I'm going to bump this thread again to fellate Grosnik a bit. This is a beautiful article: the research is exhaustive an irrefragable, the argument is cogent and powerful, and the writing style is glorious (particularly loved the casual references to classical literature drizzled among the vernacular intensifiers and invective - truly
rage vituperation).
What gets me most about this sorry saga is all these 'soft influencing' tricks the industry plays on the ensemble of clueless hacks are not new. I'm a med student, and the history of how Pharma cosies up to Doctors is well known. It's a matter of scientific research about how free meals or even
free bloody biros or a comely pharma rep being nice to you lead to biasing in doctors prescribing decisions towards that company. And, like our coterie of clueless hacks, doctors also used to trot out the same defences about how they have far too much integrity to cleave to such venal influences (does
anyone think they have
below-average integrity? Yet about half of us do!) Science said otherwise.
The medical establishment is now extremely keen to avoid this sort of corruption (although by no means perfectly: in the UK big gifts are effectively banned, and you are required to disclose conflicts of interest if you go on Pharma trips or get cushy advisor gigs, but there are still far too many drug-rep funded free lunches and pens in medicine). I know many doctors who make a point of not only refusing all gifts - no matter how trivial (stationary and food inclusive) - but make a point of
never speaking to a pharmaceutical representative under any circumstances, for fear that might influence the decisions they make for their patients. As, even if they can't buy you anything, reps will have a playbook of ways of getting you to like them, a warm glow your mind will extend to the product they will mention, as well as protecting it against criticism, as one tends to feel that acting against the product will somehow hurt this person you got on so well with, even if you'll know they'll never find out. When a company that is trying to turn a profit is
giving you something, you should assume there is a strategy on their part to get a return on their investment. (Cf. our Halo 4 reviewer earlier gushing about how
nice and
chummy MS were being to her as she was reviewing their game. What an ostentatious act of philanthropy on their part!)
There's no reason why a video game journalist - or video game magazine - can't use the same principles. You get the game (and nothing else) sent to you, play it, review it, and then send it back. You can avoid conflicts of interest re. advertising revenue by making like a reputable medical journal and have a communications wall between the reviewers and the people sourcing advertising. You can even stay engaged in the hype machine/circle-jerk whatever, so long as you keep dedicated reviewers around who stay away from that sort of thing. If you can't do that, you can (again, like a reputable scientific journal) at least demand conflicted reviewers reveal their conflicts of interest. This is not so labour intensive to be beyond the reach of the bigger video games shops. Now sure, some of our games journalists may have such steely principles that they don't
need any of this to give fair and accurate scores (although given the fact I've barely ever seen a AAA blockbuster release get a sub-8 from a major reviewer in the last half decade, this proportion is miniscule), but where's the harm? Why not follow a Caesar's wife principle here?
The problem is this will never happen, and to be honest the reason why has less to do with the generally bottom-quartile and broadly infantile graduate population who sink into video games journalism out of low aspirations or inability to do anything more worthwhile, but rather the mass of consumers. If a major 'games reviewer' did this, the average score would invariably plummet, as reviewers, deprived of the halo effect of the publishers machinations (not to mention by-proxy bribery and the wink-wink-nudge-nudge understanding about not biting the hand that feeds the magazine) would start recognising that at least some games, even AAA titles, are just dire. Not dire by the acquired taste of Codexian standards, but dire by the lights of the average fan who (for example) played DA2 and thought it blew, or was pissed off at ME3s ending, that the latest sequel to generic series X has really flogged it's carcass beyond recognizability, or whatever else. Yet bad scores will lead to publisher retribution, and the drying up of revenue and exclusive access that is their lifeblood. Game over.
If the market of consumers cared for decent reviewing, this strategy wouldn't work: sites that acted like publisher shills would have their audience dry up, and they would stick with the honest reviewers, forcing publishers to deal with them without a de facto guarantee of a 'good score', and the consumer gets what they want. However, consumers seem happy to swallow all the hype about the current flavour of pablum being offered up by major game designers, and when their offerings are indeed foul (glowing reviews from the servile reviewers notwithstanding) they are quick to forgive both producer and reviewer their collusion and return for their next helping.
Zappa said "Rock journalism is people who can't write interviewing people who can't talk for people who can't read." I think the closest cognate for games reviewing is this: "Mainstream reviews are companies with vested interests, influencing people without scruples, to write for people without taste."
