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EGM is hilariously shitty at checking facts
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In their preview for Bioshock for PS3, they admit that they completely spoiled the game months ago and offer a half-hearted apology to PS3 players.
I think it was Ubisoft who stopped giving them preview stuff after Crispin Boyer gave Assassin's Creed a 4.5 (which I don't think it deserved but it's not my job). The entire Ziff Davis gaming group has since been slightly late with Ubi games as they've had to buy them after they're released to review.
It sort of shows the horrible Catch-22 of gaming journalism. You need publisher support to get stuff early for previews and around release time for review, but if the review is not favorable then why would the publisher continue giving you stuff to review? It's silly and stupid and needs to be regulated or something.
Because IGN also came out about this shit and it didn't immediately make Konami look bad while making themselves look good?
IGN is hardly the bastion of credibility but if it outshines EGM here then GOTT DAMN.
"Editor-in-chief Dan Hsu created a controversy in issue #199, where he ran an editorial which accused several of his competitors of selling article opportunities in exchange for advertising contracts. Much of the controversy arose from the fact that he did not give the names of any of the perpetrators, leading some to believe it was all a publicity stunt; although admittedly, much more controversy would have occurred had the editor named names."
Okay, so maybe his magazine has integrity if this is true. But if they really had that much integrity, why bring it up in the first place?
The names were not given because one of them is probably Dan Hsu himself.
Seriously, if you're reading a magazine...any magazine, you better believe that shit is going on. Magazine sales have been down for years, just like most printed periodicals, and this is the only way the publishers can try to recoup.
Not if you're discussing Nintendo! Wakka wakka!
but yeah I'm done
Yeah, me too.
This topic is beaten like a dead horse.
In conclusion, fuck all paid reviewers.
I say, sure, if for nothing other than a good, if short lived, laugh. Even if you've got no opinion on the quality or credibility of the sources involved, the situation itself is pretty funny.
Steam ID: slashx000______Twitter: @bill_at_zeboyd______ Facebook: Zeboyd Games
Back during the release of Daikatana, I was working as a paid reviewer for an at-the-time prominent gaming website. The owner of the site was, privately and publicly, very good friends with John Romero.
I did *NOT* envy the guy whose job it was to review that thing. Corporate and personal suck-uppery aplenty.
Who needs integrity anyway?
Yeah, thats the exact article I was talking about. I still haven't finished GTAIV (I keep getting distracted by the tons and tons of shit to do in the game) so I didn't know they spoiled the ending - as soon as I read the first spoiler I put down the magazine. Fuck, if they'd have spoiled the ending for me I'd have been furious.
And I had forgotten that they admitted to spoiling Bioshock in their write up about the PS3 version.
Video game magazines are in a sad state. 1993-1995 was the golden years of video game magazines. Back then, the internet was in it's infant stages (Compuserve: GO SEGA was useless), so magazines served a purpose. Yeah, their writing was just as bad as it is today - their reviews were completely superficial, and were largely giant ads. However, they were basically the only way to keep up with gaming news, and they were packed with content. The average EGM is, what, 80 pages? The december issue of gamepro was 440 pages long.
And they had more content than just previews and reviews. They also included cheats, and good features, and best of all - strategy guides. Thats what I hate the most about modern magazines - they don't contain any fucking strategy guides. I remember the Gamepro guide for Phantasy Star IV was better than bradly games, for fucks sake.
I think video game magazines should become more like film magazines. I'd fucking kill for a video game equivalent to cashiers du cinema. The closest I get is my subscription to Game Developer magazine (which I believe is one fine magazine) but even then it's more of a tech guide than a true dissection of video games as an art.
tl;dr: the way for video game magazines to survive is to offer more content than just reviews, and to get a bit deeper than "seanbaby's top 5 video game boobs list"
I say this because the last issue of EGM I really liked was their last Top 100 Games of All Time list. Brought a lot of games I didn't know about to my attention, and brought about some good conversation with friends. Not to mention that was the month that GTAIII and Halo came out, so it was just a good time overall for gaming.
Oh, and the issue was fucking huge as well.
It did because it's funny.
I have so many old Gamepros, Swatpros, game players, EGMs, and EGM2s.
Probably over 200 issues all together. They were all collected during their initial runs, however.
I'll occasionally see a large auction for 90 or so issues of gamepro on ebay and I want them... but I can't bring myself to buy magazines from 13 years ago.
That's cheating.
I enjoy the hunt.
As for mags from the 90's and earlier, I've found about 50 or so in the wild.
Steam ID: slashx000______Twitter: @bill_at_zeboyd______ Facebook: Zeboyd Games
I have never seen a gaming magazine give a game higher praise than it deserved. Even official console magazines don't hold any punches when they review their system's games, including exclusives. I usually only read Xbox, GFW, EGM, and Game Informer, so there might be magazines that do do this, I just don't encounter them.
Then there are the articles they throw in that may or may not be interesting, but that depends on the person reading. Some are pretty good reads, like the one that talked about the animation technology going into Boarderlands, or the future of digital distribution.
I just don't understand where this "Video game websites and magazines are nothing but giant advertisements" statement comes from. It's business thats sole purpose it to talk about video games, so of course they are going to talk about video games. They talk about the good and the bad of games, and it's not some evil plot to trick you into buying a game.
"Everyone who is capable of logical thought should be able to see why you shouldn't sell lifetime subscriptions to an MMO. Cell phone companies and drug dealers don't offer lifetime subscriptions either, guess why?" - Mugaaz
If all game journalists did was "talk about the good and bad parts of video games", there wouldn't be a conflict. GAME JOURNALISTS GET PAID TO PROMOTE WHAT THEY REVIEW POSITIVELY. That basically defines "conflict of interest".
Remember Driv3r? EGM has one of the highest ratings for a game that was generally thought to be crap. It was widely reported that Atari PAID reviewers to give this game higher scores. It was shit on by anyone that had a final version of the game, but the previews were all glowing. THIS is the problem with video game journalism.
Atari BUYS/BOUGHT positive reviews that are supposed to be objective. This means that game journalists have gone from being people reporting on games to people being paid to sell games for the publisher. This is obviously NOT what they should be doing.
To get the early scoop, you have to sacrifice journalistic integrity and follow the publisher's demands to get access to the materials. If you aren't willing to, someone else will, and you'll lose readers.
Agreed. In this age where magazines arrive a month after we've already seen every screenshot they have, and we've seen video interviews, gameplay footage, etc of every interesting game...there's just nothing left for them to cover if they keep trying to duplicate what we have online.
Gaming mags need better writers and features that are unique and interesting and worth a read.
Still, I don't know what people are expecting here.
edit: Video games magazines were more interesting in 1994 because you were like 7 years old. Everything was better when you were 7. The strategy guides were neat, but I understand why they are no longer in many magazines.
"Everyone who is capable of logical thought should be able to see why you shouldn't sell lifetime subscriptions to an MMO. Cell phone companies and drug dealers don't offer lifetime subscriptions either, guess why?" - Mugaaz
You'd be surprised at this kind of shit. I was at a UK print gaming magazine for a short time, and they had a couple of letters pages. The plan was basically dot as many legit letters about as they could, and then fake a bunch of shit that they thought the community wanted to know that was on-message for the console for the rest of the spread.
@gamefacts - Totally and utterly true gaming facts on the regular!
Also, how do any of us know they didn't put this picture in the mag KNOWING it wasn't authentic? This is the same magazine that hides photos of monkeys in each issue. They don't exactly take themselves very seriously.
So yeah that was a great day.
Not that I have much respect for most gaming sites anyway. While we all enjoy their "Babe of the day" or "Best fart joke" lists, it doesn't really help the industry's image. Thankfully there's been a few betters ones who've popped up over the last few years, and I'm sure there's lots more that I don't even know about.
Is it possible we are just missing the obvious: all journalism is suffering. We still have the few main sources of well-written (usually), well-researched articles. But in the face of having to compete with insta-internet news facts and credibility take a back seat to page hits and sensationalism.
Print is even worse off because they don't seem to completely get the concept of offering something an online article can't. Maybe exclusive demos like you get with the hideous 360 magazine or exclusivity of writers/columns. Frankly, I don't know what that would be and if I did, I wouldn't be posting it on the internet trying to look smart - I'd be designing some magazine around it.
Also: Print is dead.
It's hard to tell from that angle, but I'd say it's a silenced Ruger MK.II
Well you kinda reinforced my point there. You played it during the PS1/N64 days, and as a result, don't remember it as total shit. I knew there was an N64 version, but a lack of PS1 version led to most people experiencing the game on the PS2 instead.
I agree that gaming mags should move away from previews/reviews, since the internet will always beat them to the punch. Though that doesn't leave them with much left to do.
The gaming "press" really needs to change their relationship with the industry that they cover. The problem is how do they succeed in doing that? We point to how film magazines and reviews are handled, but its such a different ballgame.
For film critics, it doesn't matter if they piss off some studio, who turns around and bars them from pre-release screenings. They can catch the 11am matinée (or use their pull with the local theatre owner to let them check it out even earlier) and still have their review online by the time people get off work. Without getting review copies of games from the publisher in advance, game sites may not have their review up for a few days after release.
Then there are the interviews. In the movie business, you have a lot of big-name actors and directors who, though they might have contracts with certain studios, are still fairly independent, and are willing to speak more candidly than people in the game industry, who have to choose their words carefully. Not to mention that there's such a plethora of celebrities to interview in the movie business, so people are more likely to care about what they have to say. How many gaming interviews have you flipped past or not bothered to click on because you never heard of the guy before?
PSN:Hakira__
I plan on getting a legit degree in journalism when I head back into the good ole college.
I had a free subscription for a year, and let it run out without even looking for a new one because there was, at least once an issue, a review for a game that boiled down to "I don't like these kind of games and this game isn't something I like. Because of this, I think it sucks and get no enjoyment out of playing it. Whine whine, score: 4.0" while the other people give a more thoughtful review and a score that seems to match.
But it's an editor's job to refuse a review that's simply poorly written, which is why seeing the editor of EGM bitch about integrity (and that same editorial came out during my free sub) is a crock of shit. It's easy to say "no, we're going to publish whatever we want." It's hard to say "We will publish good content and edit our writers to create stronger works." EGM makes it sound like editing = censorship.
The IGN UK review of MGS 4 skips a lot of details, and initially sounds like a fluff review, but it does do an excellent job of pointing out the key gameplay elements -- namely, that the game excels at stealth gameplay without limiting gameplay styles (so you can run & gun); battles can unfold in different ways, extending replayability and reducing linearity; and that cutscenes are skippable. I'm not saying that the IGN UK reviewer is a bastion of journalistic integrity and skill, but he definitely reviews the game in a way that avoids spoilers and illuminates the gameplay. What's nice is that at least the IGN UK reviewer used the limitations as a creative challenge, and it looks like most reviewers are doing the same -- "how can I review this game with these limitations?" These are good exercises for any writer. For EGM to mock them so they could potentially bitch about the game? It's more amateur than auteur.
Game press work for the consumers, not as an extension of the PR dept. of the Game Developer. I won't argue that their content can be lacking, but refusing to do an early review due to restrictions placed on you by a developer trying to shape the message, that's a GOOD thing.
Seriously, this shit right here is why I hate Hideo.