Scandal and amateurs in gaming industry
The gaming industry is young, and the publications covering the industry are even younger. Right now, and for the last few years, gaming publishers have been going through a lot of growing pains as they're hitting the main stream. While it's had successes like GameTrailers.com teaming up with Spike TV and the industry itself becoming the largest entertainment industry, publications, and the culture itself, are struggling with bias, controversy, and legitimizing the reviews and criticism they produce.
Video Gaming culture is an online culture and there is no other arena or venue that the gaming world has nearly as much discussion or impact. As such, there is a certain lack of thought put into a significant portion of the cultures opinions, and it is believed to somehow be filtering through into the professional side of the industry, in gaming journalism.
Just recently fans were up in arms when Metacritic, a site that collects and averages published professional game reviews and averages them, posted reviews for the Playstation 3 title, LittleBigPlanet. Among reviews that were published along side scores, like IGN's six page review that gave the title a score of 9.5 out of 10 or GameSpots two page, 9.0 review, was a review from Variety, the well-known entertainment publisher. Variety however does not publish a score with their reviews, yet when Metacritic decided to include their review anyway, they assigned an 80/100 score to the review.
Fans and amateur publications cried out over the score, as every review prior had been over 90/100, with the overall average being 95/100 across all included professional gaming publications. Many speculate bias from Metacritic against LittleBigPlanet, or Sony, and some just pin it as sloppy and unprofessional. Allegedly the editor in charge of archiving the reviews had contacted Variety personally to obtain the review score. Yet the question remains with many gamers, why include Variety reviews in a video games scores aggregator when Variety makes no intension to attach scores to their written reviews.
What happened at Metacritic is certainly not the first time a professional, gaming-centric, site has found itself under fire for questionable actions. Popular gaming publication, GameTrailers, of who provide all their content in video form, has been suspect to showing unprofessionalism and bias. One particularly popular feature GameTrailers provides to watchers is comparison videos of multi-platform games. For example, when Madden comes out each year on the Xbox 360 and PS3, GameTrailers will do a side-by-side comparison of the graphics for each console. This usually stirs up the many, many temperamental fans of either respective console.
As such these videos are certainly a hit attraction at GameTrailers, but when GameTrailers was comparing the physics capabilities of the multi-platform racing game, GRID, by developer Code Masters, GameTrailers alleged attempt to unfairly show that the Xbox 360 version had far superior physics. In the video, to display the physics of GRID, GameTrailers recorded video of them crashing their race car at high speed at different angles into walls, as the cars would crumple, smash, and bounce off. In the Xbox 360 segments of the video, the crashes were wild and impressive. In the Playstation 3 segments, the crashes were dull and not overly exciting. The only fault of the video was that both the Xbox 360 and Playstation 3 segments of the entire video were recorded solely from the Playstation 3 copy of the game.
The wild crashes of the Xbox 360 version as presented in the video were actually of the PS3 version. What GameTrailers had missed was the iconic Playstation triangle, square, circle and x icons were in the bottom left corner of the supposed Xbox 360 video. Fans quickly called fowl and many other gaming publications wrote of the slip up. GameTrailers official statement was that there was a mix up in the video sources, yet many fans look at the content of the video and find the statement unlikely.
By far, the biggest controversy among gaming publications was the firing of editorial director at GameSpot, Jeff Gerstmann in late 2007. GameSpot at the time was heavily advertising the upcoming game Kane & Lynch: Dead Men by developer Eidos Interactive, when Gerstmann gave the game as supposedly unfavourable review. Gerstmann gave the title a 6.0 out of 10 score and an almost scathing review. The review was also accompanied by a video review, which echoed the criticism of the written review, including references to the title as an “ugly game” more than a few times. Again, allegedly, Eidos was upset with the review, demanding GameSpot make changes.
GameSpot proceeded to removed the video, alter the written review to remove some of the harsher criticism, and subsequently fired Gerstmann. When the story hit the gaming press, users and fans of GameSpot literally revolted. There was a mass exodus of paid subscribers from the site, and many professional gaming publications not only covered the story, but frowned upon GameSpot and Eidos Interactive's actions. Eidos Interactive and many other games publishers pulled advertising from GameSpot. As GameSpot said the firing was unrelated, many other staff proceeded to resign.
Since this event though, controversy in the gaming press has gotten less and less profound. The impact of instances like the one with Jeff Gerstmann have given opportunity for the industry as a whole to mature. Luckily gaming culture itself demands responsibly and accountability from professionals and fans alike, and more and more this is coming into fruition.
Video Gaming culture is an online culture and there is no other arena or venue that the gaming world has nearly as much discussion or impact. As such, there is a certain lack of thought put into a significant portion of the cultures opinions, and it is believed to somehow be filtering through into the professional side of the industry, in gaming journalism.
Just recently fans were up in arms when Metacritic, a site that collects and averages published professional game reviews and averages them, posted reviews for the Playstation 3 title, LittleBigPlanet. Among reviews that were published along side scores, like IGN's six page review that gave the title a score of 9.5 out of 10 or GameSpots two page, 9.0 review, was a review from Variety, the well-known entertainment publisher. Variety however does not publish a score with their reviews, yet when Metacritic decided to include their review anyway, they assigned an 80/100 score to the review.
Fans and amateur publications cried out over the score, as every review prior had been over 90/100, with the overall average being 95/100 across all included professional gaming publications. Many speculate bias from Metacritic against LittleBigPlanet, or Sony, and some just pin it as sloppy and unprofessional. Allegedly the editor in charge of archiving the reviews had contacted Variety personally to obtain the review score. Yet the question remains with many gamers, why include Variety reviews in a video games scores aggregator when Variety makes no intension to attach scores to their written reviews.
What happened at Metacritic is certainly not the first time a professional, gaming-centric, site has found itself under fire for questionable actions. Popular gaming publication, GameTrailers, of who provide all their content in video form, has been suspect to showing unprofessionalism and bias. One particularly popular feature GameTrailers provides to watchers is comparison videos of multi-platform games. For example, when Madden comes out each year on the Xbox 360 and PS3, GameTrailers will do a side-by-side comparison of the graphics for each console. This usually stirs up the many, many temperamental fans of either respective console.
As such these videos are certainly a hit attraction at GameTrailers, but when GameTrailers was comparing the physics capabilities of the multi-platform racing game, GRID, by developer Code Masters, GameTrailers alleged attempt to unfairly show that the Xbox 360 version had far superior physics. In the video, to display the physics of GRID, GameTrailers recorded video of them crashing their race car at high speed at different angles into walls, as the cars would crumple, smash, and bounce off. In the Xbox 360 segments of the video, the crashes were wild and impressive. In the Playstation 3 segments, the crashes were dull and not overly exciting. The only fault of the video was that both the Xbox 360 and Playstation 3 segments of the entire video were recorded solely from the Playstation 3 copy of the game.
The wild crashes of the Xbox 360 version as presented in the video were actually of the PS3 version. What GameTrailers had missed was the iconic Playstation triangle, square, circle and x icons were in the bottom left corner of the supposed Xbox 360 video. Fans quickly called fowl and many other gaming publications wrote of the slip up. GameTrailers official statement was that there was a mix up in the video sources, yet many fans look at the content of the video and find the statement unlikely.
By far, the biggest controversy among gaming publications was the firing of editorial director at GameSpot, Jeff Gerstmann in late 2007. GameSpot at the time was heavily advertising the upcoming game Kane & Lynch: Dead Men by developer Eidos Interactive, when Gerstmann gave the game as supposedly unfavourable review. Gerstmann gave the title a 6.0 out of 10 score and an almost scathing review. The review was also accompanied by a video review, which echoed the criticism of the written review, including references to the title as an “ugly game” more than a few times. Again, allegedly, Eidos was upset with the review, demanding GameSpot make changes.
GameSpot proceeded to removed the video, alter the written review to remove some of the harsher criticism, and subsequently fired Gerstmann. When the story hit the gaming press, users and fans of GameSpot literally revolted. There was a mass exodus of paid subscribers from the site, and many professional gaming publications not only covered the story, but frowned upon GameSpot and Eidos Interactive's actions. Eidos Interactive and many other games publishers pulled advertising from GameSpot. As GameSpot said the firing was unrelated, many other staff proceeded to resign.
Since this event though, controversy in the gaming press has gotten less and less profound. The impact of instances like the one with Jeff Gerstmann have given opportunity for the industry as a whole to mature. Luckily gaming culture itself demands responsibly and accountability from professionals and fans alike, and more and more this is coming into fruition.
