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Forums - Gaming Discussion - Interesting take on the 2k pr mess.

hxczuner said:
Joelcool7 said:
Kantor said:
Joelcool7 said:

I think Redner was in the right, he had every right to voice his opinion. If reviewers can say the kind of crap they've been spewing about Duke then he should be able to respond likewise. I think a tweet may have been a bad way to convey that message maybe he should have sent out emails to all those reviewers and voiced his concerns. Or maybe he should have written an article and posted it on the Duke website or contacted 2k to get their opinions.

Either way some of the reviews go way over the line, nobody should have to put up with that, everyone should be able to voice their opinions and defend their products!

If, and only if, something inaccurate is said about the game, he is perfectly within his right to privately email the reviewers to explain the errors in the review and request that they be changed. This does happen.

He should not, under any circumstances, post a tweet expressing his dissatisfaction. It's between the PR company and the reviewer, nothing else.

Also, he should never complain about poor reviews for his game. And in no parallel universe should he ever even suggest the idea that review copy distribution is going to be based on review score. That's the sort of thing that destroys your reputation.

From the article I didn't gather he was particularly upset the game was getting low reviews. The article made it appear that he was getting defensive about some of the reviewers despicable comments. Comments like “Shame on Gearbox for wanting their name on this stinking pile of crap!” should not be tolerated.

Reviewers are journalists, having been a professional game and movie critic I must say your job is to report unbiased opinions on products. Your job as a reviewer is not to attack the company that made the product or get offensive, your job is to review a product and give the consumer the best quality article you can.

From his comment he was not referring to low scores at all. Lets read the tweet “Too many went too far with their reviews … we are reviewing who gets games next time and who doesn’t based on today’s venom.” When a company sends a game or movie for review they expect for the product to be treated fairly and for the journalist to have some journalistic integrity. Many of the reviews I read were not okay journalistically, very hurtful things were said and the reviewers went way to far with their comments.

One of the reasons I read VGChartz reviews is because so far the quality of them has been decent. The odd time a reviewer goes a little far. But sites like 1Up are notorious for being biased and filled with hate and controversy. Reviews like the ones Redner was talking about are not okay. If I was the PR company I would not send review copies to them anymore either.

Review copies should be sent to real journalists, not crying moma's boys who decide to get personal and childish attacking a person's integrity for the product they produce. Only journalists who are credible and quality reviewers should get review copies. Review copies are not a right for every journalist. When I worked for one of the biggest newspapers in my city, I didn't get review copies I got some advanced movie screenings and a few perks. Before my paper laid me off I was in the process of trying to get on the reviewer list, now I wanted to get review copies, but guess what not all journalists deserve review copies. I didn't work in the industry long enough and I was unproven as such I wasn't worthy of review copies.

No childish unprofessional journalist should receive advanced copies. Its not fair to the other good journalists who are denied copies. Its not fair to the publisher and developer who slave over their product for years and its not fair to the reader who deserves a decent quality review.

P.S - I also know I have bad grammar but with Word and a good editor anyone who wants to report news and be a journalist should feel free to do so. I worked for my paper for nearly 2 years and have worked at several sites. No good journalist would write the kind of crap that these reviewers did and expect for the PR company and publisher to keep sending them review copies.

With all due respect, you just identified a major problem here on the internet: The difference between bias and a passionate opinion. Most people don't know what bias truly means.

 

Anywho, I would agree with you to a certain extent, but a truly objective review is impossible (another fallacy of the internet realm). People cry for objectivity but I promise you won't like it if you see it. Games are just that, games. They're fun and we're passionate about them. The developers are passionate about making them. So why should reviewers bottle that same passion? It's ok for a reviewer to gush over a fantastic game (Outland, for example is absolutely brilliant and everyone should play it right now) but if a reviewer displays that same passion in a negative fashion they're biased, mean, and unnecessarily brutal.

I just don't believe that anything should be sugarcoated...ever.(I don't write the way some others do, and I most likely wouldn't produce anything in line with these, but I don't have a problem with it.) Our "journalistic responsibility" is not to the developer, or the publisher, or the families of either, it's to the reader. If we feel a reader should avoid any contact with a game at all costs, it's our job to say so. You don't read our reviews to see whether or not we think the developer tried really hard. Is it harsh, possibly. But it's not wrong.

I'm sorry I was using bias as an example but that wasn't the pinnacle of my argument. I don't like 1Up because in the past they have been extremely biased against Nintendo. Their reviewer called the GameCube a little childs play thing and then mocked its appearance on G4Tech. Then another reviewer said Miyamoto was a whack job. If a journalistic organization expresses such a hatred for a company such as Nintendo how can you take their reviews seriously? That's what I meant by bias.

What I was trying to get at is the offensive content. A reviewer and journalists job is to report about the product to the consumer. To do so respectfully and objectively. What some of these reviewers did was completely uncalled for attacking the publisher and developer directly in your article is going over the line.

Its okay to be passionate about reviews I have been very passionate in my reviews as well. But a journalist should always act professionally and they shouldn't cross the line. I mean attacking the developer directly and calling their product a steaming pile of shit essentially, its just not cool.

So if I was a publisher or PR company and I saw a journalist attacking my companies integrity and unfairly attacking my product. I would defiantly re-consider sending them a review copy in the future. If I saw many reviewers all attacking me and my company I would vocalize my discontent public ally, maybe in a more tactful manor but I would still say something.

In journalism class when I was taught to review products I was taught that professionalism and tact were very important. That a journalist is to remain impartial and unbiased. The reviewers job is to provide a quality review to advise the consumer on which products to use or try out, without drawing emotions and personal vendetta's into the issue. I have a negative bias against a company and showed it my review once, I went a little over board. My teacher pulled me aside and read my review to me and pointed out that I over stepped the line and reported poorly. I got an F on that review and had to improve in the future reviews.

Fact is their are ways of expressing discontent with products without insulting the developer. Instead of calling the game a pile of shit, you could comment more specifically about what you didn't like. You could say the game felt out dated and old that the game was not up to the higher standards of our current generation. Several ways to be passionate without insulting the developer.

Review copies are a privilege and developers should send them out to journalists who write good reviews. Do they have to rank your product high, no way but if the journalist goes to far, then giving a different journalist a review copy next time is not really a bad thing. Journalists need to act like journalists.



-JC7

"In God We Trust - In Games We Play " - Joel Reimer

 

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Dodece said:
@Staude

There is a hypocrisy in such arguments. People damn the weighing of content when it is detrimental to a game, but will also praise the practice when it gives a game a serious boost. There are a multitude of games which have scores that are almost fifty percent plus a result of the content.

Want an example look at Mass Effect. A game which has a whole host of issues. The game play mechanics are really weak, it suffers from bugs, crashes, and lag. On the visual side the game is poor, the environments are generic, and the layout was fairly heinous. Which makes Mass Effect a below average shooter. A game that mechanically speaking should be scored at around fifty or sixty, but it is the content that drives the game up to a average score of over ninety.

This is where this bashing of 1up is hypocritical. You cannot accept a thirty to forty point upswing for a game based on the content, without accepting that the opposite cannot be valid as well. The content is a constituent of modern reviews. The gamers expect this, and they apply the same logic themselves. When judging the value of a game. So if good content can make a game awesome then it is only logical that supremely bad content can see a game being marked down to total crap.


You should read what Joel wrote. Saves me the trouble of writing my own opinion as his statements reflect my opinion on this matter..

 

In basic, there is proffesionally reviewing, and then theres a 'immature person with a free game who decided he was gon' write about it !'



Check out my game about moles ^

This whole twitter thing is stupid anyway. As Tweeting is as casual you can address your audience with regards to PR, It should be taken with a grain of salt. I Mean obviously the PR guy acted out of emotion. If he were to "Officially" address the critics i'm sure he would have had time to write a reasonable response (as seen in his email).