Ethics and Video Game Reviews 280
Obiwan Kenobi continues:
The junket used in the article as an example was Ubi Soft's recent Rainbow Six: Raven Shield launch, where the writers got to dress in SWAT garb and have a paintball battle against mock terrorists and disable a dirty bomb. Things like this happen all the time, even more so in the movie industry (which the gaming industry is quickly mirroring).
Not that I was a big-time reviewer or anything. Back in 1997 or so, I ran a small website of my own (hosted on my ISP webspace) called Obiwan Reviews. Since I was just getting out of high school and into college (read: broke), I reviewed Quake mods, such as AirQuake, Quake Rally, After the Fall and others. Soon I tried to spread my wings a little and get a gig at a real gaming site, which would give me the ability to review retail titles. I found that site, frag.com, and the position was given to me by Jonathon "ZyFly" Works after many requests. Though the site itself is no longer with us, the experience was certainly eye-opening.
Technically I only reviewed two retail titles, Tomb Raider 2 and the X-Men Quake mod. I also got Dungeon Keeper and its expansion, The Deeper Dungeons, though I never got around to writing about that one.
In my first "professional" review, I lavished praise on X-Men, which deserved about 75% of it, and the last 25% was, I fully admit (now that I'm nowhere near this "industry") given just because it was free and I'd never gotten a free game before. Yes, it was unethical as hell, but I was under the deluded thinking that if you trash a free game the free games stop coming. I wish I could tell you I knew better, but back then I did not.
An upshot of that bloated thinking came a week later when I got an email from the guys who made that X-Men mod. They thanked me for the kind words and the payoff for some of their hard work.
This is not something that a biased reviewer needs to hear.
This put me in the mindset that "everything is great, just tell em what they want to hear." That way I could get in the industry and be loved by all! Or...so I thought.
After Tomb Raider 2 dropped on my doorstep, I played it for a few days and was very disappointed. Terrible clipping, clunky controls, sometimes buggy levels and graphics. Not that it was all bad, I still had a good time with a few levels, but the majority of the game was a misfire.
But this didn't stop me from hyping it up, telling everyone it was the greatest thing to come out yet.
A week or so later I got another email. Not from the developer, but from a reader. And he was pissed.
While I don't have the email any longer, I certainly remember the gist of it: He bought the game and he saw through my candy-coated review in about thirty minutes. He had trusted my words and was out $50 thanks to me.
I felt terrible and conflicted. I wasn't sure I wanted to review any more at all, considering that I knew there would be others who would purchase titles based on my words. And if those words were false, who was gaining here? The studios producing the titles or myself? The guilt was tough, but the review had ran and a retraction of my gushing paragraphs would mean that nothing I did from then on would be taken seriously. Not that those who purchased TR2 because of my review would do so any longer, but hey, I've got the rest of the readership to worry about.
After some soul searching and mid-terms, I made my decision.
That was my last review for frag.com, and my last video game review. Though I have since written hundreds of movie and DVD reviews, I still look back on those reviews for a free humbling experience any time I need one.
The points that are brought up in articles like the one at Online Journalism are very much factual. If you let yourself be taken in by the free food, games, flights, and gala of a modern-day junket, your reputation is at stake. Roger Ebert has since stopped letting movie studios pay for anything in regards to press gatherings and interview sessions, and I highly commend him for it. Everyone else would be happy to throw a few hundred loving words toward a bad movie because they got to shmooze with the stars and eat an expensive meal alongside them.
This thing happens all the time.
Trust me, I know.
Quotes from the reviews (Score:4, Funny)
"I've never played such .. astounding .. fun."
"Incredible!"
"This game exemplifies today's total lack of .. so many bad things to say!"
"I will never have this .. much fun."
How to spot a bad review site (Score:4, Interesting)
Not Just For Video Games... (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Not Just For Video Games... (Score:2)
Re:Not Just For Video Games... (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Not Just For Video Games... (Score:2)
Only one real ethical question (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Only one real ethical question (Score:5, Informative)
The Konami code (used for extra lives and such in many of their games) is actually: Up, up, down, down, left, right, left, right, B, A, start.
Geez, kids today.
Re:Only one real ethical question (Score:4, Funny)
I was one minute off.
Re:Only one real ethical question (Score:2)
Re:Only one real ethical question (Score:2)
I remember how excited I was to pick up Super Gradius for my Super Nintendo, sat down and tried the code on the title screen, nothing happened. Started the game, paused it, entered the code, and my ship blew up!!! That was the best
Turns out they have you use the "L" and "R" buttons instead of pushing left and right
Re:Only one real ethical question (Score:5, Insightful)
Wasn't it "select, start"?
Actually, it's neither. Start or Select, start are not actually part of the code. But if you don't hit them, nothing happens. A good way to tell if someone has friends is to ask them what the Contra code was. If they don't say select, then they were playing it alone-- no friends. If they don't know the code, then I suggest killing them, they're probably an evil alien.
Re:Only one real ethical question (Score:2)
Re:Only one real ethical question (Score:2, Redundant)
Reviewers are crooked, we know it (Score:5, Insightful)
"Stylish"
"Action Packed"
"Best game of the year"
Are just a few of the key phrases that send us into bullshit mode. Everything afterwards ends up sounding like a grown-up from peanuts.
Re:Reviewers are crooked, we know it (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Reviewers are crooked, we know it (Score:2)
Online reviews (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Online reviews (Score:3, Interesting)
The problem with online reviews for games and other technical/electronic items is that, in many cases, the people writing reviews have absolutely no clue as to what they're talking about.
For instance, go look up wireless routers on Amazon.com, and read some of the reviews. In many cases, it's quite evident that these people have no concept of the limitations that can reduce signal strength on a wireless router, so you
Re:Online reviews (Score:3, Interesting)
That said, on technical matters it's a matter of seperating the wheat from the chaff. It's something you have to do with all reviews in order to get what you want. Read between the lines and try to understand more why the reviewer is saying it.
I tend to seek out negative review
I trust Consumer Reports pretty well.. (Score:5, Informative)
They don't accept any form of advertisement, and (unlike any other review source of any kind I know of) do not allow ANY of their reviews or material to be used in ANY advertising campaigns. They instantly go after any company that attempts this. Also they aren't afraid to pull punches, and are often instremental in getting things recalled that have saftey implications.
Not only that, but they lobby the government for lots of consumer protection and saftey regulations from everything from auto saftey, and childrens toys, to DRM (yes, consumer union is fighting for us in the DRM arean as well).
Re:I trust Consumer Reports pretty well.. (Score:3)
In addition I've noticed brand preferences crop up in
Re:Online reviews (Score:2)
Re:Online reviews (Score:2)
or, say, Slashdot?
Re:Online reviews (Score:3, Insightful)
The five stars I don't trust often because:
1) people frequently need to justify a purchase by believing that they got the best thing.
2) fan boys
3) companies that see no ethics violation in 'reviewing' their own product.
The one stars I don't frequently trust because:
1) idiots who can't plug something in, and blame the manufacturer for a shitty pro
i hate to give amazon credit for anything, but... (Score:5, Insightful)
disclaimer: Of course, USENET is also great for this purpose and predates Amazon, but Amazon is more in the public consciousness these days than USENET is.
Re:i hate to give amazon credit for anything, but. (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:i hate to give amazon credit for anything, but. (Score:2)
Insightful? Please.
I'd be willing to bet CASH that more than 50% of Amazon's "user reviews" are either:
1. Hype from the publisher's marketing department or professional reviewers with a stake in the product
2. Astroturfing sponsored by the publisher or author.
3. So-called "bulk reviews" which are basically madlib-like cut-and-paste jobs with the product and company's name inserted throughout a standard "praise review" document
The last one is Amazon reviewers' insideous form of karma-whoring! It's like
Re:i hate to give amazon credit for anything, but. (Score:2)
So take the Amazon re
Re:i hate to give amazon credit for anything, but. (Score:2)
Your best bet is to find a small set of reviewers with whom you tend to agree
If you just read the stars... (Score:3, Insightful)
There are two forces at play here: first, if you take a spectrum of people and have them review an item, and have a 5 star rating system, three stars will always be the least frequently given rating. Why? Because everyone always leans one way or the other, and if they don't lean far, then they just narrow their spectrum.
Second, if you don't care much one way or the other about an item, how likely are you to spend the time to review it.
So don't look at the scores! Read the
Where is old man murray when you need him? (Score:2)
Don't bother going, it disappeared and turned into a "Coming soon" page until it eventually changed into a "Coming soonish" page.
Best game reviews ever. Sniff.
Best review scheme ever. (Score:2, Funny)
Funny because it was about as accurate as any other reviewing method for games.
I did like that site.
yup! (Score:2)
That being said, I can't wait to eat dinner tonight. I'm so hungry, I'm going to break open TWO barrels of food! (probably a chicken drumstick in each barrel)
Re:Best review scheme ever. (Score:2)
unfortunately, they are no longer with us. but in the immortal words of marvin (from the future), "stop being such goddamn fruits".
Do people still read game reviews? (Score:5, Interesting)
Black and White is a recent example. The reviews made it sound like the best game ever made. Then when I played it, I found out the UI is horrible, the gameplay is tedious, and the characters treat you (their god) like a child -- If you eat your vegetables, then you can have Ice Cream.
I just take it for granted now that game reviewers are lying when they say a game is good. Jason
ProfQuotes [profquotes.com]
Re:Do people still read game reviews? (Score:2)
Re:Do people still read game reviews? (Score:2)
Jason
ProfQuotes [profquotes.com]
Re:Do people still read game reviews? (Score:2)
Of course, OMM had spent so much time and creative energy bashing Jason Hall, that to get them to admit the game was good was a herculean task....
Britain (Score:5, Insightful)
I generally will not trust a review unless i have read many, many others that agree with it.
Re:Britain (Score:2)
Jason
ProfQuotes [profquotes.com]
Re:Britain (Score:2)
Then you, my friend, are not the target demographic of the american video game industry.
Re:Britain (Score:2)
You'll get no arguement from me there, despite the fact that I do buy a few games a year. I also wait about a month after a movie comes out because I prefer as few people as possible in the theatre, and I don't even understand the "get it first" attitude for new DVDs.
What I was commenting on is that taking away choice is not a benefit. If I don't want to buy the game for a few months, why is having the option take
Re:Britain (Score:2)
Hypocritical. (Score:5, Interesting)
There is another issue (Simcity 4) (Score:4, Insightful)
While most of the issues have been addressed in a patch that was released almost 3 months after the game was - it should have been panned by anyone who took more than a few minutes with it.
Chris...
Re:There is another issue (Simcity 4) (Score:4, Informative)
Wasn't there some sort of lawsuit against EA about requirements being way off?
Re:There is another issue (Simcity 4) (Score:2, Interesting)
It's hard to come up with a solution to this p
I've been there. (Score:5, Insightful)
In essence, the paper's policy says that if you review the game, you can keep it. We handle reviews of music CDs the same way. If you don't review the game, it goes in a charity auction that is held four times a year.
I have never felt the need to give a game a better review than it deserved just because I knew I was going to be able to keep it. In fact, I've told PR flacks over the phone dozens of times that I thought their games were of poor quality, when that was in fact the case.
In my situation, games from the industry have never stopped arriving, and if they did, I'd simply call and say I was interested in reviewing a specific title. I actually prefer that way to the flood of unsolicitated titles, which are inevitably followed up by an annoying phone call sniffing for coverage. I'd rather just review what I think my readers will be interested in, and leave the rest for what I call the "enthusiast" media.
As a professional journalist, I am of the opinion that junkets where members of the "press" are invited to participate in spectacles such as a paintball outing are simply unprofessional. While having face time with game industry execs and developers is extremely valuable (that is what I use e3 for) I would never participate in anything that was clearly tied to covering the news, and I would suspect any journalist with any training in ethics would agree with me.
Now that being said, there are gray areas. Sony, Microsoft and other big game publishers will be having receptions at e3 this year with free food and drinks. Will I attend these? Absolutely. Why? Because it gives me access to players in the industry I would otherwise not have. Will I drink a bottle of water while attending these receptions? Sure. Why? Because I will likely be thirsty.
It's not just about avoiding impropriety -- it's about avoiding the appearance of impropriety, too.
Re:I've been there. (Score:2)
I'm sure the size of the scissors poised over certain Naughty Bits(tm) would influence me greatly. Well, if they were poised over my Naughty Bits(sm).
Poised over the professional journalist's Naughty Bits(c), the shear size might influence the honesty of their review.
By the bye, my lovely wife makes a pretty good living minding the spelling of several professional journalists. I bet she wishes she had shear
White House press secretary (Score:3, Interesting)
Look at Donahue.
Honestly. I am an inner city Black Detroiter, and I will watch any stupid tear-jerker if Ebert says its good. He has been honest and only once was I ever disappointed. More should be like him. In general though he only does positive reviews...
My mom always told me, "if you don't have anything nice to say, don't say anything at all."
Ebert (Score:3, Insightful)
He's telling it like it is, big time. He pulls no punches, and isn't afraid to venture into some deep and muddy waters.
As a consequence, I've found myself paying much more attention to him lately, and mostly agreeing with him after the fact too.
Ebert rocks.
BTW, hi from Windsor.
DG
Re:Ebert (Score:2, Interesting)
In general, we agree except when it comes to comedies and David Lynch.
Re:Ebert (Score:3, Interesting)
I don't always agree with his reviews, but I nearly always understand his criticisms or praises. He does seem rather softhearted on movies
My two cents (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:My two cents (Score:2)
If a reviewer says a game sucks, but isn't a fan of the genre... and then 5-15 people who have played the game and its predecessors rave... I'll check it out.
If a reviewer says a game rocks, but the respondants say he made them waste their money, I'll save my $50.
Re:My two cents (Score:2)
Re:My two cents (Score:2)
Re:My two cents (Score:2)
you really need to move to a country, or state, with better commercial and/or consumer protection laws. Here in the good old USA the Uniform Commercial Code [cornell.edu], as enacted by almost every state [cornell.edu], says its illegal for a store to not give a refund if you arent allowed to inspect the product in full at the store, which includes being able to read the EULA and check the disc for scratches everywhere, and to actually try the softw
Re:My two cents (Score:2)
The only exception they do (which they also state on their return policies) is that the stores would give you the same software in return. This facilitates the mechanical damage provisions, but do
Re:My two cents (Score:2)
I've reviewed games & done interviews (Score:5, Informative)
Shock and horror! I got nasty emails from not only the site owner but from the manufacturer. Reviews like mine didn't sell games. Selling games makes money. Money that goes to making more games, which in a trickle-effect helps sites that do reviews, and the reviewers.
But I didn't give a shit. Know why? Because I was unpaid. It didn't effect my bottom-line at all. I spoke the truth as I saw it. Still do.
But notice I don't review games anymore.
Ask Billy "Wicked" Wilson, he'll tell you the same thing. Why do you think he hasn't made a return yet? His new site is "ready to go" but he's lost the drive to do so: the shit you have to go through just isn't worth it.
People Who Lie Suck. (Score:5, Interesting)
I used to work for the now defunct Gameplayer.com, and I reviewed a title from Take 2 Entertainment called "Reah". I gave it a -3 on a scale of 1 to 10. It was Myst/Riven clone, only it was exceedingly lame with weak graphics, and the controls very nearly made me vomit.
I called up by Take 2, who complained about it. I didn't give a crap. I kept the score at -3. The other two times I got called were for slamming Titus' 1-button fighting game, "Evil Zone", and for ripping on Medieval: Total War, because I gave it the lowest score of all reviewers on Gamerankings.com.
If you're going to pick up a game, do this first. Go to GameRankings.com, a site which will give you an instant look at all the main reviews/scores for a particular product, as well as their user's rating for the game. Read a couple of the reviews from there. Then make your decision.
I'm honestly shocked at these people who are saying they were all up on some company's nuts just for a free game. Do you realize how much it costs them to send you a copy of the game? 50 cents for the disc and packaging and $4.50 for shipping. I appreciate not having to buy or rent your game, but if your game sucks, I probably wasn't going to buy it anyway.
I'm not selling my soul for $5, so I can get some poor kid in high school or college, who probably doesn't have so much disposable income, to dump $50 on a game I honestly think is mediocre just so I can get more mediocre games for free.
There are some people who praise game because they like the free stuff. There are others who rip games because they think it's fun or a power trip.
Then there are others, like me, who remember what it was like to finally have scrounged up $40 and walking into Fry's to see that there 10 new games that sounded interesting and knowing they could only buy one. We've been burned more than enough times by companies who release software that doesn't work without a patch, promises to have features that got stripped out just before launch, or just simply sucks. I don't want a company getting rich off of misleading the customer. If that sounds good to you...check out our site [netjak.com] as one of the two or three you use to get an idea of what a game's all about. And, as always...rent before buying if you have your doubts. When you do buy, use Ebay. The testers on the game are always trying to unload their free copies.
Re:I've reviewed games & done interviews (Score:2)
Unfortunately, from your own account of things, people who write FACTUAL reviews get kicked aside and unethical people who know how to play the game are the ones still around.
reviews suck (Score:5, Insightful)
The reviews that are the most objective, I think, are the ones in PC Gamer, and Computer Games magazine. Gamespot is usually ok too. The rest of the stuff on the web could just be any 14 year old with an agenda.
Re:reviews suck (Score:2)
Don't buy any game you haven't personally played, or have a good friend who has played unless it gets:
An 'excellent' rating in the review
AND
User ratings are pretty matched with the reviewers after a couple weeks.
I've seen a few posts today about USENET, but I've never used it as a review forum.
Re:reviews suck (Score:2)
What 14 year old is going to have an agenda? If they say it sucked, chances are that's what they meant.
Today I Became A Man! (Score:4, Insightful)
Well, of course it does! The only thing peculiar here is that a weepy coming-of-age story about it makes it to the front page of SlashDot!
The bar is so much lower for Game reviews, as opposed to other consumer products, because the reviewers for the most part are poorly-paid and impressionable kids with even less experience (if this is possible) than music reviewers. Does anyone read the reviews of game software, especially those on Websites, and believe for a heartbeat there is some kind of Wisdom of The Ages being levied there? Can you imagine how they must have read before the adult edited them? Yipes!
These junkets, freebies, tsotchkes, payolas, etc etc yadda yadda all comprise the grease for the wheels for a whole caste of underpaid newbie journalists looking for real writing jobs. Consumers all know this... don't they?
Obiwan, if you really felt so emotionally scarred by the whole episode, what you should have done was stuck it out and become a Trusted and Uncorruptible Force for Game Reviewing Goodness.
You've gone and let the Dark Side win, Bunky!
Big, weepy, crocodile tears (Score:2)
Oh, for Chrissake. Just link to the damn story, and then add a comment in the forums. Or at least make it an amusing tirade, such as the awful darkness of caffeine addiction.
Talk about a cry for attention.
Re:Today I Became A Man! (Score:2)
I present, for your consideration, Kangaroo Jack [imdb.com]
text of article (Score:3, Interesting)
Credibility is a high stakes concern in this multimillion dollar industry.
Justin Hall
posted: 2003-04-10
The video gaming industry has come a long way.
Starting with the simple Pong game three decades ago and evolving into lavishly drawn interactive epics, the scale of games and the size of their audience has grown exponentially, with sales in the billions of dollars and major multinational corporations clamoring for a piece of the action.
But despite these signs of a fast-growing industry, the print and online publications that cover video games often employ fans who unwittingly make poor ethical choices.
The first print magazine covering video games Electronic Games was co-founded by Bill Kunkel in 1981. Kunkel describes those early days in a recent interview: "To an extent, we were cheerleaders for the industry -- we loved these games, we wanted to see more of them, we wanted to keep writing about them."
Not much has changed in the past 20 years. Game publications and Web sites still mostly employ low-paid hobbyists who are easy targets of lavish marketing events that encourage inappropriate ties between game makers and game critics.
These unwholesome relationships were put under a spotlight by an article in the Los Angeles Times last August "Gamers' Perks, or 'Playola'?" by Alex Pham. In an interview with Online Journalism Review, Pham said she was motivated to write the piece when she discovered that game journalists "get to do outrageously fun things." She noted that software publishers arranged for journalists to shoot guns, skydive and race cars -- all under the pretense of researching video games.
Nowhere was Pham's article discussed more than FatBabies.com. Fatbabies traffics in stories of outrage in game development and game publishing -- gossip for game industry employees. Responding to Pham's story, a Fatbabies writer "FatGameSpotGuru" savagely derided most game journalists as biased amateurs who "wouldn't understand the concept of journalistic integrity if it came and bit them in the ass."
Into the Breach
I recently attended a game industry junket hosted by Ubi Soft to promote their Tom Clancy military-industrial techno-thriller video games. Editors and writers from a wide range of game industry and mainstream media were invited to the Presidio, a defunct military base in San Francisco. There, we had a chance to play the latest games, mingle with some of the game developers, eat delicious sandwiches and drink at an open bar. And a lucky few of us were chosen to "undergo real counterterrorist operative training" from a decorated federal marshal and close-quarters battle instructor.
One game on display, Rainbow Six 3, included a portion modeled after part of the Presidio -- we were going to play that level in real life. We were suited up in flak jackets and received air rifles loaded with plastic pellets. In small groups, we were sent out to storm a building, shoot hostiles, liberate hostages and neutralize a dirty bomb. It was an event lifted straight from the screen, a real-life game action. The other journalists, all men, all looking under 35, were psyched. And when I left in an unmarked white van in a black suit with a black gun and a black Rainbow Six 3 balaclava over my head, preparing to move through a darkened building with broken windows lead by a gruff middle-aged SWAT team member, shooting terrorists with glowing plastic pellets, I was completely enthralled as well.
Credibility
Junkets are nothing new in entertainment journalism. Writers covering the movie industry are invited to nice hotels to confer with stars over expensive meals. Pulitzer-prize winning film critic Roger Ebert says that when he first started working at the Chicago Sun-Times, reporters would accept any trip they were offered. Now, he says he pays his own expenses when attending industry events.
Aaron Boulding, editor in charge of IGN's Xbox coverage,
I pirate to review. (Score:3, Interesting)
His diatribes are a little tiring after a while, but at least the reviews are honest. Sadly he doesn't review games. The best form of review for games is a pirated copy of the full version. Seriously. I only buy games that I've played pirated first (and I DO go out and buy the game if I really like it) or belong to a series that I've enjoyed before. Even then, you get the odd stink-fest (panzer general 3 and warlords 3 come to mind).
Is there a filthy critic of the game world?
hello mr. critical thinking (Score:3, Informative)
www.rottentomatoes.com [rottentomatoes.com]
www.gamerankings.com [gamerankings.com]
The same can be said about news media. If you just get your perspective from CNN or FOX, then you're only learning one perspective.
Re:hello mr. critical thinking (Score:2)
Some reviews aren't so bad (Score:4, Interesting)
For editorial reviews, I head straight to Game Rankings [gamerankings.com] or GameTab [gametab.com]. They're great at showing all the editorials out there and averaging the scores. I usually find the averages are a more faithful indicator than the 100% fanboy review at the top of the pile.
Just my 2c.
Real Videogame Reviewers Are Not Biased (Score:4, Interesting)
I can honestly say that any REAL, professional, videogame reviewer, not the I-wanna-review-games-cuz-I-get-em-free reviewers are about as non-biased as they come. As the poster of this article found in only *TWO* reviews, reader's will quickly smell bullshit reviews and your credibility is lost forever. For a professional in the industry, this would spell the end of a career.
In the end, however, reviews do come down to personal opinion... they are not scientific. I may find great joy in subtle nuances of a particular title, where another may not even notice. It is the same as an untrained eye viewing a work of art and an art historian... they will see two wildly different things. This is not bias, it comes from a deeper understanding of the material at hand. I tend to step back and review a game from a more general sense, rather than from my trained eye.
Where I think the videogame reviewing industry needs to change is in the scoring. On a scale of 1-10 almost 90% of games will fall in the 7-10 area. This span of three points is hardly a good way to evaluate 90% of the games out there, but it is where almost all game reviews fall. However, if I would give a game a 5 (which would be average) no one would ever even think of buying it... but 5 would be where many games would sit on a truly even scale.
Not too many professionals are going to risk credibility over a $40.00 game, and we at GamezCore have lost publishers over bad reviews, no big deal... we'll purchase the games if we have to and still review them as honestly as if we had received them directly. Bias is more to be found in the print media world, where hidden ties and money trails tend to cross more often than realized.
Re:Real Videogame Reviewers Are Not Biased (Score:2, Insightful)
good reviews != free goodies?!? (Score:4, Interesting)
...said as if to imply that manufacturers don't bias the samples(or access, especially pre-release, and especially with expensive goods) to people who gloat about them.
I know that the digital camera review sites pretty much gloat about every single camera they get- if there's anything negative, its little nitpicky things; "oh, I didn't quite like the texture on the grip". Sometimes they toss in a disclaimer about the camera being pre-production and thus 'things might be different'.
To memory, not a single review on any of the big digicam review sites mentioned the horrible focusing problems on the Canon D60 until well after they were on the market; a lot of D60s had front/back focusing problems, and the focusing system itself was quickly found to be slow as shit.
Reviewers gushed about the Canon Powershot G1; when I bought mine, 8 months later, I found there were all sorts of oddball restrictions on what combinations of modes and features you could use that none of the reviewers had mentioned. It was slow as shit to operate. It always seemed to generate noisy, out of focus pictures. While they mentioned the horrible bleed-over on bright spots from the CCD, they didn't mention the horrible washed-out look you'd get in a lot of pictures where anything even remotely bright was in the frame(it looks like you're in a cloud of fog, basically.) Every 'sample' picture I saw posted looked picture-perfect, and after shooting thousands upon thousands of frames with my camera, I have rarely, if at all, been able to duplicate the quality I've seen in many sample pictures posted on review sites.
I learned my lesson: wait until others have bought whatever you're looking at, see what comes up on the message boards in places like photo.net, and go to a store and try it out yourself(in many cases with digicams for example, you can even rent them- and sometimes the store gives a credit towards the purchase price for money you drop on renting). Similar things can be said about games- try before you buy(many stores have systems set up with demos), and see what people in the messageboards say, taking what they say with a BIG grain of salt. Most people on the message boards and mailing lists:
...but that doesn't mean they're not, say, someone in Company A's marketing department, hyping up the product- it's been proven to happen, and those were just the morons who were too blatant about it.
Reviewers are con-artists, and cheats- there are FEW honest ones among them, and the story author admits to being one, and even tries to make us feel sorry for him. Sorry, I don't. The whole setup is loaded with wash-my-back-I-wash-yours deals.
Hmmm (Score:2)
Does make sense, though, for people who are going to be reviewing Rainbox Six 3 or whatever to actually try out counter-terrorist operations; gives them something to compare the gameplay to, other than, oh, Quake.
If you review my online games .... (Score:4, Funny)
If you review my online games, and give them a good review, I will give you a "premium" account for free
If you give them a not so favorable review, I'll change the name of your character to "Pink Fuzzy Bunny of Teletubby Land", and amybe take away a few of your ships or tanks (depending on which game you choose)
http://war.coldfirestudios.com - WWII, War of Supremacy
http://space.coldfirestudios.com - Space, Glory Through Conquest
negative reviews (Score:3, Insightful)
Positive reviews only help to accent features that I haven't read about before. If I'm already looking at a review of something, chances are I know I want it so a positive isn't going to sway me into buying it.
--trb
Kevin Baird of videogamenews.com (Score:2)
Kevin is one of the authors of the (tongue-in-cheek, in case you're an idiot) "crate rating" system, in which games are rated based on how long it takes to come across a crate to smash or jump on.
The short answer: don't trust reviews.
As a former freelance game reviewer... (Score:2, Interesting)
I used to write freelance reviews, maybe 5 or 6 years ago, for an site called "Online Gaming Review" - they've since gone belly-up.
They would send me a game, sometimes a commercial copy, sometimes a gold-mastered final beta. I'd play it for a week or two, write a couple short pages, and they'd send me a check for $100. It was a great deal while it lasted.
However, they did send me more than a few utterly worthless titles that never
What bothers me (Score:4, Interesting)
Video Game reviewers should only take the following things into consideration when reviewing a game.
1) Is it fun?
2) Will it provide fun for a long period of time, or is it a renter?
3) Does anything in the game annoy you. Are there stupid puzzles. Do the controls not resdpond well.
4) Is the music memorable? Will the player also want the soundtrack?
Re:What bothers me (Score:4, Insightful)
For their time, each of those games (with the exceptions of Tetris, Combat and Breakout) had some of the best graphics around. Really. Mega Man 2 and Zelda 1 were early NES titles and hold up quite well, even compared to later titles like Super Mario Bros. 3 (whose own graphic goodness was rarely exceeded on the NES). Heck, even Pac Man offered an impressive amount of fluidity and animation compared to other offerings at the time.
Graphics aren't everything, naturally, but few "classic" titles didn't offer impressive (or at least acceptable) graphics alongside excellent gameplay.
Graphics in games (Score:3, Insightful)
In fact, most of a game's characteristics in this respect are irrelevant to whether it's actually fun. If it's fun, I don't care if the music is annoying and repetitive. I don't care if eve
Game Developer & Writer (Score:2, Interesting)
I wonder how many people start reviewing games (Score:2)
Maybe *I* should....
reviewing pc titles (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:reviewing pc titles (Score:2)
I'll give you a clue... it involved fraud and hookers.
Individual reviewers should be mistrusted (Score:3, Informative)
What people who actually want to know what's up with a game need to actually do some research. As with the rest of life, you reap what you sow. Unless your taste runs to whatever's "cool" at the moment (and obviously a lot of people have such taste) just picking up a copy of insert gaming magazine here] or browsing to [insert game review site here] isn't going to tell you squat.
You need to look at a range of review sites. It doesn't take long to figure out which magazines and web sites are schills for whatever game publisher gave them the most cash/best junket. You learn how to read them, and what filters you need to deal with. Check gaming fan sites and message boards. Yes, there are going to be fanboys and schills on the a publisher's payroll, but again, don't take one person's word for it, for goodness sake. Common freakin' sense people. Look at the gestalt.
Be patient. Even if the game sells out on the first day, they _will_ make more copies of them. Don't buy a game the first day unless you're willing to throw that $50 in the trash, because no matter what the previews may have said about it, there's an even chance at best that you are going to hate it. I've done my share of camping out in a game store waiting for FedEx to get in with the new shipment of whatever spiffy new "Popular Video Game Concept" is coming in that day. I've had some successes, and my fair share of disasters (in other words, most of them). The most recent and painful experience being Master of Orion 3: How The Hell Do I Do Anything Here?.
The game publishing industry certainly is able to shove crap out the door, but there will always be plenty of other gamers out there without the ethical handicaps that the commercial reviewers have, who are going to be more than willing to give you and anyone else who will listen the straight poop. Also, not all commercial reviewers are alike. Sometimes you'll find one whos taste aligns with yours, and if so go for it. But even then, you owe it to yourself to look at a lot of opinions before you buy.
Personally, I've found sites like MetaCritic [metacritic.com] and GameFAQs [gamefaqs.com] are great places where a lot of different opinions about a game are collected under one roof, and the people who run those sites don't write any of the reviews that appear there. You usually can get the gist of what a game is going to be like, what the bugs are, etc, but it requires waiting until a critical mass of reviews comes in.
An ex-reviewer speaks... (Score:2, Interesting)
Extended Play (Score:2)
some of us were ethical (Score:3, Interesting)
I gave scores ranging from 32% to 90%. I often didn't get to choose the games I reviewed, but in the rares cases I did, I sometimes picked bad games to show that we were not as biased as some might think. However it still provoked reader ire as some pestered on why we wasted space on reviewing crappy titles...
Shallow Reviews (Score:3, Insightful)
When all is said and done, the graphics and sound of a game are entertaining for 15 minutes but it is the gameplay that keeps me coming back. Just like how a movie with big-budget special effects is fun to watch once but I'll watch movies like Dr StrangeLove a dozen times. The great gameplay is the reason why I still play Doom, Quake, Starcraft, Star Control 2, Sam'n'Max, Final Fantasy 7, Galaga, etc. Admittedly those games were technically impressive when they were released but they date well because of their gameplay.
And this is why most reviews are useless. I can understand why it happens; the paid reviewers have a big stack of games and not a lot of time. The review is simply a list of the "neato" effects the game offers. I could get the same info from the downloadable demo. I expect something a little deeper from a review. This is why I've turned to user reviews; sometimes they're just as shallow but at least I can expect the user of a game to have put some effort into playing it. Maybe.
Games developers know that reviews are shallow so they produce games that have explosions and shiny things and big boom-boom noises. They know that those games will get the good reviews. So gameplay has taken a backseat to "production quality". It is exactly what happened to Hollywood. Sure, the occasional great game manages to slip through the system but it's the exception not the rule.
Re:war and games (Score:4, Funny)
I think you're getting this mixed up with the dance game, Chaka Khan.
Re:WOW, WHAT AN EXCELLENT FEATURE!!! (Score:2, Interesting)
Loki contacted my editor to complain, and my editor tore me a new one. He made it quite clear that honesty was not what they expected in reviews. I ha
I don't know... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:I don't listen to em. (Score:2)
So how the heck to you decide which games to buy? Maybe it's just me, but my friends are even more broke than I am and therefore not good for games not yet in the bargain bin...
Personally, I gauge all reviews (games, gear, etc) on how detailed and well thought-out they seem. For example, if a review carefully goes over a game's premise, gameplay, controls, storyline and etc. it's going to get a lot more credibility from my mind than a short blurb about
Gametab is evil? (Score:2)
Just blanks it out. I tried it with Safari and a couple of others.
Loverly.
-fred