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Bad Reviews for games have more of an impact than just untimely reviews.
Xion
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I work for a company "X" who publishes one of the largest gaming websites and communities in Australia. At this time I won't name the company I work for various reasons. As much as I'd love to plug them, I won't in case this post has political ramifications.
However I've come to understand that they have had to turn back small fortunes in advertising revenue from publishers, as well as from my understanding kickbacks for a good review. After-all a good review from company "X" almost guarantees that more people will buy the game.
Company "X" have subsequently slammed DNF, Homefront, Socom Special Forces with reviews all < 5.5. So there's some fairly heavy hitters in there which have been slammed by our reviewers. And because of this, they've lost potential revenue from those publishers in the form of advertising and "goodies" that get given away as part of competitions and prizes which help promote the latest version of Publisher X's "Game of the Year 2011".
This problem stems from the fact that all gaming sites are based on advertising revenue, they make their money to pay their reviewers on the advertising that their sites generate. If a game company who also happens to be an advertiser stops their advertising run. Well it could cost that reviewer his/her job for that 5.0 that he/she gave to DNF.
So there's at least one Gaming site out there who is NOT afraid to slam a game where it hurts even if its DNF, followed up by a light dusting of knuckles across the chops. That's what it means to be free, and to give an independent review. We buy the games we review and give our honest and professional opinions on the quality of the game you're going to buy.
However I've come to understand that they have had to turn back small fortunes in advertising revenue from publishers, as well as from my understanding kickbacks for a good review. After-all a good review from company "X" almost guarantees that more people will buy the game.
Company "X" have subsequently slammed DNF, Homefront, Socom Special Forces with reviews all < 5.5. So there's some fairly heavy hitters in there which have been slammed by our reviewers. And because of this, they've lost potential revenue from those publishers in the form of advertising and "goodies" that get given away as part of competitions and prizes which help promote the latest version of Publisher X's "Game of the Year 2011".
This problem stems from the fact that all gaming sites are based on advertising revenue, they make their money to pay their reviewers on the advertising that their sites generate. If a game company who also happens to be an advertiser stops their advertising run. Well it could cost that reviewer his/her job for that 5.0 that he/she gave to DNF.
So there's at least one Gaming site out there who is NOT afraid to slam a game where it hurts even if its DNF, followed up by a light dusting of knuckles across the chops. That's what it means to be free, and to give an independent review. We buy the games we review and give our honest and professional opinions on the quality of the game you're going to buy.
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1)The readership of gaming websites are not a valuable advertising segment for anything other than video games. Thus, these websites are entirely dependent on ad revenue from the same production companies that they are supposed to be reviewing.
2)Gamers don't care about objective reviews. The vast majority simply want the emotional and financial investment that they have placed in the game to be validated by a compliant media.
Your "Company X" is an a catch-22. You can't get ad revenue without giving higher reviews. Then, if you do boost your review scores and just slap a 7-9 on everything, readers no longer value your opinion and nobody will bother offering you small fortunes in ad revenues or kickbacks.
This is true of a segment of any population. You would need some astonishingly good evidence to try and claim majority on it. You also need to successfully argue why other just as common and valid motivations don't apply.
Steam ID : rwb36, Twitter : Werezompire,
Actually this isn't quite true, from my understanding the gaming population is composed mostly of 25-30 somethings who are tech savvy and work or have something to do with a technology related field. After-all most of us are smarter than your average joe.
Non-gaming, technology based advertising can and does work. Advertising for VPS (virtual private servers), mobile phone, iPhone apps, especially when you add other forms of media other than game reviews. ie 30 second advert before showing the latest preview of Shogun: Total War for instance, and showing video interviews with valve employees etc.
So these websites do not have to be dependent on publisher revenue, however those that do have an advantage over the others. Early views on games, exclusive interviews with developers, free reviewer versions of games prior to public release, odd stuff coming from publishers (free t-shirts, mugs, night vision goggles, figurines, etc) for extra advertising bang for their buck. Oh I forgot as well, invitation to exclusive publisher events such as unveiling of Publisher "S" newest gadgets. and exclusive previews on games.
All secured at the price of a good review, those that sell out do better than the ones that don't.
But for god's sake have the person reviewing the game at least enjoy the genre of game he is playing. (I'm looking at you, IGN.)
Rock Band DLC | GW:OttW - arrcd | WLD - Thortar
Many, many times they'll review something like, an MMO for example, which pretty consistently receive only mediocre reviews at best (they gave Rift a mere 6/10 and complained a lot) and the very next page will be a full page advertisement for the game they just told you isn't worth your money unless you REALLY wanted to play a fairly uninspired game.
It certainly doesn't appear as though they are scared of losing revenue.
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The fallacy here is just how you are defining 'better'. I firmly believe that it is an error for the gaming press to model itself around the normal press. It is too far detached. It is an enthusiast niche, so the bar for success should be set much lower than what a lot of people think it is at right now.
For example, I'd consider Rock Paper Shotgun a rousing success. It is trustworthy, rich with interesting and apt content, and run on a shoestring to a select base of readers. It's not trying to be the New York Times, it never will be and it never should be.
I think a lot of gaming press outlets have structured their operations to fit a scenario that simply does not match reality. Their costs are so high that they are entirely beholden to publisher ad buys to stay afloat. They decry this covenant at every opportunity yet do nothing about it.
They see news like 'video gaming is highest revenue entertainment industry' and they immediately picture themselves as legit journalists with moral obligations and a duty to society and all that bullshit they teach you in introduction to journalism, day one, class one. That is just not the case.
Video gaming is a fragmented as the entertainment industry as a whole. People have different platforms, different genres and different budgets; a mesmerising mix of an almost infinite range of possibilities and combinations. The logical response to that is to have a press that is as equally splintered. Not to have huge, lumbering organizations that have to cater to everybody and by doing so ensure their leash is made to the publishers who hold the coin.
There is only room for one or two IGNs and Gamespots, and they literally already exist. Trying to compete with that establishment is a doomed cause that compromises both your integrity and your future stability. Why try? It may not be as glamorous as you wanted, but making a barebones blog with quality content, free from the insidious ties to publishers that plague every other outlet, can easily be both profitable and respectable.
I intentionally left it ambiguous. I believe you are correct in a number of ways, but incorrect in the assumption that a small company such as Rock, Paper Shotgun could compete with the big guns such as IGN.
Off Topic
This is a little off topic, however in 1998 a small company in a garage stated a website which was a direct competitor of some corporate giants at the time (how could they possibly compete?), those direct competitors were Yahoo!, Magellan, Lycos, Infoseek, and Excite. Today they're one of the largest companies in the world, and almost no-one remembers who the others are. No need to tell you who that company is who started in their garage.
Other companies started in garages: Microsoft (1975), Apple (1977), i'm sure there's more.
So there is definitely a possibility here for a non-large company to get very large without selling themselves out the question is to either to capture a niche market, or to offer something unique or better than the others hands down.
Which is going to be difficult for a media company, so media companies are all about developing tightly knit communities. I have to say that I cannot go to IGN or other large sites for an unbiased game review, but to the smaller sites such as Rock Paper Shotgun and Company "X" of course, even escapist magazine, although Yahtzee is definetly biased towards and opposed to certain game genres, but that's a well known issue for anyone who knows him, or watched any of his reviews
Shitty Tumblr:lighthouse1138.tumblr.com
...hmmm... I should probably get some legal/editorial advice before replying to this post. :P
[We have a really, really good ad manager right now]
I mean, if the problem is the revenue source sustaining the site...
Yeah, after going by what I've seen on the internet, I highly doubt that.
Oh wow, yeah. I missed that.
No sorry Zion, selection bias all up ins for you. That whole statement you made about the "gaming population" is quite clearly your own faulty judgement based on anecdotal observation.
Do you work for Hyper? I'm really interested in anything you might have to say on this.
Also, I flicked through what I think is the latest issue last night, and only counted one Ad for a game on the inside of the back cover. The rest were hardware ads. If I recall correctly I think that might have been somewhat of the case for the last few months. That's pretty interesting, would some games magazines be moving away from game advertisements to allow for more freedom in their writing? They could probably make enough bank on advertising hardware stuff alone. Although, Hyper reviews hardware too, so that might be a whole other issue.
Please shoot me a PM if you add me so I know to add you back.
Like DP said, you should have reviewers who prefer that genre doing that kind of review. Why would you want an FPS player reviewing, say, Recettear?
I'm not saying people should only review their favorite genre, but I know there have been multiple times where a big site has assigned someone to review a game and they come out and say in the review "I hate these sorts of games to begin with".
Rock Band DLC | GW:OttW - arrcd | WLD - Thortar
Okay, well, firstly I'm going to do your boilerplate views expressed are not necessarily the position of my employers, entirely my own opinions/thoughts, etc etc etc. More to the point, I'm not the ad guy nor the editor so I don't know the specifics.
Now Hyper and its sister mag PCPP are handled as a unit since the demographic is more or less the same. Obviously there are differences - PCPP gets a hell of a lot more tech ads since it has a dedicated tech section and editor, after all - but essentially it's all managed through a single unit. That said, there are still a decent amount of game ads in Hyper - I saw a Child of Eden, Hunted, Red Faction Armagheddon, and MTG in the latest issue, 213, although I couldn't find that many in 212 so you're probably right if you're talking about that issue.
Editorially, there's pretty much zero pressure (from within) to rate something a whatever in exchange for a whatever, either in games or in tech. Zero. None. Nada. The only specific incident from outside was when we got an email from a few PR people at I]name withheld[/I saying that they regretted that our previewer wasn't the same person as our reviewer for I]game withheld[/I. We may also have had some problems with some tech companies over reviews, but our tech editor tends to request stuff that he knows is going to be good because he wants to play with the shiniest toys, so it's actually fairly rare just by general chance that he'll trash something.
I'm not entirely sure what the gist of this thread is about, so ask some more specific questions and I'll see if I can provide answers.
Let's kick this shit off Ebert style: multiple reviews from multiple people. One review per game is silly.
Dodged a lot of bullets this way.
Currently playing: GW2 and TSW
If 6/10 isn't worth your money, why do they even bother with having 1-5?
"Hey, this game isn't worth buying, it's only slightly better than average." That doesn't ring bells for you that they're not giving the review scores equal to their opinions?
Steam
I think the term "objective review" is rather disingenuous anyway. There is no such thing, unless your review contains absolutely no opinion whatsoever and just states verifiable facts about the game.
And yes, nobody wants to read that.
selection bias all up ins for you??? <= sorry?
Quantitative evidence => Computer games are making kids smarter.
That doesn't prove that 'most of us are smarter than your average joe' at all.
Steam
Currently playing: GW2 and TSW
I do. Angry Birds is great. I've been playing games for 28 years.
Yes, you sound elitist.
So obviously if a review is bad enough to tip the scales on that site, the marketing person has to do something. You could fix this by asking what went wrong, but that is too late. No, you have to keep them from dinging your games in the future, right?
It just annoys me. A site like Rotten Tomatoes (who I have not trusted since IGN bought them out, believe it or not) gives about 4-5 different ways of aggregating their scores, depending on what criteria you prefer. I have never seen that option with Metacritic.
I wish points-based reviews could be abolished forever. In lieu of that, I'd like a website or magazine to do the old-school "Second opinion" kind of review, where another person with different tastes reviews the product. That isn't always economically feasable givne the quantity of games released nowadays, but it would be nice.
I wrote reviews for about 6 years altogether, I guess, though I petered out a lot by the end.
Part of the problem is that PR firms don't really care about the words in a review. If you slapped a 90 on a review but the content was all "this game is fucking terrible. It's 90 all right, it's 90% bullshit," I think half the PR firms out there probably wouldn't even notice. Or care, if they did. It's all about the scores. They will never be abolished because the PR firms and publishers that supply games to the review sites to review don't want words, they want high scores. That's it.
And you sir add diversity to our fair community. I salute you. And your little birds. Who are angry.
Currently playing: GW2 and TSW
Oh, I'm well aware of the different angles things come at. It's like SEO - My business provides SEO services to companies, and I don't entirely know how I feel about it. On one hand, it is manipulating the rankings. On the other hand, EVERYONE does it. So if you don't you will lose business. It's somewhat similar in the ratings game.
I've had this discussion with friends before, about how hard it is being a reviewer willing to diss on games, and during that conversation they brought up Yahtzee. I wonder how the Escapist deals with having an "Accentuate the Negative" style reviewer on their website. My guess is that he brings in more ad revenue himself to make up for it, as well as the insulation of being over in a "forgotten" territory, but.. I dunno. I like hearing what folks actually think, even with their biases. It's why I read Giantbomb despite how much they seem to despise everything about the Wii. Yes, I'm a Nintendo fanboy.
Hey
read the review before giving your opinions on the 7.7 of gaming, okay
Someone with a site here said that they were considering submitting their joke 100% review to Metacritic that was clearly facetiously written, but were worried that the only thing anybody would ever take away from it was the 100%
All he meant was that once almost all gaming people were very similar to each other, but today there are many other demographics involved besides gamers.
Your post merits no more than a 5/10
Welcome to capitalism? You're complaining about something that is a fundamental aspect of American way of life.