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More MCV goodness: Post positive Hitman reviews, ignore negative ones(not conspiracy)

jwalker.png


http://www.mcvuk.com/news/read/critics-delighted-with-agent-47-s-return-in-hitman-absolution/0106621



mcv.png


ain't making this shit up folks!

And the writer's response

https://twitter.com/BenParfitt/status/270463103811067904

I am getting pretty fucking tired of Twitter seeing conspiracy in everything where there really isn't one

Apparently industry magazines don't have metacritic bookmarked. Who knew!
 

Pie and Beans

Look for me on the local news, I'll be the guy arrested for trying to burn down a Nintendo exec's house.
Perhaps Ben you should elevate your 'professional' writing beyond a petulant teenager with a grudge, and forgo stuff like putting "Grumpy" before Eurogamer to discredit their score and you wouldnt constantly be making you and yours look like gigantic fucking shills.
 

drkOne

Member
Is MCV even relevant? Honest question as I had never heard of them. Sounds like they're pissing in their own cereals making so many big outlets angry.
 
Perhaps Ben you should elevate your 'professional' writing beyond a petulant teenager with a grudge, and forgo stuff like putting "Grumpy" before Eurogamer to discredit their score and you wouldnt constantly be making you and yours look like gigantic fucking shills.

Stop being so grumpy.
 

ghst

thanks for the laugh
i always thought it was a message board conspiracy, with their social circles on twitter providing harbours of reason in a sea of witch-hunt bloodlust?
 

8bit

Knows the Score
I'm not entirely sure who MCV is aiming at (is it gaming retails such as forecasting and/or buyers or devs/pubs?) but surely ignoring half the online reviews for a game and highlighting only positive ones is doing their audience a disservice?
 
MCV trying to play their retail readers basically.
Games Writers really are the least informative and most removed from reality bunch. Don't even seem to understand why they have readers.

This is all evident by 'how tired' they are of being criticised or looked on negatively.
Do your fucking job - if the people tweeting are unimportant then ignore them, otherwise its clear who your writing for and what information those people are looking for.

"Grumpy Eurogamer" = Eurogamer not playing ball. Least how I read that. Not to say the other reviews are, but thats how MCV is seeing it all.
They don't really get it do they?
 

Prawntoast

Neo Member
Is MCV even relevant? Honest question as I had never heard of them. Sounds like they're pissing in their own cereals making so many big outlets angry.

It's a trade mag aimed at retailers and distributors, they couldn't give two shits about the mainstream or enthusiast press. It's always been a PR tool rather than any kind of journalistic beacon of integrity.
 
It's a trade mag aimed at retailers and distributors, they couldn't give two shits about the mainstream or enthusiast press. It's always been a PR tool rather than any kind of journalistic beacon of integrity.

Retailers and distributers would still probably prefer a bit of integrity however.
Not to say thats what their main objective is from reading the mag, but they'd put more value in it if it were actually informative.

They have pages of the magazine pretending to be reviews when they've never played the game for example.
 

Cipherr

Member
Apparently industry magazines don't have metacritic bookmarked. Who knew!

Well... I don't have a problem with that. I don't care for the score aggregate sites at all. If reviewers choose to ignore those sites, I can't say I would care at all. In fact I wish more people/everyone ignored them.
 
Didn't we already discuss that MCV is a retailers' magazine and its purpose is to showcase the game and make it easier for retailers to promote the product? John Walker lives in a state of denial.

I'm not entirely sure who MCV is aiming at (is it gaming retails such as forecasting and/or buyers or devs/pubs?) but surely ignoring half the online reviews for a game and highlighting only positive ones is doing their audience a disservice?

They are aimed at retailers. It is not their job to criticize the game retailers will be heavily pushing. It is their job to give retailers bullet points with which to attract buyers.

It's a trade mag aimed at retailers and distributors, they couldn't give two shits about the mainstream or enthusiast press. It's always been a PR tool rather than any kind of journalistic beacon of integrity.

Beaten.
 

Uthred

Member
I agree that this is shoddy in terms of research (and that MCV are a bit of a joke). But it does also feel a bit like they cant possibly win, one week people are screaming that Metacritic should be ignored and the next week theyre screaming at people for ignorning it (though I suppose there is a difference between ignorning and being ignorant off)
 
I agree that this is shoddy in terms of research (and that MCV are a bit of a joke). But it does also feel a bit like they cant possibly win, one week people are screaming that Metacritic should be ignored and the next week theyre screaming at people for ignorning it (though I suppose there is a difference between ignorning and being ignorant off)

You´re missing the point. No one are asking them to writing an article about the metacritic average, but this is an article about the reception for a game where all but one of the publications with negative receptions about it where ignored. Metacritic serves a purpose as a list of a reviews, so it´s not hard for anyone to find a good listing of reviews, which was the purpose of this article.
 
MCV is a trade magazine, right? Seems like it's their job as PR to cherry-pick the good reviews.

What's odd to me is that they don't just say that. I'd much prefer a "yeah no shit we didn't add the low scoring reviews" response to this flimsy "we didn't see them" argument.
 
Didn't we already discuss that MCV is a retailers' magazine and its purpose is to showcase the game and make it easier for retailers to promote the product? John Walker lives in a state of denial.



They are aimed at retailers. It is not their job to criticize the game retailers will be heavily pushing. It is their job to give retailers bullet points with which to attract buyers.



Beaten.

True. It's really the edit that is hilarious though.

If one has to get defensive about something. Usually something ain't right.
 

mclem

Member
I agree that this is shoddy in terms of research (and that MCV are a bit of a joke). But it does also feel a bit like they cant possibly win, one week people are screaming that Metacritic should be ignored and the next week theyre screaming at people for ignorning it (though I suppose there is a difference between ignorning and being ignorant off)

When people say 'Metacritic should be ignored', they don't *mean* 'Metacritic should be ignored', they mean 'The practice of aggregating review scores as some sort of objective assessment of a game's quality is wrong'. If you're already writing with the *premise* of aggregating review scores, then use Metacritic!
 

DiscoJer

Member
MCV is a trade magazine, right? Seems like it's their job as PR to cherry-pick the good reviews.

What's odd to me is that they don't just say that. I'd much prefer a "yeah no shit we didn't add the low scoring reviews" response to this flimsy "we didn't see them" argument.

If they are trying to sell games to retailers, is it really a good thing to overrate games? After all, if the games don't sell, the retailers will stop paying attention to their recommendations.
 
If they are trying to sell games to retailers, is it really a good thing to overrate games? After all, if the games don't sell, the retailers will stop paying attention to their recommendations.

You're absolutely right, and I'm sure that's a gamble they're taking. I'd imagine that they've looked at the overall trend of positive reviews, decided the game is a winner, and made the call to push the game as heavily as they were pre-release. I'm sure that's the decision their editorial department has to make every time a review embargo is lifted.

I'm just spitballing of course, I have no idea what their actual process is. I'm just trying to deduce exactly how their model works.
 

Haunted

Member
The best part about this is that while people are being clear about MCV's position as a trade magazine (as in, not interested in actual unbiased coverage of games), most of their coverage is virtually indistinguishable from that of other "proper" journalistic outlets.

Something to think about, maybe.


edit: I mean that as in, if I go into a Burger King and read their monthly advertisement pamphlet disguised as a movie magazine (KING Magazine), it inherently reads differently from a dedicated film magazine like Cargo, Schnitt or even Widescreen. Not so with MCV and a vast majority of the rest of gaming journalism.
 

mclem

Member
They really put Wainwright on a Square Enix game again?

Come on.

To be fair, given lead times, wouldn't that have been written before the whole shitstorm happened?

Not that there weren't better things they could have done (in light of the news, wrote up a new one?), of course.
 

Glass Rebel

Member
It makes me sad that Square-Enix Europe seems to be involved in a lot of this shit lately, which makes me sad because I've liked their games a lot.

Then again, maybe they're the only ones dumb enough to be caught red-handed.
 

Gowans

Member
I wouldn't be surprised if she is posting to MCV under Ben's name.

Terrible! Terrible post that has backfired.
 

nofi

Member
I wouldn't be surprised if she is posting to MCV under Ben's name.

Terrible! Terrible post that has backfired.

She's not listed as a writer under the 'writers' dropdown. Not sure if that's new or not (the menu, I mean).
 

cameron

Member
She's not listed as a writer under the 'writers' dropdown. Not sure if that's new or not (the menu, I mean).

Looks like it was recently removed. I was browsing their site an hour ago, and wanted to see how large their staff is, and Wainright's name was definitely there on the drop down list. Weird.
 

nofi

Member
Looks like it was recently removed. I was browsing their site an hour ago, and wanted to see how large their staff is, and Wainright's name was definitely there on the drop down list. Weird.

You're right, I have it cached.

Hmm.

Whoever's done their CSS needs to check the menu, too, it's hard to actually get down.
 
Head of marketing calling John Walker the king of trolls, then apologizing when Walker started to ask him questions.

John Walker said:
Gosh. The head of marketing for Capcom, @OnlyOneT, seems to describe me as "king of the trolls"! http://bit.ly/Qp7cUQ (Cheers @ocelotwildly)

https://twitter.com/botherer/status/270496718762676224

Kieron Gillen fact checking the king of trolls statement.

Kieron Gillen said:
@botherer No, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geirrodur is the king of the Trolls.

https://twitter.com/kierongillen/status/270497972859596800
 

Gowans

Member
Strange, well if she still works their or is making articles she has to be posting under something.

Her or not how can you think you can get away with a meta review post and cherry picking... tut tut.
 
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