If you spent time with video game press, there's something remarkable about the Metacritic page for the "Watchmen" movie: the sheer diversity of the scores.

The highest score for "Watchmen" is 100 and the lowest is 20. The critics are all over the map. And I'm not just talking about one divergent opinion. "Watchmen" has four 100's, three 20's, a bunch of 75's, a bunch of 50's, a bunch of 40's -- the critics are truly divided. They're coming at the movie from totally different perspectives, debating all of director Zack Snyder's choices, indirectly engaging each other, and providing viewers (or potential viewers) a variety of perspectives on what's so far the year's biggest and, arguably, most important film.

In the world of video games, that virtually never happens. Maybe once or twice in history, but I've certainly never seen it. It's incredibly rare for a major title to  come out and for some of us to love it, some hate it, and some be in between. Instead, fans seem to consider it a "controversy" when a critic comes in on the low end of a 20 point range (I know because I've been that critic). And of course it was a major Internet emergency for some fans when another publication recently came in all the way at the bottom of a 30 point range for a AAA title.

Looking at that range of opinions on "Watchmen," I realize what a shame it is that we don't have the same critical diversity in the world of video games. As I wrote a few months ago, it's a sign of a healthy mature medium when critics are engaging what artists are doing, fiercely debating whether innovative choices are brilliant or disastrous, and giving the audience lots to think about, instead of pretty much the same opinions over and over and over again

G4 is the latest layoff victims. A rep for the network has confirmed that it's cutting back its two daily programs, "X-Play" and "Attack of the Show" to three and four original episodes per week, respectively, starting March 2nd (two weeks from yesterday). While they declined to specify the number of layoffs, sources have indicated that a number of staffers on those two programs have gotten the axe, though the figures for the total network are in the single digit percentage-wise.

"X-Play" is G4's daily news show about videogames, while "Attack of the Show" focuses more on general tech and pop culture as it relates to the network's core demo of young guys.

G4 has apparently decided it wants to re-arrange spending and invest more in other series beyond its two big daily shows. A network rep insisted that today's moves are not part of an overall budget cut, but a decision to shift spending away from the two big daily shows and toward other series. "Savings resulting from this move will go directly towards producing more original programming in 2009," she stated.

It's perhaps no surprise G4 wants to make changes, though, since nearly three years of ratings growth came to a halt in the second of of 2008 and the network has, like many of its counterparts, had trouble monetizing its substantial on-demand and online video views. Combine that with a recession that's causing worries about advertising spending and G4 had to be rethinking its strategy a bit.

It wasn't long ago, in fact, that there was talk of expanding "X-Play" to an hour daily. Then ratings and economic concerns caused G4 to stick with half an hour. And now it's cut back to three half hours per week. That's a blow for the show and for fans of videogame journalism in general.

Adam Sessler and Morgan Webb will continue to host X-Play in its reduced format.

This post has been updated (twice).

A few years ago I co-wrote a book about how politicians use the tools of public relations to deceive the public without lying called "All the President's Spin." George W. Bush was our primary example, for the simple reason that he was president at the time and an expert at deceiving without lying.

I've never brought it up before because it never seemed relevant (though I will note for anyone interested that's it's available used on Amazon.com for literally one penny; and I promise it's worth more than a penny). But today it seemed relevant when I was reading this piece that has been spreading around the Interweb like wildfire by PSXextreme editor Ben Dutka that epitomizes some of the, ummm, rather rabid response of Playstation 3 fans to any less than stellar reviews of Sony's upcoming action game "Killzone 2."

In particular, Dutka (and many of his commenters) is worked up about this review in Edge Magazine, which had the temerity to say some negative things about the hotly anticipated game and score it a 7 out of 10 (a score that is above average and means the reviewer liked the game, but let's leave that aside). I haven't played the game yet (though I have a copy and am eager to try it soon), so I have no personal beef one way or another with the review. But let's remember, it's a review. There's no way it can be "wrong" unless the reviewer cites factually incorrect evidence or makes indisputably illogical arguments. As far as I can tell, Edge's anonymous reviewer didn't do that.

Nonethelss, Dutka went pretty much ballistic, calling the review a "lie." After writing "All the President's Spin," I was particularly intrigued by these descriptions:

Notice the language used: "Elite" twice. "Superiority complexes." "Know more than everyone else." And who do these elitist know-it-alls stand in contrast to? All of us, the average consumers, who just "know" (without having played it, in the case of 99% of us) that "Killzone 2" is one of the best games ever.

"Killzone 2" defenders are the regular people, you see, the common folks who know the truth without having to do the research (in this case, playing the game). Those know-it-alls at Edge may have done the research, but the fact that they disagree with us is prima facie evidence that they're elitist snobs who just want to prove they're smarter and know better. They think they're something wrong with the game we like (or are sure we will like). Oh, and did I mention that Edge is British? (OK, Dutka didn't say that, but the fact is out there and you know that Brits think they're so much better than us Americans.)

Anyone who has followed political discourse knows this routine: It's the set of charges that have been used, often to great success, against Democrats for 20-plus years. Every Democratic presidential candidate since at least Dukakis has been called an elitist, a snob, someone trying to impress his friends in the media or in Europe or the coffee shops and colleges.

It's a classic dirty tactic of political discourse: Delegitimize your opponents' views not by engaging them on the issues -- Dutka doesn't once argue with the substance of what Edge said -- but by questioning their motives and associating with with dislikable groups.

Obviously I'm not saying Rush Limbaugh is orchestrating the "Killzone 2" backlash backlash, or that there's really any crossover between Sony fanboys and Republicans (except perhaps the fact that they've both been supporting losing causes for the past few years <thank you folks, I'll be here all night>). But a nasty rhetorical tactic is a nasty rhetorical tactic and it would be great if those of us who write and talk about videogames could do a little better than the bottom of the barrel of political discourse.

(For a more amusing take on hardcore Sony fans' reactions to a positive "Killzone 2" review, check out this rant from X-Play's Adam Sessler)

I know I wasn't the only one who had a bit of a "wtf?" moment when I found out yesterday that GameFly had bought Shacknews. What's the synergy between a videogame rental service and a popular, 14 year-old fan news site? After all, if Gamefly wants content to help its subscribers pick games, it can easily syndicate it. It already posts reviews from Gamespot, Gamespy, and IGN, as well as thousands of user reviews. And promoting its service on news sites is as easy as a simple advertising deal.

This morning I interviewed Gamefly co-founder and biz dev / marketing VP Sean Spector and his answer, quite simply, is that there is no synergy. At least in the short run. Spector says that Gamefly is simply interested in getting into the content business. And it's hard to see any other reason. Forbes.com theorized it may have to do with digital distribution, but it's hard to see what Shacknews offers on that front, besides the servers and bandwidth on its Fileshack download service. The challenge for Gamefly when games go digital in the future will be the DRM to make games rentals and getting around Microsoft, Nintendo and Sony, which will have their own services right on their consoles, and established PC services like Steam.

Given that it probably wasn't too expensive a deal, especially in the current economic climate, it seems like it really is just Gamefly diversifying it business a bit by entering a related field. Here's my conversation with Spector:

Why is Gamefly getting into the content business, particularly during this tough market for advertising?

We've always had our finger on the pulse of content as it relates to games because of our website. We have always in my mind done a good job of delivering a lot of different content. One thing we never had is news. When started looking at the news-oriented sites out that are out there we had three criteria: we wanted quality, credible news; a community that responded to it; and a good user experience. ShackNews hit all three of those in the bullseye.

So did you make the purchase because there were synergies with Gamefly or because it's a separate business you like?

I think more because it's a separate business we’re interested in. If it helps rentals, great. That's icing on the cake. The goal is to have a site that delivers really good content to gamers. We want to deliver all forms of content whether it's on disc or digital or a news story.

We’re taking a long term view. We believe in the videogame industry. Regardless of what’s happening in the world out there, the video game business is having the best year it has ever had. We think news and other information, other experiences are only going to get stronger

It may not be the easiest ad market right now, but we’ve got Gamefly to help support us and so we believe in the long view that this site and the quality of its content and community will weather the storm.

You say you want Gamefly to deliver all types of game content. So do you want the Gamefly brand to be associated with Shacknews?

They will remain two distinct brands, though I can see a point in time where Shacknews content appears on Gamefly.

We want to provide a really engaging experience to gamers whether it's on Gamefly or Shacknews, whether they visit both or one.

We think we've done a good job with Gamefly and we thought the Shacknews guys have done a really good job with their site. On the surface people may be wondering why we did this, but for us it makes a lot of sense.

Gamefly obviously has more resources than Shacknews had on its own. So are there things you want to do now to expand or change the site?

These guys have done a great job. It wasn’t a distressed asset. We don’t want to muck that up. So there are no plans for major changes.

We definitely think we can help grow Shacknews by utilizing our infrastructure, our development capabilities, and the Gamefly network to help expand its reach. As games get broader and broader, even more people will enjoy site.

So the editorial team will remain the same?

[Editors] Chris [Faylor] and Nick [Breckon] will continue to publish on the editorial side. [Founder] Steve [Gibson] is going to take time off. That was one of the impetuses of them wanting to sell. He has been running it for 14 years. It was all-consuming of his life.

What about Gamefly? How has it been doing amidst the recession?

All I want to say is that Gamefly had a good 2008.

In Hollywood we're very used to the concept of the "review-proof" and even the "unreviewable" movies -- ones about which reviewers struggle to say anything relevant that perform extremely well commercially. This past weekend's $39 million grosser "Paul Blart: Mall Cop" springs to mind. As do some of the biggest movies of the past few years, like "Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull," "Twilight," "Transformers," Pirates of the Caribbean 3"... You know what I'm talking about. They may get reviewed, but reluctantly, and there's rarely much in the way of follow-up discussion and online buzz the way there is about, say, "Slumdog Millionnaire" or "The Wrestler."

I always thought that videogames were different. Most of the top sellers were usually games thoroughly discussed by reviewers (and, more recently, bloggers), usually very positively. As recently as last year, four of the top 5 titles (Halo 3, Call of Duty 4, Guitar Hero II, Super Mario Galaxy) fall exactly in that category. Out of the top ten, "Wii Play," "Mario Party 8," and maybe "Pokemon Diamond" were games that didn't exactly have critics buzzing.

Even three games seems like a lot, historically speaking, But this year, and this holiday season especially, I think, the number of top selling videogames that simply eluded critics exploded. Here's NPD's top 20 games of December, ranked and followed by the number of reviews each title received in Metacritic (that doesn't include everything, of course, but for comparison's sake, it's a good sense of what videogame critics are talking about):

Notice a trend? Eight of the the ten least reviewed games are for Nintendo consoles. Only five of the top ten and two of the top five are (and two came out more than a year ago, making them only arguably relevant).

Then there's the vaguer issue of buzz. I can't quantify it, but I'm willing to argue that videogame bloggers, message board posters, etc. were talking a lot more about "Fallout," "Gears," "Call of Duty," "Left 4 Dead" and even titles that sold beneath the top 20 like "Dead Space," "Mirror's Edge," "Prince of Persia" and "LittleBigPlanet" than almost all of these Nintendo games.

The simple reason is that most of these Nintendo titles are either the umpteenth revision of very familiar formulas ("Mario Kart," "Animal Crossing") or "games" that aren't really games, at least in the sense that we critics and writers usually think and talk about them ("Wii Fit," "Wii Music," "Personal Trainer: Cooking," etc.) And then there's the multi-platform titles like "Call of Duty," "Shaun White Snowboarding" and "Guitar Hero" for which we clearly prefer to review and discuss the Xbox 360 and PS3 versions.

It's a growing trend, but again, I feel like it really exploded this year as, for various reasons I and others have discussed, Nintendo took control of the sales charts and did so with a very different slate of titles. Last December, by contrast, videogame critics and writers were eagerly discussing four of the top five titles ("CoD 4," "Super Mario Galaxy," "Guitar Hero III," "Assassin's Creed") and a much bigger percentage of the top 20 (see for yourself).

 I don't really have a proscriptive take on all this. Should we find more to say about "Wii Fit" and "Club Penguin: Elite Penguin Force?" (Hey, Variety reviewed it!) Well, if all artistic criticism mirrored the sales charts, that would be a sad thing for our culture. Should we review the Wii version of multi-platform franchises more often? Perhaps, but if it doesn't have as many features as PS3 or 360, that seems a bit bizarre (at least for publications like Variety without the resources to review multiple versions).

It may in fact be a good thing. The videogame industry is maturing and we need our review-proof blockbusters just as much as we need everything else. It's also, perhaps, no coincidence that 2008 was also the year that we saw an explosion of interest in, discussion about, and a business model coalescing around independent games. The market may simply be expanding and some parts of it need critical attention more than others.

The personal tragedy of Electronic Gaming Monthly closing after UGO bought its website 1UP and Ziff Davis disposed of the remains is obvious, given the 30 people laid off. The editorial tragedy is clear to anyone who reads videogame magazines, since EGM was the only one -- well, the only one published in the U.S., anyway -- that remotely resembled a real magazine -- you know, one with really interesting features thought up by smart editors and writers -- as opposed to just a vehicle for game companies to promote their wares.

But the business tragedy is that publications like EGM have been so tremendously unable to expand their advertiser base beyond videogame publishers. That, in a nutshell, is what killed the publication. This is what Sam Kennedy, editorial director for 1UP (which EGM was a part of) said to MTV Multiplayer    :

The obvious retort is: Why did you need the games industry so badly? I work for a publication that relies heavily on advertisements from the businesses we cover -- studios, networks, agencies, and those who work with them -- although perusing the paper and website I can see we have expanded a bit to include fashion, alcohol, automobiles, etc. But to me that makes a bit more sense since our print readership is way more attractive to companies that are in, or work with, the entertainment industry, and thus they're willing to pay a premium (our website draws a much broader array of readers).

But that shouldn't have been a problem for EGM. Their core readership is teenage boys and young men. 18-35 year-old men are the #1 most desirable demographic for advertisers, as they're so hard to reach since they're often doing things like, well, playing videogames. EGM had that audience. GameInformer and GameSpot and Kotaku and others have it. Yet I rarely see ads beyond game companies and, occassionally, military recruiters. A few times I remember seeing car companies and a TV show or two, but that's about it.

Of course it's easy for me to sit here and say what the ad sales people shoulda/woulda/coulda done, but to me, the fact that they were unable to crack that nut is teh true tragedy, because it could have turned publications like EGM, and thus quality videogame journalism as a whole, into a much more viable business.

I haven't been spending my holidays doing much kotaku reading, but when a friend send me this post, I really wasn't sure whether to laugh or cry. Michael McWhertor at Kotaku read this long, slightly crazy interview with GameRepublic head Yoshiki Okamoto and came up with the following nugget o'news, which was apparently hidden so carefully that 1Up, the site that conducted and posted the interview, didn't even realize it was noteworthy:

Folklore Dev Was Working on Tom and Jerry for Brash

The evidence? Deep in the middle of the interview (conducted before Brash went under) comes this exchange:

1UP: You're working on a movie-based game for Brash Entertainment. Even if you can't say what license that is right now, how is the project coming? How hard is it to work on a movie license? You haven't done that kind of project before, have you?

YO: Actually, we're working on a Tom and Jerry movie/game tie-in [laughs]. Yeah, when Brash is ready, we'll both announce the game together. But technically, this isn't my first movie licensed project.

Hopefully I don't need to explain to Cut Scene readers the many contextual hints that make it obvious Okamoto wasn't being serious. Even beyond this exchange, though, it was a totally tongue-in-cheek interview during which Okamoto gave 1UP Editor James Mielke marital advice, complained about how women don't dig him, and said, "I used to have a girlfriend that I was riding too. But I went out to the parking lot to get her the other day and she wasn't there anymore."

And of course there's just common sense. Brash picked up a few crappy licenses in its day, but Tom and Jerry? Which, by the way, is not a movie. And then assign it to a fairly well regarded developer like GameRepublic? That should strike most knowledgeable readers as a bit suspicious. And probably merit more reporting. Like a Google search.

Which would have turned up that I have previously reported the movie license GameRepublic was actually developing for Brash was "Clash of the Titans." Many other sites have since picked that up (like this IGN listing), so I'm not just assuming everyone has to read this blog.

So, ummm, yea. There's nothing wrong with quickly linking to all the interesting videogame news on the 'Net. That's what sites like Kotaku do best. But sometimes a little more diligence may be in order.

[This post slightly edited by me a few hours after posting when I realized it was a bit too snippy]

The New York Times is amazed to discover that videogames have trailers. That they're professionally made and quite good. That people get really excited about seeing them for the first time. That media outlets compete to be the first to show them.

Which is really shocking. Because it's not like that happens in other media. I can't think of any movies for which people get excited about the trailer. Can you imagine websites making a big deal out of showing a film trailer first? Or hard core fans going to see a movie just to watch the trailer attached to it? Not at all.

Of course it's kind of interesting that a TV event like the Spike Awards makes such a big deal out of getting 10 exclusive trailers. But I would imagine movie studios would do the same at film award shows if they didn't have this other great vehicle for delivering trailers: movies themselves.

Also, according to the New York Times, Spike's "Game Trailers TV" is just half an hour of videogame trailers. Which means Geoff Keighley must have the easiest job in the world.

I said in my earlier post about innovation and "Mirror's Edge" and that I wanted to see more critics engaging each others ideas and that's exactly what I got, albeit at a much more meta-level than I anticipated.

Newsweek's N'Gai Croal wrote a rejoinder to recent posts by yours truly (here and here), Leigh Alexander and the Guardian's Keith Stuart in which he gives a big fat "red light" to our arguments about videogame critics not valuing innovation enough, or in the right ways. And hey, just being the subject of a post by a veteran writer like Croal, let alone his triumphant return to blogging after several months away, is pretty cool.

But I think he gets something wrong. Or perhaps I didn't express myself well and he nailed me on it. Either way, I think my disagreement can be easily targeted at this snippet from his response:

Stuart and Alexander would have us believe that the fault lies with reviewers and gamers who have disparaged any of the game's mechanics--movement, shooting or hand-to-hand combat--while being insufficiently laudatory of the breathtaking way Mirror's Edge simulates the experience of le parkour. They're wrong and, if we can turn back a phrase from Fritz, they're wrong in a way that misses the big picture. Because while the locomotion in Mirror's Edge is praiseworthy and innovative, the game it's wrapped it not only fails to amplify and focus said innovation, the game by and large works against it.

What do we mean by this? Mirror's Edge, far more so than traditional platformers, is at its most exhilarating whenever you achieve an unbroken chain of continuous motion. But because it uses a first-person camera, it drastically reduces your situational awareness as compared to a third-person camera system. That fact, combined with the need to create varied, challenging gameplay scenarios, results in a good deal of trial-and-error--which is precisely the opposite of Mirror's Edge at its most exciting. Why? Because it breaks the flow and grinds the action to a halt.

First of all, I agree with Croal. His critique very closely mirrors my largely negative review of the game. But I think it's a point in favor or my bigger picture argument, as well as the ones made by Leigh and Keith (Leigh and I are co-workers and friends, so I'll use her first name; in the case of Keith, I'm just being presumptious). Why? Because the first person POV, by and large, is the innovation. That's exactly how "Mirror's Edge" "simulated the experience of le parkour." The's the "movement," which Croal (I only know him very casually, and I'm kind of arguing with him, so I'll be more respectful) lists under "mechanics" along with shooting and combat. He appears to think that by criticizing the way the first person POV makes the game difficult to control, he's showing how a mechanic ruins the innovation. But in fact he's engaging with the big idea of the game, just as I argued critics should.

My point, which I'm sure I could have made more clearly and I gather, based on the response on her blog, Leigh agrees with, is that you have to prioritize your mechanics and other elements. A review of "Mirror's Edge" in which the shooting or story is weighed equally with the ways the game handles running and jumping at high speed through an environment is highly problematic. Sure, you can note that combat weak or that the story's generic (I did the latter in my review and didn't even bother with the combat). But trust me, if I found the parkour engaging and exhilirating, my review would have been much more positive, even if those other weaknesses remained. Too many reviews, I'm saying, don't focus enough on the big, new important elements of games. Instead they focus on the same list of attributes they always have.

To move the argument beyond "Mirror's Edge," I've been surprised to see how some (overall positive) reviews critized "Left 4 Dead" because the story is non-existent and a playthrough of the campaigns doesn't take too long. These are important elements in scripted single player games for sure. In a game that explicitly uses Hollywood cliches to immerse players in a world where dynamic enemy A.I. and co-op or competitive gameplay make for nearly endless opportunities for repeat gameplay, they hardly even seems worth mentioning. (For my take on "Left 4 Dead," you can read my new review here)

Of course, critics can argue about priorities. Maybe somebody strongly believes the brevity of the campaign really does matter in "Left 4 Dead." But you've got to make a case. When a game is innovating, you've got to really engage with the fresh mechanics/elements, or else try to demonstrate why they actually don't matter much. In the IGN review of "Mirror's Edge" that Stuart criticized, we've got the following, in order: an introduction, two paragraphs about the story, two paragraphs about the visual design, two paragraphs about parkour movement, one paragraph about combat, one paragraph about "runner vision," one  about the time trials, one about the graphics, one about the sound, and a conclusion. It's basically a checklist, in other words. That's the kidn of thing I find annoying, particularly for an innovative game that doesn't neatly fit the standard criteria.

I highly recommend reading this Guardian post about how videogame reviewers need to value originality a bit more and not focus so much on a checklist of familiar and more quantifiable criteria. I also recommend Leigh's SexyVideogameLand post that pointed me to it. I'm sure one of the reasons I like it is that it somewhat mirrors a recent argument I made here on this blog, though less succinctly and probably less persuasively.

That being said, I think the Guardian's Keith Stuart is dead wrong to use "Mirror's Edge" as his example. There's a game that has one innovative idea (first-person parkour), but it's a fundamentally bad idea that, no matter how well its implemented, just doesn't work very well. Furthermore, it doesn't take into account the many areas in which "Mirror's Edge" not only doesn't innovate, but takes steps backwards, like the generic story and repetitive, under-detailed visual design. But I've made this argument in my review of the game and besides, it doesn't invalidate Stuart's argument.

The bigger point is that I would welcome and love passionate debates about a game like "Mirror's Edge." It's new and exciting and has critics moving in wildly divergent directions and that's an awesome thing. So I think it's bad innovation and Stuart think it's great. Let's make our claims on our reviews, hash it out on our blogs, and invite readers to further the discussion in the comments or on their blogs. That's exactly what I said I wanted in my post from last month and get the feeling it's the kind of thing Stuart would welcome to.

What I think we both dislike is the cowardly critic, the one who focuses on the details and refuses to engage with the big picture ideas of the game. That can lead this kind of idiotic statement from IGN's review of the game, which Stuart highlighted:

The ideas are there for a very cool experience, and I truly hope that a sequel is spawned, but this first attempt falls just a bit short.

On the one hand, it's kind of a dismal acceptance of reality -- we all know there probably will be a sequel and EA/Dice probably will address specific issues. But that's hardly the most interesting thing about "Mirror's Edge," love it or hate it. This game made some very high level choices and those are what reviewers should be engaging.

Contrary to some of the hostile e-mails I got about my review of "LittleBigPlanet" (jeez, imagine if I had given that game an actually bad review), I think disagreement about innovative games is an awesome thing. I can't really recommend that people buy "Mirror's Edge," but based on the fact that some very smart people disagree with me about it, I'd definitely recommend reading more and thinking about it. And if you've played it and have an opinion, joining the discussion. There's probably a lot more to say about it than, ohhh, "Call of Duty: World at War" or "Rock Band 2."

Side note: Leigh also has an awesome piece on Kotaku today about the vast middle ground of people who play games, but dont engage with videogame "culture," such as it is. Perhaps they're Richard Nixon's "silent majority" in the videogame world. I don't actually have anything insightful to add to Leigh's comments (at least for now). I just advise that you read it.

We all know that PR people want to do everything within their power to secure good reviews for the games they represent. And we know that Metacritic scores have an unduly, almost ridiculously, important meaning for videogame publishers and developers. We also know that some fan pubications websites are, shall we say, easily influenced by videogame companies and their PR people who hold the keys to the screenshots, interviews, etc. they so desperately need.

Nonetheless, you can't blatantly admit what your goals are. That's rule no. 1 of PR flackery. Which is why it's amazing that someone at Eidos' British PR firm Barringon Harvey said the following to Videogaming247 after one journalist Twittered that they were being instructed not to post a review of "Tomb Raider: Underworld" with a score lower than 8 before Monday:

Just that we’re trying to get the Metacritic rating to be high, and the brand manager in the US that’s handling all of Tomb Raider has asked that we just manage the scores before the game is out, really, just to ensure that we don’t put people off buying the game, basically.

I've got to assume this "spokesperson" didn't realize they were speaking to a journalist on-the-record. But still, unless you're in some closed door meeting with marketing folks, this is the kind of thing you just don't want to discuss. Anyone who knows anything about the videogame press could have predicted what happened next: A Kotaku post with the somewhat inflammatory headline "Eidos trying to fix Tomb Raider: Underworld scores" and a sh*tstorm of comments all over the web. And there's a chance this could become the thing people remember about "Tomb Raider: Underworld," much like people still talk about the GameSpot debacle whenever the unfairly maligned "Kane and Lynch" comes up.

One of Barrington Harvey's director later issued a statement to VG247 stating that the embargo was Wednesday for everyone and they never would try to change a reviewer's score. But I suspect that's not going to be the headline people are finding in Google, or the topic thread for many message board conversations.

I previously thought that taking game journalists on a spy adventure (read the story here) was the most ridiculous stunt I've heard of in my time covering videogames.

But this postcard I just got int he mail could top it. It's for a game called "Ride to Hell" that, like you, most likely, I'd never heard of (According to ShackNews, it's an open world game about biker culture in the 60s):

Save the Date!

Ride to Hell on Dec. 3!

Grab your leather jackets, tire irons and flasks -- it's time for Ride to Hell! Deep Silver invites you to join them on an all-expenses-paid trip to Joshua Tree to immerse yourself in '60s biker culture and to get the first look at ride to Hell. You'll get the chance to shoot a handgun, ride a chopper or rock climb for the best views of the desert. The day's activities will be followed by the first look at Ride to Hell and one-on-one time with the developers and local bikers.

How other journalists do their job is ultimately their business, but I have to say that I would... question the merits of letting a game company pay for a trip to Joshua Tree to shoot guns, ride a chopper and rock climb. Surely there are slightly less bribe-ish (yes, I just made up that word) ways to give a first look at a new game. Though I would be curious to hear what the "local bikers" have to say to a bunch of geeky videogame writers.

It's gotta be some kind of milestone in running a videogame blog when one of your posts makes its way through the zeitgeist and turns into a Penny Arcade comic.

As noted below, Variety critic Leigh Alexander has an interesting post on her SexyVideogameLand blog that uses her uniquely positive review of "Silent Hill: Homecoming" as a jumping off point to rant (her word, not mine) about reviews in general. I wanted to comment on it, so first, here's the important part I'm responding to:

I feel that we -- both reviewers and audiences -- get so hung up on certain minor debates with important titles that we miss their accomplishments. Most of the discussion around Metal Gear Solid 4, for example, hinged on criticizing Hideo Kojima's aggrandizing, overburdened directorial style. And it's a fair criticism, but wouldn't it be also fair to note that the late-game "microwave hallway" scene and the visceral, psychological impact it evokes deserves to be one of the most memorable moments of the year, or that the all-female, emotionally traumatized Beauty & Beast unit is one of the most interesting slates of villains we've seen in the comparatively short history of our medium?

Stuff like that is all there in any game if you want to look -- and it saddens me when I see that what we most want to do is to nitpick, make self-referential comparisons, and grab quick and easy answers on whether something is "good" or "bad," or "better than" or "worse than" what we're used to. Especially when we were all too happy to criticize "what we're used to" in the days when it was still new.

Critics should be critical; I'm not suggesting people should stop raising complaints when something doesn't strike them right. But I definitely feel that we -- again, both reviewers and audiences -- have created a culture wherein we are deliberately searching for things to dislike, issues to take up arms over. And the discussion and debate that's taken place here at SVGL in the last week just about genre definitions and combat design mechanics demonstrates, I think, that there is not always a "right answer," there is not some universal standard-meter that starts at one hundred percent and just keeps dropping for every flaw we find.

Basically, I think Leigh is right. Game critics (broadly speaking) do attribute too much to minor details, especially ones that are already present in games they love, and fail to give credit to bigger picture advances in storytelling and gameplay.

On the other hand, this sentence strikes me as very wrong: "But I definitely feel that we -- again, both reviewers and audiences -- have created a culture wherein we are deliberately searching for things to dislike, issues to take up arms over." If this were true, one would expect videogame reviews to be consistently negative. And that's obviously not the case, right? On the contrary, I would argue that videogame reviews are by and large too positive. I didn't see many critics deliberately searching for things to dislike in "Grand Theft Auto IV" or "Halo 3" or "Mass Effect" or "Super Mario Galaxy" or "Super Smash Bros. Brawl." On the contrary, these AAA, heavily marketed franchises (mostly sequels) with gameplay very similar to what the hardcore audience has seen and loved before got overwhelmingly positive reviews. Sure, many admitted, the story in "Halo 3" was inpenetrable and the the combat in "Mass Effect" was wonky and "Brawl" is barely an advance over the last installment and has major problems with online play, but those were largely brushed aside as minor considerations.

What I think (and this is of course my interpretation; I'm not trying to put words in Leigh's mouth) is that in the case of games that are different in some way (like a new IP, or a sequel from a new developer as in the case of "Silent Hill: Homecoming"), a lot of videogame critics obsess about the small stuff because they don't like the big picture. Here's my best example: "The Simpsons Game." Yes, it had some camera problems and yes the gameplay wasn't too fresh. But it was a parody of videogame and gamer culture and it was (at least as far as most videogames go) flat out hilarious. The gameplay wasn't supposed to original since it was, of course, a satire. People were meant to buy that game to laugh, not to enjoy the innovative controls. And what happened? By and large, critics faulted the game heavily for its camera problems and unoriginal gameplay and didn't give much credit to the humor, the rare attempt to use a videogame to satirize other videogames, or the even rarer successful infusion of the spirit of a popular Hollywood property into its videogame adaptation.

Another example: "Grand Theft Auto IV." Don't get me wrong, I liked this game. And unlike "The Simpsons Game," my positive review was largely in line with most other critics' assessments. But consider what some people said about it. IGN called it an "Oscar-caliber drama." Game Informer wrote, "Grand Theft Auto IV doesn’t just raise the bar for the storied franchise; it completely changes the landscape of gaming. Once you play it, you won’t look at video games the same way again." I'm not saying these guys are wrong. But "GTA IV" had faults, many people now agree. The story gets more ridiculous as it goes on. There's a huge disconnect between the things you can make Nico do and the way he acts and is perceived in the story. If a new game, or a sequel to a less respected franchise, had the same faults and qualities as "GTA IV," do you think most critics would have gone as craz for it? I don't.

We rave about "Gears of War" (great game; love it; play it online all the time) even though it has major wall-sticking issues and come down hard on "Kane and Lynch," which has the same problem. Sure, "Gears" does many things better, but the latter pushes videogame into a darker world of moral consequences than anything else I've seen recently, particularly in its finale. Where's the credit for that?

Basically, I think another way of saying what Leigh's getting at is that many game critics, particularly those who write for avid fans, can obsess over controls or menu design problems in titles that are doing something innovative in tone or theme, but downplay the same types of faults in games that are essentially improvements on the ones they already love.

The result is that we don't value innovation or attempts to do something big and new, like make a funny game that's thematically consistent with an all-time great TV show or create psychological impact through artful storytelling integrated with gameplay, because we obsess on the mechanical problems or the length of the cutscenes. Not that those things don't matter. But they don't matter that much, especially for an artistically immature medium in desperate need of innovation and freshness.

If we re-arranged our priorities, I think we'd have more critics "championing" certain games or developers. In the end, that's what I'm calling for and I think that's what Leigh's implying. In the film world, there were critics who championed the then-radical filmmakers of the '70s who transformed the world of cinema. Wouldn't it be great if there were more videogame critics who championed certain titles or artists, while acknowledging their imperfections, the way Leigh does "Silent Hill: Homecoming" and Hideo Kojima?

Sure it happens, like with "Braid" or the original "Guitar Hero," but even then it's a bizarrely universal championing. Where are the wildly divergent opinons? The champions and haters hashing it out over a controversial developer's new work? The innovative games that get a bunch of 20's and a bunch of 90's on Metacritic?

Of course there will always be those who just want a rundown of gameplay elements and analyses of how good they are compared to what's come before. But it's also wonderful to see critics with completely different orientations as to what matters and what doesn't when reviewing a game. If in the process they pick some fights, get a lot of hate mail, or are even (gasp!) way off of the average Metacritic score, all the better, I say. The videogame audience is maturing, and the result is that there are gamers who want to be challenged by critics to think about what they're playing, or should be playing, in a new way. The more critics who are championing what's new, challenging what we think is good, and engaging with each other and the audiences, the better off the art form of videogames will be.

(PS I very much welcome discussion of this in the comments. But if you end up ranting about how much "Kane and Lynch" sucked or why "Super Smash Bros. Brawl" is pure perfection, you have missed the point and should read the post again instead of commenting.)

Outside of maybe Gabe and Tycho and a few of the top designers like Ken Levine, the person I saw getting the most attention on the show floor at PAX was actually a journalist. Talking to Brian Crecente for more than a minute was almost an impossible task because this kept happening:

Crecente (on the right) is of course very recognizable with his flowing locks. But still, it's pretty rare to see a journalist unable to go more than two minutes in a crowd without somebody asking for a photo, telling them how much they love his publication, etc. Goes to show you just how huge a cultural entity Kotaku has become.

Flying back home yesterday, I decided I might want some light reading and so I bought the latest issue of GamePro, the one game magazine that I don't receive in the mail. It's the "Fall Preview" issue and I figured it might be worth it to make sure I'm on top of every game coming out this fall. Not to mention I was a little surprised to see the cover boast that inside were "The 107 best games of 2008." I found it hard to believe there were 107 games of any significance left to come out in 2008, not to mention enough to cull out the best.

Then I read the issue and figured out how they did it: 47 of the "best games of 2008" are coming out in 2009 (or later). I don't want to be a stickler for detail, but isn't it a tad bit dishonest to print a cover boasting that the issue previews the "107 best games of 2008" and a feature with the words "fall preview: 2008" on every other page and then fill it with games that don't come out in 2008?

Now let's be fair. Some of those 47 were pushed back out of 2009 between June and this month. We can't really blame the GamePro editors for including "Wheelman," "Ghostbusters," or "Project Origin." That's just a very unfortunate but inevitable occurrence for long lead journalism. I count 11 games that were delayed since June, so we can put those aside.

However, that leaves 36 games. How to explain those? Well, three are mistakes by GamePro, as far as I can tell. "Borderlands" was delayed to 2009 all the way back in March. "Final Fantasy Vs. XIII" and the new "Twisted Metal" game for PS3 have never had a release date.

The other 33? Very simple. GamePro's "Fall Preview Guide: 2008" includes 28 games that are dated for 2009 and five with no release date. If you look carefully at the small print below the titles, you see that games like "Bayonetta," Bioshock 2," and "Guitar Hero: Metallica" are scheduled for 2009. How can that possibly be justified as anything other than flat out dishonest padding? Especially since in the case of some of those games, like "Bioshock 2" and Peter Jackson's "Halo" project (which should really be "TBA," not 2009, but whatever), we know virtually nothing about the game and the "preview" text is total guesswork accompanied by old art.

And what about the five games like "Duke Nukem Forever" and "Starcraft II" that don't have any release date? They might not even land in 2009. What the hell are they doing in a Fall 2008 preview issue?

We're all used to really fluffy features in video game magazines. And we're sadly used to videogame journalists trading editorial coverage to get exclusives. But lying on the cover is a new level of lame. Is it too much to ask that videogame magazines not try to sell issues with a dishonest premise?

Reading the latest issue of EGM, I had an extraordinary experience I don't think I've ever felt while reading a gamer magazine before: the experience of reading a real magazine.

Meaning no great insult, we all know that videogame mags consist primarily, if not exclusively, of previews fed by game publishers followed by reviews of games about to come out.

But the new EGM has something I don't remember ever seeing: a cover package that's not tied to an exclusive preview. The new issue's huge blowout with interviews and essays about the state of Japanese videogame development -- tied to the at least semi-controversial premise that the state is pretty goddamned mediocre -- is really interesting and doesn't feel at all like something pitched to the editors by a publicist. It's original reporting and original writing spurred by an editorial vision -- everything a magazine is supposed to be.

Sure, they put a scandily clad Seong Mi-na from "Soul Calibur IV" on the cover. And yes, there are pretty standard "first looks" at "Diablo III" and "Skate 2" that provide little real insight. But the interviews with the creators behind games like "Final Fantasy," "Ninja Gaiden," "Devily May Cry" and "D," the essay tracking the history of Japanese game development along with graphics of "landmarks" and "setbacks," and the roundtable with Western game developers about the state of Japanese gaming were all fascinating in a way PR-driven previews never are.

My basic point being, the September issue of EGM is proof that videogame publications can deliver real journalism. Now they've just go to realize that 1/3 page reviews, especially with three people sharing the space, are almost utterly pointless. It's time to shrink the screenshots or cut the number of games so there's more room to actually write something.

Continuing our series of excerpts from the interviews we conducted for Variety's videogame impact report, here's a big chunk of my conversation with "Penny Arcade" creators Mike "Tycho" Holkins and Jerry "Gabe" Krahulik. For those who don't know, Penny Arcade is the number one web comic about videogames and has also spawned a huge consumer videogame show, merchandise, and marketing materials. Basically, Holkins and Krahulik are the top commentators and satirists of the art form.

Previous videogames impact report interviews with "Metal Gear Solid" creator Hideo Kojima and Bungie Studios CEO Harold Ryan are already online. More will be coming soon.

[And for the record, this is the picture Mike and Jerry provided of themselves. I'm not sure if they're f*cking around and seeing if a mainstream media outlet will run a picture of Jerry holding an Xbox 360 controller upside down and Mike using a PSP as if it's a console controller without noticing, or if it's just a joke for our readers. Either way, I'm amused.]

For those of our readers who aren’t intimately familiar, can you tell me about how Penny Arcade got started?

Mike: We started the comic [in 1998] because of a contest in a Next-Gen magazine. They were searching for a cartoon to run. Jerry and I were roommates working on a bunch of different comic projects, superhero-type stuff. I made a couple of these videogame comics just for fun and entered and he saw them and wrote a few more and we ended up submitting five or so.

We did not win the contest. But we had fun making them and we thought they were good so we thought people should see them. So shopped we shopped them to all the big gaming sites at the time

Jerry: Of course our idea back then of what was a big gaming site was pretty different. There was nothing like IGN.

We had about given up until Loonygames decided to run it. After that run, we did one every Monday. The next Monday would come and they just asked for another one. We had no intention of making more. It’s just that people wanted to see them and out of politeness, we kept doing it. Eventually we bumped up from one to two to three and then we moved to our own site.

Was there a point along the way where you could feel this turning from a side hobby into a full-time business?

Mike: The lines between those two things are a blur to us. What we have is something that’s both hobby and job. I didn’t detect a firm delineation where I said, “We crossed the threshold now we’re entrepreneurs.” What happened is we got approached by one of the big content aggregators to sell advertising on our site. They said, “We can pay you for your website.” That’s when we realized it could be a job. Of course, that went south extremely fast when the dot-bomb happened months later.

We had quit our jobs in the interim period, which was really smart. Now we had no checks coming in and no jobs, so we decided to switch the comic to be donation-supported.

That was antithetical to the spirit of the ‘Net at that time. Nowadays, donation drives are not strange for small press. At the time, though, this was Satanic.

But it worked?

Mike: It did. It kept us going for a long time until we chose to switch to a mild advertising model where we would only accept two advertisers for the entire month total. We would negotiate with those people ourselves and try to find a happy medium of products we thought were good.

What made you switch to that business model?

Jerry: What happened was we met Robert [Khoo, president of operations and business development]. He came to us shortly after we decided to stop doing donations. He was working as a consultant for a game company. His idea was have them advertise on Penny Arcade. He was a fan and knew what Penny Arcade could be. He offered us a free lunch.

After talking for about an hour, he realized we were idiots with no idea what we had business-wise. He said, “I’m going to quit my job and work for you guys for free for three months. If I don’t make myself a salary and make you guys more money, I will leave. It’s been years now.

Now you have other revenue streams like merchandise and the Penny Arcade Expo show. How do you manage that little multi-media empire? Where do you put most of your attention?

Jerry: In our opinion, none of the other stuff matters if the comic isn’t good. The only reason our merchandise sells is people like the comic. The only reason people came to PAX the first couple of years is that they liked the comic. Everything we do still really hinges on the comic. Anybody we hire or bring into the company, their job is to focus on other things so that we don’t have to worry about them.

What about the new game [“Penny Arcade Adventures: On the Rain-Slick Precipice of Darkness”]? That must have taken your attention away from the comic?

Jerry: The game was definitely a big time sink. Most of the time, our other projects have tended to be comic books we make for game companies as advertising. Those take a few weeks, but really Penny Arcade was still the main focus. When the game happened, that really took priority and took up a huge chunk of both our time quite a while.

Mike: The comic is the most stable part of our jobs. It’s the kind of thing where everything else revolves around it. It has very specific times when it needs to be written and drawn. We complete other projects as we get to them, by and large.

Beyond the comics, your site also features you guys blogging about videogame issues a lot. Do you consider that a side project as well? Or is it integral to what Penny Arcade is?

Jerry: When we started, it seemed expedient to have our own archive of the strip. Eventually, we bought the domain ourselves, which was very exciting at the time. We set up a site, but our HTML knowledge was such that we could make tables, but didn’t understand how to balance them. We had these menu items on the right, but the header and footer we liked made this space on the left side of the page that looked weird with nothing in it. So I started to write posts, sometimes about videogame news, sometimes about the comic, sometimes just about weird stuff

Another reason is that gaming culture is pretty immediate. It moves quickly from day to day. It moves quicker than we can catalog it with three strips a week.

Given that you can’t be as immediate in your comics as most blogs are, how do you decide what topics to address and what to say? What role does Penny Arcade serve in the world of videogame blogs that didn’t exist when you started?

Jerry: We always try to make our position either unique or at least funny. A lot of times it feels to me like we are on the opposite side of the mass gamer community talking on the forums. But something that PAX taught me is there is this massive majority that just isn't vocal. It’s the vocal minority that posts on those threads.

Now that Penny Arcade is so popular, do videogame companies try to curry good favor? Do you get sent every new game and system for free?

Mike: I think people know better than to try to manipulate us. If we even think a person is trying to manipulate us, they know the penalties are grave. They can end up in the comic.

[Notes that they don’t get sent much stuff for free.] I do think paying for your game helps what we do. Getting it for free has got to color your impressions. I think it’s OK that we’re not on every mailing list and we don’t get every game.

It’s been a big thing recently about how some game reviewers wanted to mimic the experience of the average player. They had everything under the sun to do that except buying their own game

Getting back to the “Penny Arcade” game, how did that come about?

Jerry: We had met a few of these guys before they became [developer] Hothead. We had gotten to know them personally and when they ended up breaking away and forming an independent studio, they approached us even before they announced company. They had worked with IP before and were able to make interesting games out of other people’s products.

We weren’t entirely sure we wanted to do it at first. We said we would do it only if we had tremendous control. I wouldn’t have signed for something that looked like Penny Arcade but was motocross. It had to be something we could all agree on.

Mike: [Jerry] said would have been fine with an eight-bit looking RPG with a great story that was basically just text. I would have been happy with 3d brawler.

So you had to compromise on something that’s not what either of you wanted?

Jerry: The story of Penny Arcade is the meeting of our two minds. Both of us giving in just enough to make the other person willing to stay and work with them.

And are you happy with how the game came out?

Jerry: We don’t look at anything we have done and say “fuck yea.” We’re artists and nerds. It’s not a part of our makeup. I never sit back from computer and say, “How do I top that shit?”

That said, the game is fucking awesome.

And it’s an episodic game, so you’re doing more, right?

Mike: We’re obligated to make three more. To be honest, it ‘s been way harder than either of us had anticipated.

But I’m glad we did it and excited to make the next one better and then the one after that. I don’t know if I knew what I know now if I would have agreed to it. It’s so hard. I cant believe people do that regularly.

So does it give you more appreciation for the videogame developers you write about and sometimes make fun of on Penny Arcade?

Mike: Oh yeah. No question.

Penny Arcade Expo is coming up and from what I hear it’s going to be much bigger than before. Do you play a big role in planning it?

Jerry: Our role is to be cultural ambassadors for PAX. Most of our PAX work is super high concept. But the show itself is pretty much us acting as that connection between the show and attendees.

Mike: As an example, a few months ago one of our ad guys came and said that a few of the companies wanted two story booths. We decided that just wasn’t right. We want to keep that sort of thing out of the exhibition hall.

Can any company exhibit? Or do you decide who can come and who doesn’t, just like with advertisements on the site?

Jerry: We turn down lots of exhibitors. Our standards are slightly looser than for advertisers on the site. But not by much.

[Unlike E3 and GDC], PAX is not for the industry. That’s the difference between ourselves and them. We’re not delivering them a “captive audience.”

It's kinda fun for gamers to see our industry gossip rise to the level of New York Post gossip, which on Monday ran a story about Ken Levine's re-negotiation with Take-Two.

The actual reporting in the Post story is virtually the same as in my post about "Bioshock" creative director Levine's re-negotiation from over three weeks ago: He's close to finishing a delicate re-negotiation between his reps at CAA and Take-Two that would give him greater creative freedom and more compensation for his work.

The Post is a little more specific in saying he would earn points (or royalties) not only on games he develops, but also on "Bioshock" sequels.

The article states that "The video game industry has been moving toward a points-based compensation structure for developers of about 1 percent to 3 percent of a game's total sales." That seems a little weird to me, since of course development studios have been earning royalties on game sales for eons. Though such contracts with individuals are, of course, rare -- at least directly with the publisher. Sometimes a top creative person may have some kind of incentive plan like that with the studio where they work.

The fact that Levine himself may earn royalties on "Bioshock" sequels, even if he doesn't work on them very directly, is interesting. Given how rare it is for videogame talent to get money for games they don't work on too directly (outside of someone like Will Wright or Sid Meier, perhaps), that would be a pretty big deal and is, I suspect, one of the main issues in the re-negotiation.

Also of note: Infinity Ward last week revealed that it has re-upped its deal with Activision. Which I don't fully understand since Activision acquired 100% of Infinity Ward back in 2003. But just as Bungie had the leverage to leave Microsoft last year, Infinity Ward was surely in a very strong position to get the kind of financial deal and creative freedom it wanted from Activision after "Call of Duty 4" sold 10 million-plus units. Depending on the status of various folks' employment contracts, they could have simply left. Or they could have just made life difficult for Bobby Kotick, which he can't afford.

So Infinity Ward now has a "renegotiated deal" that lets it work on its "future project" (which we can assume is next year's "Call of Duty") as well as "the possibility of a unique new IP that [Infinity Ward will] have complete control over."

That last phrase, "complete control," is especially interesting. That seems to mean Activision wouldn't have the option to, say, assign a sequel to another developer (nothing personal, Treyarch). And probably a much bigger financial success in the property.

MTV's Stephen Totilo posted a very interesting "Game Reviewer's Bill of Rights" on the MultiPlayer blog last week, based in part on feedback from other reviewers (all from the enthusiast press, it's worth noting), and prompted a healthy discussion in the comments.

I spent a little while thinking about what I might want to add to the bill of rights and then realized (just as I was writing this) that I have nothing to add. My main thought is that a "bill of rights" is the exact wrong approach.

The problem is that a "bill of rights," as exemplified by the one in our Constitution, is a list of rights that the governed declare are inherent to their existence and that the government, which rules with the people's consent, must protect as a condition of having its power. But the comparison doesn't hold in the videogame world. It implies that publishers are the government and reviewers are the governed and they owe us something for the privilege of "ruling" us by, I suppose, providing the content we write about.

But here's the thing: Publishers don't owe game reviewers jack sh*t. They can and should give us material as they see fit. It's not Rockstar or EA or Activision's job to make the lives of game reviewers easy or make sure we do our work with integrity. It's their job to sell videogames. Period.

Sure, reviewers have some leverage over publishers because our readers are the publisher's buyers. So it's often in their interest to treat us well. But it's not their responsibility.

The only people who have "rights," to my mind, are the readers/buyers. They pay for our publications or consent to look at the advertisements and in return we owe them honest, high quality content. (Of course, we don't have to provide it, since readers can always go elsewhere, but we really should if we want to be taken seriously.)

So what I would propose is not a game reviewers' bill of rights, but a game reviewers' bill of responsibilities. These are responsibilities that we promise to fulfill because we owe it to our readers. And by the way, the more reviewers who commit to these responsibilities, the more leverage we'll all have over the publishers to help us to fulfill them, rather than make it difficult, because the publishers will have no other way to reach our audiences except to cooperate on our standards.

These are the six responsibilities that occur to me. Obviously I would welcome feedback from anybody and everybody out there, be they readers, reviewers, or industry folks.

1. Reviewers shall not have any financial dealings with the publishers/developers they write about. This means not being involved in selling ads in any way. And it means not accepting gifts of any significant value beyond the game or other items necessary to play it. (And giving away any schwag of high value that reviewers receive without asking for it). It also means if the reviewer had to accept some kind of travel paid for by the publisher/developer to do the review, at a minimum it should be disclosed (and it really shouldn't be accepted at all, IMO)

2. Reviewers shall neither seek nor accept deals for "exclusive" reviews that forbid other publications from running a review at the same time. For a detailed explanation of this one, read my post prompted by IGN's "exclusive" review of "Grand Theft Auto IV." Note that obviously reviewers can't be held responsible if a publisher gives them a review copy but doesn't give it to somebody else. But they shouldn't be involved in any shady deal to shut out the competition, thus tainting the integrity of their review.

3.  Reviewers shall not trade other other editorial coverage in order to obtain review code. Also inspired by IGN, which admitted they did this on "GTA IV." Just as with item 2, there shouldn't be any kind of shady business dealings going on that make a review possible.

4. Reviewers shall make every reasonable effort to finish the games they review. If it's not possible, or if there is no definition of "finished" (like in an MMO), reviewers should be clear about what they played and what they didn't. This was inspired by Totilo's discussion on Multi-Player a few weeks ago about whether reviewers have to finish a game. I told him that I hadn't finished the campaign mode of "GTA IV" and while I'm not convinced reviewers always have to finish a game, I think they should be as straightforward as possible about what they played and what they didn't. Which is what I attempted to do with the blog post connected to my "Lego Indiana Jones" review, for instance. It's something I'm going to keep doing going forward.

5. Vidoegame reviews shall be based on the same (or virtually the same) code that gamers will be playing. Reviews based on early code that's significantly different from what ships are not cool. Obviously if review code is tweaked a tiny bit before it ships, that's probably fine. But that should be the limit. If reviewers for a long lead publication need to use early code, they should at least disclose it.

6. If the game is not played at the reviewer's home or office, s/he will disclose where they played the game and under what conditions. Reviewing a game in a hotel paid for the publisher or at a developer's office is generally not cool, but sometimes necessary so long as the reviewer feels there isn't any interference going on. But if that is the situation, the reviewers should definitely disclose the situation and how it was different from the way most gamers will be playing.
  

There's been a lot of interesting stuff written about game reviews in the past week and I figured it was worth weighing in.

First was British journalist Simon Parkin's column on GamaSutra about the practices of game publishers that give reviewers only a few days, sometimes in the publisher's offices or a hotel suite, to review a game. Parkin makes an interesting, debatable point:

By withholding code until a late stage then (be it through design or ineptitude), a PR can force a journalist to rely on marketing hype and information to fill the gaps in their knowledge of the game when writing copy. In this way, control of the critical reaction is shifted back to the PR in a subtle and (arguably) legitimate way.

It's something I think about alot and in fact I'm dealing with it right now as I am trying to find out whether Variety will be able to get review copies of two major releases coming next week before they go on sale (which seems like the minimum any legit reviewer should be able to ask for). If we can't, of course we'll just buy a copy at the first moment and get the review done as soon as we reasonably can. (Only one of those games, by the way, is a licensed kids game -- the genre that I have previously noted is least available to reviewers ahead of time.)

But does writing a review under tight deadlines lead to the writer relying on "marketing hype and information to fill the gaps in their knowledge?" I'm not sure I agree. I'd like to think most game reviewers are competent enough to focus their brains on what they see while they're playing. I'm also not clear that a few more days would erase the influence of marketing hype much. Of course everything we've read and heard will color the way we interpret anything we play (whether you're a reviewer or average gamer). This would be true regardless of how much time you have.

However, it is true that playing a game over a more spread out period of time, and/or getting to play more of its content (particularly for games that have more to do than just the primary story), can change your opinion. Parkin 'fesses that he initially "referred to Grand Theft Auto IV’s depiction of immigrants as being more nuanced and sympathetic than that demonstrated by the exquisite Baltimore-set television drama, 'The Wire,'" but says he now thinks "it was an idiotic comparison considering the heavyweight dramatic nature of the television series and the shits-and-giggles, tongue-in-cheek parody of the video game."

He then notes that his overall opinion of the game's narrative has in fact changed since he wrote that initial statement and he has played more:

While I adore the slow pacing of the first few hours, the way Nico starts off on the straight and narrow and is dragged into the shadows of the American Dream by forces of poverty and necessity, the game soon enough swings into full adolescent-posing-as-adult narrative fizz.

I can relate. No, there's nothing in my review that in hindsight I think was fundamentally wrong-headed. But the more I have played "GTA IV," the more things I have noticed that I would have emphasized differently in my review. And it's not just from playing through more content I hadn't seen before. It's also a matter of sheer repetition. For instance, at this point Niko (under my control) has killed a lot of cops. And I mean a LOT.  It's a bit mind-numbing and it also makes him a much less sympathetic character for me. How can I possibly care about a guy who kills hundreds of cops just because some guy(s) he sort of knows asked him to do something for money. At first, it doesn't seem like such a big deal since Niko spends alot of his time doing other things. But the body count is really piling up.

This is even true in multi-player, I've realized. Even though I don't technically control Niko, I spent so much time with him in single player that when I went through a co-op mission the other night and was plugging away at dozens of cops, it still influenced the way I thought about the single player game, its characters and story. Just as I wrote that the open world elements of "GTA IV" really contradict the narrative -- something that has bothered me increasingly the more I play -- I'm finding the same is true for multi-player. The online modes in "GTA IV" just don't fit as smoothly with its single player the same way that it does in "Gears of War" or "Call of Duty 4."

(My friend Justin marks has a proposed solution to this problem which he'll be explaining in a guest post on the Cut Scene later today.)

Also interesting this week has been Stephen Totilo's excellent series about videogame reviews on MTV's Multi-Player blog. Most disturbing, if sadly not too shocking, was the revelation from former GameSpot writer Alex Navarro, who said he got the following e-mail from a publicist about a Wii launch game:

If the review is 9.0 or higher you can post immediately. Lower than 9.0, could you please hold until launch day, November 19th? Thanks.

Navarro's reaction was to go out and buy the game so he could review it the way he wanted, when he wanted. Which is fair. Mine would have been to post the review immediately and tell the publicist to go f*ck him or herself. As I wrote concerning IGN's exclusive review of "GTA IV," my opinion is that there's only one embargo for a review and once one outlet is free to publish, we all are.

I'm also very interested Totilo's proposed "Game Reviewers' Bill of Rights," but the more I think about it, the more I realize I have more than just a suggestion or two to add on that. I actually think he's taking the exact wrong approach. So I'll save my thoughts for a separate blog post I will put up very soon.

In the category of things I meant to write about long ago but am finally getting around to now is N'gai Croal's essay from two weeks ago titled "What's Missing From Mainstream Reviews of Videogames? Oh, That's Right--Gameplay."

In part, it took me a while to think of exactly what I wanted to say, since this is a very interesting issue, and in part I just got busy and forgot for a little while. But I've finally got a free moment and I really do want to respond, especially since N'Gai called me out by name (or the name of my publication, anyway).

In it, Newsweek's Croal includes my review of "Grand Theft Auto IV" in a list that, starting with the New York Times, he says uses pop culture references that are "designed to stamp 'GTA IV' with the imprimatur of older, better-known artists and hustlers of culture; points of reference that lull the reader into believing that This Medium Is Like Other Media You Are More Familiar With. We searched in vain for a chunk of the review that would approximate the experience we had while playing the game, and found none." He then says that my review, along with a few others in the mainstream press, are "variants of the same thing."

I feel like I must say, in my own defense, that my review didn't contain a single pop culture reference (go ahead, read it for yourself). So that seems a little unfair. But is it fair to say that I (and others) don't manage to "approximate the experience we had while playing the game?" Perhaps. But it depends on what you think the "experience" of playing the game is. To the extent that the answer relies on finding a place on the admittedly crude spectrum of critiquing narrative vs. interactivity, I think N'Gai falls to far on the "interactive" side of the spectrum, while perhaps I'm too far on the "narrative" side.

To wit: In a Newsweek piece he links to, N'Gai writes "[O]n ['The Sopranos'], you only watch Tony and his minions kill their enemies.In Grand Theft Auto IV, you also direct and star in a story that unfolds over as many as 100 hours, depending on your skill as a gamer." (Yes, he admits the hypocrisy of his pop culture reference). He also praises a piece (one I must say I like) in Slate by Chris Baker that goes into the issue of boundary pushing and choices. It particularly focuses on a moment in the game where you have to decide which of two unappealing people to kill. Clearly, he thinks a good reviewer should be focusing on these kind of choices.

I think this is fundamentally wrong. Playing "GTA IV" is very much not like directing and starring in a story. It's a very specifically written story that gives you a few key choices along the way (mainly about whether to kill someone or who to kill), allows you to choose the order of missions to a small extent, and also lets you do a limited number of amusing but silly things at your leisure, like shoot people, get in crazy car races, play pool with a friend, get a lap dance, etc. (Holding aside the multi-player, of course).

Sure, I have spent lots of time exploring the city and testing what I can and can't do in it, but when I do that, I'm struck by how the details I notice -- how traffic changes from day to night; where the hookers hang out; what people are talking about -- than what I can make happen It's about the experience Rockstar created, not what I can choose to do.

Fundamentally, there's too much writing to allow a lot of choice, especially in the main story missions. Don't like killing hundreds of cops? You're not going to get very far. Want to stop doing favors for your idiot cousin? Not an option. Not interested in the theme of people fighting for their scrap of the American dream? You're playing the wrong game. This isn't "The Sims." Far from it.

In fact, as I wrote in my review and expanded upon in this blog post, to the extent that the game allows free roaming craziness, it contradicts itself. The fact that you can kill a few people and get in a dozen car accidents while on a date is quite simply asinine.

My overall  point here is that "GTA IV" is a game with sharply drawn characters, a deep plot and setting, and important themes. In my opinion, any review that doesn't delve into what "GTA IV" is about is really missing the point. Baker does this to a limited extent and Croal not much at all. It's something I'd like to think I did pretty well.

Did my review explain what it's like to play the game? Possibly not as well as I should. One thing I really liked in N'Gai's piece, for instance, was his description of how "GTA IV's" world starts in a small neighborhood in Brooklyn and grows physically through relationships that manifest themselves on your phone. That's something I wish I had described better in my review, because it's an important part of the experience and it's very videogame-specific.

The other important thing to remember is that different games have to be reviewed in different ways. If I had spent much of the time in my review of "Boom Blox" focusing on the game's minimal story, for instance, that would have really missed the point. It's about the experience of interacting with those puzzles, as well as building your own. On the other hand, I focused primarily on the humor in "The Simpsons Game," because to me, that was the point of the game and the primary way in which I experienced it (others disagreed and focused on the merely adequate gameplay, which is why I gave it a better review than virtually anyone else). Different games fall at different places on that narrative/interactive spectrum and reviews should adjust accordingly.

Finally, we can't forget a simple point that N'Gai makes: "Mainstream critics must sum up an experience that's anywhere from six to 100 hours long-one that's fundamentally non-narrative, as we keep insisting--in the same amount of space or less that's devoted to 90-120-minute movie. The end result is a review where so much effort has been spent distilling the game into something that's understandable to non-gamers that no-one ever asks how truthful the distillation is."

That's true. And it makes writing videogame reviews hard. Particularly, I would add, because there are certain conventions in a review. An extended first person description like the one Baker gives just wouldn't be appropriate in a newspaper like Variety. It's not what a "review" is, for better or worse.

So yes, as critics we do need to find better ways to describe the interactive experience of playing a game. But it's not entirely correct to say, as N'Gai does, that "games are not a fundamentally narrative medium; we all 'see' games with our hands; we videogame journalists need to develop a critical vocabulary that will enable us to better explain the unique qualities of this art form."

"GTA IV" is, to a large extent, a narrative piece of art. Not in the exact same way as a movie or book, of course, but it's definitely not the opposite -- it's not all about what I do. When I play "GTA IV," I'm keenly aware that I'm playing through a story written by somebody else using characters created by somebody else in a world designed by somebody else. That plot, those characters, and that world mean something and inform my playing experience  at least as much, if not more, then the choices I make. To me, any review that misses that fails to give me "a feel for what it's actually like to play the game."

Sorry for the relative quiet, but I'm working on a really big story that will be going online. Trust me, this is the kind of thing Variety does best. You guys will be grateful I put the time into it. Plus there will be a related interview with one of the big names involved available exclusively here on The Cut Scene.

Meanwhile, here are some things to enjoy...

-Brian Crecente review Warner Bros.' "Speed Racer" videogame for Variety. He says it's a viscerally fun racing title for the Wii, but doesn't have much of the movie/TV show's personality.

-Tom Chick reviews "Echochrome" for Variety. He loves how the game flips the perspective that players are used to, but finds that playing it for too long is frustrating and, quite literally, headache inducing.

-On MTV's Multilayer blog, Stephen Totilo asks whether critics have to "finish" a game in order to write a fair review and includes some questions about me and my "GTA IV" review.

I was on G4's X-Play yesterday discussing the "exclusive reviews" issue that has become such a hot topic since I criticized IGN recently. The other interviewee was GamePro's Chris Morell, who's obviously not there to defend IGN, but provides some enthusiast press perspective, plus a really smoking '80s style collar flipped up look. (Whereas I, like always, look like a major dork)

IGN just provided a statement to defend their reviews policy:

Just because a publisher issues a press release doesn't mean we have to print it as news.

Case in point: THQ brags in a press release headline that "THQ's Nickelodeon Portfolio Surpasses Billion Dollar Mark as Company Announces Extensive New Lineup for 2008." The same day, numerous game websites run stories with a headline focused on that $1 billion number. They include Kotaku, Joystiq, 1up, IGN, GameDaily, the Escapist, GameIndustry.biz, and probably plenty of others. (Note: I'm not including sites that just reprint press releases, clearly labeled as such, with no introduction or comment.)

For the record, that's old news. THQ announced that in February as part of its last earnings report, when it stated, "During the quarter, total lifetime Nickelodeon franchise net sales surpassed $1 billion..."

I understand why THQ wants to re-emphasize that fact as it unveils its new slate of Nick games, but I don't think journalists should be re-printing it as exciting news.

Just as importantly, nobody should be taking it as evidence that THQ's Nick games are doing great (as several of the sites linked above did). Along with that February earnings report, THQ CEO Brian Farrell said on a conference call with analysts that "In a very competitive year for kids titles, ‘Ratatouille’ and our Nickelodeon titles did not perform to forecast." (As I wrote on this blog at the time.)

So, THQ revealed the details on its upcoming NIckelodeon-based games. There's the actual news.

I'm really not the type to get into feuds, but I'm also not the type to abandon my positions or to let a public insult go unanswered.

Which is why, of course, I have to address IGN's response in GameDaily to my post about the ethical problems with "exclusive reviews." Particularly since their response was simultaneously so paltry and also so revealing about exactly why this practice is really troubling.

It also ties in nicely to some reporting I've been doing on this subject, which I'll be including in this post, along with responses to some other questions I've been getting.

But first, what IGN told GameDaily:

[VP of games content Tal] Blevins made sure to point out the benefits of such premiers to IGN's readers. "We really want to try to get our reviews up the day of release or preferably a couple of days before so people can read our reviews before hand and use that information to make a purchase decision."

This has nothing to do with exclusivity. IGN could get its review up on release day or a few days before without negotiating a deal to do so exclusively. How would its readers be hurt if other websites also put up their review at the same time? The only people benefiting from IGN doing so exclusively are IGN and its advertisers.

The following comments taken from GameDaily are by Hilary Goldstein, who's editor-in-chief of IGN's Xbox channel and wrote the "GTA IV" review in question:

My position as editor-in-chief in the Xbox channel is to actually try to get [exclusive reviews]. It's not like somebody kinda calls you up and says, "Hey, we have the exclusive on this." It's my job to actually secure that. And that's just constantly being in contact with PR...

If you looked at our site, that entire week was all GTA tops on IGN.com, which was something we'd never done before. So it was an entire week leading to the review. That's how we get exclusives of any kind. We have real estate which is the placement of a story and that's what we negotiate with. Whether it's news or features or reviews, our bargaining chip is to basically say, "I will put it here if you let me have this." So we basically gave them top on IGN.com for five days, which is a huge deal, and that, to my understanding, is what sold it...

For us on the 360 side we have more than twenty stories that go up every day and we only have ten spots that editorial can place them in each day. That's, basically, our bargaining chip. If you want something to be seen and the higher you want it to be seen, we want the exclusive out of it. That's pretty much how we got the review. It's not that the review wouldn't have been topped if we put it up on Sunday with everybody else, but it was more that we were going to give them a lot of exposure leading into the review.

OK, so Goldstein has just admitted two things. 1) Before writing the review, he spent six months negotiating with the company whose product he was reviewing to get an exclusive on it. Which makes the whole thing even more troubling. Even though he didn't promise a good review, he was the person most involved in horse trading with Rockstar in order to get the benefit they granted him of an early embargo on his review. So it's not just IGN overall in an ethically troubling position of negotiating for favors before a review, it's the actual person who reviewed the game.

2) IGN trades editorial placement in order to get exclusive reviews. Goldstein admitted it with, apparently, no shame. So when you go to IGN.com and you see content at the top of the page, don't be under the mistaken impression that it's necessarily what the editors think is most newsworthy or interesting. It could just be something they gave away so that they could get an early embargo and a traffic boost over the competition on something else down the pike.

To address an obvious criticism somebody will probably bring up: Yes, of course, all publications including Variety tend to give better placement to exclusive news stories. And we all as reporters endeavor to keep our scoops exclusive. A reporter has some interest in keeping a story exclusive as a reward for his or her hard work in finding out the news. But no legitimate publication or professional journalist I know of ever guarantees placement. Even in the occasional situation when I get "offered" an exclusive by a source, if I choose to take them up on it, the story ends up where the editors choose to put it.

Back to Goldstein:

To me, my problem with online journalism in general is that nobody does their due diligence. Nobody from Variety called us and said, "Hey, would you like to comment about this?"

Because it was an opinion piece. Not a reported piece. I knew all the relevant information and was offering my perspective. As is evidenced in this interview, there is nothing IGN could have told me that I didn't already know.

So if Variety didn't get the game early then you're looking at somebody, I don't know, who had a grudge on his shoulder because he didn't even have the game yet and we'd already put out the review. He says in blog post, "If I had the game right now I would have broken the embargo." To me that goes against your ethics.

Surely this is a joke. But for the record: As a mature adult, I am capable of making arguments that are not driven by personal grudges. It would be nice if those responding to me were mature enough to address my actual point without making a personal accusation.

And my ethic, by the way, is that I only agree to an embargo if it's the same embargo that every other publication is adhering to. Once somebody else goes, I go. It's that simple. I don't know any other professional journalists who disagree. You may piss off a source for a little while, but you get more respect from readers (which, incidentally) ultimately makes you a publication that sources are more interested in working with anyway).

Goldstein again:

And of course we gave it a 10. But so did everyone else. There's not a person out there, even in the complaints, nobody said "this game is awful and IGN's giving it a 10." Everybody said that this game is brilliant. So what? Instead of telling people, "get the game" we were telling them "really get the game." It's sort of nit picky.

OK, so, obviously this guy missed the point. To repeat myself: "I'm not saying that 'GTA IV' doesn't deserve a 10." I have a problem with the concept of an exclusive review, regardless of what the conclusion is.

And guess what? Turns out I'm not the only one. I checked in with the folks at Ziff Davis (1UP/EGM) and here's what James Mielke, editor-in-chief for videogames, told me in an email:

[W]e do not actively pursue exclusive reviews with publishers, despite the windfalls we may reap in terms of online traffic or newsstand sales. This is something we did, admittedly, at one point pursue, but have decided to withdraw from as of the last couple of years for various reasons...

As the years passed, more and more publishers started getting bolder, offering us exclusive reviews of certain games they held in high regard, but only if we could guarantee scores of a certain grade or higher. We politely declined. The downside, however, was that certain competing publications accepted these offers, which not only undermined what every other enthusiast publisher like Ziff-Davis was doing in regards to our editorial integrity, but were also very sloppy in keeping that information quiet. Once word got out that various gaming publications were essentially 'for sale,' it became impossible for us to negotiate deals of this kind any more, for fear of guilt by association. Occasionally, a publisher will let us run a review online earlier than other websites, but there are never any guarantees or promises made as a result. Plus, we never go after them.

What about IGN's other big competitor, GameSpot? Here's what Justin Calvert recently wrote on their reviews blog:

GameSpot doesn't do exclusive reviews.

This has been the case here for as long as I can remember, and should come as no surprise to anyone who's ever taken the time to read our Review Guidelines. Not only could agreeing to an exclusive review invite a perceived conflict of interest [emphasis mine] where scores are concerned, but it would lock us into posting our review on a certain day, probably at a certain time, and almost certainly before we've had an opportunity to spend as much time checking out any online features as much as we'd like. Even ignoring the score stuff that's a problem, because we post our reviews when they're ready, and not before.

So, EGM/1Up and GameSpot and (to the extent anyone cares) Variety agree. I think the question now is: How do gamers feel? Are they annoyed that the publications they trust for news and information trade away their editorial space in exchange for exclusive reviews that benefit them and not their readers? Is it at all disturbing that the same individual who spends months engaging in that exact horse trading is then the one who sits down to write a review that's supposed to be objective and unbiased? Do they think they would benefit if any and every publication had the same embargo and just competed on how good their reviews are?

If the answer is "yes," I think gamers should let their opinions be heard by IGN and GameInformer and whoever else engages in these practices. That's my opinion as a gamer, anyway. I've obviously done so (perhaps at greater length than anyone cares).

Finally, to address some questions/criticisms that have been sent my way:

-What's your problem with Rockstar? Are you just mad that you didn't get a copy earlier? And after they gave you all that time to talk to Dan Houser... How ungrateful!

This has nothing to do with Rockstar. Its publicists have every right to give copies of their game and set embargoes in the way that best serves their goals. It's not Rockstar's, or any publisher's, job to defend journalistic ethics. That's a job for journalists and readers.

And for the record, Rockstar was nice enough to get me a copy last Friday, which was perfectly adequate to get my review done by Tuesday (even if I didn't sleep a lot in the 3.5 intervening days).

-Variety and its partner Reelz Channel ran a video review of "Iron Man" that they advertised as "first." Hypocrite! Hypocrite!!!

There is a difference between "exclusive" and "first." Variety has a long tradition of running reviews well before films open because our readers are traditionally industry professionals, not regular people wondering whether it's worth seeing (though that's changing somewhat on the Web).

But we don't do so by negotiating with a studio for an early embargo. In fact, the Hollywood Reporter typically runs its movie reviews on the same day as Variety. Sometimes they even beat us. Consumer media, on the other hand, typically don't want to run a movie review before opening day, because that's when their readers are most interested (obviously some weekly TV shows, like "Ebert and Roeper," go a little earlier). We compete with them by trying to attend every festival and screening that we can, not by trading favors with one of the companies that we cover. Sometimes, one of our film critics just told me, we break embargoes when we feel like we have a good reason. And yet, somehow, Variety survives.

Here's a great post from veteran videogames writer and regular Variety reviewer Tom Chick about how shaky allegations spread through videogame websites and blogs.

I don't want to steal Tom's thunder -- you should really read his post -- but he's basically pointing out that the whole thing started with an MTV Multi-player post reporting that an employee at High Moon Studios said Matt Damon isn't in their "Bourne Conspiracy" game because he objected to the violence.  Then Kotaku and Blue's News both "reported" (and I use the term very loosely) that Matt is "OK With Movie Violence, Not OK With Game Violence." (I should note that Blue's News later apologized. Which is very admirable.)

MTV at least talked to someone who it believed had spoken to Damon (though it later turned out the person hadn't), but Kotaku and any others who went off its post are making allegations about the actor's position on media violence based on what another website said somebody at a developer said about why Damon didn't want to be in his videogame.

Most importantly, Tom writes, "nowhere in this train wreck of a telephone game does Matt Damon ever say he's not OK with game violence! Furthermore, he doesn't even say he's okay with movie violence. You'll note that Jason Bourne kills relatively few people, and he certainly doesn't shoot them. In fact, he takes pains to disarm his opponents and throw away their guns."

Now, based on a Boston Globe interview that MTV later linked to, it does seem Damon shares his childhood development expert mother's concerned about the impact of media violence on young kids and that played a role in his decision not to appear in the game. But as Tom says, without somebody talking to Damon directly, all we've got is hearsay and implications. And the result is vague headlines and accusations of, as Kotaku wrote, a "double standard." Classy.

IGN.com just came out with its review of "Grand Theft Auto IV" and it's a perfect 10 rave.

I want to note up front that I haven't played much of "GTA IV" yet, so I have absolutely no basis to claim it's not a 10. The bits of it I have seen in previews are really good. So I'm not at all accusing IGN of being dishonest in this particular case.

HOWEVER... what the hell is with the concept of an "exclusive review?" Is anyone else as troubled by this entire concept as I am?

I just got an email from an IGN publicist titled "FYI: Exclusive GTA IV Review @ IGN.com, scores 10" alerting me that "IGN.com, the Web’s leading videogame and entertainment information destination, has posted the first and only review of Grand Theft Auto IV." I'm reminded of when Game Informer ran an exclusive review of "Mass Effect" a few weeks before any other outlet and gave that game a 9.75. I was shocked since I really didn't think "Mass Effect" was that great (and said as much in my review), but of course it's very possible that the Game Informer folks just disagreed with me and that's well within their rights.

(Though I have to say I still found the Game Informer review problematic, since they gave "Mass Effect" an almost perfect score despite noting that "most of the skirmishes, which begin and end in the blink of an eye, run into balancing issues, problematic AI, and a difficulty in comprehending what is transpiring" and "it controls admirably, but it doesn’t live up to the large stage the story sets or the standards you’ve come to expect from action games and RPGs." Those are pretty significant faults.)

However, anyone who knows anything about videogame journalism knows that when an outlet gets a review copy of a game, they agree to an embargo -- not to run their review before anyone else. In these cases, Game Informer and IGN.com clearly got permission from Microsoft and Rockstar, respectively, to run their reviews before any other outlet. And it means they got their copy of the game pretty damned early in order to have the review ready to run early.

Of course, once one outlet runs a review, nobody else feels beholden to an embargo and they probably start running their reviews soon. So I expect we'll start seeing more "GTA IV" reviews popping up on websites over the weekend. (Having only gotten my copy today, you won't see one in Variety for another few days).

But being the first outlet to review a highly anticipated new videogame is a big deal. It means a major boost in Web traffic or magazine sales. Anybody who cares about "GTA IV" has probably read the IGN review already, or will very soon. And every major videogame blog is probably linking to it. I have already had several friends e-mail it to me and of course here I am writing about it.

So, we have a situation where a publisher gives a videogame website or magazine a major commercial advantage by providing an early copy of the game and an early embargo so they can run the "exclusive review." This probably results in more magazine sales or Web traffic and thus more revenue.

So, again, I'm not saying that "GTA IV" doesn't deserve a 10, or "Mass Effect" its 9.75. But how can we trust a videogame review when the outlet running it has been given a major commercial favor -- one that's worth money -- from the publisher of the game? You never see a paper or TV station getting special access from a movie studio or TV network or book publisher to run an "exclusive review." Imagine the L.A. Times or Roger Ebert touting their "exclusive review of 'Iron Man.'" Absurd, right? So why do we tolerate it for a videogame?

Exclusive reviews are really ethically troubling, for all the reasons I've outlined above. And I'll state it flat out: I personally don't trust any review labeled "exclusive." Is anyone else as disturbed by this practice as I am?

(I should note that, of course, every videogame publication and lots of newspapers, including my own, run "exclusive" news and feature stories that sometimes result from cooperation with a company. But I consider reviews  to be an entirely different beast. Even if a company cooperated on a news or feature story, the facts are still the facts. You can't report something that's incorrect <and still be doing your job, at least>. But reviews are entirely subjective, so if a critic is being influenced inappropriately in any way, the whole thing is worthless even though we as readers can't prove there's anything "wrong.")

Update (4/26): Perhaps I was wrong about one thing. Even though IGN ran its review yesterday, nobody else seems to have one up. Not even IGN's biggest competitors GameSpot and 1UP . Apparently they're all waiting on an embargo that Kotaku says is tomorrow (Sunday) morning. That truly blows my mind. In my world, if I had a story or review ready to go and was waiting on an embargo, the minute somebody else ran the same review or story, I would run mine. If a publisher or studio or whatever gave me a later embargo, tough sh*t. Any self-respecting publication with a "Grand Theft Auto IV" review ready should be running it now. If mine was ready, I know I would. (Mini-preview: I've been playing it a while and it's really good. But it's not 10/10 "best since 'Ocarina of Time'" good. It does have faults.)

Wow, now this is a serious marketing stunt. I'm not really sure how I feel about a videogame publisher and its PR agency going to such elaborate lengths, though. Sierra and its team sent the guy a mysterious cell phone and then took three hours out of his life to drive him all the way around San Francisco, show off some content from "The Bourne Conspiracy," and then give him a sh*tload of schwag, some of which was disturbingly personalized (because, you know, he's a secret agent now. Just like Jason Bourne!).

But there's obviously no legitimate reason to put a journalist in a  luxury car, drive him on an indirect route, take him to a rented warehouse, and give him "a mini-backpack[,] a flashlight, a 2gig USB drive hidden in a black rubber bracelet, a Sony MP3 player containing some of the music from the game, a game fact sheet/booklet and of course the case itself which looks like it would comfortably fit an Xbox 360" along with "a dossier on me that included my name, known associates and habits" and "four large black and white photos [taken of him that day]." Schwag is schwag, but isn't this really ridiculous and over the top? (picture of it all on the left)

I mean this as absolutely no disrespect for the writer at hand, Flynn Demarco, who I'm sure is an upstanding guy and a good journalist, etc. etc. But... aren't stunts like this a tad bit insulting to gamers and game writers? Sure, some of us write for publications that are unapologetically not just for fans, but by fans. And there's nothing wrong with that. But we're also supposed to be journalists.

This isn't something that serves a legitimate purpose for a journalist, however. It's a fanboy fantasy come true, as evidenced by the kotaku fanboy comments like "I wish stuff like that happened to me :)" and "Flynn, you lucky bastard, you might have the coolest job on earth."

And yes, other entertainment journalists get wined and dined in their own ways and get plenty of schwag. But with the exception of the infamous "Pearl Harbor" premiere aboard an aircraft carrier, I've never heard of something so absurdly time wasting and insulting to a mature professional as this. I highly doubt it's how Roger Ebert or A.O. Scott or Joe Morgenstern were escorted to a screening of "The Bourne Ultimatum."

I would obviously never get in a car sent to me by strangers for no discernible purpose, but if somehow I did get suckered into this, I would be pissed. That's 3 hours out of my life for an event that substantively should only take one hour, if not for the accoutrements made to razzle and dazzle me. Don't we all have stuff to do with our time? Like our jobs? I can just imagine the reaction of my editors if I explained that I took the afternoon off to go on a pretend spy mission. Let's just say I wouldn't be writing this blog on variety.com anymore.

Now, of course, I don't write for a fan publication and so this wouldn't happen to me. But as a fan myself and a reader of publications like Kotaku, I'm a bit weirded out, if not offended. Can't publishers have the confidence to just present their wares without treating journalists like overgrown 10 year-olds? And shouldn't videogame writers demand to be treated like, ummm, adults?

[Before anyone accuses me of being a cranky codger, I should note that I'd love to go on a fake spy adventure. Sounds totally rad. But I'd want to do it as leisure, not "work." Speaking of which, based on the overwhelmingly positive reactions in the Kotaku comments, I highly recommend that Sierra create some kind of a contest giving a few lucky fans a super spy adventure just like this for a day.]

Update (4/13): Joystiq apparently went on the exact same ridiculous ego-stroking fanboy marketing stunt game demo. And they too wrote it up without an ounce of irony.

Update (later in the day on 4/13): Joystiq's Chris Grant argues that this counts as irony in their recounting of the adventure. I think that's more irony about the embargo than the ridiculousness of the whole event, but still, it should be noted:

The game looks [REDACTED] with all sorts of [REDACTED] action and [REDACTED] moments. You play as [REDACTED], a [REDACTED], who is trying to [REDACTED], with all kinds of [REDACTED] trying to stop him*.

You know you're in an interesting profession when you arrive at a preview of Sega's upcoming "Iron Man" and "Incredible Hulk" videogames (more on those later) at Marvel's Los Angeles offices and one of the 20 or so other journalists there for the event has show up -- at Marvel's offices, I must again repeat -- wearing a Spider-Man t-shirt.

Now that's maturity, professionalism, and a total lack of awkwardness.

And no, I didn't get the sense there was any irony involved.

I was all set to make fun of this story in GameDaily titled "Love in the time of Game Journalism" since, really, who cares about the love lives of game journalists except maybe other game journalists?

But upon reading it I'm man enough to admit that it's kind of interesting to consider how weird it is to be dating or married to someone who plays an obsessive amount of video games for a living, but probably also loves games and would be nerding out to a significant extent regardless. How much can you complain and how much can you be supportive?

Only part of my career is game journalist, and it's for a non-enthusiast publication at that, but even still I'm more than tired of the jokes about how I "have to play this game because I have a deadline, baby." On the other hand, I understand the awkwardness my profession can cause for my wife. Mainly because when we have company over and they see four game consoles, two of which are the same (my own 360 and a debug), dozens of games, a rock band kid and guitar hero guitar, etc., they understandably assume I'm the normal kind of person who would have all that crap, which is an obsessive gamer. Then if we explain that I get most of it for free and that I play for pay, that sets off the same round of annoying jokes.

In other words, I don't think dating is particularly hard if you have a modicum of social skills and can overcome the stereotype of someone who plays video games for a living (though let's be honest stereotypes exist for a reason and many game journalists in my experience fit this one). But explaining your career to strangers is an annoying extra burden that the significant other has to shoulder.

(Photo is the ultimate gift to buy that special game journalist you're trying to woo.)

It's time for the video game industry to get over its obsession with titles being officially "announced."

Let's get real. Barring global catastrophe, there is going to be a "Gears of War 2." I know people who have seen levels being built for the game. People who work at Microsoft have casually referred to a "Gears" sequel in conversations with me as if it's obvious and not a big deal. But of course we all know it's coming. What are the odds that a multi-million selling action title published by a console manufacturer as an exclusive wouldn't get a sequel? About the same as Mike Gravel sweeping the primary elections today.

Nonetheless, videogame websites and blogs are abuzz today because the latest issue of GamePro teases a "Gears of War 2" story on the cover. "'Gears of War 2' officially confirmed?" is the urgent question in GameSpot's "rumor patrol." Then everyone followed up with "breaking news" follow-ups like this one on GamesIndustry: "Gears of War 2 announcement "complete nonsense.'"

Treating an official announcement as "news" is just another way that the gaming press allows publishers and publicists to control them. Imagine if political reporters refused to say last year that any of the candidates were running until they made their official announcement speech? Or if TV reporters treated it as a big deal when ABC announces that "Grey's Anatomy" will be back next fall. It's ridiculous, so why do we tolerate it in the videogame world?

The working assumption in every story should be that "Gears of War 2" is in the works. It's a fact and should be reported as such. If and when Epic/Microsoft shares details about the game, then sure, that's interesting. And maybe that'll happen as soon as GDC in two weeks. But someone official saying the game is coming, or saying they haven't made any announcements yet, is not news. If game journalists and players want to incentivize publishers to stop treating us like idiots, we should completely ignore the existence or non-existence of an "announcement."

(Oh, and if you're wondering when "Gears 2" will come out, consider this fact: When New Line got the rights to make "Gears of War" movie, producers said they are aiming for a summer 2009 release. Who knows if that will happen given the writers' strike and other development issues, but my guess is they'd love to come out the same year as the game sequel.)