Slashdot Mirror
Game Reviewers Face Odd Bribery From Publishers
eldavojohn writes "You might be used to the idea that game reviewers receive games free and ahead of time, but Ars opens up a darker side to the mystery box. Like a $200 check from Dante's Inferno, reading, 'by cashing this check you succumb to avarice by hoarding filthy lucre, but by not cashing it, you waste it, and thereby surrender to prodigality.' Or how about a huge-ass sword from Darksiders. Or brass knuckles (illegal in some states) from the makers of Mafia II. Or rancid, rotting meat mixed with spent shell casings, teeth, broken glasses and dog tags from Bulletstorm. NCSoft gave out flight suits and trips to weightlessness. Nintendo apparently likes to send all manner of food, including elaborate cakes shaped as their consoles and games. Squeeballs sent a crate of stuffed animals. iPods from Activision and Zunes from Microsoft seem to be pretty tame bait for reviewers ... but there's one reason why this continues to happen: more news-starved review sites and blogs report on the extras and the publisher's game gets spread around just a wee bit more. Even if it is as freakish as bracelets from an insane asylum spattered with blood." I think we must be doing it wrong around here... we usually can't even get games before the release date, much less get free rotting meat.
Publisher: Give our game at least 8/10 or it's Two Girls, One Cup for you.
Reviewer: And if I refuse?
Publisher: Three Girls, One Cup.
Trolling is a art,
In these dire times, were I a reviewer, I'd specialize in Dead or Alive spinoff games.
Just in case they up the ante.
It's not (always) bribery, but just a PR stunt. They don't do these things for better review scores, but for media attention.
Serious, what good is "rancid, rotting meat mixed with spent shell casings, teeth, broken glasses and dog tags" or "brass knuckles"?
If it's not cash, or some other thing they can cash in then it's not really bribery.
I started a gaming blog an not one company has tried to buy me off.
Guess they're too focused on the Lame Stream Gaming Media to care about us gamers on main street.
=================
Unix is very user friendly, it's just picky about who its friends are.
Since you mentioned that you can't get any swag from publishers, here's the answer: get your reviews on metacritic.
That score determines a lot of things and you're much more likely to be bribed if you can make it look good.
-- "So they told me that using the download page to download something was not something they anticipated." - Bill Gates
You could always submit something yourself you know.
Still, this seems like a story slot that could have been better served covering something else...
Is there a limit to story slots on Slashdot?
I think we must be doing it wrong around here... we usually can't even get games before the release date, much less get free rotting meat.
Even by the extremely low standards of video game journalism, Slashdot can't get any respect. Maybe you should think about focusing on the writing/editing. Or fix the awful bugs on this site that have been around for... well, decades at this point. (How about a rich text comment field? Let's join 2005!)
Comment of the year
Or rancid, rotting meat mixed with spent shell casings, teeth, broken glasses and dog tags ...
So, are you trying to say McDonalds, or Taco Bell? (That editorial "food" review is probably not going to get me a new ipod...)
In comparison, what do slashdot book reviewers get? About the same?
"Science flies us to the moon. Religion flies us into buildings." - Victor Stenger
No, but he just has to chime in somehow, even if he has nothing to say.. as usual.. he even admitted in another story that he is just posting these comments to advertise his website :/
which is totally what she said
Back in the day when everybody read Byte Chaos Manor was probably the most important place outside of the cover you could be.
Jerry Pournell wrote what we would the column based on what he used.
His system was simple. Send me your stuff and I get to keep it all.
If he didn't like your stuff he would say so or just not write about it.
If he did like your stuff it was fantastic for you.
Borland as a company pretty much was born when Jerry Pournell wrote about how great this cheap Pascal compiler called TruboPascal was. Borland to a loan for their first full page ad based just on that column.
Now that would be considered not legit but at the time no one minded. Truth is that his reviews where brutally honest and very good.
See my blog http://ilovecookes.blogspot.com/ for light hearted technical information.
I don't play games very often anymore, but I've found the easiest way to get an honest opinion of a game is to do the following:
That works well.
Reviewers who scored a game low were not compensated by the publisher, almost definitely had to buy the game themselves, and usually point out legitimate flaws instead of glossing over them. It's a great way to innoculate yourself against hype.
This game will waste your life. Don't clicky!
The rules are different at different outlets but you'll find most try to think about this subject and let their audience know how it affects or doesn't affect them. Giant Bomb are headed up by people who left after a related incident at their previous employer. One of the founders fought to defend their review against a publisher and editor who wanted them to give it a more glowing review, and their previous job was terminated for doing so, certain people quit in disgust and joined together to form a new site.
Twinstiq, game news
Are they giving away Time Machines with Duke Nukem Forever?
The sword, brass knuckles and rotting meat etc. I wouldn't consider a bribe, since it somehow fits the respective games and are clearly not selected for their monetary value.
But checks, IPods and Zunes are obvious bribes.
In the spirit of being completely honest, yes, there are times when I do that...but this is not one of those times.
There are only so many stories that make it to the front page of Slashdot every day...my point is, why use up one of those "slots" with a retrospective on stories, some of which are well over a year old, instead of something that covers modern events?
Is that not a legitimate starting point for conversation?
Living With a Nerd
Really? I always attributed it to outright silliness (or perhaps pride) on the publisher's part. I mean, imagine you just made some kind of hardcore cover-based shooter with, oh I don't know dinosaurs as handguns. Work with me here. This hypothetical dino-gun game is your pride and joy, and you want to make a good impression on a small subset of important reviewers. You don't want to bribe them, exactly, but you want them to know that you think highly of your game, and of their capacity as high-power reviewers. So you send them a knickknack of some kind. Like, a model replica of the basic pistol-type weapon. Or a fake dinosaur tooth, or whatever. The point of the exercise is to one-up the other weird knickknacks the other publishers send so that your knickknack (and consequently your game) stick in the reviewer's minds. Bribery might be an element to it, but more valuable is the sticking-in-the-reviewer's-mind part. Ever seen professionals auditioning for a part in theatre? They're all basically excellent choices, but they've all got some kind of gimmick to get the director to remember them better than anyone else. That's the objective, anyways. Same idea, different area. Not bribery, not really.
You should turn signatures off.
"much less get free rotting meat"
That will go down in history of /, as the most regrettable thing ever posted.
Prepare for waves of rotten meat.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
Still, this seems like a story slot that could have been better served covering something else...
That's why I, as the submitter, tagged it as idle & humor. Because that's all it is. Something that's funny enough to read when you're idle. CmdrTaco put it under games and he, as the editor at the moment, has that choice. I mean, is it any less newsworthy than your submission on PS3 Trophies? At least your attention is being brought to potential bribery here.
As always: If you're using the new index, there is an edit button in the upper left near the 'Stories' tab that will allow you hit 'Exclusions' and add 'idle' to your exclusions.
My work here is dung.
he even admitted in another story that he is just posting these comments to advertise his website
Not me, sorry. Provide a link and prove me wrong.
Trolling is a art,
Well I don't mind slashvertisements if it is in the scope of intereseting, pressing todays issues and news for nerds. Games certainly is one of them and it is journalistic independance. You might not thinkg of games reviewing as journalism, but that's a different topic.
Here be signatures
Haha... burnt by the slashcode.
Those post you were responding to was a response to a post by Pojut that got modded to -1 Troll; so in certain views, it appears that YOUR post was the parent.
Slashcode pwnage strikes again.
"Trolls they were, but filled with the evil will of their master: a fell race..." -- J.R.R. Tolkien on Olog-hai
There are only so many stories that make it to the front page of Slashdot every day...my point is, why use up one of those "slots" with a retrospective on stories, some of which are well over a year old, instead of something that covers modern events?
Why not just ignore the stories that you don't consider news? It seems slashdot is often at least a few days behind whenever I talk about stories with one of my geeky friends, but I don't mind much as I don't often browse any other tech news/aggregation sites really.
I just was getting frustrated at the number of times I've seen you post near the top with some really obvious observation. I'd seriously just prefer you to say "first post!". I probably have done/will do this from time to time too, but most of the time I only post jokes, the occasional bitter/flamebaitish remark when I'm having a bad day, or comments that I think are relevant to the topic at hand (I can't help chiming in when people discuss driving for example :p ).
which is totally what she said
Obvious post is obvious...yeah....:/
Living With a Nerd
Wha? I was talking about Pojut dude :)
which is totally what she said
No, because slashdot has slow news days where one story pops up every 3 hours and it has hell-ass-balls-on-fire days where there's a new story every 10 minutes. There isn't a quota.
Support my political activism on Patreon.
Ah ok, sorry man. My apologies. :)
Trolling is a art,
I think this article is amusing (well, the summary is, haven't bothered with the article tbh!). I wasn't referring to that.
Perhaps you are browsing with -1 or 0 level comments hidden. I only hide -1 comments but I still get thrown off by it sometimes. Have a look through the parent posts!
which is totally what she said
I usually want to say "don't you have a job or something?", then realise it would be amazingly hypocritical considering I'm often browsing /. at work ;)
which is totally what she said
But what is the rest of the coverage besides recycled PR anyway? Personally I just try and get a sense of a game I'm interested in and then stop looking at coverage on it. I just want to see the basic idea of the game and what mechanics it uses, as soon as I'm interested then I cut off coverage because I don't want anything spoiled, not even the introduction. In other media I also avoid trailers because of how much they will spoil the actual movie for example. The way a game starts is meant to draw you in and intrigue you, and if you hear a lot about it beforehand, it doesn't have the same impact when you actually play the game.
There have been situations with games such as Super Smash Bros Brawl where they drip feed you with information, every day you see a new character, or a new move, or a new item you will be using in the game. By the time the game comes out I'm sick of it already and I don't even want to see it anymore. Or sometimes development time will drag on and paying attention to a game's coverage is like torturing yourself, such as with Dragon Quest IX or Duke Nukem Forever. In that case, coverage will often turn me off of a game, and if I already know I want to play it, what's the point? I've got better things to do.
Nowadays I just listen to a few podcasts where people don't talk so formally about their experiences and they often talk game theory which is much more interesting to me compared to regurgitated PR. I would recommend A Life Well Wasted, The Brainy Gamer, Gamasutra Podcast, In-Game Chat, Irrational Behavior, Mobcast, and Retronauts. If you also like those, you might like Geekbox, RebelFM, 1up Oddcast, Weekend Confirmed, Player One Podcast, Joystiq Podcast, Gamers with Jobs, Drunken Gamers Radio, IGN GameScoop and CAGCast. Hey, it makes work and commutes go by fast.
Twinstiq, game news
I do have a job, but it involves a lot of downtime :)
Seriously though...you're right. It is a bit overboard. Tell ya what, I'll keep my mouth shut unless I have something good to contribute (or if there's a joke just hangin' out there, waiting to be posted)
Living With a Nerd
Journalist to MS: Take your $800 Halo 3 bribe back, Halo 3 isn't all that
http://www.qj.net/qjnet/xbox-360/dean-takahashi-halo-3-press-kit-nothing-less-than-a-bribe.html
Even more lucrative were the game 'reviewers' at sites like 1Up/EGM who were rewarded with jobs at Microsoft studios for giving absurdly high review scores to Microsoft games and equally bad reviews for games one competing consoles.
Nintendo, Sony, and PC game publishers aren't in the same league. Microsoft is really the only publisher who outright bribes the gaming media.
Moderators are humans ;) I always read at -1 for that very fact.
Well some are basement crawlers...
Here be signatures
You maybe have the same issue I have - things that you have to point out to other people irl, are obvious to most Slashdotters :p
which is totally what she said
When you're looking at reviews, you can almost always ignore the Five Star and One Star reviews. Five stars usually don't provide insight (giddy cheerleading) and one star reviews are usually hyperbolic reactions to problems.
I swear to God...I swear to God! That is NOT how you treat your human!
A book (that I even reviewed on Slashdot) has a section on just this sort of thing you can read here. It tells you how to use HTML5 microdata to mark up reviews so that search engines and sites (like metacritic) can utilize your HTML to build indexes of reviews.
Slashdot's always been a little behind the curve but considering what their review form looks like, you'd think it'd be a trivial thing to have the end product wrap the review in microdata so they too are suddenly influencing metacritic and coming back a real review site in Google.
My work here is dung.
The little fanboy probably calls Microsoft's ripoff of Sony's old Eye Toy tech, Microsoft being "innovative".
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6gOVj_I5npA
Or Microsoft's creepy ripoff of Nintendo's Mii as yet another example of Microsoft being "innovative".
Even funnier is the fact that Sony's motion track wand tech goes all the way back to the early PS2 days. Long before Nintendo started working on their own motion tracking tech. Too much to expect a fanboy like him to actually be aware of the Sony patents on the tech.
It's integral to my job, actually...business ops tells me what they want, I translate that into tech speak, and tell the production team what needs to be done. I also do the opposite, taking the production team's technical specifications and translating them into "business speak".
Living With a Nerd
it's widespread among all industries - which is probably why there are so few reviewers who have anything approaching credibility. (not sure about what it's like in your country) In the UK there is a standard for travel reviewers that they should declare who paid for the trip / accommodation that's being reviewed - maybe it's time any product review carried a qualifier as to what benefits or freebies the reviewer received, too.
As it is the only real indicator of whether a product is worth a dam' is from people who have bought it with their own money. Having someone who had a product dropped in their lap, telling you that it's definitely worth the money (what money?) is so hollow as to be laughable. Hopefully as more bona-fide owners write about their experiences, all these media-tart reviewers will be shown up for what they really are: entertainers.
politicians are like babies' nappies: they should both be changed regularly and for the same reasons
There used to be a time when those gimmicks would be included in the retail box of the games.
Infocom comes to mind.
ok,no rotting meat, but a blood splattered bracelet would SO be in Infocoms style.
bickerdyke
What happens is I can never decide whether I should sell out completely to get the most stuff, or I should try to maintain integrity and relish the occasional opportunity to tell off a company that threatens me for giving their game a bad review (you want 100% positive? buy an ad. You want a review, you get an actual review.)
Then I realize I don't have time to play all the games I own now, and I'd probably come out better financially by working and buying the games than writing reviews and getting free games.
The Quirkz Handbook of Self-Improvement for People Who Are Already Pretty Okay
I wish the article really went more into depth. IMHO Publishers these days are not all that what they are cracked up to be , bunch of marketing whores. Look at the fiasco with CIV5 from 2k almost unplayable on most non english windows systems and the crash issues with most nvidia cards. http://forums.2kgames.com/forums/showthread.php?t=88969
Every major gaming magazine has given it almost 8/10 , while actually (as I long time civ player) I don't think it is all that great except for the perty graphics. Dumbed down for the console. At least this guy over at 1up got it right, I guess 2k didn't send him any gifts.
http://www.1up.com/do/reviewPage?pager.offset=1&cId=3181540&p=1
The Infamous Hardcore Xbox Fanboy at 1Up Dan Hsu Gears of War 'review:
http://media.photobucket.com/image/dan%20hsu%20gears%20of%20war%20review/scytherage/1upreview-gears.jpg
I don't think there ever has been a worse example of outright fraud in a game 'review'. Good old Microsoft and their billions. Why bother making good games when you can just pay for fraudulent reviews instead?
>> Or brass knuckles (illegal in some states) from the makers of Mafia II. The article says Godfatther II, not Mafia II
Publisher: Give our game at least 8/10 or it's Two Girls, One Cup for you.
Reviewer: And if I refuse?
Publisher: Three Girls, One Cup.
Publisher: Give our game at least 8/10 or it's Two Girls, One Cupfor you.
Reviewer: And if I refuse?
Publisher:Dude...I just told you. It's Two Girls, One Cup.
Aggregator sites like Metacritic and Gamerankings don't really work unless you just use them to find reviews to look at (you mention reading the reviews which is great, but many don't). These sites misinterpret scores, they have the task of taking all of the different scoring methods and getting the average score, but not every site uses the same ranking method. For example, at 1up they use a letter grade, from A to F, with C being "Good", B being "Great", and A being "Excellent". Metacritic however thinks that a C is 50%, would you say a "Good" game should be given a 50% score? Also, the sites listed on Metacritic and Gamerankings are more likely to receive bribes, as pointed out by others in the comments. Many developers and publishers hand out bonuses based on metacritics scores so there is an incentive to get these artificially inflated, and public representatives for publishers and developers often try to coax higher scores out of reviews listed by aggregators because a PR rep's job is often at stake in this case.
Twinstiq, game news
I hate it when my ass balls are on fire, but when they're hell balls it's okay.
Do you have typing Tourette's syndrome?
Publisher: Give our game at least 8/10 or it's Two Girls, One Cupfor you.
Reviewer: And if I accept?
Publisher: One girl, D cup
Or brass knuckles (illegal in some states)
Brass knuckles are never sold as brass knuckles anymore. They're sold as paperweights so that they're legal everywhere.
The pig-shit fuck is typing turrets? God damn machine gun that fires fucking letters?!
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GAME PUBLISHERS.PAY.FOR.ADVERTS.
Then what's the video gaming equivalent of Consumers Union, a non-profit organization that publishes a magazine called Consumer Reports that doesn't take ads?
Question: why do you hide -1 comments? sure you'll get the inevitable "nigger nigger" trolls, but I've found in heated discussions often the best posts are negative rated, because they dared to go against groupthink. Often metamods will fix them, but by then it is off the front page and the groupthink trolls have done their job. Better IMHO to just see it all and ignore the obvious trolls, it isn't like they aren't as easy to spot as old "In soviet Russia" jokes here.
As for TFA, considering the incredible amounts of money that must be spent to make a triple A title frankly I'd be more surprised if they DIDN'T throw swag at reviewers trying to score brownie points. At least they aren't being lame, like remember when Acclaim had promoters doing dumb shit like trying to buy the rights to name a baby Turok? Or use actual graves for advertising with Shadowman? At least here they are keeping the stupidity down to a respectable level. Although why they don't simply use the time honored tradition of cash, hookers, and blow is beyond me. What, it is good enough for the US congress but not game reviewers?
ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.
Is this a surprise?
The crazy stuff is sent because it generates hype. Bloggers rush to post about every little thing they receive and routinely gush about how awesome it is that they have it in with the publishers. Publishers bombard publications with all kinds of assorted gifts and marketing crap to foster this sense of good will, they give them special behind-the-scenes access, they offer exclusive interviews. This is all done in an effort to foster this sense of goodwill on the part of reviewers. There's usually no need for anything as overt as outright bribery.
With mainstream games the reviews are irrelevant. It's the pre-release hype that counts, hence the absurd gifts. Considering the number of people who are so impatient they need to pre-order or even wait in line for a game, there's not much of a chance of reviews having any impact on them. And given the American gamer's obsession with violence it's really not surprising that publishers are going to find odd ways to drive that point home.
There was that story about that tea party candidate who used black magic to remove human causes from global warming, but not in Russia. But it didn't mention any tech.
I drank what? -- Socrates
I tend to expand a lot of posts, but yeah the GNAA and anal rape stories were getting to me a bit so I started browsing at 0 intead of -1.
which is totally what she said