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Ethics and Video Game Reviews
Obiwan Kenobi continues:
The junket used in the article as an example was Ubi Soft's recent Rainbow Six: Raven Shield launch, where the writers got to dress in SWAT garb and have a paintball battle against mock terrorists and disable a dirty bomb. Things like this happen all the time, even more so in the movie industry (which the gaming industry is quickly mirroring).
Not that I was a big-time reviewer or anything. Back in 1997 or so, I ran a small website of my own (hosted on my ISP webspace) called Obiwan Reviews. Since I was just getting out of high school and into college (read: broke), I reviewed Quake mods, such as AirQuake, Quake Rally, After the Fall and others. Soon I tried to spread my wings a little and get a gig at a real gaming site, which would give me the ability to review retail titles. I found that site, frag.com, and the position was given to me by Jonathon "ZyFly" Works after many requests. Though the site itself is no longer with us, the experience was certainly eye-opening.
Technically I only reviewed two retail titles, Tomb Raider 2 and the X-Men Quake mod. I also got Dungeon Keeper and its expansion, The Deeper Dungeons, though I never got around to writing about that one.
In my first "professional" review, I lavished praise on X-Men, which deserved about 75% of it, and the last 25% was, I fully admit (now that I'm nowhere near this "industry") given just because it was free and I'd never gotten a free game before. Yes, it was unethical as hell, but I was under the deluded thinking that if you trash a free game the free games stop coming. I wish I could tell you I knew better, but back then I did not.
An upshot of that bloated thinking came a week later when I got an email from the guys who made that X-Men mod. They thanked me for the kind words and the payoff for some of their hard work.
This is not something that a biased reviewer needs to hear.
This put me in the mindset that "everything is great, just tell em what they want to hear." That way I could get in the industry and be loved by all! Or...so I thought.
After Tomb Raider 2 dropped on my doorstep, I played it for a few days and was very disappointed. Terrible clipping, clunky controls, sometimes buggy levels and graphics. Not that it was all bad, I still had a good time with a few levels, but the majority of the game was a misfire.
But this didn't stop me from hyping it up, telling everyone it was the greatest thing to come out yet.
A week or so later I got another email. Not from the developer, but from a reader. And he was pissed.
While I don't have the email any longer, I certainly remember the gist of it: He bought the game and he saw through my candy-coated review in about thirty minutes. He had trusted my words and was out $50 thanks to me.
I felt terrible and conflicted. I wasn't sure I wanted to review any more at all, considering that I knew there would be others who would purchase titles based on my words. And if those words were false, who was gaining here? The studios producing the titles or myself? The guilt was tough, but the review had ran and a retraction of my gushing paragraphs would mean that nothing I did from then on would be taken seriously. Not that those who purchased TR2 because of my review would do so any longer, but hey, I've got the rest of the readership to worry about.
After some soul searching and mid-terms, I made my decision.
That was my last review for frag.com, and my last video game review. Though I have since written hundreds of movie and DVD reviews, I still look back on those reviews for a free humbling experience any time I need one.
The points that are brought up in articles like the one at Online Journalism are very much factual. If you let yourself be taken in by the free food, games, flights, and gala of a modern-day junket, your reputation is at stake. Roger Ebert has since stopped letting movie studios pay for anything in regards to press gatherings and interview sessions, and I highly commend him for it. Everyone else would be happy to throw a few hundred loving words toward a bad movie because they got to shmooze with the stars and eat an expensive meal alongside them.
This thing happens all the time.
Trust me, I know.
These junkets happen in almost every facet of the entertainment industry. Movies and TV especially. For more information, check out some of the features at Hollywood Bitchslap, they'll give you the straight dirt on that whole mess, including "quote whores" and tidbits on spin-meisters using message boards and chat channels to schill movies the rest of us wouldn't even consider seeing...
Blog Prophyts - Right On, Man
And I have to tell you, even in my really limited exposure to it all, that TRUTH and FACTS will get you farther than HYPE. I played a game that sucked, control=crappy; premise=retarded. I deemed it necessary to say so in my review (and no, I won't tell you what it was that I reviewed).
Shock and horror! I got nasty emails from not only the site owner but from the manufacturer. Reviews like mine didn't sell games. Selling games makes money. Money that goes to making more games, which in a trickle-effect helps sites that do reviews, and the reviewers.
But I didn't give a shit. Know why? Because I was unpaid. It didn't effect my bottom-line at all. I spoke the truth as I saw it. Still do.
But notice I don't review games anymore.
Ask Billy "Wicked" Wilson, he'll tell you the same thing. Why do you think he hasn't made a return yet? His new site is "ready to go" but he's lost the drive to do so: the shit you have to go through just isn't worth it.
Can you still press XX OO Up Down Up down to get extra lives?
The Konami code (used for extra lives and such in many of their games) is actually: Up, up, down, down, left, right, left, right, B, A, start.
Geez, kids today.
Heh. You want to see some bad reviews, watch G4TV some time. They have one show "Judgement Day" which says some negative things about games, but then every other show on there hypes 'em up. They had their "Christmas Shopping" specials and they listed almost EVERY game that was out at the time as games to buy. They did seem to order them from good to bad, but they didn't make that clear. Bizarre. I think it was the same guys that do Judgement Day, too.
They don't accept any form of advertisement, and (unlike any other review source of any kind I know of) do not allow ANY of their reviews or material to be used in ANY advertising campaigns. They instantly go after any company that attempts this. Also they aren't afraid to pull punches, and are often instremental in getting things recalled that have saftey implications.
Not only that, but they lobby the government for lots of consumer protection and saftey regulations from everything from auto saftey, and childrens toys, to DRM (yes, consumer union is fighting for us in the DRM arean as well).
Indeed. Maxis either got boned or boned us on this one. The minimum specs on the box are about 1/3rd of what is really required for playing the game over an hour.
Wasn't there some sort of lawsuit against EA about requirements being way off?
Honestly, you should never just take one persons advice. Get a lay of the land first before you make a decision. That's why I love these sites:
www.rottentomatoes.com
www.gamerankings.com
The same can be said about news media. If you just get your perspective from CNN or FOX, then you're only learning one perspective.
What people who actually want to know what's up with a game need to actually do some research. As with the rest of life, you reap what you sow. Unless your taste runs to whatever's "cool" at the moment (and obviously a lot of people have such taste) just picking up a copy of insert gaming magazine here] or browsing to [insert game review site here] isn't going to tell you squat.
You need to look at a range of review sites. It doesn't take long to figure out which magazines and web sites are schills for whatever game publisher gave them the most cash/best junket. You learn how to read them, and what filters you need to deal with. Check gaming fan sites and message boards. Yes, there are going to be fanboys and schills on the a publisher's payroll, but again, don't take one person's word for it, for goodness sake. Common freakin' sense people. Look at the gestalt.
Be patient. Even if the game sells out on the first day, they _will_ make more copies of them. Don't buy a game the first day unless you're willing to throw that $50 in the trash, because no matter what the previews may have said about it, there's an even chance at best that you are going to hate it. I've done my share of camping out in a game store waiting for FedEx to get in with the new shipment of whatever spiffy new "Popular Video Game Concept" is coming in that day. I've had some successes, and my fair share of disasters (in other words, most of them). The most recent and painful experience being Master of Orion 3: How The Hell Do I Do Anything Here?.
The game publishing industry certainly is able to shove crap out the door, but there will always be plenty of other gamers out there without the ethical handicaps that the commercial reviewers have, who are going to be more than willing to give you and anyone else who will listen the straight poop. Also, not all commercial reviewers are alike. Sometimes you'll find one whos taste aligns with yours, and if so go for it. But even then, you owe it to yourself to look at a lot of opinions before you buy.
Personally, I've found sites like MetaCritic and GameFAQs are great places where a lot of different opinions about a game are collected under one roof, and the people who run those sites don't write any of the reviews that appear there. You usually can get the gist of what a game is going to be like, what the bugs are, etc, but it requires waiting until a critical mass of reviews comes in.
Check out Bitsmack.com. The reviews are user submitted, and cover just about every videogame known (going back to the Fairchild F).
If a game's crappy, it gets a bad review. If a game's good, it gets a good review. Pretty soon, you start to recognize other reviewers ratings and how they rank against your personal feelings to help you pick out games you will enjoy.
What, me worry?