Do triple A companies intimidate or pressure journalists for good reviews?

[beanman12345]

Access is extremely important for journalism. You ever watch the news, interviewing a politician, and they get easy questions, cause they want the politician to come back on their show at another point to continue to be asked softball questions. It's why when you read a interview with a game dev, and they are all no pressure, borderline stupid questions, it's because they want the dev to give them interviews later. You ask them the hard hitting stuff, then they don't want to come back to interview on their next project, and you lose that access. So yes, hard hitting journalism is super rare because of that. Game journalism is no exception, in fact it's actually worse in gaming journalism. They're also given free shit all the time, and much earlier to the public and it's all very easy to become corrupted by it all. I'm not saying it's everyone, but yes, it's very much true that the game journalists generally skew heavily in favor then against especially the big companies, unless something or someone changes their mind on that.

[Fencers]

This is one of the larger unsolved mysteries of the average "gamer." Just supreme confidence in things they know next to nothing about.

This entire forum is full of people that have supreme confidence in their opinion as an objective and universal fact. Even when they clearly are misusing terms, phrases, and idioms, and not understanding processes, business, science, etc.

I once saw someone on this forum offer their knowledge as an expert on knots. Like this dude worked at a naval museum or something. They offered a well-reasoned explanation of something.

Like 10 people argued with an expert on knots.

I moderated this forum, other forums, and subreddits. I have never seen a consistently convinced user base their opinion is an objective truth as the MMO-C user base.

[Ghost of Cow]

This entire forum is full of people that have supreme confidence in their opinion as an objective and universal fact. Even when they clearly are misusing terms, phrases, and idioms, and not understanding processes, business, science, etc.

I once saw someone on this forum offer their knowledge as an expert on knots. Like this dude worked at a naval museum or something. They offered a well-reasoned explanation of something.

Like 10 people argued with an expert on knots.

I moderated this forum, other forums, and subreddits. I have never seen a consistently convinced user base their opinion is an objective truth as the MMO-C user base.

I mean, a lot of that applies to present company as well. You yourself have been embroiled on countless occasions in debates where you try to inform people that "feelings aren't real, you can't feel something about a game" and such oddly robotic logic.

[Fencers]

I mean, a lot of that applies to present company as well. You yourself have been embroiled on countless occasions in debates where you try to inform people that "feelings aren't real, you can't feel something about a game" and such oddly robotic logic.

I have never said such a thing or debated anything of the sort.

I have said how you feel about gameplay isn't the mechanical process of gameplay. Regardless of how you feel about Mario's jump, it works in X manner when you press Y button. That doesn't require expertise. It's the only way that jump works.

[StillMcfuu]

Short answer is yes but it's complicated. But it's not forcing publications to do what they want and more along the lines of not giving publications review access or giving it to them later than other pubs.

It's happened with EA if I recall, one of their games got a bad review and EA threatened to not give timely review access to the entire magazine if the game wasn't "re reviewed". The story leaked 2 or 3 years afterwards by a editor showing the emails.
I recall a couple of cases through the years. But the implication exists and it shows in major publications, I think it's one of the bigger factors in major pubs slow down roll.

This isn't even a strictly game journalism issue, Ferrari famously banned Chris Harris from driving their cars, the reason is because of a bad review. Tesla banned Top Gear magazine/show from reviewing Teslas for a bit, Clarkson even made a bit out of it when finally getting to review the Model Y.
The issue isn't as nefarious for car reviews vs game reviews. The Chris Harris situation came up because Ferrari firmly believes they make the pinnacle of cars, according to them, there is no such thing as a bad Ferrari. Tesla is along the same lines, TG put the Tesla Roadster on full display with all its issues, overheating, poor track battery performance, etc.., shit Tesla still has some of these issues. But at the time Tesla couldn't have a reviewer attacking the drive train, because Tesla is known for the drive train and it should be perfect. Not a surprise Tesla pivoted to a more "tech" company after this time.
For video games, reviewers always get the whole thing and that's what they are looking at, in an entirety. Unless your Skyrim, you usually don't get away with a high score while being a buggy mess. This is where pubs have stepped on with pressure. The prevelance of day 1 patches don't help either, often game reviews aren't on the game the customer gets.

[Tech614]

Short answer is yes but it's complicated. But it's not forcing publications to do what they want and more along the lines of not giving publications review access or giving it to them later than other pubs.

It's happened with EA if I recall, one of their games got a bad review and EA threatened to not give timely review access to the entire magazine if the game wasn't "re reviewed". The story leaked 2 or 3 years afterwards by a editor showing the emails.
I recall a couple of cases through the years. But the implication exists and it shows in major publications, I think it's one of the bigger factors in major pubs slow down roll.

This isn't even a strictly game journalism issue, Ferrari famously banned Chris Harris from driving their cars, the reason is because of a bad review. Tesla banned Top Gear magazine/show from reviewing Teslas for a bit, Clarkson even made a bit out of it when finally getting to review the Model Y.
The issue isn't as nefarious for car reviews vs game reviews. The Chris Harris situation came up because Ferrari firmly believes they make the pinnacle of cars, according to them, there is no such thing as a bad Ferrari. Tesla is along the same lines, TG put the Tesla Roadster on full display with all its issues, overheating, poor track battery performance, etc.., shit Tesla still has some of these issues. But at the time Tesla couldn't have a reviewer attacking the drive train, because Tesla is known for the drive train and it should be perfect. Not a surprise Tesla pivoted to a more "tech" company after this time.
For video games, reviewers always get the whole thing and that's what they are looking at, in an entirety. Unless your Skyrim, you usually don't get away with a high score while being a buggy mess. This is where pubs have stepped on with pressure. The prevelance of day 1 patches don't help either, often game reviews aren't on the game the customer gets.

Eh, almost all the cases of publishers doing this are not for low review scores. It's usually because the reviewer didn't follow embargo instructions or the publication is reporting leaks the publisher didn't want out there. It's a huge myth that big publishers pressure for good reviews, if that was true madden wouldn't get shitty reviews on a yearly basis.

Like a more recent case would be CDPR heavily limiting early review codes to Cyberpunk to make sure reviewers where only playing it on 3000 series GPUs but this isn't pressuring reviewers for high scores this is them knowing their game was going to review poorly on weaker hardware and trying to control the early narrative so the first reviews didn't express how truly broken the game was.

[Zenfoldor]

Complete made up fan fiction in your head. The NPD guy has spoken multiple times about how high review scores lead to increased last minute preorders and week 1 sales. This is some hard cope the "gamers"(as in annoying internet gamers making up complete bullshit about the industry they have no idea about) have. Elden Ring doesn't sell 20 million copies if it was sitting at an 88 on metacritic, it would of barely out sold previous from software games if not for it reviewing as a complete spectacle.

This is correct. Good and/or bad reviews can affect sales figures in gaming, sometimes heavily.

It makes perfect sense if you think about it(but thinking about it, is NOT how I came to this conclusion). Rottentomatoes was a paradigm shift for the movie industry. It only makes sense that gamers, who are much more plugged in than the average movie watcher, would be even more heavily affected by available metadata.

I assume anyone who thinks metadata is completely irrelevant also ignores the user reviews on Amazon. They must also believe that user reviews on Amazon don't affect sales, which is again, clearly not true.

Reviews matter and they will continue to matter more and more as people get more and more informed about what they are purchasing.

[Santti]

To some degree, I believe they do, yes. Been following Escapist (Zero Punctuation), and they have mentioned a few times how Sony never sends them review copies. Something something negative reviews or somesuch. Which is probably true, seeing how Yahtzee never pulls his punches, if there is something he doesn't like. And in the Triple A sphere, there is a lot to dislike.

[Tech614]

To some degree, I believe they do, yes. Been following Escapist (Zero Punctuation), and they have mentioned a few times how Sony never sends them review copies. Something something negative reviews or somesuch. Which is probably true, seeing how Yahtzee never pulls his punches, if there is something he doesn't like. And in the Triple A sphere, there is a lot to dislike.

Or they just did something else to hurt their relationship since Sony is one of the better publishers at giving review codes to youtubers. Go look at how many youtube channels get early review codes for Zelda compared to God of War. Even Easy Allies doesn't get Nintendo codes and they're one of the nicest review platforms on the planet and rarely will give a game anything lower than a 8.

When someone doesn't get review codes early, it's very likely not because of how they reviewed games and never has been. Either the publisher doesn't see them as worthwhile for marketing, or they got blacklisted for other reasons(not following embargo or a leak being traced to them).

[Edge-]

When someone doesn't get review codes early, it's very likely not because of how they reviewed games and never has been.

To wit, unless it's a "one person outlet" a la Yahtzee (he's under Escapist, but sorta does his own thing), they don't have control over who even reviews their game. You can shop outlets to a point, but that's it. You try to be sneaky and bypass managing/review editors and send the key directly to your "preferred" reviewer? Grats, they're just forwarding that email to the managing/review editor to be assigned out to whoever they'd planned on assigning it to or has some bandwidth to take it.

[Skildar]

I remember how the french website gamekult director explained that they had issues with rockstar and were not receiving press kits, communications, and test versions because of how they rated Red Dead Redemption 2.

So the pressure from some editors is very real and even if you have some weight you will need to fight

[Santti]

When someone doesn't get review codes early, it's very likely not because of how they reviewed games and never has been. Either the publisher doesn't see them as worthwhile for marketing, or they got blacklisted for other reasons(not following embargo or a leak being traced to them).

Well, maybe. I'd rather trust Escapist on this issue, though.

https://www.escapistmagazine.com/the...eek-in-review/

https://www.reddit.com/r/KotakuInAct...he_escapist_a/

Also, the next bit is the last part of Ratchet and Clank: Rift Apart review of theirs:

...And also for the lateness of this review. It would have come out sooner if we’d gotten a review code before the release date but Sony wouldn’t give us one when they found out what it was for. They said that, quote, “Given the tone of that coverage, we’d prefer you secure your own code.” From where, Sony, the fucking dumpster outside your office? I don’t normally give you these cheeky little glances behind the beef curtains but I mean, really. I guess we all knew publishers want to dictate the content of reviews, hence those review guides they keep sending us that read like a timid schoolchild asking to please not be kicked in these specific sensitive areas, but I didn’t expect them to just come out and admit it. What’s your problem with my “tone,” Sony? You didn’t know I’d make the “snatchet” joke.



So yes, the tone is their problem.

[Edge-]

Well, maybe. I'd rather trust Escapist on this issue, though.

https://www.escapistmagazine.com/the...eek-in-review/

https://www.reddit.com/r/KotakuInAct...he_escapist_a/

Also, the next bit is the last part of Ratchet and Clank: Rift Apart review of theirs:

...And also for the lateness of this review. It would have come out sooner if we’d gotten a review code before the release date but Sony wouldn’t give us one when they found out what it was for. They said that, quote, “Given the tone of that coverage, we’d prefer you secure your own code.” From where, Sony, the fucking dumpster outside your office? I don’t normally give you these cheeky little glances behind the beef curtains but I mean, really. I guess we all knew publishers want to dictate the content of reviews, hence those review guides they keep sending us that read like a timid schoolchild asking to please not be kicked in these specific sensitive areas, but I didn’t expect them to just come out and admit it. What’s your problem with my “tone,” Sony? You didn’t know I’d make the “snatchet” joke.



So yes, the tone is their problem.

I mean...yes and no and sorta?

Yahtzee's style is being intentionally shitty towards games for comedic effect. Fine and all and I've enjoyed a lot of his videos, but is it surprising that some publishers might not be interested in giving an early key to someone whose whole schtick is to shit on just about every game (minus a few like Portal) might not want to grant early access to a title specifically to that end?

Note: It's not about being critical, it's about being intentionally shitty for comedic effect. Sony has a vested interest here in avoiding that kind of thing at launch. Does this hurt Escapist? Sorta, but not a ton. They're very "mid" at best in terms of outlets and traffic, and folks that like his reviews are going to watch his reviews largely whenever they post, be it on launch day or beyond.

His complaints about review guidelines? Read that in part through the lens of him being intentionally shitty and hyperbolic. Yes, embargoes exist and need to be abided by if you want to keep getting early review keys. Yes, some publishers occasionally send out hilarious embargo requirements that are beyond burdensome and can be ignored by the outlet simply saying, "Thanks but no thanks, we'll buy a key at launch and review that." Publishers do not "dictate" the content of any review, ever. No review editor would allow that.

For a fun anecdote, we had to tell a marketing guy that the ad-sales teams will tell you just about anything to buy ads, including telling you that "oh editors love when you tell them what tone of voice to review games in and how you want that review formatted" to get him to do a big ad-buy, because especially for the outlet in question if we'd tried to dictate those terms to the EiC he would have told us to fuck off and probably that if we ever pulled that shit again they would stop opening our emails.

But those are exceedingly rare. The overwhelming majority of review embargoes? Yeah, "Don't post your review or show off the game until XYZ time/date". Getting fancy? "Please don't record/stream or write about XYZ spoilers to preserve the surprise at launch for players." which isn't a big ask or very concerning. That's about it. Yeah, a big AAA will occasionally send out guidelines that basically tell them to ignore a huge chunk of the game for their review or something else crazy, but those leak to the public because they're so uncommon and outrageous.

[HansOlo]

About a decade ago or maybe half a decade ago, we had validated concerns that Triple-A game studios would pay off reviewers to shill their game even if it was shit.

But we've had a slew of Triple-A games in recent times, namely Callisto Protocol and Forspoken, that only had their reviews delayed; they opened to horrible reception.

I'm mainly suspicious because Resident Evil 4 remake reviews have been rolling in quite a bit ahead of release, and it has opened to near-universal acclaim.

Maybe people should revist the need to read reviews.

I understand back in the days - you didn't have access to the media(YouTube, Twitch etc.) - where you can watch everyday people and thier reaction. Or the forums where people are exchanging thoughts at bigger scale.

Journalism exists because of a product - essentially, it's the product of some other product. It can't be sustainable and objective in this setting.

[Malkiah]

So yes, the tone is their problem.

it's an interesting specific case, i think.
zero punctuation as a series is i think about 70/30 comedy/critique, insofar as the critique is genuine but the comedy is the point.
in that sense by all accounts ZP is closer to 'honest trailer' than it is to 'before you buy' or the like.

would honest trailers get a pre-release copy of a game for the sake of one of their videos?
i tend to doubt it, and for the same reason that i doubt it i sort of think ZP is a fantastic outlier here to the extent it's very much an exception rather than a rule.

as for the broader question in the OP... i'd tend to say either probably? or probably not. and it doesn't matter either way philosophically at least not to me.
i've never skipped a game because of negative reviews or have i ever changed my mind about a game due to reviews.

however, i HAVE bought games because of how highly reviewed they are and then had a little bit of my soul chipped away by the knowledge that people love these games.
like, elden ring and the witcher 3 and GoW: ragnarok are probably the three worst games i have ever played, relative to their budget and exposure, and looking at the reviews i can only imagine there's some kind of money and LSD conspiracy at work.

[Flame6]

Metacritic actually has a pretty good way of looking at a reviewer and seeing if they seem to give "false scores". I'm not saying anyone paid them to give a better score, but some outlets just generally rate things more positively than others. Examples below.

I think its pretty darn clear that reviews aren't bought because you sometimes have HUGE titles just tank. Take Anthem for example. A game published by a very greedy publisher.
IGN gave it a 65 and Gamespot a 60.

I think if ANYONE was going to buy a positive review, it would be EA.

Now, Medium & small Youtubers? Screw that, I don't trust them at all. They don't get paid to make a positive YT video, but it's really hard to bad mouth a game when the company is providing you early access which is crucial to getting the views to make money. It's also no secret publishers send them swag boxes to hype up the whole influencer circle. There's a reason why a lot of the media reviewers don't allow gifts/early access to products as a rule because it does indeed stop them from being independent reviewers. The giant youtubers? Sure, they can afford to lose early access deals and it does happen when they give negative/harsh critique on a game.

[Okacz]

I mean...yes and no and sorta?

Yahtzee's style is being intentionally shitty towards games for comedic effect. Fine and all and I've enjoyed a lot of his videos, but is it surprising that some publishers might not be interested in giving an early key to someone whose whole schtick is to shit on just about every game (minus a few like Portal) might not want to grant early access to a title specifically to that end?

Note: It's not about being critical, it's about being intentionally shitty for comedic effect. Sony has a vested interest here in avoiding that kind of thing at launch. Does this hurt Escapist? Sorta, but not a ton. They're very "mid" at best in terms of outlets and traffic, and folks that like his reviews are going to watch his reviews largely whenever they post, be it on launch day or beyond.

Gotta be careful not to derail this thread into "battle over an internet reviewer", but this does exemplify the issue in my opinion. Yahtzee's reviews tend to have crude humor and poke fun at games flaws, but when it comes to actual criticism and giving a clear impression whether a game is good or bad, they do their job. I doubt Bethesda is angry at his review of Hi-Fi Rush, where he poked a few barbs at the game but was overall very happy with it, and with the direction the publisher seems to be going. Same with a ton of other great games.

Likewise, when he dislikes a game, he tends to throw more barbs at it and expresses his dislike as strongly and comidically as possible. That's why he points out tired tropes in AAA games, or their unfinished state, and by extension shits on the company developing/publishing them. You know, like a reviewers always have done. Nothing new here, right?

So when Sony issues a note to him that they won't be supporting him with review copies because they "dislike his tone", I can't help but notice that this might have something to do with the fact he might have been intentionally shitty, yes, but to unintentionally shitty games Sony has released. And Sony takes offense in that. It could have something to do with, for instance, his less than stellar coverage of The Last of Us 2 among other things, a game he seemingly disliked in his review, and called out on its narrative problems and repetitive tropes, while the "biggest" video game journalists simply showered the game with hugs and kisses.

In that case it's a publisher openly saying he's not going to keep supporting reviewer with review copies because he criticizes said games? Doesn't it kinda go back to the beginning of the argument, with publishers openly supporting reviewers only if they are sure the reviews are going to be positive?

[Flame6]

however, i HAVE bought games because of how highly reviewed they are and then had a little bit of my soul chipped away by the knowledge that people love these games.
like, elden ring and the witcher 3 and GoW: ragnarok are probably the three worst games i have ever played, relative to their budget and exposure, and looking at the reviews i can only imagine there's some kind of money and LSD conspiracy at work.

I think it comes down to taste here. I did NOT think witcher 3 was very good, but I loved GoW and Elden Ring (dark souls is better). I also think borderlands has been a bad series since day 1, but I'll admit I'm wrong because so many folks love the thing. I just cant see why.

[Edge-]

In that case it's a publisher openly saying he's not going to keep supporting reviewer with review copies because he criticizes said games? Doesn't it kinda go back to the beginning of the argument, with publishers openly supporting reviewers only if they are sure the reviews are going to be positive?

No, because that's a singular instance with an individual reviewer. Not even a pattern with that singular reviewer, much less more outlets. There are far too many examples of big AAA games getting shit on at launch for this argument to hold much weight. If this was happening Forspoken wouldn't have been reviewed pretty poorly (60's ain't great) and had a slew of reviews that seemed more interested in having fun dunking on the game than anything else (no criticism there, there was a lot of humor to be had) because outlets wouldn't want to jeopardize their access to FFXVI later this year, for example.

But they did...because while Squeenix may cry about it and while they may decide that one smaller outlet that shit on Forspoken won't get a key (probably not even), they have just as much interest in maintaining positive and professional relationships with media as well. Media/content creators remain a key part of marketing and promotional strategies and likely always will be.

[Okacz]

No, because that's a singular instance with an individual reviewer. Not even a pattern with that singular reviewer, much less more outlets. There are far too many examples of big AAA games getting shit on at launch for this argument to hold much weight. If this was happening Forspoken wouldn't have been reviewed pretty poorly (60's ain't great) and had a slew of reviews that seemed more interested in having fun dunking on the game than anything else (no criticism there, there was a lot of humor to be had) because outlets wouldn't want to jeopardize their access to FFXVI later this year, for example.

In case of Forspoken or a few other titles (Balans Wonderworld comes to mind), big publishers seem to be self aware enough not to die on those hills. Squeenix and other major publishers are not deluded, Forspoken was a fire-and-forget that will still bring enough money not to leave the studio in shambles.

The mentioned reviewer however criticized Sony's big hitters, games that are meant to sell whole systems, like TLOU2 and Dad of Boy: Ragnarok, that were otherwise given solid 9s and 10s. Bit of a different situation.