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[gufu1992]

In todays world, the hype doesn't help the game - instead, anyone expirienced will find the game worse, due to earlier hype.

But, the current generation... I don't support it. Maybe, unless you don't want DRM on your computer, but I still dislike it.. :/

[Panthro]

I agree about the damage of the hype-machine, its one of the reasons I liked morrowind but was disappointed by oblivion, which promised so much and didn't deliver. Not the first time I was burned, and unfortunately it's unlikely to be the last.

It does seem to me that there are very few current generation titles (especially for PC) which are better than their ancestors, except in the obvious graphical capacity (and you could say voice acting, but I prefer text).

I could list examples, but this thread is so far from the original topic this probably needs a new thread!

[Blood-Pigggy]

Fallout 3 looks terrible, pirate it please, maybe it will convince them to not make the sequels they've promised.

[Playbahnosh]

Don't worry Pigggy, someone will pirate it for you.

@Panthro

Well, the things I said are no real secrets. Ask any professional reviewer and they will have a similar story, I'm sure. The reason people don't trust us anymore, is, granted, we are as hopeless as the crowd sees us. If we don't deliver, the industry won't give us info. If the publisher doesn't like the reviews, they'll be reluctant to give you games to review in the future, or any info about upcoming releases. It's not that we want to suck up to the games industry, but rather most of us have no choice. In a smaller scale, if the General Editor (my boss) doesn't like my low scores for games, he will be reluctant to assign me games to review. That's it, sadly, the facts are quite clear. I'm trying to be as objective as I can, but it's not that easy, particularly regarding the big releases.

On the other hand, the hype is not helping either. Along the years, I learned to control my salivation, but I do fall for one or two campaigns still. The last one was Spore. I fell for it, it looked awesome, the vids were awesome, the pic were awesome and the premise was awesome. I got it for review, and it was....the sh*t compared to what I expected. It wasn't a bad game per say, but it was so much less than what they promised. I could only give it an average mark, and surprisingly my boss went along with that. I won't believe hype anymore. I wait, and see for myself.

[red_avatar]

Originally Posted by Playbahnosh

Don't worry Pigggy, someone will pirate it for you.

@Panthro

Well, the things I said are no real secrets. Ask any professional reviewer and they will have a similar story, I'm sure. The reason people don't trust us anymore, is, granted, we are as hopeless as the crowd sees us. If we don't deliver, the industry won't give us info. If the publisher doesn't like the reviews, they'll be reluctant to give you games to review in the future, or any info about upcoming releases. It's not that we want to suck up to the games industry, but rather most of us have no choice. In a smaller scale, if the General Editor (my boss) doesn't like my low scores for games, he will be reluctant to assign me games to review. That's it, sadly, the facts are quite clear. I'm trying to be as objective as I can, but it's not that easy, particularly regarding the big releases.

On the other hand, the hype is not helping either. Along the years, I learned to control my salivation, but I do fall for one or two campaigns still. The last one was Spore. I fell for it, it looked awesome, the vids were awesome, the pic were awesome and the premise was awesome. I got it for review, and it was....the sh*t compared to what I expected. It wasn't a bad game per say, but it was so much less than what they promised. I could only give it an average mark, and surprisingly my boss went along with that. I won't believe hype anymore. I wait, and see for myself.

I've argued about this with PC Gamer staff members. They claim that their magazine is totally unaffected by pandering to publishers & developers and I found that hard to believe. As a magazine, you get so much competition and getting games early is vital or you end up having your reviews published over a month after most reviews have hit websites due to printing delays.

While PC Gamer (UK) does indeed give plenty of low scores, I've seen increasingly weird decisions made by the staff over the years. When PC Gamer was the best selling games magazine in Europe, they were in a very strong position and could kick any publisher in the balls so to speak - but back then, very few people had internet so they only had to compete with other magazines and if the publishers pissed PC Gamer off, bad scores could and would affect the sales of any given game since a large amount of people relied on those reviews.

Personally, I think that with all the reviews out there, all the competition between websites and magazine, that the publishers have it a lot easier to pull the strings and demand higher scores. After all, it's easy to go "well, we'll give the exclusive to site or magazine X then".

[Playbahnosh]

Originally Posted by red_avatar

They claim that their magazine is totally unaffected by pandering to publishers & developers and I found that hard to believe.

It IS hard to believe. Nobody in the PC media is unaffected by the publishers and developers, nobody. We are but small webzine in Hungary, but even we are not unaffected. The real problem are not the low scores, negative popularity is popularity too, just look at the GTA series. The real problem is information and timing. It all depends on the sources, what can you publish when, because gaming news is almost more important than reviews.

bad scores could and would affect the sales of any given game since a large amount of people relied on those reviews.

The thing is, people rely less and less on reviews, and much less on scores. In a system where 9.3 is uber-good and 8.2 is the sh*t, you can't be sure. That's why people want hands-on experiences, videos, demos, pirated copies, before they buy the actual game, because we, the media, is inherently corrupt. We battle with each other with very little regard for the readers. The small indy magazines and webzines, like us, are pretty unworthy for the reader's attention. We have a sizable core fanbase, but its never near enough. While IGN and Gamespot are at each other's throats, we, small-timers, write our reviews and try to stay afloat on the sea of sh*t that is the PC (and console) media.

[Panthro]

@Playbahnosh:

Sorry to hear that what should be a dream job is held back by things like that, I would have hoped that pressure could be applied on the game developers and publishers in return, although you could argue that they have the economic pressure too.

@Blood-Pigggy:

While I'm not one to pirate things (or at least not these days), I will be waiting for fallout to drop into a special offer state, probably within 6 months given what I've seen so far, or thanks to its lack of DRM I can pick it up cheaply in my local 2nd hand store.

[Playbahnosh]

Originally Posted by Panthro

Sorry to hear that what should be a dream job is held back by things like that, I would have hoped that pressure could be applied on the game developers and publishers in return, although you could argue that they have the economic pressure too.

Yeh, I thought it would be a dream job, thats why I joined the magazine. But sooner or later you'll realize that someone has to review the sh*tty games too, and you gotta watch what you write about them, because you can get into trouble. The job has its good moments too, like when you get your games for free, and you can tell people about games in your own words. I still like to write about games, despite all the obvious hardships. It's NOT a dream job, but it's helluva lot more better than the rest I'm qualified for at this stage of life (like working at mcdonalds or as a friendly neighborhood sanitation worker).

As for putting pressure on the publishers...not a chance. The tables have turned, and now the publishers and developers are in command, they blackmail you with insider informations, so you write a better review, the coerce the magazines with possible huge ad campaigns so you write favorable reviews...etc. There is a huge war between gaming magazines, who has the insider info, who has the game the soonest...etc. You can't put pressure on the publishers, because they will just ignore you, there are hundred other magazines that will gladly accept the bribe you refused in the name of fair play. That's today's world.

[gufu1992]

IMHO, all jobs related to games always seem like a dream job - but they never are. You might still like it, but it is completely different than what you originaly think.

[SlowCoder]

Piracy is not legal, but it does have its place, whether the companies it affects want you to know it or not.

- Do I believe that it drops their income for a specific title? Yes.
- Do I believe a company will die because of piracy? Not particularly. If the game is good enough, and they manage their money wisely, they will survive to write the next one, which will hopefully be better than the last.
- Does piracy permanently harm a company? No. I believe it actually helps to get the name of the title, and the company out into the eyes of the consumers. If the title's good enough, more people will look for that company's next title. This will, in turn, bring in more overall cash flow.
- Do I believe copy protection works? No, at least not more than a few short months. If someone in the company is savvy enough to write the copy protection, someone outside the company will be savvy enough to break it. This is how it's been for many years. So, what ends up happening is the company wastes money developing what will become useless protection schemes.

I can't say I'm totally innocent, but as a general rule if I played a game and liked it, I bought it. Actually, every one of the games I've gotten in the last 8 years is off the store shelf. I do believe in supporting a company's hard work. And if I don't like the title, I sell it back to the store as a used title, recovering some of my cash.

I've got a pretty nice library of PS1/2/3 games, all original. The machines might die, but I'm hoping to eventually be able to play them on emulators.