MTV Multiplayer is in the midst of "reviews week," discussing a subject very close to my heart. Yesterday I provided the indie take on Multiplayer's "Bill of Rights" for game reviewers, and today I must share this interesting story that MTV dug up, courtesy of former Gamespot reviewer Alex Navarro.
When reviewing an un-named Wii launch title, Navarro had a most intriguing request from the PR company handling its publicity:
If the review is 9.0 or higher you can post immediately. Lower than 9.0, could you please hold until launch day, November 19th? Thanks.
Navarro also said that this wasn't exactly a unique request, either. It really shouldn't surprise anybody that a publicist would want the bad reviews held off until launch day, but damn, 9.0? They're not asking for much, are they? GameSpot eventually bought their own copy after launch and panned it. It clearly wasn't an Eidos game then.
Jim Sterling serves as reviews editor for Destructoid.com, head of the Podtoid podcast, and produces a number of news stories, original features, one-of-a-kind videos. With his passionate argumentative style, controversial opinions, harsh delivery, and dedication to brutal honesty Sterling is a name that you can't help but recognize.
Likes
PS2, iPod Touch, Silent Hill 2, Metal Gear Solid, Dynasty Warriors 3
Meet the rest of the team
| BBcode help |
| [b]Bold text[/b] |
Bold text |
| [i]Italic text[/i] |
Italic text |
| [url]http://www.dtoid.com/[/url] |
http://www.dtoid.com |
| [url=http://www.dtoid.com/]Web link[/url] |
Web link |
|
| [img]http://www.example.com/robot.jpg[/img] |
 |
Post a comment! You can also post a photo below:
Comment with Facebook
Click connect and comment instantly!
|
Comment with Dtoid
New? SIGN UP - it takes 5 seconds
|
49 comments | showing # 1 to 49
|
Comment with Facebook
Click connect and comment instantly!
|
Comment with Dtoid
New? SIGN UP - it takes 5 seconds
|
Comments policy
Destructoid is an open discussion community. You don't need to "audition" to post a comment - just speak your mind. We respect differing opinions on the site, so have at it. Be smart, funny, insightful, clueless, or cute -- but back it up with substance. Keep your cool, keep it fun. We only ask that you act respectfully and above all: don't be a troll and ruin it for everyone else. Don't bring down gamers or we'll, you know, gently shoot you in the face and stuff you into a flaming mailbox. Each comment is your opportuntity to make this community awesomer. Is that even a word?
Avoiding the banhammer only requires common sense: spamming, trolling, racism, NSFW stuff, and other forms of sucking will not be tolerated. If anyone is griefing please report abuse. Be good. Don't suck!
Contest:
6:16 AM on 05.29.2008
| 
The way I see it they should serve us first. Far to often reviewers get chummy with game companies who churn out crap.
Seems perfectly reasonable to me. I don't get this high-and-mighty thing some of these people are giving off. The game companies want to do well, so what!?
Some reviewers need to get of their soap box once in a while. Imho, reviews should expect to pay for every game, and it should be a nice surprise if a company is kind enough to gift them a copy.
The way I see it they should serve us first. Far to often reviewers get chummy with game companies who churn out crap.
The more it's relegated to the shadows the less likely people will see it and cause a ruckus.
Reviews are also completely subjective and offer a mere opinion on whether a game is good or not. If a reviewer pukes all over the game I slaved over for 5 years and truly believed in I would get a bit defensive about it too.
There are more less-than-credible reviewers out there than ones I respect, ones who just like to stir up controversy to get page views. The whole system is broken really, I'm surprised game companies send out review copies at all anymore.
Subjective? Doesn't seem too subjective to me when I see GTA4 getting all 10s in every category. Seems like more and more the score is just a measure of how much money was included with the review copy.
I think reviewers in general aren't harsh enough. I understand its hard for them to be when they rely on those same developers for inside stories and advanced copies but I'm so sick of terrible games getting a pass. If a game sucks, say so and state all the reasons why in a giant rant. Let the chips fall where they may and then deal with it is what I say. But then again... my livelihood isn't dependent on relationships with game companies so its easy for me to say.
...supposedly subjective haha. I agree with you, good review scores are the equivalent of payola for radio airplay.
- They make a game
- They know as much as anyone if it's shit or not.
- Do you send it out for review before release? Well, no. in order to sell more, make more money and, in turn, keep the industry going.
Is anybody really surprised that this happens? They are just trying to do as well as possible and I can't blame them really. OK, so maybe they shouldn't make shit games but sometime people have less of a budget, new staff and not 4 years like Rockstar.
Still doesn;t mean they can't go home to their wives and say "I'm proud of my work and I'm not going to let some smug geek who could never quite make it into my position tell me any different".
-
I don't think this is a really big deal though, besides the PR company not having any faith in their product and going about PR'ing in an immature "Don't tell!" way.
When it comes to game sales, marketing budget>review.
In all fairness there is prolly much more shady goings on between pubs and reviewers than this so it's hard to care.
please change the picture...
I feel sick..
<pukes>
Then again gamers nowadays seem too stoned themselves to really care and buy based mostly on hype so a part of me is scared that they think little of the average gamer cause there really is little to think about them...
If someone slaves over a game for 5 years and it turns out to be a pile of crap, they should probably look into a different line of work.
Just because someone has worked on something for a long time doesn't mean that the general population has to bow down and praise the person.
Completely unfair comment towards the majority of people who work on a game. There are but a handful of people who make the decisions that determine the quality of the game. Much of the others deal with changing requirements, flip-flopping concepts, and trying to just get their job done to the best possible when it typically is never enough.
Many of the people who work on a game can do the best job possible, but the result can still suck because they're only doing their job and not making any of the decisions or ensuring that everyone else is turning in as good of work as they are.
Maybe those people that worked on the game for that long don't think it's a pile of crap and are proud of their accomplishment. Case in point: Too Human. Dennis Dyack is trying really really hard to shake the perception that his game sucks, and this is the general consensus BEFORE anyone has actually played it.
Whether the game turns out to be good or not they're pretty much dead in the water already, and that's too bad because nobody has actually played it yet.
i dont know very many casual gamers who actually go online and read reviews tho. they mostly walk into a game store and buy something almost arbitrarily.
but hey, maybe if really shit games get awesome scores they'll make even more of those gems! we'll never go hungry for shit games again!! ^_^
This statement makes absolutely no sense.
It does if you remember the Kane & Lynch fiasco from a few months back.
Unfortunately, this is rarely the situation. The problem more often than not is with those in decision-making positions not knowing their ass from a hole in the ground. These people think they know what's best for the game in terms of appeal and sales figures but they really don't. They end up calling for changes large and small without understanding anything about how it might affect the gameplay, story, pacing, etc. and end up screwing up the game - which then gets blamed on the main developers when reviews come in.
It's the same with movies, too. Say a skilled director, cast, and crew create a great film for a big company - they still have to deal with big producers, studio heads, and other people of high authority who want to make asinine changes to the film during all stages of production in order to make it more appealing to the masses (i.e. dumb it down). As someone with this sort of experience, it's infuriating beyond belief to watch your hard work and creativity tainted by such clueless morons - and let's not even get into "focus groups."
I think anyone who has had to work under an incompetent boss or superior gets the idea.
Anyway, this is not always the case, but it does happen more often than we hear about.
we all know the professional-video-game-websites are crappy sellouts, that's why we are here in the first place :-D