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L.A. Times on Game Reviewer 'Playola'

Posted by chrisd on from the does-a-twenty-enhance-gameplay dept.

madmancarman writes "Celebrity parties, target practice with automatic weapons, and free trips to spend the night in haunted castles are just some 'perks' game reviewers enjoy as described by this article from the L.A. Times. The reviewers say this has no effect on their reviews, but we've all heard politicians say the same thing with respect to their jobs. Maybe Ion Storm should have spent some more money on Daikatana junkets?"

1 of 177 comments (clear)

  1. My findings by Lurks · · Score: 5, Informative
    I've been a games journalist for a number of years, on print stuff that is, not the web. In my experience, travel trips, gifts and stuff like that aren't what skew review scores. Exclusive reviews and coverdisk demos are what skew reviews.

    The magazines I worked on didn't play that game but in the ultra-competitive British games magazine industry, there were several who most certainly did. I remember in particular being pretty sweet with GT Interactive's PR with regards to TA: Kingdoms. I was a massive fan of the former game and thought I had an understanding that I would review this game for our magazine first because I had the best background. Bingo it turned up on the cover of another magazine, exclusive review with a Big Score.

    I couldn't even review the game, it had too many show stopping bugs namely the fact that it ran at about 25% normal speed. The game sucked anyway. Up until that point I was sufficiently naive to believe that everyone was like me. The process of getting reviews for the blockbusters is very much a business negotiation in the UK. Mags barter scores (I assume, although I never saw it myself), pages, coverdisk space and cover realestate.

    Still, at the end of the day if you buy a mag and it says a game is great when it's absolutely crap - then you wont buy that magazine right? That's what I don't quite get about American magazines. They've always been very bum licky crawly to publishers, but then again their reviews are pretty useless coming out 2 months after a game hits the shelves anyhow...

    Later on, after I escaped journalism to work in the games industry properly, I came to realise a real home truth. Actually reviews are pretty irrelevant. In this day and age, under 20% of those buying games have EVER bought a magazine for their console, still less have looked at a web site.