I can't believe Polygon's Diablo 3 review. It's frankly astounding.
I honestly can't get over the commentary on this from Weekend Confirmed, it's fucking ridiculous.
Boo. Guess that's one more outlet I might be done with. Haven't had a chance to listen to this week's yet. I'll give it a listen and see if it really is that bad.To be fair, Jeff Cannata did say at first that it is "easy to seem defensive about this issue." Then they pretty much went on to be very defensive about this issue.
The "First review of Hitman" thread reminded me about how tired I am of all the review bullshit. On good days I can manage the complete lack of critical thinking when I am reading these almost sycophant, fanboy-like rants on "best game ever 9/10!", but what irks me the most right now is the fact that I as a reader has to wade through all the bullshit PR talk and superlatives in order to actually get an understanding of the actual game they're reviewing.
I'm so sick and tired of reading a review and I have to spend so much energy on looking for actual information on the game, because every score, every adjective, and every value statement have been rendered completely meaningless by this enthusiast press. I mean, I cannot possibly take this seriously in any way whatsoever:
Reviews are basically just a wall of platitudes these days.
Exactly. And yet journalists say they're doing nothing wrong. So not only is MS "buying" direct access to readers/viewers, but they're also "buying" a site's credibility. It's dirty. And the fact that journalists don't want to acknowledge or admit this is even dirtier.
I can't believe Polygon's Diablo 3 review. It's frankly astounding.
"[Diablo 3 has] finally rendered its predecessor a footnote."
"It's rare that high profile sequels take 11 years to come to fruition, but Diablo 3 feels like all that time meant something. That all along, Blizzard was thinking about the hows and whys of the series, that nothing was sacred in their efforts to make something that lived up to the hype."
"Diablo 3 is almost evil in how high a bar it's set for every PC action RPG to follow, and I wouldn't be surprised to see that bar remain for a very long time."
Reviews are too easy to bash collectively. And it's too easy to respond with "reviews are just opinions" (which they are).http://www.neogaf.com/forum/showthread.php?t=454236&highlight
Reviews by the enthusiast press are completely fucking useless. I'd much rather read impressions here and make up my own mind by checking a fact list, gameplay videos and/or a demo.
Precisely. Sites are doing what amounts to "free advertising" anytime they show this crap.
Do readers like it? Of course. Does that mean game sites should make these videos themselves? Hell, no. Let MS (or whoever) do this junk. Link to it if you absolutely must. As any journalist should know, just because it gets clicks that doesn't mean it's ethical.
Boo. Guess that's one more outlet I might be done with. Haven't had a chance to listen to this week's yet. I'll give it a listen and see if it really is that bad.
In the wake of this, my reading and listening habits will have changed quite a bit.
And how is it that Eurogamer (as ground zero for this renewed discussion) ends up looking like an awesome group of journalists at the end of this? It's amazing what a little bit of "mea culpa" and an open acknowledgment of an issue will do. Great to see them say things will be changing.
Any educated person should be able to realize this.Being schooled and working in the field of pharmaceuticals I can confirm the things mr. Elliot pointed out about subversive marketing. Your ethics are being manipulated even when you don't think your strings are being pulled.
Ok, so here is an honest question. What do you guys thinks perpetuates smart people to write sentences such as this? Can it be anything other than the media circus that leads up to the release of games like this. Was anyone, any player at all, saying this kind of thing about the game a week or two after it came out? This seems a prime example of someone who unintentionally got caught up in media hype.
Sony's approach is a great model (from the publisher/manufacturer side, at least). Sites still link to it, but they don't have to sell their trustworthiness to do so. For more companies to follow Sony's lead, it would take the big media sites stopping doing this junk themselves. Very quickly, readers would be able to separate the wheat from the chaff.I love Sony's approach in providing those things (for example an unboxing video of Uncharted 3 with Nolan North) in an official blog. That way it's more clear you are being marketed towards. I wish more companies would take this approach, even though I can understand smaller companies can also benefit from being exposed on a big media website.
Jeff Gerstmann totally accepted that flight to Rome from Capcom didn't he. =(
The score, pure and simple. You HAVE to write language like to justify the score, otherwise people highlight everything negative you said like in Shoe's review of Gears and ask how the hell did X still get a 10? One thing Kotaku generally does right imo is their reviews. Pure opinion broken down into like and dislike followed by a recommendation.
Have you seen videos of his garage? It's filled with games and press kits.
All of that stuff adds to his personal wealth, and a lot of it was paid for by the very people he should be objective about.
(in other words, she is being Andrea).
I think many game reviewers have unintentionally internalized the language of marketing. Reviewers know on some level that sentences will be excerpted from their reviews and used on other sites, Metacritic, and even in company marketing. Reviewers may not mean for it to happen, but it must register on some level while they're writing. So they veer into marketing-style hyperbole, whether it's positive or negative.Ok, so here is an honest question. What do you guys thinks perpetuates smart people to write sentences such as this? Can it be anything other than the media circus that leads up to the release of games like this. Was anyone, any Diablo 3 player at all, saying this kind of thing about the game two weeks after it came out? This seems a prime example of someone who unintentionally got caught up in media hype.
Which is why they also have adopted "fluid" reviews and scores. They'll continue updating their reviews over time. We'll see how this pans out. But in theory, it sounds like an awesome idea. It also gives a bit of a middle finger to Metacritic.Gies and Polygon in general make it part of their editorial philsophy that they review a game "how it is on day one." But maybe that is part of the entire problem. Because "day one" is surrounded by the media circus that leads up to its release. It is not the same as the game most players actually experience.
The Giant Bomb crew ate EA-provided pizza on camera during a Medal of Honor stream.
It's a greasy business.
I really want to like Totilo, but that picture from their comments section on Rab's Twitter makes it real fucking hard.
Then they proceeded to rag on the game for 90 minutes, and expose its shitty AI, terrible storytelling and general blandness for all to see.
Ok, so here is an honest question. What do you guys thinks perpetuates smart people to write sentences such as this? Can it be anything other than the media circus that leads up to the release of games like this. Was anyone, any Diablo 3 player at all, saying this kind of thing about the game two weeks after it came out? This seems a prime example of someone who unintentionally got caught up in media hype.
Gies and Polygon in general make it part of their editorial philsophy that they review a game "how it is on day one." But maybe that is part of the entire problem. Because "day one" is surrounded by the media circus that leads up to its release. It is not the same as the game most players actually experience.
Then they proceeded to rag on the game for 90 minutes, and expose its shitty AI, terrible storytelling and general blandness for all to see.
Maybe the pizza was really bad and it influenced them the other way.Then they proceeded to rag on the game for 90 minutes, and expose its shitty AI, terrible storytelling and general blandness for all to see.
Maybe the pizza was really bad and it influenced them the other way.
Then they give the game 3 stars out of 5.
in among people dismissing this story and the broader ideas around it i've seen a few people talk about trying to learn from it which is nice
eurogamer's simon parkin tweeted this "Week's lesson: perception is almost as important as truth. Time to make some changes."
and christian donlan this - "Long way to go, but the message of Rob's piece -before and after edits- has really made me want to change way I do things."
Microsoft sent you that package because they wanted/hoped to get some coverage of their game this late in the PR cycle. Yes, there might be reasons why covering it is interesting to your readers, but let's not forget that the one and only reason why Microsoft sent you this is to achieve a specific goal (I've mentioned it earlier: Nice huge boxes naturally get more attention, etc). Bluntly said; they play you like puppets. Not necessarily evil or bad for your users in this case, but that's what it is and absolutely nothing else.
Maybe you shouldnt be perpetuating a hype machine that actively encourages readers to buy things "day one" any way. If that is game writing's primary function than it really is just an extension of PR.
Have you ever stopped to think that the perpetuation of this "gotta have it day one" concept stems directly from the PR-Media machine? I have a lot of friends who like videogames but have never been a "hardcore gamer" like I am. They dont read tons of magazines and websites. They buy a lot of games for full price but rarely do I hear them clamoring for release dates amd they never preorder or stand in lines outside of stores.
Well I don't see Kotaku got played in the sense that they weren't aware of MS's intentions. Everybody got what they wanted: MS gets coverage, Kotaku get clicks, readers get information. Obviously there should be a larger point of discussion on this kind of practice in the first place.
I dont even understand what the fuck is useful about this. The box lists its contents. Everybody knows what a 360 is and how it works. The only purpose of showing unboxings is to build anticipating and create allure. In other words, marketing.
Next time I buy fast food maybe I should youtube my "unboxing."
The very fact that a lot of readers apparently dont realize that unboxings are nothing more than marketing just highlights part of the problem.
If you want to do a hardware review, do a hardware review. But that is not what unboxings are. They are just consumer porn.
Bingo! If marketing/PR got nothing out of the arraignment, they wouldn't do it. Just saying, "Eh, it's an unboxing. There's nothing wrong with that," is "journalists" deluding themselves. Congrats, you just did free advertising for [insert name of game company here].
Also, it's incredibly lazy. I know click-through rate, pageviews, etc., rule the day for most sites, but go out there and do some actual work. Write up a critical editorial. Do an investigative piece on something. Write a critique of a game instead of a traditional review.
I remember doing stuff like this editorial: Does The Industry Need The ESRB? The few that read it back in the day said, "Why isn't there more stuff like this?"
..Or both are getting something out of it? You see it as a problem because you think all PR/Marketing is evil. It's not.
Game sites are in this to make money, and game companies are in this to make money. Things like sending a Halo 4 X-box to a game site to get a little coverage is far from harmful to anyone.. unless you believe there is secret evil intentions.
The intentions are very clear on all sides. The readers get's a quick look on whether they want to buy the product, the site get's hits, and MS get's a little press.
Nobody is suffering for it.. and honestly it's only a few places on the internet who really think that something like this is so ethically wrong. It'd only be ethically wrong if the site pretended like they bought it themselves and hid that fact. They don't.
..welcome to the real world. I know people have said it, but that's pretty much every industry.
This guy gets it.
Umm.. you don't see the difference between reading the box and someone actually showing you what is in the box?
Umm.. you don't see the difference between reading the box and someone actually showing you what is in the box?
Have you even read my post? I highly doubt it, because I explicitly pointed out that it's not necessarily evil...Or both are getting something out of it? You see it as a problem because you think all PR/Marketing is evil. It's not.
Game sites are in this to make money, and game companies are in this to make money. Things like sending a Halo 4 X-box to a game site to get a little coverage is far from harmful to anyone.. unless you believe there is secret evil intentions.
The intentions are very clear on all sides. The readers get's a quick look on whether they want to buy the product, the site get's hits, and MS get's a little press.
Nobody is suffering for it.. and honestly it's only a few places on the internet who really think that something like this is so ethically wrong. It'd only be ethically wrong if the site pretended like they bought it themselves and hid that fact. They don't.
I haven't had time to read through this thread to absorb the full sweep of issues you guys are discussing. Yesterday, I was focused on our own readers' questions about why we hadn't covered the Florence story and on this thread's discussion of Kotaku. Chatting here helped me understand how much broader the concerns were, which is what I'll be looking into, hopefully without just rehashing the same-old, same-old from other stories about games journalism I and others have done over the years. I've already done pieces about issues with reviews and I've never been compelled strongly about suspicions about reporters and critics being on the take probably in part because I've had the benefit of working at and for outlets (MTV, Kotaku, the NY Times) which are far better insulated from many of the compromising pitfalls (to mix metaphors) than most. Still, it seems there must be new ground to cover here after all, despite my initial skepticism, otherwise this thread wouldn't have gone on so long.
.Um, because I just had a drink? I don't know. It's almost as weird as people having amnesia about the good journalism done on Kotaku just so they can selectively bash us. People can be unpredictable and occasionally inconsistent.
Why isn't the thread about our Silicon Knights story this long, NeoGAF? Sweeping that one under the rug?
Imagine a world where good games journalism doesn't generate really long threads on NeoGAF, but threads about games journalism and the alleged lack of good games journalism does. I guess everyone, not just Nick Denton, loves the whiff of scandal.
Bingo! If marketing/PR got nothing out of the arraignment, they wouldn't do it. Just saying, "Eh, it's an unboxing. There's nothing wrong with that," is "journalists" deluding themselves. Congrats, you just did free advertising for [insert name of game company here].
Also, it's incredibly lazy. I know click-through rate, pageviews, etc., rule the day for most sites, but go out there and do some actual work. Write up a critical editorial. Do an investigative piece on something. Write a critique of a game instead of a traditional review.
I remember doing stuff like this editorial: Does The Industry Need The ESRB? The few that read it back in the day said, "Why isn't there more stuff like this?"
Oh no! That's why he gave Resident Evil 6 a 6/5 and said it was the best game in the history of the universe. Except he didn't. His impressions from the event were pretty lukewarm, and he didn't even review the game they were showing off. Instead Brad Shoemaker gave it a pretty scathing 2/5. Clearly, Jeff is bought and paid for.Jeff Gerstmann totally accepted that flight to Rome from Capcom didn't he. =(
Folks, I probably won't have time to post much today, but I just want to repeat that it's refreshing to see how heated people are getting about these issues. No matter how you interpret my Twitter feed, you should know that I think ethics are always worth debating and discussing, and we are constantly thinking and talking about these subjects at Kotaku, as Stephen pointed out.
I do wish that some of you weren't so quick to attack and dismiss Kotaku at every opportunity, and I do wish that folks hadn't boiled down a complicated issue to an out-of-context meme image (note that the Halo video was days before any of this happened!), but I'm reading and appreciating a lot of these thoughts even when I don't necessarily agree with them. Even when I disagree with some of your hardline stances -- like the idea that we shouldn't be taking review copies from publishers -- I do think it'd be good for more reporters to embrace their inner idealist.
So keep talking. Maybe try to tone down the hatred a bit. But the conversation is great!
I don't think many here would disagree with the content of what you're saying. But your implied conclusion, "It's a product, so they needn't worry about being good journalists," is the height of cynicism.What I'm trying to say is that "journalism" is a far too wide concept to use in this context since a website or magazine is first and foremost (!) a product (or brand) that has to be sold, and as such is a mold into which everything is fitted.
?Folks, I probably won't have time to post much today, but I just want to repeat that it's refreshing to see how heated people are getting about these issues. No matter how you interpret my Twitter feed, you should know that I think ethics are always worth debating and discussing, and we are constantly thinking and talking about these subjects at Kotaku, as Stephen pointed out.
I do wish that some of you weren't so quick to attack and dismiss Kotaku at every opportunity, and I do wish that folks hadn't boiled down a complicated issue to an out-of-context meme image (note that the Halo video was days before any of this happened!), but I'm reading and appreciating a lot of these thoughts even when I don't necessarily agree with them. Even when I disagree with some of your hardline stances -- like the idea that we shouldn't be taking review copies from publishers -- I do think it'd be good for more reporters to embrace their inner idealist.
So keep talking. Maybe try to tone down the hatred a bit. But the conversation is great!
this is the most hilariously naive and ethically bankrupt thing I have read all week, congrats.
The point is, it's nothing more than marketing. You could say they're "reviewing" the bundle, as Totilo put it in his post earlier, but it probably is not a product Kotaku asked for or expressed an interest in reviewing it (I may be wrong), but are sent.
This makes me wonder what message Microsoft send with the bundle. Do they ask outlets to review the bundle? Or to show it to their audience?
Have you even read my post? I highly doubt it, because I explicitly pointed out that it's not necessarily evil.
What I said is that PR can play the press like puppets and that the press plays along. They have to. Jeff Green explained that one pretty well - there's a link somewhere in this Thread.
It's time to stop postingOh no! That's why he gave Resident Evil 6 a 6/5 and said it was the best game in the history of the universe. Except he didn't. His impressions from the event were pretty lukewarm, and he didn't even review the game they were showing off. Instead Brad Shoemaker gave it a pretty scathing 2/5. Clearly, Jeff is bought and paid for.
If someone is petty enough to be seduced by a free trip or a free PS3, you shouldn't trust their opinions no matter what they're getting or not. Because the decent reviewers and members of the game press realize this stuff doesn't really matter. They're not cheap enough to let this kind of stuff influence their opinion. Giant Bomb gets many of the games they quick look for free, but if they don't they just go out and buy the game themselves, and don't treat them any differently.
People who say, "Gaming press is only just PR!" are really fucking stupid. Like 'the earth is only 6000 years old' stupid.
Oh no! That's why he gave Resident Evil 6 a 6/5 and said it was the best game in the history of the universe. Except he didn't. His impressions from the event were pretty lukewarm, and he didn't even review the game they were showing off. Instead Brad Shoemaker gave it a pretty scathing 2/5. Clearly, Jeff is bought and paid for.
If someone is petty enough to be seduced by a free trip or a free PS3, you shouldn't trust their opinions no matter what they're getting or not. Because the decent reviewers and members of the game press realize this stuff doesn't really matter. They're not cheap enough to let this kind of stuff influence their opinion. Giant Bomb gets many of the games they quick look for free, but if they don't they just go out and buy the game themselves, and don't treat them any differently.
People who say, "Gaming press is only just PR!" are really fucking stupid. Like 'the earth is only 6000 years old' stupid.