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[spirity]

I can't believe Polygon's Diablo 3 review. It's frankly astounding.

 

[EternalGamer]

I honestly can't get over the commentary on this from Weekend Confirmed, it's fucking ridiculous.

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.

 

[conman]

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.

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.

 

[Dictator93]

I usually frown upon .gif response. But seriously, this is just a perfect example of what the problem here is.

 

[Wrestlemania]

I gave up at "I wish people were this impassioned about something actually important" line.

 

[jett]

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.

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.

 

[CzarTim]

Stephen,

You say you keep the free stuff you get in boxes in the office. Is this stuff insured? If the property were stolen or damaged, would there be compensation?

You say you sometimes sell the free stuff at a charity drive, does Gawker deduct the money earned this way from its taxes?

You say you sometimes trade in free games at Gamestop, do you benefit from Gamestop's rewards program with those games? Are the games you get with credit added to your personal collection or kept at the company? Do those games ever get traded in? Does anybody who works for Kotaku keep any games or items received for free?

Would any of this raise the value of the company or persons involved?

If a company gave Kotaku money with a note to use it on a specific item, would you accept it? How is this different than receiving the item itself and not returning it?

 

[Foxtastical]

Editorial backed advertisements. Third party sponsored marketing. This is how Madison Avenue describes you, and instead of proving them wrong with your actions, you say NeoGAF posters are being hostile to game journalists while publishing unboxing videos?

Clearly your higher levels of intelligence and education are above our levels of comprehension.

 

[RedFalcon]

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.

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?"

 

[EternalGamer]

I can't believe Polygon's Diablo 3 review. It's frankly astounding.

"[Diablo 3 has] finally rendered its predecessor a footnote."

Diablo 2 is nothing more than a "footnote"? A footnote in what? Gaming history, I suppose (whatever the fuck that is)? And somehow Diablo 3, he is confidently saying, will play a major part in gaming history? After playing it for 40 hours a week before release his confident it is historic?

"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."

Gies is honestly saying here that Blizzard worked on Diablo 3 tirelessly and always thinking about you the player, for 11 years. Not that those 11 years had anything to do with the original team working on it being fired and moving on to other companies or the product itself being scrapped and restarted several times. No, those 11 years were all dedicated to deep, hard thought about excellent gameplay. Really?

"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."

And this is how he chooses to end the review, with this bombastic piece of hyperbole.


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.

 

[conman]

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.

Reviews are too easy to bash collectively. And it's too easy to respond with "reviews are just opinions" (which they are).

The real question is trust. Even if reviews are opinions, can we trust them? So far, the majority of the press is telling us, "no, we can't" and "we should just get over it and move on."

 

[StevePharma]

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.

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.

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.

 

[EternalGamer]

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.

Jeff is by far the one most willing to play Devil's advocate and he doesn't come off as completely defensive. He did talk about how much he values reader's trust and how carefully he (thinks he) guards his opinion. Sometimes he even seems to hesitate and reflect for a moment. But that statement he makes about people having a problem with the Keighley pic just because Keighley is successful is pretty astounding. And Andrea is just absolutely absurdly reactionary and non-reflective throughout the entire discussion (in other words, she is being Andrea).

 

[I'm an expert]

Jeff Gerstmann totally accepted that flight to Rome from Capcom didn't he. =(

 

[Foxtastical]

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.

Any educated person should be able to realize this.

You are not a super man. You are human.

 

[braves01]

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.

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.

 

[conman]

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.

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.

 

[CzarTim]

Jeff Gerstmann totally accepted that flight to Rome from Capcom didn't he. =(

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.

 

[EternalGamer]

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.

I think the score is just another symptom rather than the underlying problem. I mean, do you think there are any regular players of Diablo 3 that would give that game a perfect 10 after they played it for a week or two? I am not saying it is a bad game, but calling it the pinnacle of the genre and a huge contribution to gaming history? Would anyone consider it that stuff?

My hypothesis, as I stated above, is that they are reviewing it in the center of the hype around it. Meanwhile the player might experience that day one media hype when they first get the game for the first couple of hours they play it on the first night. But then they continue to play it over the next week or so. Reality sets in. I think this perhaps establishes a key difference between how game media experience games before they come out and how gamers experience it after it comes out.

 

[I'm an expert]

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.

I like to think the GB crew is above that kind of stuff, I suppose that's the trust that Klepek was talking about, but you really can't exclude them from this. Though I will say the "we're not journalists" line would totally apply to the GB crew (minus Klepek) because they're critics, but even then a critic should not be accepting anything from that which they are critiquing.

 

[McBradders]

(in other words, she is being Andrea).

Pretty much, yes. I expected far, far more from Garnett, though.

 

[conman]

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.

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.

And as any writer knows, you write like what you read and hear. You can't help it. There have even been studies that show this. If all you're surrounded by are fellow journalists, marketing materials, PR reps, PR-coached developers, etc., you will sound like they sound. Which is yet another important reason why journalists need to erect firm boundaries that separate them from as much of this as possible. If for no other reason than to not write like a total hack.

Gies may be a standup dude for posting here, but he has a lot to learn about good writing. And, he, like many other game reviewers would be best served by first isolating themselves from the language and environment of marketing.

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.

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.

 

[Oxx]

The Giant Bomb crew ate EA-provided pizza on camera during a Medal of Honor stream.

It's a greasy business.

 

[Hot Coldman]

I really want to like Totilo, but that picture from their comments section on Rab's Twitter makes it real fucking hard.

The Giant Bomb crew ate EA-provided pizza on camera during a Medal of Honor stream.

It's a greasy business.

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.

 

[papersleeves]

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.

Then they give the game 3 stars out of 5.

 

[Lancehead]

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.

This is why I said earlier that the bigger issue is the preview hype, not the reviews necessarily. If the game had received glowing previews, chances are, reviews will also be glowing - a confirmation of the preview hype. And you know what, most gamers follow the same cycle - preview hype, review confirmation.

 

[Freeza Under The Shower]

I don't think it's fair to judge Tolito for everything Kotaku is and does. Having been able to observe some GJ professionals in their daily work, it's both fascinating and awkward to note that both a professionally run organization and a not-quite-professionally run organization can produce about the same result in terms of style, content, and intended audience. And of course, all of the selfpropelled myths GJ have about players and the industry. (which are shared by roughly 99% of NeoGAF btw)

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. If I told you that some teen or gossip magazines were written by highly educated professionals, you would probably laugh your ass off and say "no f-ing way". But that is actually true for quite a few of them, despite the products tone, content, and audience. Also: what is believed to be the product's audience may not actually be that audience. Which is to say that like all verbal / written products, it is independent from its producer. Journalists may not write about things they really want, like, or interest them in the slightest. It's their job to sell the product, not their own values.

This seems to be missing from how posters look at outlets in this topic. The thought seems to be that Tolito controls the content of Kotaku, which was already an established brand when he became part of it. (as I see it It's actually more the other way around. Whatever values he and his staff may have, have to be second to the demands of the product: Kotaku.


What is interesting about this thread, just as it was with Denis Dyack at the time, is the rather personal vendetta in it. "calling out" [insert person]. I know that this whole "personal focus" has been a growing part of journalism in general since the decline of printed newspapers, but it seems much more so in GJ. I think it's worth pointing out that this "personalized access" to professionals is a myth in the sense that the person is still quite irrelevant to the demands of the product.

Also: I have said it before, and I will say it again: the Dyack "victory" was a huge loss in terms of having access to industry professionals and their personal views on their work. Community managers started popping up after that. And 'management' currently means 'control'. Their job is specifically to protect the brand / product (company and products) from detractors. Which is the core of PR.

If you want a serious debate about what GJ is, can be, or is allowed to do for that matter, there also has to be a discussion about the degree of (non-PR regulated) access to companies has to made possible by those some companies. I assure you that they have zero interest in letting anyone near their stuff without PR regulating their every movement. You might as well go to North Korea for the authentic "game industry visitor experience" (patent pending).
I mean: you can't expect journalists to be able to do their jobs (more than currently the case) by their own values when there is zero room for error in terms of keeping access.

/ my two cents

 

[Oxx]

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.

They still put 'Is it funny?' and 'Am I hungry?' ahead of 'Is this tacky?' or 'Should we accept this?'.

 

[OMG Aero]

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.

 

[Hot Coldman]

Maybe the pizza was really bad and it influenced them the other way.

Twist: Activision sent the pizza!

Then they give the game 3 stars out of 5.

They're not great at giving scores: valid point.

 

[jschreier]

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!

 

[Noaloha]

Requoting because the relevance of the below can't be emphasised enough.

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."

 

[NervousXtian]

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.

..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.

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.

..welcome to the real world. I know people have said it, but that's pretty much every industry.

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.

This guy gets it.

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.

Umm.. you don't see the difference between reading the box and someone actually showing you what is in the box?

 

[stephentotilo]

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?"

There is if you look for it. Here's an ESRB-related story you might find edifying: http://kotaku.com/5901423/two-video-games-two-age-ratings-whats-the-bloody-difference

 

[jim-jam bongs]

..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?

this is the most hilariously naive and ethically bankrupt thing I have read all week, congrats.

 

[Lancehead]

Umm.. you don't see the difference between reading the box and someone actually showing you what is in the box?

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?

 

[snap0212]

..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.

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.

 

[beastmode]

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.

.

 

[Boss Man]

If anything, this has made me very aware of which sites are worth paying attention to and which ones aren't

 

[Sissel]

This whole charade seems to only be a problem for people who go to shitty sources for their reviews.

 

[Victrix]

I'm somewhat disappointed to note that a lot of people seem to think that 'marketing' is only successful if the reaction is a positive one.

That's not how marketing works.

You really think companies spend billions of dollars a year on advertising that doesn't work because the too-smart consumer goes 'oh, ads don't affect me, I ignore them all'? Do you think you're somehow alone in your smug view that you're above the influence of ads?

Or more simply, any press is good press.

Ignoring the hilarious tie between Metacritic averages and bonuses inside the industry, do you really think reviews for Halo, CoD, or GTA make a bit of fucking difference? Or reviews for a game than a publisher _knows_ is a dog?

Plenty of titles that are either objectively or subjectively terrible have sold extremely well - those occasionally show up on GAF in 'I can't believe this' threads, same goes for games that are objectively or subjectively amazing have sold poorly. Quality is far from the only factor that determines if a game is a financial success or failure.

The level of coverage for a title is just as important as any single review or review score (more? much more?). If a game is getting prerelease coverage on a daily or weekly basis on every gaming press website out there, their marketing and PR teams are doing a great job. And yes, this includes insipid unboxing videos and showing off the swag the PR department sent in a feature article.

 

[MC Safety]

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?"

Every publication under the sun writes stories that are free advertising. They're called previews or features. When you read an interview with Brad Pitt about his latest movie, well, that's free advertising. When Xbox Nation (were it still publishing, this would be free advertising!) writes a profile of Tim Schafer and runs it over four pages with a picture of the man, his staff, and screen shots for Psychonauts, that's free advertising too.

It seems as if you're suggesting these kinds of stories, the ones that promote an event or product or service are inherently without merit. Or maybe that's an overexaggeration.

 

[Aaron]

Jeff Gerstmann totally accepted that flight to Rome from Capcom didn't he. =(

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.

 

[chickdigger802]

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!

Thanks! The thing is toning down the hatred = threads dying lol. But yeah, hopefully most people here aren't taking that halo pic seriously, even though it does work quite well with the starting Geoff pic I admit.

 

[conman]

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.

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.

A college education is a "product." A novel is a "product." Some might even argue that an individual's very identity is a "product."

But that's as much an excuse for casting ethics aside as is saying "I'm not a journalist." I won't buy it.

 

[beastmode]

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!

?

Also, that Twitter garbage is on you, no one else.

 

[NervousXtian]

this is the most hilariously naive and ethically bankrupt thing I have read all week, congrats.

Huh? How so? Un-boxing a console sent by MS where they don't hide the fact it was sent to them and that even MS PR made sure to say that it came with the game? They were honest about the whole thing.

This isn't even an ethical question to begin with.

You want to talk about reviews that were written by PR people, or scores raised because they were paid off or threatened? Sure.. have do some digging on that and let's discuss it.

That's what this is about, right? Some un-boxing video just makes the argument stupid, because there's nothing inherently wrong with it at all. It's harmless.

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?

Of course it's marketing. So? There's no place for that? Did the un-boxing video somehow make the SK story bad?

There's room for more than just serious journalism, and yeah even the place for marketing/PR type shit.

Want to get back to discussing how that Marketing/PR stuff is affecting the serious journalism again? Or is this even about that?

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 not a parasitic relationship that only the PR machine gains from. If you want to believe all PR for companies are that way, I think we've seen to contrary from the press just in this thread.

There's a certain level you have to play ball, but that's in every field. If your job is to cover a subject, you don't just piss off that subject and expect them to give you info. Doesn't mean you bend over and let them write the story themselves either.

 

[beastmode]

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.

It's time to stop posting

 

[spirity]

This will all blow over and it will be business as usual, we'll go back to watching video game award shows where gamers are ridiculed and game designers are told that if you spend too long on your acceptance speech you'll be tea-bagged, because we don't want it to overrun into the Felicia Day bobbing for cupcakes segment, while PR people and journalists slap each other on the back for winning a Playstation 4. Geoff will sit next to more bags of doritos and the next time some uppity writer gets any big ideas about speaking openly and honestly, they'll think twice or get fired. And not a single fuck will be given, apparently.

Nobody wants change, because between journalists and marketing its one hand feeding the other. IGN, Gamepot, Kotaku and all the rest have ran a mile from this because it hits too close to home. Just ignore it, the fuss will go away in a few days and we can get back to high-fiving our friends in marketing on twitter.

I'll tell you one thing though. Before I always had my doubts about games journalists and the reviews. But that's all they were. Doubts. The past few days has been both an eye opener and a travesty - and I'm not borrowing from the Diablo 3 review school of hyperbole here when I say that.

 

[NervousXtian]

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.

This is such a great post.

The haters gonna hate, but they are broadly painting this brush on all gaming coverage as bought and paid for... and if they can't understand why that would be somewhat insulting of those in the field.. well.. maybe they should look at why they get so insulted when someone refers to NeoGaf as a collective.