This post has been taken from my blog: maxcrit.wordpress.com
 
 

Kill Screen Magazine, which has the honorable distinction of being the only gaming magazine mentioned in GQ, has released a new article about one intern’s experience at Games Radar. Go read it.

I think the point of their story is to explain how an article about a game can sound like it’s another piece of hype coming straight from the publisher’s mouth. As a gaming journalist, it’s hard not to foster a “too close for comfort” relationship with a publisher. Reviewers depend upon news from publishers, just like publishers depend on income that a good review can generate. It’s in both party’s interests to get close.

However, in this instance the end result wasn’t all that bad. The article feels like Kill Screen is reaching for something provocative. You can ask any journalist about their experiences with PR people, and get a similar story nearly every time. A PR agent’s ultimate goal is to get a journalist to publish said agent’s press release completely unedited. That’s the best way to make their company or product look awesome, even if everyone knows it’s a day-old turd sandwich. If you sit a PR agent in the same room as a reviewer, that PR agent is going to do everything short of locking the door in order to get a good review. It’s not that PR agents are bad people, it’s that their livelihood depends upon their ability to make something look great, regardless of its actual quality.

But, understood in a more general sense, Kill Screen’s article is indicative of something that may be more systemic. Most people probably have their suspicions about publishers indirectly buying reviews for favorable scores on their games. When you’re fighting in a crowded, billions of dollars a year industry, the temptation to cheat the system becomes very real. For example, there’s the Jeff Gerstmann incident (though Jeff’s firing lead to his founding of one of the best gaming news sites).  CNet hasn’t been able to tell anyone why Jeff was fired because of California state law, but it’s hard to deny what that whole thing looks like.

Ultimately, because the gaming press has such a close relationship with the very industry they’re scrutinizing, it may be impossible for a games journalist to be completely objective.  Does that really matter, though? It's not like a $60 video game is the difference between life and death. Ultimately, as a consumer, can you trust what a review says? That’s the billion dollar question.