So, the Eurogamer shitstorm

[Eraser]

Yeah, the XCom demo was an atrocity.

[Don Carlos]

Well thats a shame :/

[losCHUNK]

Wait, how is all this exactly news? This kind of thing has been going on for ages and I thought it was considered common knowledge now. Besides, how can you expect a website yo run an unbiased review of the very game they're promoting through their ads at the same time?

Well the news is not only about Journo's whoring themselves out, it's also about what happens when someone calls the Journo's whores and this time there was a nice little bread trail that showed you what happened, dopey cow has even gone on her profiles and removed any mention that she at one point or another worked for Square Enix. It's also pretty good to see how the community reacted, instead of dismissing it as an every day occurrence people got pissed off about it, as you should and exposing the whores for who they are and watching them get anal pinned over it. The alternative would be making no mention of it and how would that help ?, it'll just make the situation worse as the whores will know they can get away with forcing people out of jobs.

As for reviewers not affecting your decisions in game purchases, I know when I was younger my room was filled to the rafters with gaming mags from nearly every platform, would've been hard for me to say that I did not value their opinion.

[GONNAFISTYA]

BTW...I just got home because I had to confirm it before I posted...but in my employment contract, the size of my bonus is directly tied to both sales and metacritic score of the game.

No bullshit.

You should mail RPS on the sly about it and see what happens. Frankly, that's some disgusting shit to have to put up with. A bonus tied to sales, without knowing the details, sounds fair enough as that'll logically correlate to how much was made, but metascore? That's some random shit right there.

Truth be told it doesn't bother me that much as the bonus is NEVER something I've EVER relied upon for money or negotiated as part of my annual salary...it's something that may or may not occur and I treat it as such. I learned that lesson a long time ago.

The only real issue I have with telling your team "you must score above this arbitrary score number" is that it puts unnecessary and unfair pressure on the staff, who are already doing the best they can and already believe they can make it a good product. It's like telling someone they're doing a great job but the instant they stop doing a great job they'll be killed along with their entire family. It's utterly moronic, does nothing but lower morale and is one of the worst management habits I've ever seen in this or any other industry. All they're doing is hitting their team with the proverbial "big stick".

[losCHUNK]

Just seen Kain has given a more in depth read on the matter, even goes into my criticisms about his previous piece -

Yesterday I wrote about the Robert Florence controversy and focused much of my post on the libel issues that make journalism in the UK a more precarious endeavor than elsewhere.

But if the threat of a libel suit is at the heart of Eurogamer’s amending of Florence’s article, why does the American gaming press, which exists with no similar Sword of Damocles hanging above its collective head, fall into similar traps?

http://www.forbes.com/sites/erikkain/20 ... the-rails/

Fair play.

[Doombrain]

Oh hey. I found out the guy in the middle of this works for my friend.

She the editor of two B2B game mags and he writes for one of them. Small world eh?

By the sound of it he's in the shit.

[GONNAFISTYA]

The Contemptible Games Journalist: Why So Many People Don’t Trust The Gaming Press (And Why They’re Sometimes Wrong)

Questionable Tweets. Claims of legal threats. Edited resumes. An article that named names one day and didn't the next.

Mock reviews. Free drinks. Extravagant swag. Elaborate junkets.

These are the ingredients that are helping bring to a boil familiar suspicions about the gaming press, the work they—we—do, and whose side they're really on.

Welcome to the world of games journalism, where, at any moment, someone is certain that you suck at your job. It's not the only job of this type, but it's the one we've got here. It's the one under a more intense microscope than ever these past couple of weeks.

Let's zoom out for a moment and see where we're at.

Florence: "I think we're in a horrible position right now, where most games coverage is almost indistinguishable from PR."

[Deathshroud]

The Contemptible Games Journalist: Why So Many People Don’t Trust The Gaming Press (And Why They’re Sometimes Wrong)

Questionable Tweets. Claims of legal threats. Edited resumes. An article that named names one day and didn't the next.

Mock reviews. Free drinks. Extravagant swag. Elaborate junkets.

These are the ingredients that are helping bring to a boil familiar suspicions about the gaming press, the work they—we—do, and whose side they're really on.

Welcome to the world of games journalism, where, at any moment, someone is certain that you suck at your job. It's not the only job of this type, but it's the one we've got here. It's the one under a more intense microscope than ever these past couple of weeks.

Let's zoom out for a moment and see where we're at.

Florence: "I think we're in a horrible position right now, where most games coverage is almost indistinguishable from PR."

This is a large reason why I refer to amateur game reviewers on youtube. They are just as articulate, if not more than the game review/hype machine from the big media outlets. Metacritic is also a great resource.