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Famitsu For Beginners
Via Kotaku, a post on the forums at the selectbutton site that may interest you. Famitsu is the gaming bible for a lot of people, but not all of us have the language skills required to follow it. Many more are confused by what's seen as 'buying review scores', a practice that's more about the realities of the magazine's role than about corruption. From the article: "What Famitsu is -- and you wouldn't know this unless you've held a heavy issue in your hand on a tired Friday morning -- is straightforward (if not entirely honest) PR in a pretty, meaty, high-quality bundle. It's an advertisement feast. If the western concepts of 'journalistic integrity' are distorted and twisted within its pages, they're done so very lovingly. Because, you see, that degree of over-thinking really doesn't exist here. You can cry 'viral!!!!!!!!!!!!' and 'TEH PAID!!!!!!!!!!' all you want at Famitsu's features and articles. However, you can't change that it's a hell of a thing to look at on the train on Friday morning, or at lunch on Friday afternoon; it provides stimulating topics of conversation (for geekos) over Friday dinner." So, as Kotaku's Luke Plunkett says '[This is] why we all ignored the scores they gave Sonic, but paid attention when games like Blue Dragon and Lost Planet won them over.'
Which is better, a company which openly accepts money in exchange for better reviews/hype or a company which (behind closed doors) exchanges better reviews for money; because that is (pretty much) what print game magazines all are.
With a few exceptions, you will notice that many magazines have a tendency to give higher reviews to games that have "invested" in several issues worth of full page advertizements.
How did this end up on the front page? All I got from this is that "Japan has a big gaming magazine, that is biased, but Kotaku and Zonk like it. You should read it, but you probably don't speak Japanese". I think this is the worst front page story I have seen on /. in my umpteen years of sifting through drivel.
So what is the news? Japan has paid for review magazine like the US (and rest of the world), but people expect this and don't complain?
Wow.
A patriot must always be ready to defend his country against his government. -edward abbey
But it makes sense. If it is true it answers a lot of questions but raises one last one. Why the fuck do American news media keeping posting their scores? It really does sound like a hype rag.
It is really no different than EGM in any way other than being a) physically bigger, and b) published more frequently. Their "journalistic standards" are no better or worse, their reviews no more or less bought and paid for. Which is to say the NY Times they ain't, but neither are they paid shills.
There's no real meat to Kotaku's "story". What it seems to be is the cynical ramblings of a jaded gamer. No real harm there, I guess; we've got plenty of people here who think EGM gives "courtesy scores" to big games too (and they probably do).
I think the problem is westerners - who don't generally understand the language - go around calling Famitsu things like "the gaming bible", which put it on a pedestal. It is no bible. It is simply a magazine that writes stuff about games. But that pedestal we put them on means any time they do something the slightest bit weird, like, say, giving a game that everybody else seems to think sucks straight 8's or 9's, there's a massive look of bewilderment here. They're human and subject to human foibles like anybody else. They're also just as easily swayed by hype as any of the gaming press here.
What is impressive about Famitsu is just how prolific they are. EGM struggles these days to put together an 80 page pamphlet in a month. Famitsu does about 250 pages in a week. And they also put out system-specific monthly magazines, which borrow staffers from the weekly version. That's pretty amazing, and it makes them worth paying attention to if for no other reason than their obvious dedication to gaming. These guys (and girls) eat, drink, sleep and shit nothing but video games, 24 hours a day.
Call me crazy, but isn't Famitsu just Cosmopolitian magazine (or any of those other women's magazines that are 90% advertising)? Most of the "content" of the magazine is ads, and the "articles" and "reviews" are thinly-disguised ads. Famitsu is so popular in Japan in part because of the general Japanes fetish for magazines, and partly because the are MUCH bigger whores than then Western gaming press. It's a lot cheaper to put together a magazine if all of your content is submitted by advertisers. The comparison to GameSpot or EDGE isn't correct, Famitsu is more like "Official Playstation Magazine" or Nintendo Power.
Now maybe you WANT 250 pages of ads, but I doubt it.