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

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.

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.

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.