Gaming Today’s Take On ‘Game Journalism 101′
By William on Sunday, January 6th, 2008 at 6:14 PM PST In Videos
The Bonus Round recently posted a video titled ‘Bonus Round Episode 18: Part 1 – Game Journalism 101′, which points out some possibly damaging topics of debate to the world of game journalism. The relationship between game journalists and publishers has often been a mystery to gamers on the outside, but it’s becoming a common concern. Some of the following questions are covered in the video:
Do you trust game journalism?
How do game journalists work with game companies?
Do publishers ever blacklist game magazines and websites for bad reviews?
Do publishers ever threaten game journalists?
The Bonus Round’s panel included:
• Tiffany Spencer, VP of Communications, Brash Entertainment
• Daniel Hsu, Editor in Chief, EGM
• Ryan Schneider, Marketing and Community, Insomniac Games
In my own experience with publishers and various game-related companies, I have never once felt threatened when covering a game, even when my views on their game were unkind. Even negative publicity can be good for a game and I think most marketing representatives understand this. We want to know what our readers think about the topic, so feel free to drop a comment below. The primary question we would like to see our readers answer is ‘Do you trust game journalism?’ If not, we’d love to hear any suggestions on what it would take to change your mind.
In an effort to find out where we stand on the subject at Gaming Today, I presented Daniel “BB” Perez, our Marketing/PR Manager, with two of the primary questions from the video. The questions and his answers follow:
How do game journalists work with game companies?
In my experiences, there are two kinds of game journalists that game companies recognize. The “veteran” journalist, meaning the kind of journalist that has been around enough for the game companies to recognize them and offer their news, previews, or review material to them directly (of course through the company, but it’s probably meant for them to handle). The other kind of journalist is the “dime a dozen” journalist. These are the kinds of journalists that really aren’t recognized by the game companies yet since the publication either rotates journalists often or the publication (whether it be online or print) isn’t really big enough or just hasn’t reached out to the game company for their material.
Do publishers ever blacklist game magazines and websites for bad reviews?
I don’t know much about what went on with publishers & publications in the past, but I can tell you now, especially in the wake of the whole GameSpot debacle, publishers don’t blacklist publications over bad reviews. The publishers are smart enough to know that not all of their titles are AAA titles. Although some publishers often have a higher rate of successful titles than most, no publisher has had a 100% successful rate with their titles. So to blacklist a publication for giving a less favorable rating for a title is silly because not only will it look bad on the publisher, but it will also ruin the relationship between the publication and the publisher for a very long time. The only time I believe a publisher might question a publications review is if they feel the review was unjust.
If you read more than one review, like any smart gamer should, then you pretty much have an idea on a game’s pros and cons from various reviews. If one publication’s reviewer tries to be unique and gives the game a less than favorable review and is totally off with their pros/cons compared to other reviews, then the publisher might take it upon themselves to contact the publication to find out if the game really did deserve that review. But never will they blacklist a publication. The relationship between a game company and publication is one of give/take. Game companies need publications in order to promote their material. Publications need game companies in order to grab the attention of the readers by obtaining exclusives from the game company. So to cut ties with a publication over a review only hurts the publisher.
All comments appreciated and welcomed!
No, I don’t trust game journalism. Mostly because I’d rather form my own opinion on something than listen to someone who knows much more about it than I do, or much less, depending.
So weclock, why do you post here so much then ? Do you do that on all the sites you don’t trust ?
Weclock, the purpose of a game review isn’t to formulate opinions for the gaming public. It’s really just to give them some information to wrap their minds around before making a decision on what to buy. If I’m reading reviews from other sites, I’ll often check out 5 or 6 reviews on the same game just to get an overall feel for what the game is all about. It’s kind of like movie reviews. You can only use reviews as a guide, not as a end-all opinion on the topic.
To be blunt, I trust game journalism as much as I trust every other genre of journalism, which isn’t a whole lot.
That’s not to say I don’t think some have its points; I’ve quickly come to respect GT’s standards because they (you guys) seem to include more than the numbers 10, 9.5 and 7 in reviews. Obviously, you can’t do it on numbers alone, but the quality of the tone here seems to make sense. Like other reviewing journalism, I sometimes struggle in understanding when a conclusion has made that goes against the tone of the content in the bulk of the read, and see the problem in reviewing games as common as other similar occassions.
What would it take to change my mind?
I’d like to see the review process. Not just them typing it up, I mean know the person, enough to know if they’re the right person to be doing the review, or at least most capable, then see them receive the game in both being handed to them and their initial thoughts of it when playing and how that transports us to what I read on the various sites or articles. That way, I’d know if the person was being honest, or not just nit-picking. Sure, that sequence may have bad camera angles, but the rest of the game is flawless, so why have you written all the game has bad camera. The game is still fun, right?
An example of why this would be good is in that recent article about the journalist who reviewed Mass Effect, but hadn’t played it for long enough. Without knowing the way he did it all, we wouldn’t have known if that was entirely honest. Fortunately, the advent of public opinion in terms of being able to speak so openly on the net has stopped these things. Unfortunately though, it’s not wholey worked. I’d have thought journalists would be prompted to push a bit more to get it right (they talked about extremes in that video, which is probably true) but it seems as if they’re stuck in their way of writing random drabble that somewhere along the line includes the necessary content and required point to turn it into a review.
And why on Earth are reviews limited in word count online? I can understant a minimum word count, but journalists should really be able to push out as much as they want in some cases, so we get a real understanding of it all. The details. I’ve seen on 1up before that they mention word counts and I just think “why?! It’s not as if a few extra words is killing trees due to paper”.
Before buying games, I check the following sites,
1UP, Gamespot, IGN, GamingToday and GamingForums (part of FileFront) and Play.com for player reviews, and take the best written ones from there. Most importantly though, I ask my friends who have played it, because they’re regular-gamers like me (except, I seem to be the biggest gamer in my friend group, yet the only one who doesn’t play WoW).
However, in showing brooding loyalty, I’ve gotta say I’ve come to really like GTs journalism style. I like the fact you cover different angles. You get down and dirty with your personal opinions in the comments section and you do self-made editorials that have no prompting other than what happens to you. I’d like to see more of those. Heck, I got a million ideas in my head for editorial ideas! FPS’, Admin abuse on servers, cost of games, reliablity etc. You’re the ones with the power to write this stuff…do it! They can be more interesting than any of the other news that day, especially when it’s bloody HD this or Red Ring that, or peripheral for Wii here.
Generally, I don’t trust gaming journalism a whole lot. I think a lot of people will be disheartened with what happened on Gamespot too, however there are some exceptions. And I DO trust them.
@ Joelteon7: “I’d like to see the review process. Not just them typing it up, I mean know the person, enough to know if they’re the right person to be doing the review…”
Usually, when a game is being submitted to one of us to review, most of the time (from what I understand) it is given to the person who is most familiar with that genre. For example, since I prefer an RPG, RTS or survival horror, I would be the prefect candidate to review the latest Resident Evil, Oblivion expansion, Age of Empires, etc. Lets say that Shawn is more familiar with MMOS, he would be the one to review the latest one to hit the market.
All of the writers on staff have their favorite gaming genres just like everyone else, but the great thing about us is that all of us are familiar with every type of game on the market – therefore all of us are more than qualified to do a review on any game that comes our way. I mean, I may not PREFER racing games, but I have played enough to make an educated decision as to whether or not it is indeed worth the play or not.
Also, another wonderful thing about our site, is that we are not subjected to certain standards like word counts. Our posts can be as long or short as we like, therefore you never have to worry if we have been edited for size. We get to say what we want with as much gusto and length as we wish.
Thanks for your loyalty too, we do this not only for the love of gaming, but for you guys as well.
@Joelteon: I think that one thing I always try to do when reviewing a game, be it good or bad, is to point out what the good and bad points of the game are, and to elucidate how they affect the gameplay. I’m very glad that we’ve gone away from scoring our reviews here at Gaming Today, because I’ve always felt that the 1-10 ratings system is so skewed that it’s not salvageable. Reviews with no ratings allow us to simply talk about what we liked / didn’t like, and let you form whatever conclusion you draw as a reader.
Pretty much any review that anyone writes, regardless of what site they write it for, is just one person’s opinion. Luckily, in this day and age of gaming, we read hundreds of reviews for the same game if we so choose, and that allows us to be more informed before we spend our precious gaming dollar. I can’t fathom how that could be anything but good.
To everyone, thanks for reading and commenting.
@Stephany, … I do like our review process and how games go to the person suited for them. I don’t think that’s the case on many game sites. I also like the fact that none of the writers here have topics forced on them. That definitely allows us to be a little more honest and to write about topics we choose to.
@Ron, .. well stated. I also like how we got away from the 1-10 thing.
Fun story about PR pressure:
I wrote a review last year (wasn’t here at FileFront, so don’t bother digging for my reviews) and gave the game a poor score, and was overall pretty negative. The game simply wasn’t fun, and I reviewed it as such. The PR person was none too happy, and dissected my review, citing specific inaccuracies. After quite a number of back-and-forths between myself, the site’s PR person and the PR rep, we finally got him to realize that he was mistaken in thinking certain features were included.
Long story short: lots of pissy e-mails and calls over (what he assumed to be) false accusations. Fun times.