Grimwell, now back on his eponymous website, discovers the obvious:
This is no different than in any other media, there are PR people trying to ‘spin’ the news and make steaming piles of crap into hits before word of mouth kills them. This is why I don’t buy gaming magazines anymore — you can’t trust what you read. On the web you can at least find people brave enough to spout off about the truth of what they find, but those people have no chance of getting an exclusive preview of the big games for the year, or secret access to the recesses of E3 where the ‘good’ data (which has been glossed by PR) is.
So I’m at the point of decision in a quest. Do I play the game and get the exclusives that are shallow and misleading (not always, but often enough), or do I play hardball and accept that I’m not going to be able to do launch day reviews because I won’t see products until I buy them?
As Abalieno, who discovered Grimwell’s new haunt, notes:
Even here I believe who is losing more are the game companies themselves, not the players. It’s the games that are going to suffer because the quality always stands out. You can hide the dirt under the carpet but you are going to have it come out somewhere else and hurting you even more.
As can be seen from my quote in the same article (which was taken from a private email – bad ranter! no cookie!) I tend to agree. Public relations people are normally great people (they kind of have to be, being that dealing with people is their job and all) but they are at direct cross-purposes from a free flow of information which is necessary if developers are to ever get honest feedback. Which is why the best community relations teams aren’t treated as PR adjuncts, but their own seperate fiefdom, where they act more as ombudsmen then salesmen.
{ 16 comments… read them below or add one }
Huh, I have a stupid question.
What’s wrong with walking to a store, buying a released copy and writing a totally independent review?
Sure, some people won’t wait to read your independent review and will pre-order the game blindly.
Yet, is there any reason to believe an independent review would change that anyway?
A review of a released copy will occur a month after everyone else publishes their review, as they got advance copies.
People, being ADD addled instant gratification idgits, won’t wait for your review, so they won’t read your review, so you won’t get ad dollars.
The basic issue is just as the Grimwell put it. If you’re too blunt, then you don’t get hand outs from the industry that leads to better traction on your corner of the internet. Lower traction means lower revenue. That means you grow less and that means you might not ever make it out of the small time independant scene at best.
Now, this isn’t absolutely true. You can break out of this, I do some some review shows and websites absolutely pan a game for everything terrable. (X-Play on G4 TV) And yet they still get invited to every E3 event, why? Because they appealed to their audiance and developers know they can be ‘used’ to gain the buzz they need on a product that has a good chance with the public.
Still, this is sort of the way with the Entertainment Industry in general, isn’t it?
Those “ADD addled instant gratification idgits” people are not going to pay attention to your review, even if you were able to publish it 1 month before anybody else. So, why bother with them?
(Expected answer: Because they click like frenetic monkeys and hence generate ad dollars.)
How about catering to people who are tired of blowing money on bad games? They can click too and they would be loyal to reviewers who allow them to read a genuine assessment of a game’s quality.
I know this is all stating truisms, yet, if the #1 focus of reviewers is to generate ad dollars, how can they rant when the #1 focus of publishers is to generate game sales?
I’m starting to get very interested in breaking that mold.
The problem is that the concepts behind this PR style pre-dates the internet. You’ve got large corporations in charge of this stuff who got where they are by keeping a firm grasp upon the flow of information, back when the channels of information flow were limited. Now the channels of information have become a raging flood, and there really is no way to keep it under control for any useful length of time. Yet they keep trying to do business as if it were 1990. And it just doesn’t really work.
Eventually one of these companies is going to realize what needs to be done and take the plunge. They’ll open up and share more honest data with the public. Sure, some of the sales on their crappy games will drop because of it, but that will be more than made up for by profits from the benefits. Good will from the public, increased sales on their good game titles, and most importantly of all the chance to release better quality games when they can pick out the stinkers before they are done sinking money on them, these things will make these companies prosper. Plus, running a company that people actually LIKE is the only effective way to combat casual piracy.
It’ll be awhile yet, though. These companies are run by people that just don’t understand the way the world really works anymore. We’ll have to wait another generation before they start to be replaced by people who do.
I recommend writing for 2 websites:
Call the first one IGNLITE and give every game you review a 98%.
Call the second one Grimwell online and write good reviews using games you received as a writer for IGNLITE.
slog, you are a genius.
What if they discover your double nature?
Deny everything.
Eliminate the double nature. Team up with someone else that does do 98% reviews, and get your material from them. For that matter, network with several that do 98% reviews.
which was taken from a private email
Well, I thought it wasn’t going to put you in trouble, so I decided it was okay to play outside the rules ;p
I’ve pointed this out before not that long ago, but in most entertainment magazines, most of the copy isn’t devoted to reviews.
But Grimwell, if you want something different, you just need to go go do it yourself. And that’s hard without money and the right people, isn’t it?
Which is exactly what we plan to do.
I’m with you and I don’t see what would be so hard about it.
Sure, you won’t make a fortune being honest, but money is not all there is.
If I can do this at a minimum cost and have fun doing it, why would I concern myself with anything else?
Well, you probably ought to be concerned about providing something readable for a wide audience. Otherwise, what’s the point?
If there is no public for independent reviews, is there any hope at all?
I have to admit that I wouldn’t have kicked things off with that post if I actually thought a bunch of people were going to read it. I was blowing off steam. I have great interactions with a lot of PR people and received good responses for something written more about the parts that frustrate me than the entire whole.
I do stand by what I said, PR people have a job that works as a direct counter to mine, but I don’t fault them for it. The entire post was me setting the plate for myself: I have GO back and that particular URL does not have time for the hype.
Thanks for the linkage Lum, even if I did state the obvious