Computer games industry puts the squeeze on reporters
Game reviewers are often enthusiasts who do not know the rules of journalism
By Jussi Ahlroth
The evening's get-together in Toscana seemed to have gone alright.
The hosts received their guests in a handsome villa that once belonged to the Medici family. The food was delicious and the wine was flowing nicely.
The host was the computer game house Ubisoft and the guests were game reporters and reviewers from all over the world.
The company was showing off to the press its new Assassin’s Creed 2 game, the sequel to the successful 2007 release Assassin's Creed.
The new action-adventure game is set in Renaissance Italy, so the location for the party was ideal.
Finnish game reporter Ville Arvekari described his jaunt in Toscana in great detail in his blog in the Pelaaja (“Gamer”) magazine.
“The staging was extravagant to say the least”, was Arvekari’s assessment.
The computer and video game publishing houses do not stint themselves when pampering the reporters who matter.
After having returned to their home countries, the reporters then write enthusiastic evaluations of the new game that is soon to be unleashed on the waiting public.
Such preview pieces are standard operating procedure in gaming circles. They are also one of the ways the gaming business tries to influence the media.
“There is a constant preview auction going on”, says Tuija Lindén, editor-in-chief of the Finnish magazine Pelit (“Games”).
“People ring me and ask if the cover is available and how many pages can I spare for this or that upcoming game. If I do not promise anything, the conversation may end right there, and the story goes to a competing mag.”
The Pelit magazine has two competitors in Finland: Pelaaja and Game Reactor.
According to Lindén, the wackiest days of the preview freebie trips are now history.
“In the past the game houses used to lay it on a lot thicker.”
Another Finn who worked in the gaming media for a long time reports calmly: “Yes, they did. I have fired various weapons, driven all manner of vehicles, eaten all sorts of dishes, and all this on these preview trips.”
Naturally the content of the advance teaser stories is not dictated out loud.
The persuasion is much more subtle and gentle within the gaming circles, where everyone knows everyone else, and everyone is everyone’s pal.
“Everybody is chummy, people eat and drink well. Then, when these things are reported on, it is just assumed that the review is going to be a favourable one”, explains a Finn who works on the PR side in the gaming industry.
Gaming researcher Tanja Sihvonen is of the opinion that the industry has a stronghold on the gaming media by controlling simultaneously the flow of "exclusive" material and the faucets for the marketing cash.
“It is all about boys writing for boys, funded by the gaming industry. The writers pass on - with minimal criticism - the press-pack material handed to them by the games developers and manufacturers.”
The gaming industry also uses the old stand-by of "divide and rule", and takes advantage of the competition between the different gaming media.
“The gaming firms create artificial boundaries and elevate certain guys as their trusted point-men”, Sihvonen explains.
The Pelaaja magazine’s editor-in-chief Thomas Puha knows the main players in the field.
“There’s not a clear line between my work and my personal life. I am always working and I have good friends in the field, on the publishing side, and as game developers.”
The magazines compete furiously for exclusivity on stories.
“One must work hard to get their hands on something before someone else does”, Puha says. “Of course good connections help.”
Once a magazine has first published a lengthy preview article about a new game in the works, an actual review of the game will follow a couple of issues later.
The gaming firms also eagerly try to influence the reviews.
A common practice is that selected media will get to test a game well before it is made public.
At that time the editor-in-chief will have to agree on the terms, for example that the review can only be published on the tenth of the month, except if the ranking-points awarded top 90/100.
This will ensure that lousy reviews will not get to affect the first weeks’ sales of the new product.
“This is way out of line, of course. With this type of ridiculous contracts it is virtually impossible to get any reviews published in the next issue of the magazine”, frets editor-in-chief Lindén.
For the gaming media, it is vital to get the essential reviews published on time.
It is with such reviews that the magazines stand or fall.
Lindén says that occasionally he has bent the rules of engagement with a game developer, with the result that he has had to purchase the next game they released from a shop like any normal punter - in other words, after it has been launched on the public.
The review of that game has then come out hopelessly late.
The Finnish computer game media fraternity is fairly well-behaved.
Here, for example, a critic has not been fired after having delivered a lessthan favourable of a game. Tanja Sihvonen is aware of several such cases elsewhere in the world.
But even Finnish gaming journalists report other forms of pressure brought to bear.
One journalist began to receive a certain company's games systematically a couple of weeks later than everyone else, after having issued negative reviews on the firm’s previous releases.
Another reporter reveals that after he had taken one game apart in print, the manufacturer had contacted his editor-in-chief and presented a wish that he would no longer be allowed to write reviews on the firm’s products.
On the PR side, there are some remarkably cynical views on the realities in the field.
The game producers' advertising money, however, does pass muster with the media - to the point that it can even influence the content of the reviews.
“The consumers would be shocked if they knew how many of the reviews are more or less paid advertising.”
Editor-in-chief Lindén knows that the gaming firms’ PR representatives are paid commission depending on how prominently the companies' games are featured on the cover of his magazine. Even if it is he himself who decides on the cover.
The gaming companies are under a tremendous amount of pressure to produce results.
A new game can cost EUR 60, so the consumer's buying decision requires more thought than that of a cinema ticket or a CD.
In practice keeping tabs on what is happening in the branch is entirely in the hands of the gaming press, for unlike movies for instance, few games for the PC/PlayStation/Xbox platforms get reviewed in the mainstream media.
“We have the power to raise a game to the bestseller list or to let it fall into oblivion and the bargain bins”, Lindén says.
A source on the PR side disagrees. “Not so. The reviews are of no real consequence. The real tricks are performed on the retail side.”
To some extent the gaming media only has itself to blame.
“This branch has been very immature, with young guys producing stuff for their mates”, Lindén summarises the root of the problematic practices in the field.
Researcher Sihvonen does not spare her invective when commenting on games journalism.
“Games journalism as such has never existed”, she declares. “From the very beginning the gaming magazines have been merely a channel of interest group communication to serve the makers' marketing needs.”
For all practical purposes, the gaming reporters have landed in the field through a personal gaming background.
More often than not they do not have any kind of journalistic training, nor any previous work experience in any other form of media.
From the PR side, the gaming branch is thus seen as a soft touch and an easy playing-field.
“It is easier to get things through in the gaming media. The kind of journalistic practices and guidelines that are self-evident elsewhere just do not exist there”, a PR person explains.
“Whoever you call, they all get excited at the chance to play a new game.”
Editor-in-chief Thomas Puha admits openly that a gaming journalist is motivated by the love of playing games.
“I have never made an effort to hide the fact that we gaming reporters are at the bottom of the pile. We do this with our heart, and if the game publishers do not send us material to review, we have nothing.”
Though the gaming media may still suffer from its adolescent background, the business itself has long ago matured to adulthood.
Size-wise the gaming industry can be compared to the film and music industries. It is not just the backroom potterings of nerdy types, but very much mainstream business for big bucks.
At the same time, the gaming media shapes even the young Finns’ impressions of what is a reporter and a critic’s job, and what a particular media’s relationship is with the field of industry it covers.
“Maybe this is the future of journalism”, researcher Sihvonen says, with more than a hint of irony in her voice.
“Money changes hands, the party was awesome, hey, here's some picture material.”
This article is one in a series run by Helsingin Sanomat on the ways in which influence is exerted on cultural journalism in different fields.
Helsingin Sanomat / First published in print 19.3.2010
JUSSI AHLROTH / Helsingin Sanomat
jussi.ahlroth@hs.fi
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 Computer games industry puts the squeeze on reporters |
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