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

color me ...

[McGiraf]

... surprised

Gotta listen to him

[black6host]

I'm telling you, everything this guy says is gold. :)

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.

Re:Not necessarily "marketing"

[Anonymous Coward]

That'a good point, but most companies stipulate that you can't say anything bad if you want to preview a game.

Re:Not necessarily "marketing"

[FearTheFrail]

I think, then, some of the most informative previews come out when the writers comment on the previewed game like my parents used to talk about me. You've seen it before, the guilty eyes, the sheepish smile, and the "Well, maybe his features will actually be a little refined when he gets older..."

Granted, I haven't seen it often, but in cruising IGN I've seen at least a couple of previews (though, now that I think about it, this could've been 3-4 years ago) where you could tell the writers had that same look on their faces, and while they desperately want to be able to generate some positive hype about this feature or that, all they can offer is hope that things improve in the future.

And really? Truth be told, who wants to read any more than the rare preview to say "omg this game is gonna sucks bad?"

Honesty in previews, candid words and recognizing both the positive and negative in an upcoming game is, indeed, pretty much a dead breed.

Re:Not necessarily "marketing"

[Henry V .009]

"Amazing freedom and scope"?

Familiar... Do they pay you marketing droids extra to work on Sundays? In actual fact, a player has almost zero freedom to influence the game world of Morrowind. Yeah, he can build a character with a different set of skills than another character. Whoo hoo. And scope? I hope you're talking about the mouth wash. Fighting huge birdy things for an hour just to walk to the next tiny dungeon does not add scope to a game. A billion cookie-cutter NPCs does not add scope. Look at Planescape Torment or Fallout to see a game with scope. (Sadly, Bethesda has got its grimy maws on the Fallout franchise; RIP.)

Instead of paying people to troll slashdot to talk up the next Bethesda bug-fest, maybe they should spend a bit more money and a first-class design and programming team.

Re:Not necessarily "marketing"

[skam240]

Just IM'd a buddy of mine who's an editor for one of the big sites. While the developer would certainly prefer only good things to be said in the preview there are no stipulations attached to getting stuff to preview.

Re:Not necessarily "marketing"

[billcopc]

Poll: Name ONE Bethesda title that didn't suck! I remember back in the early 90's when Doom was all the rage, and everyone was making FPS games, few had the smooth feel of Doom. I had a demo of Terminator Future Shock by Bethesda and holy hell, it felt like I had downgraded back to a 25mhz 386 with EGA. It felt like this game was not only rushed, but 2 years late to market.

They're not known for making innovative eye-popping works of interactive art, they're known for doing piss-poor me-too ripoffs of whatever's trendy. Just look at their list of releases over the last 15 years.. they don't even have a specialty. You can't really play a game and say "Ooh that's a Bethesda".. At least EA, hate them as we may, they have recognizable sports titles and solid (if cheapened) franchises like Need For Speed. A game house needs to be more than just generic coders with a big-ticket license.. it needs creative direction.

Re:Not necessarily "marketing"

[Shano]

I've yet to see any game that allows you to influence the world to any great extent beyond pre-scripted events (aside from trivial examples of natural selection). I'd love to see it, and from what I've heard, Oblivion should be closer than anything else. Like lots of the features of Daggerfall, however, I expect it to be either removed or massively cut back.

The freedom in Morrowind largely comes from the fact that the game doesn't push you hard in any direction. There are enough quests to play the game even if you don't give a toss about Dagoth Ur.

As for scope, most of that comes from third-party mods, some of which have better storylines than the original game. As long as Oblivion still has the contruction kit, it's guaranteed not to suck completely, at least after a couple of patches. I admit to being a Bethesda fanboy (at least for their RPGs), but if the first release doesn't crash every five minutes with no warning, it's just not a Bethesda game.

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?

[Radish03]

Exactly. Whenever I read a preview of a game that looks awesome, I think to myself "I hope that game ends up being as cool as this looks" and make a mental note to watch for the game later on when it's actually finished and reviewed. The preview doesn't usually do the advertising job of selling me the game. What it does is makes me aware of the game's existence.

Re:Why?

[chris_7d0h]

Because it's better than simply reading the title and a summary at Amazon.com ?

Really, what's your point? People pre-order cars since most cars are just new revisions / bugfixes to older models with very little changing over each revision (such as the yearly increments of the BMW E46 model for example). I don't think the car business and their merchandise can be compared to the software industry and theirs. Programmers prefer to re-invent the wheel far more often than any other engineering profession.

The gaming industry is a segment of the entertainment industry and as such the same rules governing other practical / utility-industries do not apply. If I pre-order a non-software utility gadget which builds on an existing model (which is often the case), I know pretty much what I'll get. With entertainment this simply isn't true. Thus and apples and oranges comparison.

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.

Re:Why?

[aiken_d]

Actually, car enthusiasts spend lots of time drooling over prototypes, "concept cars," and all sorts of other trivia about new cars long before their specs are final or the model even has a release date. Ask me how I know this :)

I don't see the problem. Casual gamers go down to Walmart and pick up a game. Enthusiasts eat up news months or years in advance. Is the idea here that those poor dumb enthusiasts who actively seek out news and rumour sites are suckered into hiding under a rock between the demos and the release, and then end up making a purchasing decision based on the demos? Just seems like weird logic to me.

-b

Re:Why?

[chris_7d0h]

What I was referring to was the implementation, not the ideas governing the implementation.
Take two different implementations of the same software idea and you'll surely see two different implementations. This even stretches as far as to implementations of the same idea at different points in time by the same developer.

Don't mend what is not broken rarely applies to software developers (unfortunately). Component reuse was a buzz word a few years ago which unfortunately didn't have much of an impact for inhouse development in cross project form. Developers like to experiment with new stuff and applying new algorithms or patterns to a known problem seems to keep them happy (avoids them being turned into factory workers i guess) and gives them a way to further educate themselves. However, this often impacts the deliverables in a (from a product manager's perspective) negative way since it introduces more unknown factors and deviations with each re-implementaion of a problem solution, than would seem necessary from the inception outlook.

Engineering in other segments (like the tangible sectors) of the market is simply more strict than in the software market, the latter where people build castles from thin air (pure thought stuff). In software the cost of trying out new approaches to problems is significantly lower than in the tangible markets which gives bored programmers a whole new set of freedoms when it comes to experimentation.

On a macro level though, the same governing rules apply as in the tangible segments. Stick with a proven formula since it minimizes risk. Yeah, it's boring and yields unimaginative products but that's what you get when the Harvard grads are sitting on the money bag.

The point I was originally trying to make was that when you pre-order stuff, you do it when you pretty much know what the product will be like. Final products can be predicted pretty well in the utility market but not in the entertainment segment. Utilities are built, marketed and sold upon proven formulas and solid history while entertainment are (or should strive for) about providing new experiences which may often require unproven formulas (higher risk and subjective in appreciation which if appreciated by many can bring in the jackpot). Since entertainment is based on subjective experiences it lends itself poorly at pre-ordering strategies from a consumer's point of view (the unpredicatable nature of the result that is).

Re:Why?

[tresstatus]

i base my purchase of games on the amount of time i spend playing the warez versions. =-)

Re:Why?

[SuperRob]

Exactly. Thanks for saying that.

Most of the sites I've written reviews and previews for actually had it as a rule: Previews are to remain positive. Why? Because it's a look at an UNFINISHED product, and it's not fair to be critical at that stage, at least not publicly (we frequently give feedback directly to the development teams). I've seen good games go bad, and I've seen bad games become amazing. Everything deserves a fair shake, so we remain "cautiously optimistic."

A well-written preview should refrain from editorializing at all, simply stating the intent the developers have with the game, and the time frame they intend to do it in. There are ways to sneak that editorial opinion in, however. ("This very early look ...", or "The game is very rough at this stage ...")

And...

[__int64]

This is non-obvious?

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!!"

Re:How could it be otherwise?

[MrBigInThePants]

I believe the "review" would be in the context of this is a preview of an unfinished game. Call it a "preview" if you will...

Why are so many posters missing this point? It NOT the goal of this article to point out that previews should be the same as reviews. (BTW: I mean unbiased reviews, because most have the same problems)

Things like vision, core graphics models, levels and premise are MOSTLY completed at the time of previews and can be commented on. But even things that are not finished can still be evaluated on in context of an unfinished game.

Just because it is not finished, does not mean you cannot make ANY critiques at all.

What are you after?? Something like this: (????)

This game has been in development for 2 years now and is set to go gold in 2 months. Currently it is only a cuboid polygon that is moved about with the mouse (with many controller bugs) on a white background. However, we feel confident that this will be THE BEST GAME OF THE YEAR, based on the marketing fluff we were given.

Most of the beta testers of SWG knew what was going to happen on release...

Re:How could it be otherwise?

[MBCook]

How about something like this (I made this up):

"In Joe Bob's Grand Adventure you'll be playing Joe Bob as he fights to regain his Pickle farm from the evil Artichoke-Industrial Complex. In the build we played there were some bugs here and there, but the game was comming along nicely. The levels looked good and were interactive and had plenty of little touches making them seem alive and real, and the shooting mechanic felt very good. The AI provided some challenge (except for a few known bugs) and the game seemed fun. The world is enganging and the story is well presented. The game has a large number of weapons, but some currently feal very similar. The game is shaping up for a November release."

or "In Joe Bob's Grand Adventure you'll be playing Joe Bob as he fights to regain his Pickle farm from the evil Artichoke-Industrial Complex. In the build we played there were some bugs here and there, but none severly effected gameplay. The levels looked rather drab and flat, with detail akin to a game from 3 years ago. There was no interactivity to speak of, and the shooting mechanic had serious flaws in the accuracy of aiming. The AI, while working, provided little challenge and was prone to getting stuck on the simplest of objects (like a stair). The scenerio is very similar to about a dozen other games; and the story seems almost bolted-on to the action and completely incidental to the game. The dozens of weapons play almost identicle, many even looking very similar to others. The game is expected to be released in November."

The first was of a game that shows promise, the second was of a game that had some obvious problems. Let's look at what a "normal" preview looks like:

>"In Joe Bob's Grand Adventure you'll be playing Joe Bob as he fights to regain his Pickle farm from the evil Artichoke-Industrial Complex. The game world is full of interesting characters and enemies all with AI that will be very realistic. In the build we played we ran around and shot stuff and since we didn't want to kill ourselves afterward, this will obviously be a "must have" game. The levels looked great, based on the pre-renders they showed us, and are supposed to be fully interactive using a real-time-inverse-kinematic-physics-engine. There are dozens of weapons in the game, along with what is promised to be the best online multiplayer for a console to date. You'll want to reserve your copy now so you can buy it when it comes out in November."

It doesn't matter how boring or bug ridden a game is, they always get glowing previews. The only time you even see bugs mentioned in previews is in the previews of games that are expected to be great (due to lineage). You might see something like "In PGR3 we encounted a few small glitches but the game is already a blast to play." In a buggy game you'll see previews like "In Driver 3 you'll be able to drive around a GTA like world." Notice it doesn't mention that if there was a feather in the road it would stop your car dead if you hit it (example based on memory).

The reviews themselves don't help either. The "average" game seems to get a score of about 80%. A game has to be really bad to get even a medium-low score (40-50%). I think we should force reviewers to use a bell-curve system to fight "Review Inflation."

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.

Re:I'll answer the first question..

[vicotnik]

Did you play games before our current degree of risk-averseness set in, say the C64 days? Yep, most games were clones and they sucked really bad, in fact they were a lot worse than the bad games of today. This is something you tend to overlook since you don't remember all the crappy games you only played for a few minutes or so. Sure, there was creativity then, but there is creativity now too. Also, the people who complain about the lack of creativity today are often very unaware of the wealth of games coming from independent game companies. Maybe they realize that creative is not the same as good, or they just don't have the time to waste finding the gems among these games in the same way they did 20 years ago.

Who buys?

[Threni]

Who pays £40 or whatever for a game without reading several reviews about it, or having played it first? I don't get it, but apparantly it must be lots and lots of people.

No problem though - hang back a little, and you get to buy a game once the reviews are out, the servers are up and the patches are released.

Re:Who buys?

[Khuffie]

Well, it depends on the game really. I for one know I'll be buying Twilight Princess before reading any reviews. I wait on most other games, but there are certain titles that I know I'll love regardless of the reviews.

Re:color me ... Shocked

[ePhil_One]

Really, I think this guy may be on to something. Lately, I've been thinking hardware companies don't send review sites expensive computers for free out of the goodness of theri heart, I think they are doing it for Marketing reasons. This could blow the whole industry out of the water!

Breaking News: Water is wet

[Anonymous Coward]

Also reported today the sky is blue, foods give you gas, and hitting the ground from a fall hurts.

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:Easy to Criticize

[urbaer]

They're par for the course and an acceptable trade-off.

Looking at Edge 142, (thier preview section is called 'Hype'), most of thier previews run through what's in the game and what the developers will need to do to the game before release to make it decent. A few choice quotes:
"... appears to do little of consequence and little to offend, but will that be to little to justify its price?"
"Having only played through the initial levels in a tightly restricted early beta test, it would be dangerous to jump to conclusions..."

My point therefore is go find a mag that doesn't gush over previews, they exist. I've found that multiformat mags are a little less gushy than single format mags, but hey.

Re:Easy to Criticize

[Perseid]

I can excuse not disclosing negatives - many of them will be fixed before the game goes gold. But almost every preview I see in almost every print game magazine proudly announces these games as if they're going to change your life when they're released. I don't even read previews anymore. I might skim the pictures but that's about it.

Re:Easy to Criticize

[1u3hr]

Hard to get a solution.

Sadly, the submitter and almost every commenter so far seems not to have read past the first few paras, if that. He DOES propose a solution. So, for the benfit of those non-RTFAs:

If editors were to break this unspoken agreement they've made with publishers to write groveling previews, they'd be heroes to gamers everywhere. They'd also be out of a job. Which is why it's up to gamers to save them from themselves--and in the process, to help save games.

This is where blogs like this come in.

Starting in April, Kotaku will launch a regular feature called "Preview Ho of the Month", and the object is to name and shame.

"Preview Ho" will be a compilation of the most egregious, blatant promotion for unreleased games from across the gaming press. We will challenge the editors of these magazines and websites to justify their hype on behalf of their advertisers' products. We will ask them why they gave so much glowing press to games that were so unfinished as to be design documents with conceptual art, or gave any attention whatsoever to yet another movie spin-off with no perceivable originality at all. In doing so, we will go after previews as they exist now for what they are: the mortal enemy of good games.

And Slashdot would be the perfect place to give this some momentum. If anyone had done more than read the headline and make "duh, obvious" remarks.

Re:Easy to Criticize

[bri2000]

Not only are Edge's previews notably well written, willing to offer constructive criticism and objective they will follow games through the development process (subject, I guess, to developer co-operation) and list any previous issues of Edge in which the game has been featured. Allowing you to trace their evolving view on a game.

The GamesTM preview section isn't bad either, although I have noticed it becoming a little more "gushy" recently

In all seriousness....

[TomHandy]

Really, I don't expect anything from a game preview other than to get an idea of what an upcoming game is going to be about, what it might look like, what kind of gameplay or innovations it will feature, etc. Granted, some of the hyperbole can be distracting (i.e. "this game is going to REDEFINE FPS's!!!!"), but it's not generally something I read a game preview for. Honestly, the biggest thing I care about is screenshots and online videos (something which is of course handled much better online than in magazines)..... I don't think I'd ever pre-order a game though or even buy it on the first day though (unless I was reasonably confident it would be good) until I read more final reviews, and also read more user reviews and impressions.

Next you're going to tell me...

[smaerd]

...that people that post about video games are shills.

That said, Madden NFL 06 is pure engineering genious. The new QB Vision Control and QB Precision Placement really brings you into the game. NFL superstar mode brings you into the world of top talent.

Overall, Madden NFL 06 will totally change the way we think about console NFL games.

Oh, Nostalgia...

[ucaledek]

Remember the good old days where we had unbiased gaming previews and reviews with none of those terrible corporate sponsorship problems? Wait, that's right I grew up on Nintendo Power. Their review of "The Wizard" was dead-on. That was the greatest film ever!

Re:Oh, Nostalgia...

[Anonymous Coward]

i credit nintendo power for my cynicism. i remember issue #1, with mario 2, and how excited i was when it first arrived, and how every month i'd check the mailbox to see if it came (i was in like 4th grade, i think). the two best parts were 'classified information' and the preview thing... i think they called it 'pakTM watch'...i remember seeing my first screenshots of megaman 2 in there. later on i actually deciphered the megaman 2 and solar jetman password schemes, discovered a warp bug from airman to the 2nd wily stage, and many others, and always sent them in, waiting for 'agent #888' to appear in classified information.

but it never happened. increasingly i realized that nintendo power was basically a PR magazine. the final nail was when the pak watch (gah, 'pak'? everyone else was calling it 'cart' by that time) column had a thing about the upcoming mortal combat port, and mentioned how the blood was replaced with sweat, saying (quoting from memory), that it "seems fine to this pak watcher. nothing wrong with a little variation." at that point, in my mind i replaced "pak watcher" with "absolute fucking tool", and the cynicism was complete.

now, as an adult, i feel pity for those people involved in making nintendo power. what a waste of life. i have a suspicion, though, that people like that will never be able to comprehend further than their paycheck. suckers.

Article is an incomplete argument

[tengennewseditor]

Previews are necessarily positive because the media doesn't have access to the final game and has to take the developer's word. There's no opportunity to be critical, so they're just hype, but everyone knows that.

Reviews ensure that developers have a reason to make the game as good as possible. If previews drive sales too, then it allows developers to take more risks -- because an ambitious game that ultimately fails will have a good preview writeup and sell enough not to be a total loss.

The author is trying to posit an implied (but untrue) connection between previews allowing mediocre games to sell and all games 'sucking.' Mediocre stuff sells in every entertainment industry that exists -- if only the best games sold then the market would be too risky to enter.

Other possible explanations...

[aendeuryu]

You might notice that a lot of reviews rate the games out of 100. I think people already have a slant about that sort of system based upon school. At school, when your efforts are rated out of 100, it feels like there's very little difference between somebody who's gotten 20 and somebody who's gotten 45. I think it's similar with how people look at games. Look at some of the reviews that fanboys put out for their games. They'll say it's worth a 78, for instance. Try to get them to explain exactly what it is that merits that exact score. What kept it from getting a 79, for instance, or what made it four points better than a 74. Chances are they probably can't, but fanboys, being what they are, like the supposed sophistication about rating something out of 100 and have to choose a number that feels right, rather than one that reflects accurately what the game deserves.

As for reviews being overwhelmingly positive, many trade publications operate on this principle, too. Even if you want to say something sucks, you want to put a slightly positive spin on it to keep people spending money on your industry. Besides, you can't always be honest about how you feel when part of the funding for your journal or website comes from advertising, and those advertisers also happen to produce products that you're reviewing.

I wish more places would just adopt a star rating. Rate something between 0 and 5 stars, with 2 stars being an average game. That way, we're talking about the equivalent of an average game getting close to 50%, but the stigma of failing isn't always there.

The ultimate example title: MOO3

[AtariDatacenter]

I always rate the credibility of a game reviewer on the INVERSE of their score for the game Master of Orion III, which was widely acknowledged to be an awful title.

Yet you'll find reviewers who give it quite a good score "4.3/5". And they'll wax poetic about some of the worst and repetitive features of the game. "I always turn up the speakers when I've gotten a diplomatic message to hear the wonderful alien voices."

Compare/Contrast the following reviews. Who would YOU go to for the truth next time?
#1: http://www.stratosgroup.com/reviews/games.php?sele cted=0303moo3 "4.3 out of 5"
#2: http://pc.ign.com/articles/386/386281p6.html "9.2 out of 10 and Editor's Choice Award"
#3: http://www.avault.com/reviews/review_temp.asp?game =moo3&page=3 "3 out of 5"
#4: http://www.gamespot.com/pc/strategy/masteroforion3 /review.html?q=master%20of%20orion
"6.7 out of 10"

Re:The ultimate example title: MOO3

[soupforare]

I love how not one of those reviewers had MOO3 down as less than average.

Re:The ultimate example title: MOO3

[sholden]

Isn't the average 9/10?

Previews: the reality

[payndz]

Speaking as a former games magazine editor, I can say this with authority. The reasons magazines do all those more-or-less uncritical previews on upcoming games is...

To fill pages.

No kidding. When you start the month, you have anything between 100 to 164 pages to fill. (Certainly where I worked, the editor had no say in the total number of pages - that was decided based on projected advertising revenue and the whim of the publishing director.) The advertising department says they expect to need X pages. You know fairly well how many games will come in for review based on the release schedules, and can allocate pages based on that. You have all the standing pages - news, letters, cheats and guides, house ads, subscriptions, etc.

Anything left over has to be filled. And the nature of the games business means they either have to be filled by either wacky filler features (which the magazine writers love because it gives them a chance to be self-indulgent, but the readers generally couldn't give a shit about)... or you have to talk about games that haven't come out yet. They might be lengthy interview-based stories, or they might be based entirely around the latest set of screenshots that have become avilable. Either way, they're previews.

And the sad fact is, if you preview a game that's still some months from release and get all snarky about the lame concept, the horrible control system or the blatant swipes from other games, even if it's deservedly so... the publisher is likely to tell you to fuck off when you ask for final review code down the line. Which will leave a hole in your predicted number of pages for the review section. You can fill that either by extending other reviews, even if the games aren't worth the extra space, or throw in another last-minute filler feature... or add another preview. Either way, you quickly learn to walk the fine line between gentle mockery and actual criticism, and to keep the latter until you actually have the game in your hand.

Jerry Seinfeld said it best. "Magazines are another medium I love, because 95% is simply based on 'How the hell are we going to fill all this blank space?'"

Re:Previews: the reality

[Buran]

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, because I don't see anything anywhere about writing objective, fair articles but I see lots of bragging about happily filling the pages with bullshit.

I wrote to PC Gamer once to politely correct a photo error in one of their articles, and they published my letter -- and made fun of me, comparing me to a fictional character on a TV show. For politely correcting an error in the way that one is supposed to do when writing to a magazine or newspaper editor! In the same way in which I've found errors in the NY Times and Time magazine and written to them -- and either gotten a very polite, grateful response from them or seen the correction published in the errata in a future issue.

That one act meant I did not renew my subscription and I have never subscribed to a gaming magazine since -- because some asshole doing the same job you do proved that his profession didn't deserve any respect.

Grow up and do your fucking job. You know, the thing they teach in journalism school about, I don't know, following the rules of journalism ethics.

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...

Here's how the publishing idustry works

[91degrees]

It's not just games magazines. It's all magazines. A large portion of their content is made from press releases. They have a magazine to fill up, and regurgitating press releases is a cheap easy way to do it. When all the papers were waxing lyrical about the Segway, did the journalists think "Wow, that's a cool toy. Let's find out about it"? The papers want you to think that, but what most likely happened was a P.R company sent a load of photos and bumph, and the editor got an office junior to rewrite it into an article.

But these are only previews. The purpose of a preview isn't to tell you what a games like. The sole purpose of a preview is to inform you that a game exists. This is not a bad thing. Gamers want to know what's coming. They just have to understand that a preview is not an opinion peice, but a promotional piece. To find out whether a game is any good, wait for the review.

Previews are *not* reviews

[Lewisham]

I did some writing for a couple of print magazines in the UK. As the new guy, I'd be handed the stuff no-one else liked writing, and that included previews.

Every editor I spoke to told me to be positive. This is not the same as jacking up hype from the PR guys: I never even spoke to them. Most of the time they'll talk to someone higher up because they don't know who I am, and then I'd get the preview handed off to me. Most of the PR junk we recieved was exactly that: junk. I found it difficult to make any more favourable words simply because I had a Spiderman Web-Shooting Gun.

The reason I was told to be positive is that there is no reason to be overly critical of preview code. Most preview code looks like ass, plays like crap and has some show-stopping bugs. That's because it isn't finished. The idea of preview code is to show ideas and direction to the journalist. Exciting games get more column inches because they show better ideas and promise, *not* because their code didn't suck. And a lot of games that have very poor preview code brush up. Development is organic. You can't be critical of every piece of code that comes through the door: it's all crap. You pick out the good bits, show it to the reader and say "you might like this when it comes out." Some games are of interest to more people than others, and might get more column inches.

Until a game ships, it never deserves derision, just encouragement. It would be very ego-centric to kick the shit out of every game that I recieved just because I could in the name of "truth".

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.

What a hilarious article.

[fondue]

It seems that this Wagner James Au character hasn't become any more qualified to write about games since Old Man Murray used to tear his clueless, self-absorbed drivel to pieces five years ago.

Most previews are positive? Holy shit! Previews help to sell games? Bring me the fucking Bat-phone!

Publishers are interested in publicity, not critical acclaim in reviews that are six weeks late and which nobody reads. Magazines want as much repeat business as they can, so if they know that readers want to hear about a certain game, they can string out their coverage for months on end. Previews have never, ever, in over 20 years of games magazine publishing, served as a forum for criticism. NOBODY has EVER claimed otherwise.

This proposterous swaggering about "naming and shaming" of journalists DOING THEIR JOBS serves no purpose other than to make it painfully obvious that WJA hasn't the faintest idea of how the specialist press works.

The simple fact is that if you still buy games magazines in 2006 then your judgment is already in question; if you pre-order games based on fucking previews then God help you: you are part of Wagner James Au's audience, you are probably part of (rumour-mongering tabloid vermin) Kotaku's regular readership and YOU, not the publishers, not the magazines, are the fucking problem.

Freebie Hardware

[TubeSteak]

Lately, I've been thinking hardware companies don't send review sites expensive computers for free out of the goodness of theri heart

I remember reading on [H]ardOCP about how they do reviews of most(?) computer systems.

They have an agreement with the Marketing/PR guys so that they can buy a system (like anyone else) and then get a RMA when they've finished reviewing the system.

Either the deal works, and they get a random system like anyone else would, or the PR/Marketing guys intervene and the reviewer + several other lucky folks get computers that received a little extra attention.

Re:color me ... Shocked

[AKAImBatman]

I think it is good to rant about this because he has a good point: those web reviews sites don't wanna lose their jobs. So they play along with the devs, not the people.

*sigh* PC Gamer, PC Gamer, wherefore art thou PC Gamer? Thoust were taken over by PC Accelerator, forever to be changed into a mediocre magazine. The PC Gamer thy once were is forever dead. Dead, and floating upon the winds of time. Farewell pointy stick and coconut monkey, I knewest thou well.

Re:color me ... Shocked

[m0ng0l]

I think more so, the point he was trying to make is that reviewers get a gushy over *previews* of the game in question. The problem being, if they don't get "positive gushy," the publisher won't get any more juicy advertiseing dollars.

So, the bad previews get editorialized into something positive about game X, despite the fact that they were using alpha code, or maybe just pre-rendered screenshots, or even just the design document. Then, readers get geeked up about the game, wait 6 months for preview number 2, which is even more sugary sweetly positive, pre-oder, which convinces the retailers that the game will be a hit, so they get prepped to stock up.

Then, the game comes out, and sucks. Happens on the PC, happens on the consoles (maybe worse there?) Happens with hardware (oh look! This video card that isn't even in engineering samples will have 6 quintillion transistors, 1 million pixel pipelines, and support DirectX25, plus full Linux and DOS support! Lets write a positive preview of it to get a sample when it actually goes to silicon!)

One of the hardware sites a couple months back did a power-supply test. However, they didn't request samples from the manufacturers, they went shopping on the web, and ordered from retailers. They did get permission to use a power supply manufacturers test lab, but still bought and brought in a retail package from a web store, of that manufacturers brand. And also managed to convince said company to leave them alone with the test equipment...

Not sure how they managed that one...

I've gotten more and more un-impressed with previews. Either they preview goes on about great new features, that don't make the final release (BF2s dynamically re-sizeing maps), or there is just no "meat" to the article, to give a taste of what might be good about the game...

Quick follow-up to my essay...

[wjamesau]

Thanks for the fascinating conversation, Slashdotters. Two quick corrections:

- My name is actually "Wagner James Au".
- I'm still blogging about Second Life as an embedded journalist at http://nwn.blogs.com/, though now on a commercial basis with Federated Media, the kids what bring you Boing Boing, Metafilter, and other juicy goodness.

Lot of worthwhile points worth discussing, but rather than wade in too deep, let me hit at one in particular:

> The author is trying to posit an implied (but untrue) connection between previews
> allowing mediocre games to sell and all games 'sucking.' Mediocre stuff sells in
> every entertainment industry that exists -- if only the best games sold then the
> market would be too risky to enter.

Actually, I didn't say all games sucked. What I did say is that due to previews, the few games which don't suck have to compete for shelf space with the 95% of games that do. Preview hype, not game quality, is what guarantees retail store shelf space--especially if the game is backed by a large publisher and/or it's connected to a known brand. And since the average consumer only buys the games that are on the retail shelf, they are far more prone to walk away with a shitty game. This means good games are artificially disadvantaged on the market, which is not open, and it's substantially different in this sense from all the other mediums. A good book or movie can cut through the clutter by word of mouth or good reviews, while it's far more difficult for the same thing to happen with a game, because all the good reviews in the world won't help a game that isn't even on the shelf in the first place.

Well, I do

[Moraelin]

"And really? Truth be told, who wants to read any more than the rare preview to say "omg this game is gonna sucks bad?""

Well, I, for one, wish someone gave me the full, honest picture for a start. If I'm gonna blow my money on a product, be it a game or a watch or a TV or whatever, I'd like to have the full picture, not just a lopsided hype-only half of of the story. I'd very much like to know the good _and_ the bad, so I can make an informed decision if it's the kind of game I'm looking for.

Frankly, I never got the seemingly rampant point of view that if you dare say anything bad about a game, or even admit that you read negative reviews, then you're a horrible person, an anti-gamer or game-hater, a troll, and/or a fanboy of the competition. There's this idiotic notion that if it's a game, we should all treat it nicely and say only the nicest stuff. God forbid that someone would be so inconsiderate and hurt the poor developpers' feelings by saying that a game sucks.

Why? It's a product I'm buying, and not even a cheap product. Why is it so fundamentally wrong to make an informed decision about buying it? Why is it so wrong to give me the whole picture instead of a sweetened sales-pitch?

It's the same as any other product. If I buy a TV, I want to know if this model's image looks kinda fuzzy or the de-interlacing makes it laggy for console gaming. (Some HDTV models do just that, for example.) I _don't_ want the reviewer to carefully skip all the bad parts. If I buy something as cheap as, dunno, a pair of cheap computer speaker, it would be nice if someone told me in advance "dude, playing anything through these, sounds like playing it through an old Casio watch stuck in an empty plastic barrel". (Don't laugh, I have some speakers that sound just like that.) Etc. All I'm asking is the same for games. It's not that unreasonable a request.

And on the topic of previews, I don't expect them to predict the future and say "omg, this game is gonna suck". But it would be nice to tell me what works now and what _doesn't_ work now. Does the AI actually do yet what the developpers said it would do? Do the graphics actually look like in the developpers screenshots, or maybe in practice do you have to turn the graphics quality to a _lot_ lower to get more than a slide-show? Does the game system and resource system make any sense, or do you "mine for fish" like in the VG Cats comic strip and get bone by cutting wood? Does the story, as much of it as you can preview, make any sense? How's the balance so far? Does one class kill everything by just repeatedly clicking the left mouse button, while the other needs 15 mana potions per fight? Etc.

(BTW, the above are not even exaggerations, sadly, but actual examples from games I've played.)

It doesn't even have to be the meat of the preview, you know. It can just be a "stuff that doesn't work yet" section at the end.

Yes, we all know that it could get better before release, and feel free to even include a reminder if you wish. But ffs, don't make it sound like it _already_ _is_ better anything that ever happened before, sex included, and so perfectly realistic and detailed that God himself is taking notes for the next time he creates a world.

No surprise here

[jamyskis]

As someone who works in journalism (not a gaming rag though) I know the laziness that sometimes permeates through the industry. Mostly these previews are just rehashed press releases and the screenshots have been ready-completed by the publisher, and generally look far better than the game actually does (Age of Empires III anyone?) I'd love to know what happened to the "investigative" reporting that made this profession so great instead of acting as a free marketing channel for these companies?

You'll notice

[SirSmiley]

that in same gamepro, gamespy or any other print media/online gaming mag/any other product review mag that when they preview something they will never say "game doesnt have X, game doesnt have Y". What they will say is "looking forward to this game having X and Y, that will be a blast". It's the polite way of saying, please add this or your game will suck, and the reader will never know whether the product was originally designed to have it or if the previewers just think it should be that way,

It's what the readers want.

[west]

To be honest, I really hate previews. But then, I grew up reading game reviews without a final rating (that long ago - horrors)! However, for the most part, readers value previews over almost any other feature, and they their not big fans of negative reviews.

They read previews to be excited for a few months, enjoying the anticipation of playing the greatest game ever. They're reading the magazine to get a little lift. In short, most readers *aren't* curmudgeons.

With positive previews everybody wins. Pages are filled, publishers get free publicity, stores pre-order more games, magazines get a closer relationship with the publisher, advertisers (who want happy game-buying readers) are happier, and readers get their thrill of anticipation (which takes their mind off the game they're playing now...)

Outside of a few curmugeons like me (and many of the previous posters), people no more want honesty in gaming magazines than they do in health magazines ("forget special diets - simply eat less calories and get moderate exercise" doesn't benefit anyone. The advertisers don't want it, and neither do the readers). The magazines give people what they want, and the one's that chose different paths have all gone bankrupt.

If you want *real* reviews by people who paste games that "deserve it", smaller websites that don't depend on readers or game advertising for financing (i.e. labors of love) are the only viable medium.