and Australian readers will probably know what I am talking about: I'm sure I'm not the only one who misses the zany yet sophisticated humour, and complete and utter lack of moral fibre, of the great UK games mags. The copious pop-culture references, the disturbing running gags and in-jokes, the barf-inducing layouts.... all seem to be missing from today's sanitised publications.

There was a terrific site set up by the staff of the short-lived (but truly surreal while it lasted) Amiga Power magazine, telling the inside story of the fake reviews, blatant plagiarism etc of the UK games mag scene of the period. Unfortunately it seems to have vanished.... hopefully someone might turn up with a URL.

Re:Talk about an old chestnut...

[Fluffy the Cat]

http://ds.dial.pipex.com/ap2/ is probably what you're looking for. This page is especially topical, but the rest of the site gives a great deal of insight into what the games magazine industry is really like.