Computer games journalism
To be fair, I've been out of the industry for a few years now so things might be different now from what follows...but I doubt it.

First off you need to know that when you buy a magazine, in most cases the cash that you fork over doesn't get close to covering the cost of writing, printing and distributing it (in some cases, it actually costs more to produce than the cover price). You won't be surprised to learn that the shortfall is made up for by advertising.

Not surpirsingly, in niche areas like computer games the sort of people who pay to advertise are the very people whose products are being written about. As you can imagine, this introduces a certain degree of tension between the need to create reliable, unbiased content (or at least, the illusion of it) and the need to attract advertising cash.

The pressure is rarely as blatant as "give us a good review or we'll pull all our advertising", although I've experienced that in my time too: I gave a lukewarm review to an A-list title from a big-name publisher but somehow they got to hear about it before we went to press (journos and PRs hang out a lot). Wild threats were made, my copy was spiked and they got someone else to write something that was rather less critical.

There are plenty of other tactics that the companies use to get what they want. Mags don't just publish reviews, they also do news, previews, feature, cover CDs (do they even do these any more?) and so forth and much of this relies on co-operation from the games companies. In one case, we'd run a series of exclusive (oh, how they love that word) previews/features on a game that had been in development for some time. Previews, of course, are all about hype so there were no problems there. But when it finally came to be released, it turned out to be a great big steaming pile of donkey turd. Irredemably terrible. And the reviewer said as much.

The reaction from the company behind the game was, unsurprisingly, quite extreme. First they demanded a retraction, which the editor refused (good for him). Then they began harrassing the reviewer, calling him every name under the sun, and demanding he be sacked. No dice. So they withdrew all advertising, and refused all future preview access. They even refused to send review copies of their games, meaning we'd have to buy them from the shops. I'm glad to say that in this case the mag's publishers stood their ground, but I know that many mags routinely promised favourable reviews in return for privileged access and advertising spend. Some of the biggest ones, too.

Not that the writers are above criticism. As I indicated before, if you think every game is played from beginning to end then you're kidding yourself: it's just not practical. If it's a very good game, maybe, but in most cases it'll be a few hours tops. In many cases, reviews were based on unfinished beta code. Publishing deadlines rarely coincide neatly with game release dates: on more than one occasion we'd get a CD couriered over the evening before press day, play for a couple of hours, write the review (giving some leeway for all the bits that weren't really working yet) that evening and submit it the following morning.

Also, the industry is (or at least was) quite small and incestuous -- journos and company PRs were often friends or ex-colleagues, so a nudge here and a wink there, a freebie or two (skiing trip to Aspen? Boozy day or two in Paris? Some free kit maybe?) and you know who's on your side.

The internet has changed things I'm sure so maybe things really have changed. /shrug

Length? Hey, I get paid by the word OK?
( reallywittyname veraciously conspues lexiphanicism on, Thu 27 Sep 2007, 12:39, Reply)