Game Previews Just Game Marketing?

Kotaku has a feature up today written by James Wagner Au, formerly embedded reporter in the world of Second Life. He's now doing his own thing, and he's got a fairly cynical discussion over at the Kotaku site about the real purpose behind game previews in industry rags. From the article: "For the thing of it is, game magazine previews are almost uniformly positive, even for the most undistinguished titles. So it unrolls thus: publisher makes mediocre game; press previews depict mediocre game as being good or at least worth a look; excited gamers read previews, foolishly believe them, start making pre-sale orders of mediocre game; driven by preview press and pre-sale numbers based on that press, retailers stock up on mediocre game; publisher makes money from mediocre game, keeps making more games like it."

Comments

Not necessarily "marketing"

[77Punker]

It wouldn't make sense to say many bad things about a game before it's even finished; it wouldn't be fair. It does make sense that game writers would tell the eager fans everything they do have to be excited about. Should they write me an article telling me that some budgetware paintball game will have no features and the core gameplay will suck? No. That can be saved for a review. When something rad like Oblivion is being developed, it does make quite a bit of sense to tell me what'll make it so interesting beforehand. If they didn't, nobody would buy the magazine. It's not selling games, it's selling magazines.

Why?

[mboverload]

Would you base your opinion of a car on a video of a test drive of a prototype version? No?

Then why would you do it with a game?

Re:Why?

[UnrealAnalysis]

Because there's far less financial risk involved in purchasing a $45 game than a $20 000+ car.

Re:Why?

[krunk4ever]

But it's that 1st review in your car magazine that actually gets you to go test drive a car, which might or might not lead to the final result of purchasing the car. Same thing with video games. You see some demos, look at people's reviews, see some actual game play, maybe even try it yourself, before you actually purchase the game. Of course that's what a "sensible" person would do... On the other hand, we have ...

But my point being, without that first demo or review, you might not even hear of the game at all.

How could it be otherwise?

[Anonymous Coward]

Can you imagine a world where journalists were objective and direct about unfinished games? "This game sucks, it's full of bugs and there's only two levels!!"

I'll answer the first question..

[onion2k]

Why do games, for the most part, unrelentingly suck such ass?

Because making games is hard.

See also: Websites, records, television programmes ..

Anything that involves a creative input is difficult because thats the way we're made. We love to think of ourselves as wonderfully creative creatures all very capable of coming up with brilliant new ideas day and night .. but that's simply not the case. Thinking up something original is exceedingly tricky. Games cross a bridge between technical innovation and creativity .. that makes them doubly difficult. And on top of that it's (perceived to be) a big money, big profit, prestigious part of the IT industry .. and that attracts just about everyone regardless of their level of capability.

So you have a difficult creative process blending with some hardcore technical requirements being worked on by just about everyone who wants fame and money.

To be brutally honest, the article should be asking how the hell any games are any good, not why most are bad.

Re:I'll answer the first question..

[ScrewMaster]

Actually, the reason most games (movies, CDs) are bad is because once a medium goes mainstream (with big money behind it) a degree of risk-averseness sets in. That is, once something makes money, milk it for all it's worth because trying some thing new might lose money instead. There's plenty of creativity available ... the problem is getting that creativity past the money people. The motion picture industry is a prime example of the long-term dangers of that kind of thinking: eventually the buying public gets bored with your retreads. When that happens, they stop shelling out hard-earned dollars for something they've already seen a dozen times before. However the movie studios, judging from several recent public statements, appear to be waking up to this: I'm not sure the music outfits have the wit to figure it out for themselves. But that's okay ... the market with figure it out for them.

Easy to Criticize

[Trojan35]

Hard to get a solution.

Here are your options:

1) Gamers get positive previews and find out what games will look like, how they will play, but will not hear any of the negatives.

2) Gamers hear nothing of new games and have to wait for reviews of the games after they are released. Or worse: purchase based on number of TV ads they see.

Given those, i'll take option #1 anyday. It's not fair to game developers if they will get ripped for framerate issues when they let editors take an early playtest. There's lots wrong with the video-game industry (such as bought REVIEWS). However, overly-positive "previews" are not one of them. They're par for the course and an acceptable trade-off.

Re:Love the honesty

[Phrogman]

which is exactly what City of Heroes chose to do. When you reach level 50 (the maximum level) on at least one character, you unlock the ability to make a new Archetype of character called a Kheldian. They are available in 2 flavours, and offer challenging gameplay through both regular missions and special unique Kheldian origin missions.

Really, I think the problem is that people expect a game followed by an "Endgame". The *GAME* is the process of getting to 50, not what you do when you get there. If you don't like the proces of leveling up and developing a character, then don't play the game. I am constantly hearing of people who start a game, find a way to powerlevel through to the end of the game then whine that there is no content and that they are bored. Of course they are fucking bored, they bypassed 95% of the game to get to the end. Its like renting a DvD, fast forwarding to the last 5 mins and then complaining that it was a boring movie and didn't make sense.

I think designers need to start designing games that are enjoyable to play as a process, as a journey, and fuck the people who think the game starts when they get to the end :)

The very simple reasons

[Opportunist]

Imagine there are 2 game mags at the store. One has a preview of the Ultimate New Game you've been waiting for. One doesn't. Which one do you buy?

Right.

Now, how do you get a preview? Unless it's available for download (well, if it is, every mag's gonna have it, so let's ignore those for now), the game company has to send you the necessary goodies.

And now the big question: Will they send you their next preview if you write "This sucks! Bugs, flaws and no interesting gameplay, even if they spend another year on it it will STILL suck!"?

No. They'll send it to a magazine that hypes it into heavens and back. And the magazine that has the article about the preview sells more copies than the one that doesn't.

Sipmle as that.

I think it's not THAT bad.

[Vo0k]

What magazines lack is a "crap" column. Most reviews rate games with 70-100%, but most of these games deserve this rating. It's just that games rating lower don't get reviewed - they get very little press at all. The editors play a little, decide this is a shit, don't bother writing a review and taking up space in the magazine, then move on to the next title that is more interesting.

People complain about how many bad games are released nowadays but they forget shitty games were like 80% of the market ALWAYS. Thing it, they got forgotten and we don't remember them anymore. You remember Zork and HHGTTG from Infocom, but you forget a dozen of more medicore games they released. You remember Revenge Of The Mutant Camels, but where's Herbert's Dummy Run? Quake is there, a dozen of Quake knockoffs is forgotten. And press rarely bothered to mention them too.

Though I agree - we're at a crisis moment. Making a game to be of quality comparable with the market leaders is way out of reach of small developer groups. And big players want to play it safe, so they dump innovation. There's fewer good new games than there would be at any moment of the gaming history in the past. And magazines write reviews comparing games to the average. Quake 4 is still at upper 95% of the quality of currently available titles, it's just the quality of currently available titles is at about half the level the quality was in times of Quake 3.

Re:Previews: the reality

[edunbar93]

And apparently, you just don't care about actually telling the truth in your articles and serving the people who pay to subscribe to your magazine

Congratulations. You have just independently rediscovered the principle that you are not the customer. You are the *product*. *You* are sold to the advertiser. The advertiser is the customer who pays to make the magazine cheap.

And guess who the advertiser is in this case? That's right, the game publishers.

Of course, you could just stop reading the magazine if you don't like what the writers have to say and how they say it...