The Integrity of Game Journalists

ScoobyScooby writes "An interesting story went live on Games.net yesterday in response to a 'letter from the editor' penned by Dan Hsu of EGM. In his letter he accuses a number of publications and publishers of being essentially buying coverage and vice versa. A Games.net editor responds with his own take on things and the resulting comments and discussion are worth investigating. Are veiled accusations about improprieties really helpful at bringing gaming journlism to a more respected level? Or, do such accusations hurt more than they help? The Blame Game: Where Do You Keep Your Integrity?" GameSetWatch has commentary.

Comments

Back in the late '90s

[Anonymous Coward]

At a tiny game start-up where I worked in the late 90s, one of our beta testers let us in on this dirty little secret. The big game publishers "buy" reviews of their products by purchasing sufficient advertising. Of course it's never officially acknowledged, so as a start-up you can't just call up and ask how much advertising you need to buy to get a review. They'll just insist that's not how it works. So unless you're already on the inside, you can't get in. Not surprisingly, the game didn't get reviewed in any U.S. magazines.

Re:Back in the late '90s

[Shad_the_protector]

I think it more happen like this.

"Well, mr. Reviewer, you know I've got this bunch of ad from your magazine, giving you a great deal of money...., and you know I'm begining to be short on money with all the developpement of our next game... and I fear that if it doesn't work well I may loose a great deal of money, and I was thinking of removing those ad, you know, just to make sure I've got some money left....., but you know maybe we could do a deal."

"go for it"

"Well, if my next game would happen to hit a great review in your magazine, well maybe I would not have to fear for a possible selling problem...."

"Well that could be arranged"

Re:Back in the late '90s

[Anonymous Coward]

Like Anonymous Coward #1 I've been there as well.

It's not just magazines, the major 'professional game reviews' websites operate the same way these days. Call them up looking for ads and you get standard banner rates, or overpriced sponsorship packages. After you spend enough on several campaigns they'll start to offer such perks as guaranteed index placement for articles/news about your game, etcetera. This applies even more if you're representing multiple titles - like any major publisher does. Buy enough ads for one title and spend that extra credit on a different one. It won't look like overt favoritism, but when everyone is giving way too much coverage to a title everyone sees is going to be a wreck, you can bet people are calling in some of those past puchases.

In the journalists' favor, I haven't seen this happen to the point where a review score was rigged by the writer - the ad influence is usually at the editor level. It might guarantee coverage or a review, and we've all seen the occasional web-outcry when an editor dramatically changes a final review score, but most of the content is written by external contracters on assignment. What's worse is that a lot of the so-called 'previews' or 'feature previews' are actually written by the marketing team for the game, and published as being written by the site - that happens more than you'd think, and even on 'reputable' sites.

It's hard to blame them at this point though - the only people buying ads are the ones whose products they review. They can't be to harsh on them, or they take the money away. That's why most of the 'bad' reviews are for bargain-bin or independant titles - they're not buying ads anyway.

Gamers need media about games that don't rely on game companies for advertising - that's what would help fix the problem.

Is this a suprise?

[sehryan]

Really, did anyone not know that this sort of thing was going on? I mean, just look at the coverage of the three new consoles, and you can easily tell which "news" site is being paid by which manufacturer.

Re:Is this a suprise?

[chrismcdirty]

It's sometimes harder to tell when rabid fanboyism is in place.

What?

[vertinox]

FTA:

More importantly, when you begin questioning someone's journalistic integrity, does that make you any better than the person you're accusing? The answer: no.

What? You mean, if we state that it appears that someone has a particular bias towards a certain product because we suspect they appear to be getting kick backs that we are no better than them?

Even if we have proof?

I would think that if had knowledge of such behavior that it would be in the best interest of everyone to know about this..

Re:What?

[ShakaUVM]

>>What? You mean, if we state that it appears that someone has a particular bias
>>towards a certain product because we suspect they appear to be getting kick
>>backs that we are no better than them?

Exactly. The ability to expose bias (or just plain old sell-outs) in the media is one of the critical components to running a free press. Flogging the messenger is the wrong thing to do.

For example -- I played a RPG back in the day called Olympos or something. It was literally the worst RPG I'd ever bought (some freeware/shareware games were worse, but not many). On the Baldur's Gate forums (before BG1 came out) a guy posted a question: "Hey, before BG comes out, has anyone played this game, Olympos?" I (and about five other people) responsed with withering criticism of the game. A sole person responded saying they LOVED it, and it wasn't nearly so bad as everyone was saying it was. The forums showed the IP addresses people posted from, and I noticed that this guy was posting from the same regional ISP that the Olympos people used (I had traded emails with the company trying to resolve one of their numerous bugs.) I posted on the forum my suspicions that the person was a plant from the company. People flamed him. He wrote back a scathing "How Dare You" email, then suddenly people were flaming ME. All I'd done was note that the only person in the greater United States that liked the game had been from the same podunk ISP as the company, not said the guy was absolutely a member of the company, simply a suspicion, and yet I was the person who ended up getting attacked. It's an interesting social mechanic, and I don't doubt something similar is going on here.

As long as the SCOPE of the suspicion is not deceptive (i.e. as long as the author doesn't say he has stronger evidence than he actually has), and he simply posts his evidence and lets people draw their own conclusions, I think that's the proper way to root out weasels, bought reporters, or people posting under fake identities.

Re:What?

[easychord]

But if at that time you were an employee of Bioware it would have been harder to trust you. Maybe you were making things up to sell more copies of Baldurs Gate?

Thats absurd of course, but one magazine editor trying to make his publication sound more honest than the competitors isn't always the best person to listen to. A lot of games reviews and opinions are slanted, but can you really trust anyone in the industry to tell you which ones to believe?

Take your pick, corrupt or incompetent

[SmallFurryCreature]

Black & White. The original game. Glowing reviews and yet some time later virtually everyone acknowledged that the game kinda stunk. To much micro management, bad interface making it hard to do your task (praise or punish your pet) and generally just not worth the scores it got.

So explain it dear game reviewer who gave this game and others like it such high scores? I can think of three reasons.

• You were bought, wether directly, through advertising deals or by being invited to exclusive launches and going all gooye I don't know
• You are incompetent, you did installed the game, played it for ten minutes and spend the rest of the day jerking off.
• or perhaps this, you weren't so much bought as unwilling to be the one that the great "XXX XXXXX" has made a bad game and that perhaps "XXX XXXXX" is not the gaming god everyone claims but just another developer who can screw up. I note that most of the reviews that have you wondering if the reviewer actually played the finished game past the first level come from the big companies/names in the industry.

Frankly I don't care anymore, wod of mouth is worth far more to me. Friends will tell me about games and luckily as an EU customer I usually can wait for the time it takes for worth of mouth to start taking effect because games are released a few months later anyway.

Game review sites are little more then ways to keep track of release schedules and beta signups. Judging wich game I am going to buy has stopped long ago.

Oh and game companies that want to know how best to get a good review of your game? Playable demo. If your game is good a well done demo can create far more excitement then the best bought review.

Wait...

[Somatic]

Are you telling me that IGN's 9.0 review of Carrot Top's Mad Kareoke Jams was somehow tainted? Cause I was about to send the author hate mail for being such an idiot... but if he was just being a capitalist, that's different.

Driv3r, lest we forget.

[easychord]

Driv3r controversy.
 
This report makes the online review sites sound more honest than print media which I don't think is all that true these days. (Yes, web sites with massive flash ads every 5 pages and their software bundled with games, I'm talking about you.) It was fun watching the people from the UK's biggest games magazine publishers getting caught in their lies in the forums though.

Re:Bigger Companies Throwing Weight Around..

[SetupWeasel]

That just isn't true. Nintendo keeps billions of cash on hand. They are famous for it. The last number I heard was roughly $7 billion. That doesn't include any of their other investments and assets.

Now, I don't know if they do buy magazine or website reviews. As a fan, I hope they don't. However, I do know they have plenty of money to do so if they wanted to.

Re:Payola

[rtechie]

"It's no different from Payola and just as illegal."

No it isn't, illegal that is. People don't seem to understand that payola laws are VERY narrow and ONLY cover record labels paying individual radio DJs and radio stations for airplay of specific songs. That is the ONLY thing that is illegal, and this law is widely violated by using "third parties". And by "widely violated" I mean virtually every single song you hear on commercial radio is the result of payola. The laws are really about going after DJs who essentially are screwing the STATIONS by playing a different "payola list" than what the labels paid the STATION for. Radio is such a wasteland that DJs are completely willing to get fired for kickbacks, hence payola.