Reviewers: Gave Duke Nukem a bad review? No more games for you!

[heybtbm]

I know Duke has it's own discussion going on, but this news requires it's own thread. Here's a little gem from the people (formerly) handling Duke Nukem Forever's PR...

"Too many went too far with their reviews... we r reviewing who gets games next time and who doesn't based on today's venom."

The story on Kotaku is great...http://kotaku.com/5812131/negative-d...to-pr-shitlist

Busted!

[Robocop2]

I don't really see what the big stink is about. I thought it was a well known fact that reviewer base their opinions at least partially on how much swag they get for a good review. Which is kind of in the same vein. In all fairness though I do read reviews just to hear opinions out curiosity but I take what they say with some caution.

[retroman]

its Duke..its all about mindless action and horrible story and cheesy sex innuendo's with bad one liners...but for some reason..im all over it..not that bad...

[retroman]

its Duke..its all about mindless action and horrible story and cheesy sex innuendo's with bad one liners...but for some reason..im all over it..not that bad...

[PapaStu]

And the PR guy who made the statements, came out later and apologized for saying what he did, as he says in the heat of the moment.

Seriously though, some of these reviews have been beyond bad. Games that are true crap like Darkest of Days, Jurassic the Hunted are scoring better than this, and I have a VERY hard time believing that the game is THAT bad.

[goatdan]

I have no doubt that stuff like that goes on in the game review business. Having said that, I do think that it suddenly became overly popular to hate on Duke for being Duke. It seems like sometimes the gaming press does this.

What's odd about Duke is that you had this huge amount of hype surrounding the demo and how great that was, and there were lots of articles talking about how cool that demo was...

With the game coming out, suddenly journalists are complaining about the same stuff that they were saying was so great earlier. The demo opens with Duke taking a pee. Okay, that was the same demo at PAX, where apparently that was really funny. Oh, the game is chlidish because you can pick up the poop and throw it around? Hello, welcome to Duke Nukem, where you could have him do weird stuff in the earlier games too. Don't like it? Unless I'm mistaken, at no point are you forced to pick up the poop and throw it around, so don't do it.

I canceled my pre-order on the game right before it came out because I had got the Ball of Steel edition when they were making a total of 6000 of them, and I saw a certificate that was over 83000. It doesn't make me any less interested in the game though, and I do feel like everyone decided to punish Duke more because it took so long to come out than for anything else.

[substantial_snake]

I'm a little confused about the hate for DNF as well.

Every video that I have seen with some critic bashing the game looks like an early PS3/360 title both graphically and gameplay wise. Nothing seems terribly broken or bugged the game, it just seems like a basic FPS with a character all its own...which if I'm not mistaken was what the Duke has been since 3D.

I've pretty much given up on "professional" game reviewers because of the amount of money pumped into them now and the politics that inevitably brings. In that light I can completely understand a company being upset with the treatment a game is given and therefore blacklisting those sites that go out of their way to bash your product.

That being said this should of been a budget title out of the gate, asking 60 bucks for the game was a mistake IMO and it cost them this sale. If released at 40 bucks I would of bought it new and probably loved every minute of its ridiculousness but now I'm waiting to pick up a used cheap copy.

[goatdan]

I'm a little confused about the hate for DNF as well.

Every video that I have seen with some critic bashing the game looks like an early PS3/360 title both graphically and gameplay wise. Nothing seems terribly broken or bugged the game, it just seems like a basic FPS with a character all its own...

The difference to me though is that the environments that I have seen in the game are all so wildly different. I've been playing through Killzone 2 lately, and everything looks very similar. Admittedly, I haven't beaten the game yet, but just in seeing some of the demo for DNF, it has more diverse environments in that short demo than Killzone 2 has had in the first three or so hours of play.

Too bad Duke isn't a space marine...

[kupomogli]

I've pretty much given up on "professional" game reviewers because of the amount of money pumped into them now and the politics that inevitably brings.

QFT

http://ps3.ign.com/articles/107/1075772p1.html

Final Fantasy 13. 8.9/10

8.9/10

8.9/10

...and then later on rate it first in their most disappointing titles of the year.

Yeah. Reviewers are definitely getting paid to give crap games high ratings and then are offensive towards the a publisher when there aren't enough zeros on their check.

[Aussie2B]

I think you guys have a bit of a twisted view of professional game reviewers. They're not making a lot of money, and a lot of these mags/sites are on hard times too so nobody is really rolling in it. They are pressured to give high scores, but I'm skeptical that they're getting directly bribed. It's more a matter of publishers pulling advertising, which is the real way in which these publications make money, or denying exclusive access, which helps sell more mags/get more hits, allowing them to get more advertisers. If the reviewers give low scores that hurts the publication, they could theoretically lose their jobs or have their pay cut.

[retroman]

im not know pr...it aint that bad with what i said...go in with mindless fun and not much more...

[Dire 51]

It's more a matter of publishers pulling advertising, which is the real way in which these publications make money

I've seen firsthand evidence of how that affects professional reviews. Splatterhouse lost its advertising budget shortly before the game was released, and I firmly believe this was what caused all of the negative reviews from the big sites. The reader reviews were consistently in the average to above average range (which the game rightfully deserved), the professional sites gave it lousy reviews. That doesn't really jibe, does it?

Some places continued to trash the game after that, Joystiq in particular, prompting one member of my forum to say "Their 'coverage' of the game so far smacks of 'Namco's only sent promo items but no check, and my panties are in a bunch over it'."

[portnoyd]

8.9/10

Yeah, I feel no pity for the reviewers. FFXIII was total garbage in every respect.

They were definitely unnecessarily harsh with their Duke reviews. Most reviews were ones you'd expect to be tied to a 1/10 or 2/10... not 5/10 or 6/10.

[Icarus Moonsight]

I think you guys have a bit of a twisted view of professional game reviewers. They're not making a lot of money, and a lot of these mags/sites are on hard times too so nobody is really rolling in it. They are pressured to give high scores, but I'm skeptical that they're getting directly bribed. It's more a matter of publishers pulling advertising, which is the real way in which these publications make money, or denying exclusive access, which helps sell more mags/get more hits, allowing them to get more advertisers. If the reviewers give low scores that hurts the publication, they could theoretically lose their jobs or have their pay cut.

Which is why their output is suspect. Just like the News Media - Their access and pay is tied to playing ball. It's political, and worthless because of it. They're the twisted ones.

You get more useful reviews from some random gamer with a DV Cam and capture card on Youtube.

[Kitsune Sniper]

phreakindee / Lazy Game Reviewer said it's fun.

That's all I care about, really.

[Peonpiate]

QFT

http://ps3.ign.com/articles/107/1075772p1.html

Final Fantasy 13. 8.9/10

8.9/10

8.9/10

...and then later on rate it first in their most disappointing titles of the year.

Yeah. Reviewers are definitely getting paid to give crap games high ratings and then are offensive towards the a publisher when there aren't enough zeros on their check.

So true, its always been that way though. And Square games have been the golden cow for "OMG ITS AWESOME111" reviews ever since the print mags were in force. As soon as a FF game is announced, even if its a utter turd like FF13 is its a good bet it will get a good review.

[goatdan]

The thing that I think that a lot of people are forgetting, which is I think what we're seeing with Duke Nukem, is that there are two prongs for how publications get their money -- advertising is one, but the other is traffic. If your web site has 5000 people coming to it a month, it's going to demand a lot less money for ads than if it has 5000 people coming to it per hour.

With DNF, when the reviews started coming out, I think it became a feeding frenzy to pick up on new and different parts of the game to complain about to drive traffic to those sites. The delay of DNF made it so this release was / is perhaps the most compelling release in years, and so when researching the game, would you be more interested in hearing an average review that touches on nothing new, or a review that complains bitterly about the humor, or the tiny Duke sections, or the driving sections, or the lack of enemy AI, or whatever?

Game reviews are like network news -- if you add a partisan slant to it to excite or inflame your audience, you have a better chance that people will stick with it longer to see what else is going on. That's what I think happened with Duke -- the reviews seemed to start out as average (when I first checked meta critic, it had two positives, seven mediums and two negatives, now it is 2 / 22 / 17, including 1up.com giving it a zero).

Why did they do this? Well, because it makes you go, "Oh my! 1Up gave it a 0! Let me see that!" Hell, it even worked on me. And thus, they can charge more for advertising.

It's crap, but there really is very little "journalistic integrity" left in any medium since everything is more or less run by the industry they seek to cover.

[Graham Mitchell]

I know the topic here is mostly about about game reviewers, and I agree that most of them confuse the hell out of me. (the new alice game got trashed, but I think it's great.)

However, what I find interesting about this story is that it's another example of people getting in trouble because of twitter.

Every week we hear about somebody's career being in jeopardy because of some stupid shit they said on twitter.

People in the public eye should be forbidden to have access to a twitter account. If they have one for pr reasons, the tweets should be composed by an objective writer. When people get pissed they can say some crazy stuff. The world doesn't need to be privy to that.

This pr guy deserves what he gets. Twitter is a public forum. He might as well have held a press conference saying game informer is a bunch of fags, because thats essentially what he did.

[Rob2600]

it suddenly became overly popular to hate on Duke... It seems like sometimes the gaming press does this.

Yeah, it's weird. Sometimes a game comes out and critics feel the need to out-bash each other in their reviews. Once the downward spiral of negative press starts, it's almost impossible to stop.

What's odd about Duke is that you had this huge amount of hype surrounding the demo and how great that was... With the game coming out, suddenly journalists are complaining about the same stuff that they were saying was so great earlier.

This happens a lot in video game "journalism." I used to read IGN every day and the writers there would hype up games like crazy in the previews, only to bash them in their final reviews. Eventually I recognized that pattern, stopped getting excited about game previews, and stopped reading IGN (and every other gaming publication).

All the publications are guilty of doing that. Before the game comes out: hype! hype! hype! After the game comes out: meh. It really seems like "previews" are just paid advertisements in disguise.

what I find interesting about this story is that it's another example of people getting in trouble because of twitter. ... People in the public eye should be forbidden to have access to a twitter account. ... When people get pissed they can say some crazy stuff. The world doesn't need to be privy to that.

I disagree. The world needs to see *more* of the truth, not less. Each time something like this happens, the curtain gets pulled back another inch, exposing more behind-the-scenes shenanigans (a.k.a. "industry secrets") and revealing the way things *really* are. It's a good thing.

[InsaneDavid]

People in the public eye should be forbidden to have access to a twitter account. If they have one for pr reasons, the tweets should be composed by an objective writer. When people get pissed they can say some crazy stuff. The world doesn't need to be privy to that.

I think it's more that people need to learn to keep business and their personal life / thoughts separate.