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The Media Entertainment Games

A Shoe To The Head For Game Journalism 52

Posted by Zonk from the boot-to-the-head-ed-gruberman dept.
On Wednesday we reported on an editorial by EGM editor Dan Hsu making claims that publications and web sites were 'selling' reviews for ad revenue. Shoe has since posted the original editorial to his blog, along with some commentary on why he makes the claims but doesn't name names. From the article: "My industry pisses me off. I was a little suspicious of the cover choices one of our competitors was making, so I checked in with a contact of mine from a major game publisher. 'Yes,' he confirmed. 'We can pretty much get whatever cover we want from that magazine. All it takes is for us to meet with the publisher, promise that we'll buy some ads, and discuss the details from there.' So...that magazine's cover stories are for sale. Great." Kyle Orland's VGM Watch steps in for some commentary on the broader picture.
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A Shoe To The Head For Game Journalism More

A Shoe To The Head For Game Journalism

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  • Shoe? (Score:1, Funny)

    by Zediker ( 885207 )
    No No No... Its BOOT to the head =)

    • Re:Shoe? (Score:2, Insightful)

      by Anonymous Coward
      Zoom! That's the sound of the headline going right over your head. The author of the piece in question was Dan Hsu, who's last name is pronounced "shoe." (Native speakers might quibble that it's not precisely "shoe" but it's close enough for the pun."
  • I'm surprised this is considered newsworthy. Magazines devoted to video games are going to have a very vested interest in making the game companies happy, and vice versa. If "GameD00d" does nothing but rip on/ignore every game EA makes, EA can respond by pulling their ads, and GameD00d takes a serious punch in the economic teeth. On the other hand, if GameD00d knows that EA will throw some extra cash in their Christmas stockings by making a slightly-bigger-than-usual deal over "NFL Deathmatch Blastoid 2009"
    • I will take that one step further. I am a video game addict, but I cannot for the life of remember the last time I bought a video game magazine of ANY sort.

      You can get the cheats online.

      You can get the walkthroughs online.

      You can get the reviews online (from other users, not editors/writers who are in the game publisher's pocket-- try amazon.com, epinions.com?)

      And if that isn't enough, go to best buy / target / walmart and try playing the game in the store, if you can find a playable demo.
    • If "GameD00d" does nothing but rip on/ignore every game EA makes, EA can respond by pulling their ads, and GameD00d takes a serious punch in the economic teeth.

      That why one must suspect any newsource that makes most of its money by selling adds rather than subscriptions.

      Oh wait...
  • Welcome to the real world!
    ANY and EVERY review magazine of ANY kind that boasts even one page of advertisement is bound to be corrupted.
    And guess what, ads are an important part of the revenue stream of these publications, and it's not going to become any better. Even BLOGS are goin' adsense!
    Do you know where that leads? Here's a fine example :

    "If you give this game less than a 95% rating, I'll just buy my 12 pages of ads at $1,000,000 each at another gaming magazine.
    - MMMph! *slurp, slurp* I couldn't talk

    • The established way of doing it is to clearly seperate the "content" makers from the ad-sellers. Newspapers are supposed to work like this were for instance in a real paper NO amount of money will buy you an front page ad covering the entire front and every advertisement has a little header pointing it out and no advertisements accepted that look to much like the regular content.

      Of course this line was blurred long ago when newspapers stopped publishing news and started adding lifestyle sections.

      Were exac

      • AKA Gun Tests magazine. It is simple plain white paper with BW photos, no ads. It is the only publication I know where the reviewers will actually say something like "This gun sucks. Not only does it not shoot straight, sometimes it won't shoot at all. Don't buy it".

        I wish I knew of an equivalent subscriber supported rag for cars, audio-video, etc...

        Only other thing I can think of that approached this level of gall was S&E with their now legendary thumbs up or down movie reviews.

        As far as the rep of the
      • I've read magazines where you'd see a doublepage ad and two pages after it a review giving the game a 4% score. Advertisers may be able to exert pressure but the magazine knows that by negotiating with terrorists the rest will take the clue and start exerting the same pressure, the reviews become so inaccurate that readers just stop buying that useless rag and profits really hit zero.

        Edge is supposed to be the least biased games magazine on the market and the price shows it, 8$ an issue I think.
  • Is it because they enjoy reading about stuff that is 2 months old?

    Web publications are where real gamers go for their gaming news and reviews.
    • Paper publications tend to be edited and not a crappy blogger template filled with "omgz this game is so nice lookzing and rofl teh blah fucking blah".
    • You gotta read something when you're in the shitter. Somehow printouts are not the same.
    • Cor Blimey! Didja hear that?
      It was the point of this article that flew over your head, back to its nest of incomprehension.

      Look at gamefaqs' main page. Sometimes the whole color scheme is changed to display a commercial. Same goes for a LOT of online publications. So don't worry : the same problem applies for us, on teh intarbutt!
      The worst thing about it is that people, as a great big band of sheep, completely miss the issue, or don't really care.
      THESE PEOPLE ARE CALLING THEMSELVES JOURNALISTS. This is not

      • Look at gamefaqs' main page. Sometimes the whole color scheme is changed to display a commercial.

        That'd actually be IGN who's the worst offender -- anybody remember the day they went McIGN on us? The day I visited and saw the McDonald's logos and color schemes all over the place was the last day I ever browsed their site.

        GameFAQs' ad presentation doesn't impact the content: written and contributed by unpaid users. You can try to astroturf there, but if you're posting a glowing review about a game peop

  • I'm shocked! (Score:3, Insightful)

    by faloi ( 738831 ) on Friday December 16, 2005 @12:01PM (#14271994)
    Companies are selling out to the highest bidder, and tailoring their content to be as favorable as possible to the people that back them financially!

    Honestly, I didn't realize this was anything new. I always assumed that video game rags were pretty much like every other magazine out there. You throw some money around, get the coverage you want and ride the wave to profit. Just like pretty much every other publication out there. I'm sure we've all heard stories about reviewers coming clean about getting a lot of swag from game publishers that helps up their review a bit. Why would the magazine really be any different?

    The days of being able to realistically expect unbiased reporting from anywhere are pretty much long gone.

  • Was there ever any doubt? (Score:3, Informative)

    by Rowan_u ( 859287 ) on Friday December 16, 2005 @12:05PM (#14272030)
    Was there ever any doubt that this kind of thing happens occasionally in the game review business? Thankfully there are alternatives to basing your purchases on these big-name low-integrity publishers. Websites like http://www.metacritic.com/ [metacritic.com] or http://www.gamerankings.com/ [gamerankings.com] provide averages of many collected reviews, and cannot be corrupted as easily as if you trusted a single source review. You could also take your reviews more personally and visit one of the smaller Blog type sites like the one I write for, http://www.thegamechair.com/ [thegamechair.com] A volunteer run sight like ours has a double advantage, no bribery, and all of the writers are passionate about the games they play.
  • You don't think there would have been a cover story on the front of the Boston Herald every day after the Xbox 360 release if some money didn't change hands, do you? What about all that coverage on CNN? I thought it was always just assumed that the gaming press was for sale. Every single month from as far back as I can remember you see some shit game get better than average reviews from the big review sites and magazines. The real news should be that the regular media is taking the bait too.
  • Sounds like slashdot. Or any media that depends on advertising revenue for that matter. This is why Media English is not the worthless class in (Canadian) highschool that it at first seems to be.
  • All press is for sale.

    Like Lew Black sez: businesses has always been sleeping with each other. It's only recently that they just stopped trying to hide it.

  • *ALL* magazines are like this (Score:3, Insightful)

    by brunes69 ( 86786 ) <`gro.daetsriek' `ta' `todhsals'> on Friday December 16, 2005 @12:20PM (#14272152)
    All the trade rags are the exact same. Car + Driver, Computer Shopper, etc etc. Why should video game magazines be any different?

    Any magazine that reviews a product that features a single ad for a product it reviews is tainted.

    This is why I never trust any reviews from any magazine but Consumer Reports (who buys the products they review through normal channels via secret shoppers, and who do ntot accept any advertisement swhatsoever in their maagainze, and who do not allow their reviews ot be used in advertisements).

    The only web reviews I trust are blogs or reivew sites where I know the reviewer purchased the items themselves.

    There is no other way to ensure journalistic integrity.

  • Funny.. (Score:5, Informative)

    by Grave ( 8234 ) <awalbert88@nOspAm.hotmail.com> on Friday December 16, 2005 @12:28PM (#14272213)
    Seems a bit amusing to hear that sort of thing from EGM (no doubt referring to Game Informer) when EGM is often knocked for praising Sony excessively while trashing Microsoft. Of the publications out there, GI has far and away shown the least amount of bias, and in fact I seem to recall there being an award given to the entire GI staff last year for best video game reporting or something along those lines. GI also has the least to gain from bias, because it is a division of GameStop. If GI took a slant towards one publisher or another, then other publishers might decide not to give GameStop the volume price discounts that, say, Best Buy would get. Same with Microsoft/Sony/Nintendo.

    • from TFA (Score:3, Informative)

      by jbellis ( 142590 )
      "In our interview, Hsu refused to go public with the names of the magazines and publishers mentioned in his editorial. He did note that the outlets in his examples did not include IGN and Game Informer, "who were often accused by some readers." Hsu defended his silence by saying that naming the outlets would look petty. "While I want to call them out because I want the industry to shape up, I don't want to get into petty fights. I feel like we're above that." Hsu also worried that an investigative piece loo
    • If GI took a slant towards one publisher or another, then other publishers might decide not to give GameStop the volume price discounts that, say, Best Buy would get.

      Ok, so what if they rate a mediocre game well, to sell more units in their stores? I'm not saying their taking money for cover stories, but it's not like they don't have something to gain from bias in their reporting. They most certainly do.

  • The problem with gaming journalism (Score:1, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward
    As I've stated before [slashdot.org], the game journalism industry is corrupt and laughable. If Hsu were truly bothered by this, he'd name names. There's certainly nothing illegal about a publisher buying a magazine cover. Unethical, perhaps, but not illegal.

    Why are IGNs reviews of "anticipated" titles so much longer than those non-anticipated ones? Do you really think Perfect Dark Zero deserves a 4-page review? Notice how none of the professional sites or mags talks about PDZ's complete lack of presentation (you get a sc
    • Why are IGNs reviews of "anticipated" titles so much longer than those non-anticipated ones?

      Easy, they do what the readers want and the readers want lots of talk about the hyped up games. Even if that game could be handled with "Same as $previous with $newfeatures added". Same goes for other forms of news, they talk about what the audience wants to know even if there's nothing to be known about it (the news broadcast will happily waste fifteen minutes talking to various experts repeating the same obvious fa

  • Publicity stunt? (Score:2, Interesting)

    by MaWeiTao ( 908546 )
    It looks to me like he's trying to stir things up in order to boost readership.

    I never liked game magazines, hell I don't like most magazines, because they're nothing but advertising. Considering the amount of advertising in some of these magazines you'd think they could distribute them for free. I find game magazines to be some of the most obnoxious on the market, topped only by the "lifestyle" crap.

    I haven't seen anything in EGM that would indicate they're any different from the rest. Even if they're not
    • I don't think you understand how the print industry works in general.

      The more magazines you print, the higher the advertising rates you charge because of the higher printing costs. So the more successful the magazine, the more ads you need to break even. A magazine cannot stay afloat without ads, it's that simple. A 50% sell-through would be considered highly successful--and even then that's 50% of wasted paper that the company has to pay for (even if that's a low 150,000 issues, that money adds up). To t

  • Magazines in business to make money, news at 11.
  • I can honestly say after having worked for a both a large and medium sized network in an editorial and PR capacity that this is not an uncommon practice. I have been pressured by management of the site to not give a title coverage because they would not buy advertising and the reverse has also happened. Pressure from the publishers to change a review to meet a certain score or they will pull their advertising money is not something that happens every day, but it does often enough that I am surprised it took
  • I dunno, I always find it funny when the back cover advertizes a game that the magazine slams a few pages back. It happens all the time.
  • http://games.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=170711& c id=14222701 [slashdot.org]

    He basically mirrored my comments and experiences in this industry, and ultimately it led to me leaving. This whole gaming business is one of the biggest shams in the world, and people - intelligent people - get suckered time and time again. Take a trip to E3 sometime to see a glimpse of the real "professionals" who work in this industry... you will lose all respect instantly.

    Dan Hsu is one of the few journalists I ever had a respect for and
  • Ok. I noticed Dan Hsu quoted myself in his blog (Funkyzealot), guess he didn't know that I work on Gamepro mag too.

    The thing is, nobody wants to actually come out and say "XX mag is buying covers from YY." That includes Dan Hsu. As I mentioned in Games.net, the games industry is *tiny.* Everybody knows everybody else. Journalists switch from PR and back. Frankly he hasn't said anything, and I would venture to say he's afraid of the repercussions of doing so. In short, he himself doesn't want to open the c

  • I won't claim to be a part of the games industry or have any experience whatsoever in detecting when review scores, cover space or whatnot has been influenced but:

    It should be very very wrong when something like Game Informer's November (151) issue has such a blatently camoflauged piece of garbage like they do when advertising (Tom Clancy's Advanced Warfighter I think...). Not only was it in the same format and layout as a standard GI review (albeit with tiny disclaimers at the top of the page) but they p

  • So I just thought someone in sales should enter the mix here. I sell ads in game mags and know for a fact that there are 2 camps out there. Those who sell their edit and those who don't. I work for one who doesn't. There are no shades of gray. There aren't enough dollars out there to change a publishers mind. If you don't sell your edit then you have clear lines of church and state. If you do then it's like a secret rate card between the mag/website and the publisher. The only gray would be Cover Pos

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