Fireside Chat: Alpha Protocol reception and New Vegas

[.Pixote.]

So, while you may be right that the reviewers are really just doing their job in this instance, it's still not right if they don't explicitly state, "Hey, this time we're being honest in our review so you can't compare the scores we give this game to the scores of other games where we've been heavily influenced by developer advertising, gifts, hype, and the threat of losing access to early previews and review copies of titles from major development studios."

During the 60’s and 70’s some radio DJ’s in the USA were accepting bribes from record companies to play their records constantly on the radio, maybe that’s why there were plenty of successful shitty records during that period…and there were hundreds of radios stations involved. Move forward 30 or 40 years…the video game market is potentially even larger and more lucrative, and you don’t need hundreds of internet sites under your wing, just a dozen or so of the biggest and most prominent. Now this is just speculation, but big business run the video game industry and there are 10’s of billions at stake here (its bigger than the music and film industries)…some money under the table might make the difference between hundreds of thousands of units moving, or millions of units (we are talking about 100’s of millions of dollars here). Given the numbers involved 5 or 10 thousand to turn a game reviewer is chump change. Ask yourself - how can you read a review of a game, then play the same game only to find the review and actual game experience completely different, maybe we are less discerning then the reviewers, but I doubt it.

Apparently the radio station bribes are still an issue for the industry – “Top record labels are accused of bribing radio stations”… The Sound, the Fury

 

[yukatan]

No, having worked at some of the major gaming pubs, I can say with certainty that they don't get a dime for positive reviews. It's nothing like Clearwater controlling the airwaves and dumping all those crappy pop songs.

That said, there's a lot of other factors.

First, which I think is the biggest one, is hype. Reviewers get duped into it badly. If a game is "AAA", there's a lot of pressure to give it a high score. As long as the game is polished, it gets an inflated score, even if it's not that amazing (aka Fallout 3). When a game doesn't have hype, reviewers feel freer to take a dump on the game.

Second, reviews affect relationships with game developers and the PR that often serves as the middle-man between the developer and the reviewer. For example, you work for IGN and get the exclusive first review, but then pan the game giving it a 6/10. Guess who they'll give the exclusive review to instead next time? Gamespot. That's very common. It doesn't affect the review directly, but it's always in the back of their mind. The games industry is very small, which makes the relationships close.

Some game companies are notoriously difficult to deal with when you give them any negative press. Rockstar is famous for that. They threaten to cut ad spending, block out coverage, etc etc. Surprisingly, most game companies don't make direct threats, but they guilt you quite a bit.

Third, the reputation of the publisher is at stake, and they'll pick reviewers that usually are fans of the given franchise/genre, or else the publisher and readers will come back and say "this person doesn't understand the franchise, he/she shouldn't have reviewed it." Hypothetically, say you have two editors:

- editor A plays a lot of RPGs, hates avoids Oblivion and Bethesda games. Loved Fallout 1/2.
- editor B plays a fair amount of RPGs, but has played every single Elder Scrolls games and lightly played the Fallout series.

And Bethesda gives great news: they're deciding to give your gaming pub the exclusive review of Fallout 3!! Guess who's going to review the game? Editor B of course, who will also likely give the better score.

In other words, it's much more complex than some simplistic notion of "they're getting money from gaming pubs."

 

[UncannyGarlic]

The SoreThumbs blog is down but the writer of that was a game journalist for a number of years (went by the name Shoe or something) and he wrote a series about corruption in game journalism. It goes from the small things, like allowing someone from a company to buy you a meal to bigger things like paying for airfare and hotel rooms (sometimes for a special press event) to plain bribery in the form of a day at a fighter plane flight class with a ride in a F16, a ticket to the Super Bowl, and even a confirmation that he had seen journalists accept prostitutes from game companies (not as bad as the former two, just a generic bribe). The circumstances under which journalists play the games is important too and it tends to be problematic with prerelease reviews where the reviewer is put in a very nice situation (good setup somewhere other than their home or workplace) where they are completely supervised which really amounts to being helped with any problems or questions that they might have.

That all said, the bigger part of the problem is how financially dependent review publications are on the companies they review, advertising being the big one (banner ads plastered all over the site and sometimes a site-wide theme). The other big chunk is all of the prerelease shenanigans with interviews, press events, and press releases. Publications fear being too hard on any big game that has given them all of that in case they don't get it the next time. Companies usually put a minimum score on prerelease reviews and ask that publications with a review that is lower than that number hold the review until release (which is almost always done). They don't have to come out and be direct with threats but by badgering and harassing publications when they publish something they don't like (bad review [IGN is bad about editing out negative portions after it's been released] or bad score mostly), they get the same effect.

 

[yukatan]

You're talking about Dan Hsu, who just spread the accusations around with nothing to back it. Not very professional. [Oh the dirt I have about that...]

They weren't direct bribes, as in, "we'll pay you in hookers for a positive review." You could give a game a horrible review in spite of all the schwag you get. Which also happened. But yes, those perks would impact reviews, albeit in a less direct way.

As far as reviewing in a controlled environment, that was also due to security reasons. Sending review build DVDs to dozens of gaming pubs vastly increases the chances of the game getting leaked prior to release or embargo. Having everybody play at their offices in a giant LAN room was an easy way to counter that.

In short, the practices surrounding reviews are very flawed, but 99% of the time the inflated review is a problem with the reviewer opinions, not bribery.

 

[UncannyGarlic]

They weren't direct bribes, as in, "we'll pay you in hookers for a positive review." You could give a game a horrible review in spite of all the schwag you get. Which also happened. But yes, those perks would impact reviews, albeit in a less direct way.

Of course they aren't direct bribes, neither is buying a high school student a million dollar car when you're the coach of a college sports team but the rationale behind it is that of a bribe. Why do they have press events in exotic locations rather than at a conference center by the developer's office? To impact the "journalists'" opinions. Expense accounts, campaign finance laws, laws regarding the maximum monetary value of any service or product that a government employee can accept, etc. all exist in order to prevent non-explicit bribes.

No, not every positive review is bribed. There are fanboys and people who get caught up in the hype and there are also editors who tell (usually nag or somehow indirectly) the reviewer what score to put on what they write.

As far as reviewing in a controlled environment, that was also due to security reasons. Sending review build DVDs to dozens of gaming pubs vastly increases the chances of the game getting leaked prior to release or embargo. Having everybody play at their offices in a giant LAN room was an easy way to counter that.

There is a difference between security where you have journalists play the game in your office or in some rented area and paying for five star hotel rooms and having a person in the room to help the reviewer with the game. Prerelease reviews are ridiculously tainted by design.

 

[Tagaziel]

*snip*

Did Chris Avellone eat your cat or something?

 

[Morbus]

Do you think I'm an idiot?

That's not a good question to ask...

Alpha Protocol is generic and to put it lightly, quite hideous.

"Quite hideous" is lightly? How would you put it if you were being frank? "Absolutely horrendous"? "Astronomically repulsive"? "Awfully abhorrent"?

Besides, if I want a long winded RPG with mediocre gameplay I'll go play PS:T again. At least that one had unique art-style.

I was considering getting AP, but then, like you, I thought of replaying Torrent and how a much better choice of game it is. And then I decided not to get AP.

As always, one man's trash is another man's treasure.. It doesn't mean one of those two people have bad tastes, it just means they have different tastes.

Yeah. I know a guy who absolutely loves Final Fantasy and says Fallout sucks. The same guy loves Naruto...

I think it just means he has sucky tastes...

 

[Elhoim]

Do you think I'm an idiot?

That's not a good question to ask...

Alpha Protocol is generic and to put it lightly, quite hideous.

"Quite hideous" is lightly? How would you put it if you were being frank? "Absolutely horrendous"? "Astronomically repulsive"? "Awfully abhorrent"?

You really had me loling quite hard

Do you think I'm an idiot?

Besides, if I want a long winded RPG with mediocre gameplay I'll go play PS:T again. At least that one had unique art-style.

I was considering getting AP, but then, like you, I thought of replaying Torrent and how a much better choice of game it is. And then I decided not to get AP.

Freudian slip?

 

[mobucks]

Just wanted to point out to all non MGS players, if you raise the difficulty, the AI becomes a lot harder to negotiate. They will react to/investigate things on hard or extreme that they wouldnt normally on easy/normal. I remember from MGS2, going from normal to hard was almost like playing a new game.

Still, MGS isnt the stealth bible, the games dont take themselves too seriously, so neither should the gameplay.

The thing i take from this thread is people shouldnt tolerate half finished/buggy games anymore. I dont understand how people think they can release games half finished to the PC when Console games HAD to be in a playable state before release (not sure this is the case anymore, since consoles went online, i bet they get buggy games now too)

 

[PaladinHeart]

I like both Fallout and Final Fantasy. They're like apples and oranges though. There aren't many games that you can actually compare Fallout to. It's a tactical, turn based CRPG where you play a lone lonely loner (well maybe not in Fallout 2, but ally AI & level system is so messed up anyway...).

Maybe your friend simply couldn't get past the rats in the first cave. It's difficult to say a game sucks unless you've spent at least 10 hours trying to play it (which is about what I devoted to STALKER and I found out that I still was not enjoying it).

 

[mobucks]

Jagged Alliance 2 reminded me of Fallout. Great Game. Stealth worked pretty good too for a TBRPG.

 

[Tagaziel]

The thing i take from this thread is people shouldnt tolerate half finished/buggy games anymore. I dont understand how people think they can release games half finished to the PC when Console games HAD to be in a playable state before release (not sure this is the case anymore, since consoles went online, i bet they get buggy games now too)

Maybe that's because Obsidian Entertainment doesn't have good coders. They release unpolished gems, full of content but rough and unrefined.

Sure, they might be a little wonky on the side of balance and gameplay. But guess what? If you buy Obsidian's games purely for gameplay, then you're an idiot.

 

[Sam Ecorners]

Great game, best C&C I ever saw in a game. Haven't seen any bugs or horrible graphics. AI is pretty stuuuupid.

The game is now in my top 10 list.

 

[Brother None]

Heh, top 10? That sounds reasonable.

My eyes are rolling here.

Sure, they might be a little wonky on the side of balance and gameplay. But guess what? If you buy Obsidian's games purely for gameplay, then you're an idiot.

If you buy a game for gameplay, you're an idiot?

Tagz, I always like how you remind people not to be whiny bitches, but sometimes you really veer into the unreasonable.

 

[Lexx]

I have no problems with APs gameplay.

 

[Sam Ecorners]

Heh, top 10? That sounds reasonable.

My eyes are rolling here.

I really don't understand why you would roll your eyes. Sure, it's not the best game evah; it's in the second half of my list, but the depth of it's C&C is really unparalleled in any other game. That, in addition to decent gameplay made the game really fun for for me. Definitely more fun than any other RPG in last 5 years.

 

[UncannyGarlic]

I like both Fallout and Final Fantasy. They're like apples and oranges though.

I like some Final Fantasy games, not all of them, and they need to work harder to push their system forward (XIII, from what I've read and seen, had a good idea behind the system, they just got caught up in using old junk instead of being more creative). That said, the Final Fantasy games probably aren't Squares best.

Maybe your friend simply couldn't get past the rats in the first cave. It's difficult to say a game sucks unless you've spent at least 10 hours trying to play it (which is about what I devoted to STALKER and I found out that I still was not enjoying it).

I liked Fallout from the get-go but my innitial exposure to it was a friend playing it and killing an entire town. Still, I didn't think the rats were that bad and it doesn't take that long to deal with. I also think that the interface is trashed more than it deserves, it's really not that hard to pick up (holding right-click might be the hardest thing to figure out). It eases you into the game pretty well, starting out with combat, slowly bumping it up (rats > radscorpions > molerates > raiders/Junktown) and slowly introduces more and more dialogue stuff. Really I think you'd only have trouble if you tried to play something other than a combat character the first time through (which, given how RPGs are, I don't know why you would...).

EDIT:

Sure, they might be a little wonky on the side of balance and gameplay. But guess what? If you buy Obsidian's games purely for gameplay, then you're an idiot.

I'm of the school of thought that if a game does something that it should do it well. I hate it when games tack on half-assed features just so that they can have them and a lot of the time I feel like they could have improved other parts of the game with the time spent created the half-assed piece. I think that some studios have issues with not over extending themselves and AP sounds like many of the problems are due to them trying to do too much. If they wanted to make a visual novel or interactive movie then they should have gone that route. That said, I haven't played it so I can't judge the gameplay but I'm going with the general consensus on what's good and bad about the game.

 

[Brother None]

I really don't understand why you would roll your eyes.

I roll my eyes at anyone that goes "best evah" after just playing a game. It's that mindset that contributed to making the gaming media what it is today. If you can accurately slot in a game or film or piece of music into your personal top-whatever, just after playing/viewing/hearing it, you are either super-human or deluding yourself. Guess which one I'm shooting for.

 

[Sam Ecorners]

Sooo, is it wrong to rate one's experience based on other experiences? How else would one rate it?

 

[SharkClub]

I have no problems with APs gameplay.

This, there's the occasional glitch but nothing that really makes the gameplay of Alpha Protocol shit.