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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 never played such .. astounding .. fun."
"Incredible!"
"This game exemplifies today's total lack of .. so many bad things to say!"
"I will never have this .. much fun."
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
Can you still press XX OO Up Down Up down to get extra lives?
Best Windows Freeware
The good news is, most of us are aware of the keywords in game reviews.
"Stylish"
"Action Packed"
"Best game of the year"
Are just a few of the key phrases that send us into bullshit mode. Everything afterwards ends up sounding like a grown-up from peanuts.
Unless you know the reviewer personally, never trust a reviewer that may have a conflict of interest, even Consumer Reports. Online reviews such as those at imdb.com, amazon.com, etc.. are usually the best for me. Newspapers prove this point best, it's not just the news anymore, too many (not all) writers spin the news to further their cause.
...this is one of the reasons that their user review system is actually a Good Thing(disregarding problems with abuses of the system, which in the large scheme is pretty insignificant). Game reviews can be good to read, especially if you find someone who has a history of praising games that you have enjoyed and criticizing those which you did not. But really what you need to do before buying is harvest some information from amateur reviewers. Certainly some of them will be idiots and a lot of them will have different tastes from you, but at least they have no vested interest in saying that something is good.
disclaimer: Of course, USENET is also great for this purpose and predates Amazon, but Amazon is more in the public consciousness these days than USENET is.
lysergically yours
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
That is one of the bonuses of living in Britain and getting games later than everyone else, i can speak to my American friends who inevitably have the game months before its out here, and they will tell me if its worth buying or not.
I generally will not trust a review unless i have read many, many others that agree with it.
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.
Was the scheme of time to barrel. How long it took to find a barrel / box in the game. It showed exactly when the developer ran out of creative juice and started to put in cliche elements.
Funny because it was about as accurate as any other reviewing method for games.
I did like that site.
playstation 2 game called "shock & awe"
I think you're getting this mixed up with the dance game, Chaka Khan.
Best Windows Freeware
Sometimes the reviewers do not take enough time with the game to get the full picture. A classic example is the progessive game like Simcity 4. This thing got practically glowing reviews, but come to find out it was a sluggish, bug ridden piece of junk as soon as the city got to any reasonable size. At that point certain buildings wouldn't show up and the frame rates dropped to around 1 fps - even on 2Ghz plus machines.
While most of the issues have been addressed in a patch that was released almost 3 months after the game was - it should have been panned by anyone who took more than a few minutes with it.
Chris...
It does not matter what you do, it's wrong.
I write for a mainstream, general circulation newspaper with a daily circulation of about 300,000 readers. The influences of freebies are mitigated by my newspaper's policy, as well as our shear size.
In essence, the paper's policy says that if you review the game, you can keep it. We handle reviews of music CDs the same way. If you don't review the game, it goes in a charity auction that is held four times a year.
I have never felt the need to give a game a better review than it deserved just because I knew I was going to be able to keep it. In fact, I've told PR flacks over the phone dozens of times that I thought their games were of poor quality, when that was in fact the case.
In my situation, games from the industry have never stopped arriving, and if they did, I'd simply call and say I was interested in reviewing a specific title. I actually prefer that way to the flood of unsolicitated titles, which are inevitably followed up by an annoying phone call sniffing for coverage. I'd rather just review what I think my readers will be interested in, and leave the rest for what I call the "enthusiast" media.
As a professional journalist, I am of the opinion that junkets where members of the "press" are invited to participate in spectacles such as a paintball outing are simply unprofessional. While having face time with game industry execs and developers is extremely valuable (that is what I use e3 for) I would never participate in anything that was clearly tied to covering the news, and I would suspect any journalist with any training in ethics would agree with me.
Now that being said, there are gray areas. Sony, Microsoft and other big game publishers will be having receptions at e3 this year with free food and drinks. Will I attend these? Absolutely. Why? Because it gives me access to players in the industry I would otherwise not have. Will I drink a bottle of water while attending these receptions? Sure. Why? Because I will likely be thirsty.
It's not just about avoiding impropriety -- it's about avoiding the appearance of impropriety, too.
Anyone that goes to interview at the White House has the same situation. Critisize and you will NOT be invited back. Be a hard nosed tough guy and you can forget it. The truth WILL make you free (from a job) after all.
Look at Donahue.
Honestly. I am an inner city Black Detroiter, and I will watch any stupid tear-jerker if Ebert says its good. He has been honest and only once was I ever disappointed. More should be like him. In general though he only does positive reviews...
My mom always told me, "if you don't have anything nice to say, don't say anything at all."
I always love reviews of games that haven't shipped yet. Just a pile of regurgitated press releases and a few "golly-gee-whiz!"'s thrown in.
Boobies never hurt anyone. - Sherry Glaser.
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.
Yeah. I can speak from experience. Was a writer for a prominent website, and reviewed Linux games. You're expected to throw ethics away. I reviewed Loki products. One particular product, I gave a very bad review. I had given glowing reviews to previous titles, but felt this one was poor, but did level most of the criticism at the original developer, NOT Loki.
Loki contacted my editor to complain, and my editor tore me a new one. He made it quite clear that honesty was not what they expected in reviews. I had a BIG problem with this and eventually quit in disgust at the complete lack of ethics and honesty in the business.
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.
I worked for a small (6 employees) developer. We made low-budget ($150k or so) titles, but they were solid, fun to play and a good value, IMO. But plenty of reviewers felt free to completely slam us. Some reviews were positive and fair, some were negative but fair, but a good number were excessively negative to the point of being completely unfair. Some looked like they hadn't really played the game much, or had maybe only played the demo. Some had plagiarized stuff from other reviews. At least one reviewer was clearly having hardware problems, which are as likely to be the drivers fault as not. Also, many of the reviews have suggestions that would be impossible or very expensive to implement.
The reviews that are the most objective, I think, are the ones in PC Gamer, and Computer Games magazine. Gamespot is usually ok too. The rest of the stuff on the web could just be any 14 year old with an agenda.
I expect a reviewer to be honest. I know that's like expecting a three-year old not to eat the donut the minute you leave the room, but that's how I feel.
Boobies never hurt anyone. - Sherry Glaser.
Something has happened to ol' Ebert in the last year or so... I can't put my finger on exactly what it is, but there's a definate change in him.
He's telling it like it is, big time. He pulls no punches, and isn't afraid to venture into some deep and muddy waters.
As a consequence, I've found myself paying much more attention to him lately, and mostly agreeing with him after the fact too.
Ebert rocks.
BTW, hi from Windsor.
DG
Want to learn about race cars? Read my Book
This thing happens all the time
Well, of course it does! The only thing peculiar here is that a weepy coming-of-age story about it makes it to the front page of SlashDot!
The bar is so much lower for Game reviews, as opposed to other consumer products, because the reviewers for the most part are poorly-paid and impressionable kids with even less experience (if this is possible) than music reviewers. Does anyone read the reviews of game software, especially those on Websites, and believe for a heartbeat there is some kind of Wisdom of The Ages being levied there? Can you imagine how they must have read before the adult edited them? Yipes!
These junkets, freebies, tsotchkes, payolas, etc etc yadda yadda all comprise the grease for the wheels for a whole caste of underpaid newbie journalists looking for real writing jobs. Consumers all know this... don't they?
Obiwan, if you really felt so emotionally scarred by the whole episode, what you should have done was stuck it out and become a Trusted and Uncorruptible Force for Game Reviewing Goodness.
You've gone and let the Dark Side win, Bunky!
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).
Ethics in Video Game Journalism
Credibility is a high stakes concern in this multimillion dollar industry.
Justin Hall
posted: 2003-04-10
The video gaming industry has come a long way.
Starting with the simple Pong game three decades ago and evolving into lavishly drawn interactive epics, the scale of games and the size of their audience has grown exponentially, with sales in the billions of dollars and major multinational corporations clamoring for a piece of the action.
But despite these signs of a fast-growing industry, the print and online publications that cover video games often employ fans who unwittingly make poor ethical choices.
The first print magazine covering video games Electronic Games was co-founded by Bill Kunkel in 1981. Kunkel describes those early days in a recent interview: "To an extent, we were cheerleaders for the industry -- we loved these games, we wanted to see more of them, we wanted to keep writing about them."
Not much has changed in the past 20 years. Game publications and Web sites still mostly employ low-paid hobbyists who are easy targets of lavish marketing events that encourage inappropriate ties between game makers and game critics.
These unwholesome relationships were put under a spotlight by an article in the Los Angeles Times last August "Gamers' Perks, or 'Playola'?" by Alex Pham. In an interview with Online Journalism Review, Pham said she was motivated to write the piece when she discovered that game journalists "get to do outrageously fun things." She noted that software publishers arranged for journalists to shoot guns, skydive and race cars -- all under the pretense of researching video games.
Nowhere was Pham's article discussed more than FatBabies.com. Fatbabies traffics in stories of outrage in game development and game publishing -- gossip for game industry employees. Responding to Pham's story, a Fatbabies writer "FatGameSpotGuru" savagely derided most game journalists as biased amateurs who "wouldn't understand the concept of journalistic integrity if it came and bit them in the ass."
Into the Breach
I recently attended a game industry junket hosted by Ubi Soft to promote their Tom Clancy military-industrial techno-thriller video games. Editors and writers from a wide range of game industry and mainstream media were invited to the Presidio, a defunct military base in San Francisco. There, we had a chance to play the latest games, mingle with some of the game developers, eat delicious sandwiches and drink at an open bar. And a lucky few of us were chosen to "undergo real counterterrorist operative training" from a decorated federal marshal and close-quarters battle instructor.
One game on display, Rainbow Six 3, included a portion modeled after part of the Presidio -- we were going to play that level in real life. We were suited up in flak jackets and received air rifles loaded with plastic pellets. In small groups, we were sent out to storm a building, shoot hostiles, liberate hostages and neutralize a dirty bomb. It was an event lifted straight from the screen, a real-life game action. The other journalists, all men, all looking under 35, were psyched. And when I left in an unmarked white van in a black suit with a black gun and a black Rainbow Six 3 balaclava over my head, preparing to move through a darkened building with broken windows lead by a gruff middle-aged SWAT team member, shooting terrorists with glowing plastic pellets, I was completely enthralled as well.
Credibility
Junkets are nothing new in entertainment journalism. Writers covering the movie industry are invited to nice hotels to confer with stars over expensive meals. Pulitzer-prize winning film critic Roger Ebert says that when he first started working at the Chicago Sun-Times, reporters would accept any trip they were offered. Now, he says he pays his own expenses when attending industry events.
Aaron Boulding, editor in charge of IGN's Xbox coverage,
Do not read this sig.
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?
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.
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.
Then you deserve what you get.
There are two forces at play here: first, if you take a spectrum of people and have them review an item, and have a 5 star rating system, three stars will always be the least frequently given rating. Why? Because everyone always leans one way or the other, and if they don't lean far, then they just narrow their spectrum.
Second, if you don't care much one way or the other about an item, how likely are you to spend the time to review it.
So don't look at the scores! Read the reviews instead. I frequently do find them useful.
-fred
Sign #11 of Slashdot overdose: You see the phrase 'moderate Republican' and you wonder if that would be a +1 or a -1.
If you review my online games, and give them a good review, I will give you a "premium" account for free
If you give them a not so favorable review, I'll change the name of your character to "Pink Fuzzy Bunny of Teletubby Land", and amybe take away a few of your ships or tanks (depending on which game you choose)
http://war.coldfirestudios.com - WWII, War of Supremacy
http://space.coldfirestudios.com - Space, Glory Through Conquest
HallmarkOrnaments.Com
I can't be the only one who looks for negative reviews, can I? There are too many ways that corporations could rig reviews, even at sites with paid reviewers (as opposed to reader/user reviews). My goal is to always find the negative reviews and see what they said. On any good product, you'll find that the majority of negative reviewers fall into 2 categories...people for whom the reviewed item didn't meet their need or people for whom the item was never intended, either because of the target audience or the reviewer was just plain stupid.
Positive reviews only help to accent features that I haven't read about before. If I'm already looking at a review of something, chances are I know I want it so a positive isn't going to sway me into buying it.
--trb
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
... I reviewed plenty of drek, and wasn't afraid to describe it as such.
I used to write freelance reviews, maybe 5 or 6 years ago, for an site called "Online Gaming Review" - they've since gone belly-up.
They would send me a game, sometimes a commercial copy, sometimes a gold-mastered final beta. I'd play it for a week or two, write a couple short pages, and they'd send me a check for $100. It was a great deal while it lasted.
However, they did send me more than a few utterly worthless titles that never deserved to see the light of day. And that was my review. I didn't skimp on the details, I didn't play it only for a single day and make up a half-assed opinion. I took it seriously and tried to be a professional while slogging through some truly awful games.
Some of my best reviews were on games I'd purchased myself (those spare hundreds came in handy) - I reviewed the original Fallout, and correctly predicted in my review that it would named Game Of The Year.
So, no - I never got any great free stuff, unless you count those $100 checks for playing computer games "free stuff".
Man, I'd love to have that side gig again!
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?
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As a game developer and also a writer I've had experience from both sides of the coin. I've had reviewers write a six-page puff piece on the latest & greatest game I was working on only to leave me anticipating the game's publication so that I could play it because it sounds so cool and I'm wondering why I didn't think of all those cool features it's going to have. Also as a writer I've reviewed games, movies, restaurants and development software. Some it has been free, some of it has been bought, and some co-opted through the company. I'd like to think that I'm pretty much un-influeced by "free stuff", sure it's neat to get a new package in the post of some cool new piece of software but I also need to be objective. I just wrote a review of an SDK that costs several tens of thousands of dollars, the company was very helpful, and I gave it a good-ish review, not because the company went out of their way to lavish attention on me, but because the product is actually pretty good and I'd had positive experience with it in the past, before I decided to review it, and thefore draw the attention of the publishing company. Previously I reviewed an IDE & compiler from a well known embedded tools publisher and I had a lot of negative things to say about it, and now I'm interested in reviewing another of their products, which this particular company understandly doesn't want me to do, so they won't send me the software. The review is still going to get written, it just won't be with their "blessing." The short of it is, all writers have a personal agenda, some make it more obvious than others, but all professional writers have an obligation to their readers, and that's what separates the Siskels and the Eberts from the quote whores of the review writing world.
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
I had kind of a similar experience in highschool, I worked for a small tech news site called Geeknews, they were owned by a giant asshole of a company called eFront.. I started a gaming section on the site and began receiving titles like Max Payne, Gunman: Chronicals and Homeworld: Cataclysm.. fortunatly I got a lot of genuinly good titles but I made sure to note in the reviews what bothered me about the title and what other people might be bothered with. Anyway.. most of the entertainment industry has been doing this for ages.. it's nothing new. We're just seeing it on the web more and more now because we're so used to seeing "Best Product Ever!" "Killer Buy!" and so on and so forth plastered over everything in sight.
Smokedot.org
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.
I did always try to be honest about my feelings in reviews, though (an advantage of being the editor is that your views don't get toned down by the subs). If I liked a game, I said so. If I hated a game, I said so. In no uncertain terms. Frequently at great length. I'd on occasion increase the amount of space allocated to truly shit games just so that I could *really* lay into them. Like the time I used three pages to give [unbelievably buggy and unplayable console conversion of well-known and respected PC violent racing game] a final score of 3%. Not 3 out of 10, but *three percent*.
Ah, those were the days! Unfortunately, on most magazines now the PRs have taken control to the point where an 'average' score is considered to be 80%, and even giving that will often generate veiled threats and even open abuse from the software companies. Thank god I'm not doing that any more.
Now I work on a movie magazine and have to deal with agents and managers and lawyers instead...
You must think in Russian.
I've come to trust Extended Play's reviews a great deal. Sure, they're a little soft (some games clearly deserved a zero (don't think they give this) or one star) when it comes to crappy games, but they do a wonderful job of breaking down exactly what works and what doesn't work for a game. Without Extended Play, I would have passed over some very nice titles. Namely Resident Evil and Resident Evil: Zero AND would have made the mistake of continuing to buy the RE's...had it not been for EP. (For those who can't tell, I'm a GC son)
Finding a reviewer you can trust is important, and I'm glad I've found EP for my games and Chicago Fats (li'l ol Ebert) for my movies.
Good graphics do not make a game. But that does NOT mean that all games with good graphics are bad. For every Asteroids, Tempest, Scorched Earth, or Lemmings there is a NOLF 2, Half-Life, or Mario 64 that proves great games CAN have great graphics. Too often, though-- artworks seems to take precedence over gameplay.
In fact, most of a game's characteristics in this respect are irrelevant to whether it's actually fun. If it's fun, I don't care if the music is annoying and repetitive. I don't care if everything in the game is a big block of pixels.
Fun is fun. Graphics are graphics. Music is music. If they're all there, super. But mostly I just want the fun.
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?
In those days, it was an unwritten rule of sales that if a game got <80%, it would lose money, or just scrape by. 80-90% would be a reasonable earner, and >90% meant a winner. Games publishers were desperate to find out what a game had got so they could judge sales, and plan advertising.
So I got to review one of the earliest virtual world games, where you could play god to a civilization, and see it grow or fail. I thought it was okay, but not life-changing, so gave it a solid score in the 80%-range.
Bad move. The publisher (enormous) had bet the farm on this game going huge. I'm told they faxed my editor a copy of their monthly advertising invoice from the magazine -- in the thousands of pounds -- along with a note saying something to the effect of "Want to lose this income?".
By a strange coincidence, the game was reviewed again in the next issue, with some kind of placatory note saying that the reviewer didn't really like this kind of game. Lo and behold, the game got over 90%, and sold by the truckload. Whether people played it much after they bought it is not recorded.
Being a freelancer at the other end of the country from the editorial office, I missed most of the excesses of the industry. My only perk was being sent a modest-sized bottle of champagne after reviewing a game I particularly liked.
I did hear rumours of game publishers offering the services of, um, obliging young ladies to reviewers in exchange for good reviews. But the names and circumstances are long forgotten.
But yeah, it was hard making up superlatives, or indeed saying anything charitable about some of the real dross games. At least we knew we could mess with the system; you're talking to the author of the first >100% game review ...
I was one of the "underpaid fanboys" reviewing games. My rule of thumb in grading was always the answer to my ultimate question: "would I pay $40-$50 to own this game?". The percentage was more or less an estimation of the answer, thinking that I would never buy any game with less than 50%, very rarely one less than 60%, and sometimes one less than 70%, quite often 80%, and always 90% or more.
:-) No way to make everybody happy... :-)
I gave scores ranging from 32% to 90%. I often didn't get to choose the games I reviewed, but in the rares cases I did, I sometimes picked bad games to show that we were not as biased as some might think. However it still provoked reader ire as some pestered on why we wasted space on reviewing crappy titles...
The ENIAC Demo Competition
Editorial reviews are too shallow. The reviewers will focus on the graphics, the special effects, the support for 5.1 surround sound, how neato the FMV scenes are, and any glitches they can find. This makes the review worthless because all too often they haven't bothered to discuss the GAMEPLAY.
When all is said and done, the graphics and sound of a game are entertaining for 15 minutes but it is the gameplay that keeps me coming back. Just like how a movie with big-budget special effects is fun to watch once but I'll watch movies like Dr StrangeLove a dozen times. The great gameplay is the reason why I still play Doom, Quake, Starcraft, Star Control 2, Sam'n'Max, Final Fantasy 7, Galaga, etc. Admittedly those games were technically impressive when they were released but they date well because of their gameplay.
And this is why most reviews are useless. I can understand why it happens; the paid reviewers have a big stack of games and not a lot of time. The review is simply a list of the "neato" effects the game offers. I could get the same info from the downloadable demo. I expect something a little deeper from a review. This is why I've turned to user reviews; sometimes they're just as shallow but at least I can expect the user of a game to have put some effort into playing it. Maybe.
Games developers know that reviews are shallow so they produce games that have explosions and shiny things and big boom-boom noises. They know that those games will get the good reviews. So gameplay has taken a backseat to "production quality". It is exactly what happened to Hollywood. Sure, the occasional great game manages to slip through the system but it's the exception not the rule.