The gaming press had a choice: either play Modern Warfare 2 in Santa Barbara, under the watchful eye of Activision and on their dime, or give up early coverage. Many sites wrestled with the ethical implications by posting disclaimers, others simply ignored the issue and didn't discuss it in their review. We explore what happened during the review event, and ask the question: what does Activision get for all those plane tickets and hotel rooms?Ars didn't accept the free hotel room and airfare, but enough gaming press outlets did. Go ahead and skip right to the end of the article:
Would knowing when and how a review takes place change the way you think about the final score? What's clear is that readers should know the circumstances surrounding how the game was played, and how controlled the situation was. Reviewing the game at home is one thing, reviewing it in a remote location, surrounded by other enthusiasts and the game's creators is another. There is no reason Activision couldn't ship writers prerelease copies of the game: it has been finished and packaged for some time, and the leaks had already spread across the Internet.
Instead the company decided to pay for the gaming press to come to a specific location, stay in company-provided rooms, play the game a specific way... and all this came at a substantial cost to Activision Blizzard.
What value did they get for that money? We asked Activision and have yet to receive a response.
What value, indeed? Even if you suffer from some kind of virulent retardation that causes you to conclude that these "professionals" were not influenced - even a little - by all the pampering, it would still be obvious that the Acti-vacation was designed to skew MW2's Metacritic score upwards. The whole thing creates such a massive appearance of impropriety that it doesn't matter if MW2 actually is worthy of an 87 ("generally favorable reviews").
"Playing in a room full of friendly developers and your games press colleagues with perfect connections is undoubtedly much more fun than gaming online with some of the legendarily obnoxious Xbox Live players," [one compromised reviewer] told Ars. "You'd have to be a pretty naïve reviewer to think there's no difference—and if you let that experience form the basis of your multiplayer assessment without qualification, you're giving too much credit to online gamers' behavior."
Well no shit. Any media outlet that accepted Activision's package should have their MW2 review nullified for the Metacritic calculation. It's that simple, and it's that stupid.
Considering you make it sound as though reviewers who go to these events are automatically tainted, I'm just curious -- how would you handle a reviewer who accepted one of these invites from a company, went to the event, played the game whilst surrounded by publisher PR folks who talk up the game incessantly and still wind up writing a scathing review of the game.
ReplyDeleteAre their opinions just as invalid because they went to the event?
J.W., those people don't exist. The first time a reviewer pulls something like that, they don't get invited back. Or did you miss what happened over at Gamespot a few months back? It might not be an identical situation, but it's the dark undercurrent of the industry.
ReplyDeleteSo where is the middle ground here? Reviewing a game at home can be just as influenced -- any number of factors in the home can bring a person's mood down.
ReplyDeleteMaybe it's too hot or cold. Maybe your speakers are blown. Maybe your dog just shit on the carpet. Any number of things can piss you off at home, so why is it considered preferable to review from home where you might give a game a lower score/ worse review, but playing it on a company's dollar and in good conditions is so much worse?
My problem with the whole thing is that it was perfectly clear what Activision's motives were, and the games press went anyway. Even if their reviews were completely objective in spite of the obvious bribe, they still accepted the obvious bribe.
ReplyDeleteIt doesn't matter whether there was any actual influence. The conduct was still unethical.
JW: If you want to offer a full rebuttal, I'll give you space on the main page.
ReplyDelete