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Post by Bean on Oct 29, 2012 1:49:34 GMT -5
You know, that's a tougher issue. If you decline a gift, you could receive less attention from that company in the future. At the same time, there are plenty of other companies that you could conceivably give your time, too. That's kind of my viewpoint on the matter. If you have to "play ball", I think you should be allowed to do it under your own rules.
Too many times, I just see capitulation on the part of the press that we don't see in other fields. Then again, there aren't many fields where the companies' products literally fund their own pockets. Again though, that goes into the murky situation that's been brought to light in the last week now. There has to be more recognition of "falling into the trap" here than I believe many press members make. Saying you're not a journalist is one thing, but does that make you lose credibility when it comes time to review a company's product that you could have been possibly influenced by?
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Post by HF on Oct 29, 2012 1:59:32 GMT -5
You know, that's a tougher issue. If you decline a gift, you could receive less attention from that company in the future. At the same time, there are plenty of other companies that you could conceivably give your time, too. That's kind of my viewpoint on the matter. If you have to "play ball", I think you should be allowed to do it under your own rules. In its own way, it's a game of "using someone as much as they're using you"; you only lose when you get caught big time as a mindless suck-up (or worse, a sock puppet for a company).
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Post by Dashe on Oct 29, 2012 2:11:45 GMT -5
To be honest, I don't think the gaming companies and the journalists critiquing them should have good relations in a professional setting. Like I said, it's all good and well if at the end of the day the journalists and PR reps hang up their hats and put work behind them. But if this industry is going to move forward, the developers need the press to respectfully challenge them at every turn. It's definitely important to stay respectful, but too much gift giving nets a false sense of entitlement. The PR people--or more likely, their higher-ups with the publishing house--think they're entitled to a free good review since the press rep accepted their gift.
Right now this just seems like it's stunting progress for gaming as a medium.
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Post by Bean on Oct 29, 2012 2:15:20 GMT -5
There's also the scary part on the other foot of reviewers and Metacritic in general being a standard to award bonuses to employees for reaching certain scores. That puts a lot of pressure on reviewers that I don't think they should have of determining whether or not employees receive benefits or not. I very much doubt Rotten Tomatoes guarantees employee rewards based on the overall collection of reviews on their movies. It's just another way the industry is flawed at the moment.
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Post by HF on Oct 29, 2012 2:23:58 GMT -5
@ Dashe: Once again, that would be subjective to the individual higher-ups wouldn't it?
If they're as dignified as they should be, then they won't use their 'Entitled Bastard' card like a typical angry gamer and actually act on it.
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Post by Dashe on Oct 29, 2012 2:50:49 GMT -5
It's pretty evident the average gaming industry higher-up is doing something wrong then, since this article ended up having to be written at all. Over the past few years a lot of gamers and writers seem to be digging their way deeper and deeper into examining how the gaming industry works, and it seems like very few of them have anything positive to say.
I can personally attest just from going into game sections of stores with my brother and seeing a lot of games that look very similar to each other and uninteresting instead of things that look awesome enough for me to plunk down hundreds of dollars on a console, that something is pretty wrong somewhere in the pipeline. I used to be able to go into a game store and find more games I was interested in to a 'must buy!' extent than I had fingers on both hands. Some of that might have to do with me moving on to other interests and getting old in some order, admittedly, but the industry is certainly not entirely blameless. Do you remember when Final Fantasy last felt like an RPG? I don't. >_>
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Post by Bean on Oct 29, 2012 2:53:41 GMT -5
I should clarify what I meant in my last post. Scores on Metacritic will influence publishers paying developers bonuses, not reviewers paying anything which is how that possibly came out. It's going on 3am here. Hope you all cut me some slack. Ha-ha. HF, the funny thing is that the site that played the "entitled" card was IGN while defending the wrong argument gamers were making about Mass Effect 3. In that one, fans of the series were commenting that things that were said by the developer were the exact opposite in the game as to what they were saying in interviews prior to the game. In the video about entitlement, the argument was a different one from what I remember, being about how the authors shouldn't have to change the ending. It was really ridiculous, as if they weren't listening to complaints. Do you remember when Final Fantasy last felt like an RPG? I don't. >_> Personally? FF9 back in 2000 or any of the remakes of the older titles that have come since. I never did play The 4 Heroes of Light for the DS, but that was supposedly an older school title. I want to talk about the 360 failure rate and see if there was a coverup on it at first or not, but I don't have enough facts on it to talk about it at the moment. That would go into the current argument.
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Post by Loken on Oct 30, 2012 14:54:41 GMT -5
The games industry is kinda like Hollywood with the Oscar movies. If we had a proper game awards show (and high standards) I think alot of the industry would fix it's self. At this point there is really no measurement of how good games are. Basically if you're a big budget game and you're not broken you get a 9 on your review. Games just arn't critizied properly and it's got to change. That's why I watch Zero Punctuation, it's the only place to get a harsh review. www.escapistmagazine.com/videos/view/zero-punctuation
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Post by ravenf6 on Nov 1, 2012 11:26:14 GMT -5
One problem in that respect is that journalists have their own individual mindset of how good games are measured. More often than not, that mindset disagrees with developers hope would be said about thier own products, and the consumers who buy them.
I definitely agree with the setup of 'use someone as they're using you'. Gaming journalism isn't so much idealistic as it's become an exercise of Machiavellian practice- A journalist has to put out reviews that are as good as can be accepted by both consumers and developers. It's pretty hard for one to create an unbiased review that can be accepted by everyone- anything said these days can come under scrutiny-justifiable or otherwise.
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