It's said that a picture is worth a thousand words—in the case of the following picture, all thousand words are four letters long and begin with an F:
Click here for picture
This requires a bit of backstory. See, that picture is the score that the
Eurogamer.fr (the French-language Eurogamer)
review of Call of Duty: Black Ops 2 awards the Xbox 360 version with. Note the reviewer:
Click here for picture
The briefest of glances at
Julien Chevron's LinkedIn page reveals a 7-year span of time during which he worked at Activision,
the publisher of Call of Duty: Black Ops 2. This only ended in November of 2011. Consider his position as reviewer of this particular game given this delicious slice of text from his LinkedIn profile:
Click here for picture
Translated through Google:
"Achievements:
- The two most important and impressive PR campaigns Activision-Blizzard France Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 Call of Duty: Black Ops, the two biggest launch in the history of entertainment in France and in the world."
So basically, Julien Chevron was a PR manager for Activision who worked on two huge PR campaigns for Call of Duty games,
including the first Black Ops. Remember, this is an individual who Eurogamer.fr apparently deemed fit to
review Call of Duty: Black Ops 2. The review now has a small writeup from an editor explaining that they felt that 1 year away from Activision was sufficient to wash away any conflict of interest.
It isn't; rational human beings realize that seven years of doing PR for a company irreparably skews one's perceptions of that company (and by extension, its products), and it's disingenuous for Eurogamer.fr to state otherwise. Reviews are subjective, and those offering up their opinions of a game for the sake of gamers who are seeking unbiased information need to have no ties to that game so that their impressions are as close to the average gamer's as can be. Being responsible for the PR campaign for the original Black Ops is just about the most blatant link to Activision and Call of Duty—especially the Back Ops games—possible; the only thing that would constitute a worse conflict of interest would be if he had actually worked on Black Ops 2.
Look at the score again:
This picture is worth a thousand words, and all of them are profane. Thank you, Eurogamer.fr, for yet another shining example of
journalistic integrity in game journalism.
