Preview Ho: Gamespot/Gamespy - Kotaku Comments

Preview Ho: Gamespot/Gamespy

hilker — Wed, 29 Mar 2006 14:57:40 MST

Consumer Reports doesn't run advertisements of any kind, hikaru. This is part of why people trust them to be impartial.

hilker

Preview Ho: Gamespot/Gamespy

fungus amungus — Wed, 29 Mar 2006 12:16:16 MST

Crecente, you're confusing the story here. This is about media buyers buying prominent placement of content that's already on the site. It's a "digital reprint" like the article says. There may be some hazy other ways that reviews get influenced such as companies trying to send schwag, but it's still pretty minimal. Who really cares about yet another t-shirt to wash the car? You can even test this theory out yourself by checking out the sites. Games get slammed in the review and yet on the same screen there will be an ad for the same game. It's the same street cred theory as posted before.

fungus amungus

Preview Ho: Gamespot/Gamespy

Obiter — Wed, 29 Mar 2006 10:21:36 MST

These sites are dangerously blurring what should be an unambiguously bright line. Even if one is willing to buy the vapid justification of these petty media moguls, it is nevertheless an inexcusable practice given what the readers experience of these advertisements is. When the reader sees a game promoted on the front page that is not delineated in any way as an advert, the assumption is inevitably that the editors have put it there for good reason. It is precisely the perception of the implicit editorial endorsement that makes these wonderful advertisements, and is precisely why the adverts cost so much and why companies are eager to participate. At a minimum the practice is dubious, and at worse shameful. Too bad none of these companies care enough to hire a collective ombudsperson to mediate such conflicts with the integrity of media objectivity and the readers interest at heart. On a related note, I want to thank Wagner Au for his efforts to elevate games to an art in the popular understanding through his criticism and thoughtfulness. It might be an embarrassing comparison to say the guy has the potential to be a contemporary Diderot or Baudelaire, but I think the spirit of appreciation and dedication to this nascent digital medium is at least is the same.

Obiter

Preview Ho: Gamespot/Gamespy

hikaru — Wed, 29 Mar 2006 10:09:20 MST

Street creds stop IGN and Gamespot from selling out. All the hype and top placement in the world won't save dogs -- the PR guys know this, and the ad sellers know this. The big sites have way too much to lose. You can't buy an 8.9 if it's a 5.9 -- and if you sell yourself, and sell it as an 8.9, everyone will scream bloody murder and go to your competition who gave it a 5.9. You can trust the big guys better than the little guys, oddly enough, because they have the least to gain, and the most to lose. Think about Consumer Reports and their car reviews. Think GM can't throw in huge kickbacks for good reviews? They'e got a helluva lot more money than EA or Vivendi. And yet CR will still stick to their guns. Why? The press only has one way to hold its audience: Trust.

hikaru

Preview Ho: Gamespot/Gamespy

crecente — Wed, 29 Mar 2006 07:37:35 MST

One other thing I have to add. Don't think for a second that the developers don't know what the review says before they decide to pay to push it to the front of the site. I can't imagine some developer paying $7,000 for a review of their game to get front page play without either reading the whole thing first or at least being assured it's positive. So, what happens when a developer says they have $7k and want to push a review out front but it's bad? Does Gamespot or Gamespy or whoever say "No thanks, we don't want your money" or do they change the review? Once you sell your news judgement what's to stop you from selling your review judgement? It's a slippery slope.

crecente

Preview Ho: Gamespot/Gamespy

Tue, 28 Mar 2006 21:07:25 MST

I think the issue here is not the money, but the deception. One would assume that those "spotlights" are reserved for games the editors are excited about. I think most of us have clicked on a "spotlight" and saw bland screens of a boring looking game. I also think that most of us have thought "they HAD to have been paid to do that" and now we have some proof. This may not be an issue to those of us who have been around game journalism for awhile, but think back to when you first subscribed to a videogame mag or went to a game site. Most of us can remember that we took note of the games they featured, the hype they spewed, and the screens they printed. We were all taken by that stuff at one time, of course we got older and realised how the world works, and that hype is often tied to the buck. Even younger players realise that game mags like Nintendo Power are owned by Nintendo, but what about gameinformer? A major game retailor running a game magazine, so if said retailor wants to push so many units of "crap licenced product" they have a propaganda rag from which to do it. It's all deception, and that is the real issue. If they maked this content as a paid feature this wouldn't be an issue.

Preview Ho: Gamespot/Gamespy

fungus amungus — Tue, 28 Mar 2006 16:17:58 MST

While this is an interesting topic, even though it's been common for years, it's still not the Preview Ho Conspiracy you make it out to be. The buyers here are buying prominent placement of editorial content, not directly influencing the content itself. There's a huge difference. Is it kind of subtle and a little misleading? Maybe a little bit in that readers see an older preview or review pop up from the archives, but it doesn't change the content itself. Like Hikaru said above, this is nothing. Nothing big, anyway, since the sites run on credibility and if they go too far astray the readres will hate them for it. And even so there will be some crusty folks like mashuren who bag on games because they're popular.

fungus amungus

Preview Ho: Gamespot/Gamespy

Robert Summa — Tue, 28 Mar 2006 13:56:05 MST

Not surprised at all to hear about this. That's why I don't trust outlets like those.

Robert Summa

Preview Ho: Gamespot/Gamespy

dan — Tue, 28 Mar 2006 12:27:26 MST

Crecente has the right idea. You want to have "designated spots that can be 'sponsored'"? Fine, great. But when that designation is known only to buyers, not to readers, you're going down a very dangerous road. Simply put: if they didn't think they were doing anything wrong, and if it's so innocuous, then there wouldn't be any problem with a small designation of the item as "Advertising" as is done in print every day. Hell, most papers have so-called "Real Estate" sections that are completely bought, but they designate them as such. Sure, it's in small print, and if you're not looking for it, you might think it's editorial content. But when it comes down to it, there is indeed marking. At the very least, allow your readers to make the decision as to whether they care that a spot is paid for or not. Until then, it's impossible to say it comes across as anything but dishonesty and deception.

dan

Preview Ho: Gamespot/Gamespy

mashuren — Tue, 28 Mar 2006 10:48:47 MST

Hikaru The problem here, of course, is that video game reviews are invariably one person's opinion, and that opinion could have nothing to do with what anyone else thinks about the game. Steaming piles are subjective For example, the Halo series and the Grand Theft Auto series are two examples of some of the worst video games ever made, and yet every single video game review site fellates them on a regular basis. Likewise, there are a ton of games that received horrible reviews that I really like. The whole point is that game previews and reviews are a load of bullshit in the first place. The only way to form an opinion about a game is to play it for yourself.

mashuren

Preview Ho: Gamespot/Gamespy

Justin — Tue, 28 Mar 2006 10:33:43 MST

This is the same bull that's been going on for eons in other industries. You would think gamers would run a business differently and actually try to tell companies that ads are ads and reviews are reviews. You pay for one, you take a chance with the other.

Justin

Preview Ho: Gamespot/Gamespy

Lordieth — Tue, 28 Mar 2006 10:31:25 MST

This article didn't shock me in the slightest. This is the world of business, where money talks as loud as you and your pockets allow. Exceptional games will get coverage on their own merits, average games need to be "pushed" to be sold. I'm not saying that some great games don't get advertised heavily, what i'm saying is, if you can make an exceptional videogame, then the players will do all the advertising for you.

Lordieth

Preview Ho: Gamespot/Gamespy

A_B — Tue, 28 Mar 2006 09:40:21 MST

Yes. If the content placement is anyway based on anything but editorial discretion, which I assume is not tied to the financial side, it needs to be indicated. "First noting that the practice is "pretty common both in print and online", Peer Schneider, IGN's VP of Content Publishing..." Can you imagine the editor of the New York Times or the Washington Post saying such a thing so casually? Whatever the faults of news outlets like these two, at least they don't sell the front page to the highest bidder and not tell the readers about it. If these guys want to get out of the journalistic gutter, they need to stop with this "pretty common" practice.

A_B

Preview Ho: Gamespot/Gamespy

hikaru — Tue, 28 Mar 2006 09:25:03 MST

*yawn* I'm sorry, but no "complicated-and disturbing" content here. Publishers are paying for placement, not paying for content. I make game X and GameIGN reviews it. If they are going to take a dump on it, I'm not going to pay for placement. I want it buried. If they are going to polish it till it's fat and chubby, I want it right there for everyone to go, wow, it's so big and shiny... Simple, and not deceptive. Ultimately, review sites only have one thing going for them: their integrity. If I read IGSpot and they say Y game is ubarleet and I drop $60 and find out it's a steaming pile, I'm going to be royally pissed at IGSpot for lying to me. They will lose me and every other person who disagrees with their review. And then they lose money from their advertisers. And then they have to sell their cars and their offices off the 101 and move back in with their moms and work at Kinko's again... Mmm, so ya, nothing to see here, move along.

hikaru

Preview Ho: Gamespot/Gamespy

crecente — Tue, 28 Mar 2006 09:03:36 MST

The problem, as I see it, is that front page placement, be it in print or online, is an indication of increased newsworthyness. I don't have a problem with a site or magazine or newspaper selling front page ads (actually I do, but that's a whole other ball of wax), but the ads need to be marked as such.

crecente