A very interesting read:
"Over the past couple of months, I’ve noticed a change in the landscape of reviews around the internet. Traditionally, there were a number of large sites that could be trusted to “professionally” review a game. You know who I mean without me needing to name them. I think this has begun to change.
It’s going to be very difficult to talk about this subject without naming names but in the interests of professionalism I will try to avoid specifically calling anyone out on what I believe to be their shoddy work.
It first struck me a month or so ago when I read a review on the website of a magazine which I have genuine respect for. The review was for a game I had just reviewed myself and it was abundantly clear that the reviewer working for this website had not played the game in question for longer than an hour or two.
He mentioned things in the review which simply weren’t true and the only reasonable explanation was that he hadn’t got to the part of the game which made them untrue yet. I was shocked and more than a little disappointed. The website in question even issued a statement claiming that their guy had finished the game and standing behind the review. I understand that it’s important to back your staff but surely not at the expense of honesty or reputation when the evidence is so clearly contrary?
This brings us to the seemingly growing trend of not actually playing the games that you are supposedly reviewed. No outlet will ever admit to this (except us) because if you come out and say “yes, we reviewed that game without actually playing it to its fullest” then you are admitting that you sold the game – and your readers – short. I am reasonably sure of at least one growing outlet that definitely does not play the games it posts reviews for. How can you adequately pass objective judgement on something if you don’t know all it has to offer? You can’t. It’s dishonest and it harms our industry.
In my opinion, this happened just this week with an extremely poorly-written appraisal of an upcoming Move title from one of the big outlets. The reviewer misquoted controls (which have since been edited out, mostly – without referencing the original mistake) and claimed that they were detracting from his enjoyment of the game without actually knowing what those buttons were supposed to be doing. It’s like me saying that a piano is out of tune because I can’t play Rachmaninoff’s third on it. I can’t play the piano and I’ve never tried to learn so why blame the piano makers?
So why bother? The answer is simple: traffic. If you don’t cover as many games as possible you limit your chances at search engine hits and you seem less professional to your readership because you have gaps in your coverage. You see, contrary to what some might want you to believe, high traffic is essential to profitability with a website. If you don’t have the traffic then advertisers don’t want to pay you for adverts, no matter what your advertising model is.
This is the reason for those sites which post multiple sensationalist headlines out of one interview. It’s the reason for most of those sites which post the “announcement of an upcoming announcement” news stories. It’s the reason why many outlets focus on negative stories: negativity is popular. It’s also the reason, sadly, that some sites or writers rig their reviews. All of which brings us nicely to the sites that post artificially low scores for highly anticipated titles.
Now, I’m not suggesting that simply because a title is highly anticipated, it should automatically get a positive score. That is just as bad as the negative scoring trick used by some, it deceives your readers. We try to use the full scope of our review scale on TheSixthAxis and we occasionally moan when it’s clear that others are only using the top third. It is fairly obvious though, that sometimes writers and outlets will purposefully approach a game negatively in the anticipation that it will create a bit of conflict and drive a lot of traffic.
Various outlets have been accused of this and, while it’s not always a fair accusation, I think that it does occasionally have a solid basis in truth. It happens too often and scores from individuals are often too disparate in comparison to the general consensus to be a coincidence. This would be easily accounted for if it was a rare occurrence but certainly not at the regularity with which it happens.
I’ve always been of the opinion that some of the most talented writing on the internet is on small, independent blogs. It genuinely annoys me each year when the nominations for the Games Media Awards are announced in the UK and they’re the same limited selection of outlets, owned by the same couple of publishers or media outlets. Independent outlets and the talent they employ don’t get noticed by most.
So how does that leave the future of games reviews? Well, there are talented people out there who are willing to work for free when they’re not on freelance assignment (Jen Allen and others at Resolution, Lewis Denby and of course, certain TSA staffers all immediately spring to mind) so there’s no shortage of youth and enthusiasm. We just need the established industry giants to take notice. Or we’ll overthrow them."
I'm going to have to agree with this guy. It sucks he can't name names, but I think most can figure out who he's talking about.
So do you agree or disagree?
