Advertising and reviews

[BiG D]

Many sites report that Gamespot has fired long time reviewer and editorial director Jeff Gerstmann over his negative review of Kane & Lynch, due to pressure from Eidos, the publisher. Most of this is still a rumour, so what do you think? Are they really stupid enough to do that?

Are review sites based on ad revenue from the very products they review still trustworthy?

This is no doubt going to be a big topic in the next few weeks... More as it develops

 

[Tetsuo_Shima]

There was always corruption in reviewing. Gamespot definitely succumbed to it first, but there are a lot of sites that give a good/bad reviews to certain games under the influence of corporate executives and their omnipotent weapon, the american dollar. IGN, I suspect, is a recent casualty after awarding a few more 9+'s than is necessary which is completely out of character for them. Some games have been downright suspicious, where they berate the game a lot in the body of the text and then award 9.2 or 9.3.

I'm not sure where to turn for reviews anymore, Metacritic provide an average but are still wildly off the target in some cases, and customer reviews are rarely helpful as they range from one extreme from fanboys to the other extreme from the opposing fanboys.

 

[Ronin Storm]

I used to give a lot of credence to GameSpot reviews. So much so that I was a paid subscriber there for a number of years, even after they closed the UK branch (which they later have brought back). I've not renewed my subscription this year and that should say something.

Reviews, in general, seem to be going the way of Amazon product reviews. "I love it, it's the best thing ever!" "It's crap, it should never have been made, so disappointed." So, I end up looking for a sort of "review smell" that tells me how the reviewer and I might match or differ in our viewpoints. GameSpot have somewhat lost that, for me, and just like Tetsuo I haven't found a suitable alternative source.

Sure, Zero Punctuation is amusing but it's also entirely unhelpful when it comes to whether I want to buy a game or not. Eurogamer have a tone I like, though, and their reviewers don't seem to feel any need to follow the same lines as other shops, given their (almost) glowing Tabula Rasa review. Largely I've ignored IGN as having a style I don't appreciate.

So... good reviews are hard to find. And hard to write. We do a little impromptu reviewing here and the fact that they are few and far between, with fairly random formats and trouble comparing between them is no surprise to me.

(Though I have wondered about start an articles section somewhere about to allow reviews to be posted in a more structured format, with screenies and a unified scoring system. One of many projects in the perpetually full pipeline.)

Back to the question, though...

Are review sites based on ad revenue from the very products they review still trustworthy?

I don't think they can be quite as objective as they claim but, contrarily, I also believe that can't be as corrupt as some readers might claim either.

On one hand, even if you keep the advertising sales team and the game reviews team apart, they all still report to the board and in there the waters of ethics versus revenue will become muddied. Hell, I'm pretty stand-up about this sort of thing and I think I'd have problems in this battle, when considering a commercial organisation.

But the site still needs to remain credible otherwise their readers will go elsewhere and their advertising revenues will fall as their advertisers realise that the readers aren't there any longer.

So, swings and roundabouts. Blunt and immaculately credible? Low advertising revenue 'cause who wants to advertise with a company that slags you off... Total sellout? Low advertising revenue cause who wants to read corporate "buy me" messages... Neither situation ideal for a large corporate entity.

 

[DeZmond]

The thing about Eurogamer is that some of the staff have appeared in paper magazines for gaming reviews (thinking of Kieron Gillen of PC Gamer UK fame). I largely trust reviews from PC Gamer and they tend to be well written, sharp and witty reviews which tell me what I want to know. That said, there have been instances in the past where I have disagreed, but for the most part I am happy to part with cash to buy such a magazine.

For that reason I rarely read online reviews, unless it's out of curiosity (Rock Band) or a game that I really, really want to know about (Crysis).

 

[Tetsuo_Shima]

I used to read review magazines, for the interest more than anything else, but recently (and especially with PC gamer, which I have never liked) you seem to be paying out the nose, ass and every other bodily oriface for them. I mean, whats it up to now? 7 quid or something ludicrous like that, nae ta.

 

[Nanor]

I get PC Zone and PC Gamer. I think they're 5 quid now, maybe 6. I find them a hilarious read and help me decide which games to avoid.

 

[thatbloke]

I get PC Zone and PC Gamer. I think they're 5 quid now, maybe 6. I find them a hilarious read and help me decide which games to avoid.

I agree with taht totally. I only get PC Gamer (not as often as I should) but it is still the best source that I have found for reviews. By and large, I agree with their verdicts.

Elsewhere, to survive on the web there are currently only two real business models (the big sites use both):

• The ad revenue based model
• The Subscription based model

Sites that use ad revenue will attempt to get their money from people relevant to their audience... i.e. a gaming site will want gaming ads. Reviewing a game that you have been paid to advertise presents this dilemma... and in the short-term the corporations will win (i.e. they will fire the person giving a crappy review). But in the slightly longer term we can affect what goes on by not visiting sites (and related sites - Eidos in this case) that treat their staff in such a way and therefore completely screw up their revenue sources...

It will eventually come back to bite them in the arse.

 

[Piacular]

Yep, I agree with Ronin.

The only site I really pay attention to and enjoy reading at the moment is Eurogamer.

Although, Metacritic is good for a chuckle when you see all the insane, we don't get money from publishers, 100's about .

Acutally, I'd take Mass Effect as an ideal case. Fair bit of hype, was quite excited myself, and whilst it's good, it isn't great. It's worth more than stingy Egde gave it, but less than over keen IGN. A solid 80, just like Eurogamer said .

(But seriously, any game that, for fairly large exploration chunks, drops to 10fps on a system it was solely designed for can't ever deserve above 90+ )

 

[BiG D]

Official word from Gamespot on the whole situation. Better than 'no comment,' but still leaves a lot up in the air.