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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.
I've bought enough computer games over the years that had rave reviews and turned out to be total crap that I don't even read reviews anymore.
Black and White is a recent example. The reviews made it sound like the best game ever made. Then when I played it, I found out the UI is horrible, the gameplay is tedious, and the characters treat you (their god) like a child -- If you eat your vegetables, then you can have Ice Cream.
I just take it for granted now that game reviewers are lying when they say a game is good. Jason
ProfQuotes
One thing I noticed was that the one publicaiton said that only their editors went to the events but that their writers could not. Who actually decides which reviews get published and which placement? The editors of course. If anything journalistic integrity is MORE important to an editor than a writer. Or maybe it was a matter that if the writers couldn't go to the junkets there would be more spaces available to the editors? "You guys can't go on these biasing publicity events" the editor says as his bags are packed for the airport.
Currently, I'm helping out as a game reviewer at Netjak. However, I've been reviewing games since the late 1980s, and I have gotten my share of nasty e-mails, but very rarely have I seen a well-formed argument against my review. Most of the responses are from people who read only my review and trusted my word, without cross-checking with other reviews. While I am trying not to be influenced by the freebies I'm getting (yes, even such a small site as ours is a target of marketing campaigns, and yes, it is very hard to resist), I am the first person to admit that no single person can be objective. Thus, whenever one wants to make an informed purchase, he or she should consult various sources. Especially here, where the items cost up to $50 and most of the time cannot be returned to the store, relying on any single game reviewer is stupid and irresponsible.
Online reviews such as those at imdb.com, amazon.com, etc.. are usually the best for me.
The problem with online reviews for games and other technical/electronic items is that, in many cases, the people writing reviews have absolutely no clue as to what they're talking about.
For instance, go look up wireless routers on Amazon.com, and read some of the reviews. In many cases, it's quite evident that these people have no concept of the limitations that can reduce signal strength on a wireless router, so you get these stories along the lines of, "One star!! This product is awful! I installed the wireless router in the backroom of my all-concrete basement, and I wasn't able to get 'excellent' quality signal strength on the third floor of my friends house next door! And [company name] told me that was expected!"
Or you get game reviews along the lines of, "One star! I purchased [brand new game which requires top-of-the-line graphics card to run at high res with decent framerate], but it doesn't run on my practically-brand-new computer. I mean, I bought my system in 1999 and it has a PIII 800 with a GeForce2 -- I can't believe how bad this game runs on my system!"
It's actually surprisingly hard to find unbiased reviews from people who are actually qualified to review the product in question (meaning, people who understand the limitations and can present a realistic portrait of the products strengths and weaknesses).
The only movie reviewer I pay any heed to is the filthy critic.
His diatribes are a little tiring after a while, but at least the reviews are honest. Sadly he doesn't review games. The best form of review for games is a pirated copy of the full version. Seriously. I only buy games that I've played pirated first (and I DO go out and buy the game if I really like it) or belong to a series that I've enjoyed before. Even then, you get the odd stink-fest (panzer general 3 and warlords 3 come to mind).
Is there a filthy critic of the game world?
For editorial reviews, I head straight to Game Rankings or GameTab. They're great at showing all the editorials out there and averaging the scores. I usually find the averages are a more faithful indicator than the 100% fanboy review at the top of the pile.
Just my 2c.
"I'm a leaf on the wind. Watch how I soar."
-Hoban Washburn
I have worked in the videogame industry for over 4 years now, and I am the owner of a 100% independent Playstation 2 website GamezCore.com
I can honestly say that any REAL, professional, videogame reviewer, not the I-wanna-review-games-cuz-I-get-em-free reviewers are about as non-biased as they come. As the poster of this article found in only *TWO* reviews, reader's will quickly smell bullshit reviews and your credibility is lost forever. For a professional in the industry, this would spell the end of a career.
In the end, however, reviews do come down to personal opinion... they are not scientific. I may find great joy in subtle nuances of a particular title, where another may not even notice. It is the same as an untrained eye viewing a work of art and an art historian... they will see two wildly different things. This is not bias, it comes from a deeper understanding of the material at hand. I tend to step back and review a game from a more general sense, rather than from my trained eye.
Where I think the videogame reviewing industry needs to change is in the scoring. On a scale of 1-10 almost 90% of games will fall in the 7-10 area. This span of three points is hardly a good way to evaluate 90% of the games out there, but it is where almost all game reviews fall. However, if I would give a game a 5 (which would be average) no one would ever even think of buying it... but 5 would be where many games would sit on a truly even scale.
Not too many professionals are going to risk credibility over a $40.00 game, and we at GamezCore have lost publishers over bad reviews, no big deal... we'll purchase the games if we have to and still review them as honestly as if we had received them directly. Bias is more to be found in the print media world, where hidden ties and money trails tend to cross more often than realized.
www.GamezCore.com For Hardcore PS2 Gamerz : By Hardcore PS2 Gamerz
...said as if to imply that manufacturers don't bias the samples(or access, especially pre-release, and especially with expensive goods) to people who gloat about them.
I know that the digital camera review sites pretty much gloat about every single camera they get- if there's anything negative, its little nitpicky things; "oh, I didn't quite like the texture on the grip". Sometimes they toss in a disclaimer about the camera being pre-production and thus 'things might be different'.
To memory, not a single review on any of the big digicam review sites mentioned the horrible focusing problems on the Canon D60 until well after they were on the market; a lot of D60s had front/back focusing problems, and the focusing system itself was quickly found to be slow as shit.
Reviewers gushed about the Canon Powershot G1; when I bought mine, 8 months later, I found there were all sorts of oddball restrictions on what combinations of modes and features you could use that none of the reviewers had mentioned. It was slow as shit to operate. It always seemed to generate noisy, out of focus pictures. While they mentioned the horrible bleed-over on bright spots from the CCD, they didn't mention the horrible washed-out look you'd get in a lot of pictures where anything even remotely bright was in the frame(it looks like you're in a cloud of fog, basically.) Every 'sample' picture I saw posted looked picture-perfect, and after shooting thousands upon thousands of frames with my camera, I have rarely, if at all, been able to duplicate the quality I've seen in many sample pictures posted on review sites.
I learned my lesson: wait until others have bought whatever you're looking at, see what comes up on the message boards in places like photo.net, and go to a store and try it out yourself(in many cases with digicams for example, you can even rent them- and sometimes the store gives a credit towards the purchase price for money you drop on renting). Similar things can be said about games- try before you buy(many stores have systems set up with demos), and see what people in the messageboards say, taking what they say with a BIG grain of salt. Most people on the message boards and mailing lists:
...but that doesn't mean they're not, say, someone in Company A's marketing department, hyping up the product- it's been proven to happen, and those were just the morons who were too blatant about it.
Reviewers are con-artists, and cheats- there are FEW honest ones among them, and the story author admits to being one, and even tries to make us feel sorry for him. Sorry, I don't. The whole setup is loaded with wash-my-back-I-wash-yours deals.
Please help metamoderate.
This doesn't only happen in the video game industry. CNN announced today that they did not report lots of things in Iraq during the past 12 years because they were afraid of the consequences against their journalists. As opposed to doing the ethical thing and leaving Iraq, they decided to keep their access and only report things approved by the Iraqi government. Thus, they were getting access to a very important news story if they would only report good news. Note that this did not only happen during the current war (when it was expected), but during the past 12 years.
Come play Heroes of Might and Magic Mini online.
I've been writing game reviews on and off for 5 years now. I try to be as fair as I can, and I tell you for sure that freebies don't really influence my review.
I used to work for the now defunct Gameplayer.com, and I reviewed a title from Take 2 Entertainment called "Reah". I gave it a -3 on a scale of 1 to 10. It was Myst/Riven clone, only it was exceedingly lame with weak graphics, and the controls very nearly made me vomit.
I called up by Take 2, who complained about it. I didn't give a crap. I kept the score at -3. The other two times I got called were for slamming Titus' 1-button fighting game, "Evil Zone", and for ripping on Medieval: Total War, because I gave it the lowest score of all reviewers on Gamerankings.com.
If you're going to pick up a game, do this first. Go to GameRankings.com, a site which will give you an instant look at all the main reviews/scores for a particular product, as well as their user's rating for the game. Read a couple of the reviews from there. Then make your decision.
I'm honestly shocked at these people who are saying they were all up on some company's nuts just for a free game. Do you realize how much it costs them to send you a copy of the game? 50 cents for the disc and packaging and $4.50 for shipping. I appreciate not having to buy or rent your game, but if your game sucks, I probably wasn't going to buy it anyway.
I'm not selling my soul for $5, so I can get some poor kid in high school or college, who probably doesn't have so much disposable income, to dump $50 on a game I honestly think is mediocre just so I can get more mediocre games for free.
There are some people who praise game because they like the free stuff. There are others who rip games because they think it's fun or a power trip.
Then there are others, like me, who remember what it was like to finally have scrounged up $40 and walking into Fry's to see that there 10 new games that sounded interesting and knowing they could only buy one. We've been burned more than enough times by companies who release software that doesn't work without a patch, promises to have features that got stripped out just before launch, or just simply sucks. I don't want a company getting rich off of misleading the customer. If that sounds good to you...check out our site as one of the two or three you use to get an idea of what a game's all about. And, as always...rent before buying if you have your doubts. When you do buy, use Ebay. The testers on the game are always trying to unload their free copies.
Netjak.com independent reviews of domestic & import video ga
What really bothers me is graphics. Every video game magazine I've read, and every website, takes graphics into consideration when reviewing a game. If a game doesn't have amazing graphics then it usually gets bad review. The best video games ever all had terrible graphics. Mega Man 2, Zelda 1, Mario 3, River City Ransom, Combat, Breakout, Galaga, Missile Command, Pac-Man, Tetris. All these games had terrible graphics, but they are some of the best video games ever created.
Video Game reviewers should only take the following things into consideration when reviewing a game.
1) Is it fun?
2) Will it provide fun for a long period of time, or is it a renter?
3) Does anything in the game annoy you. Are there stupid puzzles. Do the controls not resdpond well.
4) Is the music memorable? Will the player also want the soundtrack?
The GeekNights podcast is going strong. Listen!
Look up what they gave daikatana. A few of the big name sites actually gave this reeking pile of shit a decent review. Kinda shows you exactly who romero had in his back pocket.
- Toby