But another article (I think it's the kotaku one) says that games still get leaked even with these events. So this excuse that the publishers need these events may be flawed...

I for one agree that perks and gifts from publishers to reviewers should be strictly forbidden. As for the lateral crap like the "being shot" thing, I'm ignoring that.

All this crap about soldiers-this and Afghanistan-that is a logical fallacy to beat up on someone. Lots of people have cushy jobs that don't involve lethal situations, that doesn't somehow make them worthy of derision. This is an argument akin to "Think of the children!" It isn't contructive in any possible light.

I agree.

Maelstrom is essentially calling out the reviewers for trying to downplay what is obviously not a healthy practice in game-review business.

please, the only good job is one where you just go about doing whatever you wanna do in you life as normal.

Every job has it's own rewards and pitfalls.
In fact, since you've informed me about business so much, let me inform you about psychology.

Getting paid to do something you love to do lowers the intrinsic value you receive from doing that thing. In a study with children, half of a classroom was given drawing tools and were paid to draw a picture, while the other half was just given drawing tools.
Results showed that most kids who were paid, stopped drawing after one picture while the ones who weren't paid kept drawing picture after picture.

Anything you get paid to do is going to have a lower intrinsic value and a higher extrinsic value. Additionally, if the extrinsic value is insufficient or does not live up to the expected tradeoff, resentment is the result.

Just because I would love to get paid to play video games doesn't mean that I would love a pressure to log 12 hours in a game today when I'd rather be doing something else.

Getting paid to do something you love >getting paid to do something you dont love.

If doing it repeatedly 'lowers' your enjoyment, then doing something repeatedly that you do NOT enjoy makes it hell.

No, it makes them equal.

The only thing that lowers job satisfaction is unfair treatment or inequity. All jobs have inequity because you lose your freedom in exchange for monetary compensation.

There is no scientific evidence showing that people who get paid to do something they dislike hate the job more.

In other words:

Getting paid = loss of intrinsic value

Getting paid =/= hating something more

It's loss of enjoyment, not increase of disdain.

Don't argue psych if you're only using logic and reasoning. Psych is very much counterintuitive, it's not a simple math problem.

Why isn't anyone mentioning reviewer reputation?

If someone keeps giving shitty games high scores, sooner or later people are going to piss at that reviewer. Publications have their own editorial integrity and so do journalist, they have to uphold a reputation, otherwise there will be no readers!

This doesn't happen just in the gaming industry ffs. Companies try to do their best to sway opinion legally everywhere. If anything, Jeff Gerstmann was fired from gamespot for giving a sponsor's game an unflattering review (Kane and Lynch, but gamespot obviously admitted nothing).

this too.

It's not like reviewers live behind some curtain like the titular wizard of Oz. We know who these people are and we know what their preferences are. In general, the key to using reviews is to find someone you agree with over several games and see how your opinions matched up. Once you've found that person, you can begin to build trust in them.

Additionally, it's not like: hotel room and food=high review. If there are people that do accept a bribe and decide to alter the score to appear more favorable:

a) It may not be their fault... (for example, food that increases happy mood)

b) If those journalists are caught, they and their company will lose MASSIVE amounts of trust and it will hurt their brand name. In the end, an editorial based company only has it's integrity. That integrity is worth something to consumers, which is why they use the website or donate, or buy their subscriptions.

c) You'll be hard pressed to find someone in that situation who is willing to trade their own integrity for some freebies, especially when there is no pressure to review the game favorably in the first place.

- wrong thread.

haha, at first I thought you were making some kind of metaphor