Oyashrio-Sama
Member
You have my Axe ($15) Pete!
I dont think review scores are the entirety of "playing ball." Especially singular ones. Some games suck and everyone pans them. Other times a big site pans a game that others don't. I'm not saying that doesn't happen. But if a big site legitimately didn't like every ubisoft game for a year would ubisoft continue to send them games? That's one of the questions i would like to get to the bottom of.
And if i'm ubisoft, do I send them games? I certainly understand the argument for not doing it, from a financial standpoint. But I don't care about Ubisoft's financials, I care about transparency to the customer.
$500 is barely anything for a web design.
That's the hope with news.
Lets take Amy Hennig leaving ND for instance. IGN wrote what I thought was an irresponsible story that mixed facts with fiction and rumor and innuendo. I don't blame IGN for reporting the rumor they heard, but the way they deliver news is that it's all bunched together which gives the impression (especially non-critical thinkers) that it's all news.
On our site news will be broken down into three parts. Facts, Conjecture, Rumors. Because I don't want people confusing any of the three.
The facts would state who Amy Hennig is, what she has done in her career, and that she left Naughty Dog.
Conjecture would then have my (or whoever wrote the piece) opinion on it. What it means for the uncharted franchise. What it means for Amy. All easily identified as opinion.
Rumor would then, if we had the "she was forced out" rumor (she wasn't btw, well, not entirely) we would post that.
Same info as IGN but presented in a much more responsible way. This also assumes you want to hear my or our my writer's conjecture on a given story. Some people will, some people won't, some people will send death threats on twitter. That's cool. For everyone other than the people who want me dead, you can read the facts and then get right out of there.
But just because one site is negative about one game doesn't mean they won't be positive about another. It's all only one persons opinion after all. There is no way they'd blackball a big site ever, not unless they were really going out thier way to upset the publisher. (It has happened, I know Eurogamer didn't get code from one publisher)
I agree one game will most likely never sink the ship unless its something insanely huge like Call of Duty. But that is just the problem look at Battlefield 4, that game shouldn't have gotten the scores it did, yet it got them from literally everyone in the games journalism buisness. http://www.metacritic.com/game/playstation-4/battlefield-4 An 86 for a game which will randomly delete saves, has somehow made its netcode worse than 3, etc... got stellar reviews? Why? I think the logic I outlined is the most likely culprit. Games journalism/Game development in general doesn't reward that well financially so I agree with the sentiment that most of the people who run these sites aren't corrupt in nature, but you can't dismiss the fact they are businesses and most of the core gaming audience views their opinions with far more cynicism than they use too.
Pete:
Polygon was supposed to be a paradigm shift too.
It was, but for the wrong reasons. It's done well to prop up MS questionable business plans and poke the fanboy fires, while providing cover and misleading stories. Editorially, they're all over the map (Do tiny differences in performance matter? One day yes, another day resolution and frame-rates are overrated!).
Taking a quarter of a million dollars from MS is all you really need to know. You don't do that if you're looking to be independent.
These questions are irrelevant to customers. I hope you get that. Gamers don't care about Ubisoft's review copy policies -- they care about how they spend their time and money. After a game's release day, anyone can watch or read about it on a bazillion different sources. Nobody needs another. There is no hole you're filling here. It's a waste of your resources, your audience, and the money that people are giving you. Use that to do something better.I dont think review scores are the entirety of "playing ball." Especially singular ones. Some games suck and everyone pans them. Other times a big site pans a game that others don't. I'm not saying that doesn't happen. But if a big site legitimately didn't like every ubisoft game for a year would ubisoft continue to send them games? That's one of the questions i would like to get to the bottom of.
And if i'm ubisoft, do I send them games? I certainly understand the argument for not doing it, from a financial standpoint. But I don't care about Ubisoft's financials, I care about transparency to the customer.
It makes me look at Pete and think ; So someone else is getting money/clicks/something, for something you said on NeoGAF? Then there's this gem of an article.
What the hell is this? It's just Pete's name on an article and an opinion. Are you serious? When I see this, all I can say is...
If you really have all these contributors willing to write free articles/news/reviews and someone willing to design your site for free, why not just launch it as a hobby first and then figure out a monetization plan before you try and make a living off this?
I'll throw in 20 bucks if misterxmedia will write features. And get mrcteam for the paint skillz.
As for reviews, keep in mind that if your reviews come out a week late no one will care. I've had to put up reviews late in the past and I may as well not have bothered. Absolutely nobody will read them. Once again your time will be better spent elsewhere. Also, never once have I ever gotten in trouble for a low review score. That's largely a myth and I've never seen anyone in the industry actually get in trouble for it. The only problems that arises are that fans of a particular game will rip you to shreds if you give "their" game a low score, but nothing from publishers. The story of the corrupt media outlets is largely a fabrication from what I've seen.
These questions are irrelevant to customers. I hope you get that. Gamers don't care about Ubisoft's review copy policies -- they care about how they spend their time and money. After a game's release day, anyone can watch or read about it on a bazillion different sources. Nobody needs another. There is no hole you're filling here. It's a waste of your resources, your audience, and the money that people are giving you. Use that to do something better.
I feel like a fairly large part of NeoGAF believes in quite a few of these gaming journalism myths. Now, there might be a few rotten apples in this industry that make the rest look bad but I've read some pretty delusional things regarding the "luxury" you apparently get.
Just a few months ago, I had to go to Paris to attend a Dark Souls II preview event. Namco covered traveling expenses for the Brussels -> Paris train but the rest was on me. I think it was around 200 so some people might think this is a free trip to Paris. Truth is, I have to wake up way early to catch my train, quickly buy some food/drinks at the station and then sit in a train for an hour till I reach Brussels because it's not like I live there. Once I'm there, it's another two hours or so till I reach Paris.
When I'm there, you have to cross the city and find your way to the event. It's kinda chaotic because I'm not used to Paris. When you're there, you get a presentation and play the game. But once it's over, you have to cross the entire city again real fast because the train ticket you have is on a fixed time and you have to make sure to not miss it. It's not like you have time left to check out Paris, visit the Eifel tower and stuff. For me, it's six hours (total, to Paris and back home) in a train, around 45min. crossing the city to the event and then you sit there playing the game with your headphones on. I barely have time to realise I'm in a different country.
It's a real hassle if you have multiple games like this in one week, so I really don't mind if my chief editor is like "you don't need to go anywhere next month". But I've seen people on here claim events like this are a real treat and people get influenced by them to give games better review scores etc. If anything, I'd rather have them send me the physical copy so I can relax and play it at home instead of all the stress I sometimes get with these events.
I've worked in gaming journalism for a few years so I feel like I may have something to contribute here.
First off, listen to Jason. Everything he's said has been solid advice and will make your life a whole lot better once everything gets up and going. Especially about the niche - you need to find one and take it for all it's worth. Don't spread yourself too thin.
I'd like to touch on your news and reviews, especially. Leaks should be your primary focus because that's something unique your site can do that no one else can. You'll be much less successful in standard, run of the mill news. My site tried that for a bit and we ran into the problem that nobody cares. Readers are already checking IGN, Gamespot, etc. for news so they have reason to get it from you. You say that it will be worth it if it attracts even one reader, but trust me, it's really not. Once you find yourself working hours everyday to find and write the news and have essentially nobody read it your tune will change very quickly. It's essentially wasted time that would be better spent elsewhere.
As for reviews, keep in mind that if your reviews come out a week late no one will care. I've had to put up reviews late in the past and I may as well not have bothered. Absolutely nobody will read them. Once again your time will be better spent elsewhere. Also, never once have I ever gotten in trouble for a low review score. That's largely a myth and I've never seen anyone in the industry actually get in trouble for it. The only problems that arises are that fans of a particular game will rip you to shreds if you give "their" game a low score, but nothing from publishers. The story of the corrupt media outlets is largely a fabrication from what I've seen.
With that said, I wish you luck. I've seen your posts and you're a great dude so I really hope this works out for you. Feel free to PM if I can help in any way. I've been in this business long enough to feel like I've gotten pretty good at it.
I'll throw in 20 bucks if misterxmedia will write features. And get mrcteam for the paint skillz.
Timdog will be our social media guy.
Also, Jason, I respectfully disagree. I think there are plenty of people who want to know how the industry works. Not Kotaku-like numbers of people, but enthusiasts that want to understand everything they can about the hobby they love so much. I don't feel like it's a waste of time looking into such things.
As for the site staff. I still need to go through all of the applications and pick who is qualified and who isn't but there are atleast 15 people who have asked to write for the site. I have several people helping me with site design. One, you guys know, he goes by Mik on this forum - check out his work in the mock up videogame covers - the man is fucking brilliant with design. As a i mentioned earlier I have two different sociologists that want to contribute from time to time because I think the fact that games being "addictive" being thought of as a good thing is worrying. Or that most mobile games are basically slot machines. Several gaffers want to help. Vince McMahon (formerly sunflower) completely sold me with a PM where he said he had no interest in snark and wanted to do something earnest. I have a professor of english who does not want to be named that will help edit (and we all know I need that). I have a few other 'grammar nerds' that have offered to do the same. This will be a much larger operation than I planned. And every one of these people are doing this for free because they believe in the idea and they are also looking for someone to give them their break. I'm happy to a part of both of those things.
I would love to have an advertising department that has zero contact with me or anyone in creative. As of yet I don't have that person. So google ad-sense it is, for now.
First of all, let me say that when I first read this thread and looked at the Indiegogo project, I was pretty skeptical. I would have thrown in with Jason and others who have basically said this is a waste of time, it's nothing more than Wordpress blog, you're not doing anything new or special, etc. etc.
And while I still don't fully agree with all of Pete's premise for why he's doing this, I think there is some real value here. For better or worse, it's clear that a lot of gamers no longer trust the big sites and publications like IGN, GameSpot, even Kotaku. We could argue all day long (and we certainly have) about the reasons for this and whether they're valid, but the simple fact remains that trust has been lost.
On top of this, it's clear that gamers want more and different information than what the mainstream games press is providing them. They want more about resolution. They want more about frame rate. They want to know the inner workings of the industry in ways that just don't get adequately covered right now.
(Jason, you made a comment saying that gamers don't want to know the review policies of big publishers... I think that's an overgeneralization. People are passionate about games and everything that surrounds them. They are aching to absorb as much information as possible about them. I think it's doing a disservice to your audience to assume people don't want to know about that stuff.)
If Pete can be a champion for gamers and provide this type of information and insight that they can't get elsewhere, or if he can provide similar information in a way that more gamers trust him, then I think that's valuable. Even if reviews don't come out right away, some people will still find value in them. Don't assume that everyone buys games on day one. Some people don't have the time or money to do that. I can't count how many times I've seen comments on GAF along the lines of "I'll wait until it goes down in price."
So anyway... to Pete, I think if you're passionate about this project you should go for it. There are clearly people who believe in what you're doing. Keep on truckin'.
Is the indiegogo name less trustworthy than kickstarter?
If so is that cause of the keep all money if you do not reach the goal aspect?
I think it is safe to assume a site will exist even if he misses funding.
These questions are irrelevant to customers. I hope you get that. Gamers don't care about Ubisoft's review copy policies -- they care about how they spend their time and money. After a game's release day, anyone can watch or read about it on a bazillion different sources. Nobody needs another. There is no hole you're filling here. It's a waste of your resources, your audience, and the money that people are giving you. Use that to do something better.
but isnt polygon already the future of gaming journalism
Their reviews have to be bog standard so that they can do the longer features, but I assume it's because their reviews drive most of the hits/revenue to the site.I'm pretty sure polygon was formed to do better than other sites before it, journalistically wise. People begin with idealism, lofty goals, and to make money. The ones left standing are those who make money. That's not to say polygon lost it's way. It's top notch reporting and great features. People have problem with their criticism which is just one aspect of journalism. Actually they just like to obsess over Arthur.
So how are you planning to get publisher support for something like this? They don't have to blacklist you, they can just ignore you. It's not like you're going to be starting off as some major gaming website that attracts thousands of readers daily. Publishers will ignore you and you'll have to buy your own games to review, that in turn will lead to your reviews being published after everyone else. At which point very few people will even care. There's a reason why sites like IGN and Gametrailers bend over backwards to please publishers, it's what they have to do to survive.
Then there's the issue of reporting news. People who already get their gaming news off IGN, twitter, reddit, neogaf, what reason would they have to go to you? What's going to attract them? A website like this needs some sort of hook to draw people in and I don't think you've explained exactly what it is. Your leaks are about the only reason people will visit your website, but that stuff is usually posted on Gaf anyways so I'm not sure what's going to draw people in.
I like Fort, hes probably one of the more level headed insiders we have ( all insiders here are sony based beside ntkrnl), but he is a sony fan and doesn't hide it. I will visit his site but the people he hires or articles he posts will come from a sony fan angle. As a xbox fan I can't throw money to this.
Have you even read the whole thread? He has talked about the people who will help him. It is going to be a "games" site not a "Sony" site, I don't get this biased and slant argument on a guy who owns, plays, and wants all consoles to do well. Or do you only read sites with a "Xbox" slant and be happier if it was negative towards Sony? Seriously asking cause I would think just being a gamer people would want the truth about all the subjects covered.
Who says he needs publisher support ? I think that's why people are telling Pete to start small and to focus on something specific like customer advocacy, carve his own niche and advocating for the customer seems like a good one to me. Also, not everyone gives a fuck what IGN thinks about anything but I doubt reviews would be a main focus of the site anyway.
To be fair, most of the other guys helping him out have a sony bias as well...that I can remember. I could be very wrong though.