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[Discussion] Reviewers having to wait for review copies

itmeJP General
#1

First off let’s try to keep this civil but feel free to debate the topic.

Bethesda is the first company to make reviewers wait until 24 hours before release to play their games. Is this a good or bad trend for gaming?

Article from IGN for reference: http://m.ign.com/articles/2016/10/29/a-response-to-bethesdas-review-copies-policy

How TotalBiscuit feels on the subject: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=76tSYX6ZxsA

In my personal opinion (I’m looking forward to reading all of yours) this is a good thing for gaming. This should stop at least some of the day 1 purchases and pre order hype which should lead to more informed purchases. I already don’t preorder games and very rarely purchase on day 1 anymore due to mixed results.

My most recent day 1 purchases:
Rocket League - Amazing day 1 purchase
Star Wars Battlefront - Terrible day 1 purchase
Overwatch - Good day 1 purchase

This also may increase traffic for streamers, like JP and Cohh that enjoy playing new games on release day, since many potential buyers will want to tune into live coverage of the game to form opinions on a possible purchase.

What are your opinions?

Edit: I am not a fan of any of Bethesda’s games so I am not blindly defending them.

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#2

I get that game companies want to control the discussion to maximise marketing effect, but I feel a more reasonable way of going about it is to just put an embargo up until 24hrs before release and let the reviewers create good, informed reviews instead of reviews in-progress and such. Unless they have something to hide I guess?

In the end, it’s going to be in their interest to make reviewers rush to get their reviews up, it’s more likely that the reviewer will be riding that new game high, less likely that the reviewer will encounter glaring bugs etc.

In conclusion, I feel like this is a horrible way to treat game reviewers, I understand why it’s happening from the publisher’s perspective but I do not agree with it. I hope as you say, that it will cause some scepticism that will prevent pre-purchases, but I honestly feel like the marketing is the main contributor to pre-purchases not the reviewers and the marketing will keep chugging on.

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#3

A couple points on your response:

•Bethesda has stated that one of their primary reasons for doing this is because review copies of the game have led to spoilers being leaked.

•I’m unsure of why reviewers would rush their reviews at all. If I trust and enjoy a certain reviewer like TotalBiscuit or the Dropped Frames cast I will easily wait until that person reviews the game.

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#4

Oh definetly, reviewers like TotalBiscuit and such can take their time and deeply analyze video games, but this isn’t the case for most game journalists.
Most people will be looking up reviews around release so it really pays off for journalists to get their reviews out before or at least at release, if they only have 24 hours then the quality and depth of the review will no doubt suffer. They don’t really have the option to wait most of the time.

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#5

I agree that it will make reviews from most gaming sites worse.

Especially for developers like Bethesda, their style of games make it basically impossible to do a proper review in one day.

I like the idea of just having embargos and still giving out copies with enough time to fully review the game.

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#6

TB does not do reviews and he does not hurry his videos for views.

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#7

I think this is very anti-consumer. I Agree with TB’s video about the subject.

Earlier this year we released DOOM. We sent review copies to arrive the day before launch, which led to speculation about the quality of the game. Since then DOOM has emerged as a critical and commercial hit, and is now one of the highest-rated shooters of the past few years.

This is not really a justification to do this. It really lowered my opinion of the company as a whole.

we want everyone, including those in the media, to experience our games at the same time.

:itmejpfml:

I only pre-ordered 4 games this year. X-Com2 , Stellaris , Hearts of Iron 4, and Civ 6.
I pre-oreded those games because a) I knew that I would love that type of game. b) I watched hours upon hours of pre-release footage c) for Stellaris and HOI 4 I have a lot of good will towards paradox development studios - though not enough to trust them blindly. They streamed so much of Stellaris and HOI4 themselves and were giving out pre-release versions of the game to youtubers and streamers.

I was going to buy Dishonored 2 on the first day now I will watch JP play it and wait for TB to comment on the game. I need to see and/or hear about the performance, the mechanics, how it compares to the first game which I loved etc…

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#8

I’m very confused on why people think this is very anti consumer. This new policy will hopefully make people, including yourself, not impulse buy games on day 1.

Yes some reviewers will rush their review out as fast as possible (aka IGN) but they will be less valid reviews as the educated consumer base waits maybe an extra day or two for better thought out review.

Let’s also put it this way; if someone is looking for a positive review to justify their purchase they will find it even on the worst of games. A few companies jumping the gun on their reviews are not going to sway that population.

On a side note; TB’s video made me lose some respect for him for many reasons. He resulted to name calling near the end which is completely uncalled for and took quotes from Bethesda out of context to prove a very trivial point.

#9

The reason TB says he doesn’t do reviews is that he doesn’t feel like his videos live up to his criteria for a review. His videos do however fill the same role that more traditional reviews do, so to separate his videos from reviews in this case I feel is a bit pedantic.

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#10

I feel like they should be able to do this if they want to. Having one of the most expected game with a grand story arc to be spoiled few weeks before the game was launched isn’t good for anyone. Also, i think reviews are a completely moot point for Bethesda games for day one sales. There is just too much bias from both sides of the table when it comes to consumers and reviewers.

  1. If the review is giving less than 90% it will be flamed to death by fanboys.

  2. The people who will buy day one or pre-order will do it most likely no matter what the reviews say.

  3. As we could see from Fallout 4 reviews, it was said to be the next best thing ever. Turns out it wasn’t.

I’m very confused on why people think this is very anti consumer.

It’s anti-consumer by proxy of giving less possibilities for the consumers to know what they are buying when they buy the game early or pre-launch. One might say that it’s the consumers fault, but here in the Internet land everyone must be pro-consumer and it’s never the consumers fault.

I think that for me Roundtable Podcast summarized it pretty well. It doesn’t affect new media content creators. It mostly affects more traditional review sites. The new media content creators just tend to defend their fellow buddies as this is something that could end up giving the whole industry more problems.

Personally, i think it would be best to have preview copies for reviewers and content creators early but then have a hard stop in the game. One of the most recent examples would be Tyranny. By having a soft stop like DS3 had is much harder to pull off and it doesn’t stop the spoilers from leaking out.

PS: I didn’t link the Roundtable Podcast as the link was formatted so that it embedded the whole video to the post and i didn’t want to do that.

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#11

On rushed reviews: Their reviews aren’t any less valid than other reviews. They might be less professional, more greedy, less useful etc. No matter how you frame it a review has value to someone who is able to separate low-effort reviews from high-effort reviews. If rushed reviews are overly positive while later reviews are negative, that tells us something about the game.
Yes, the ‘educated’ consumer base will wait for more trustworthy and higher-effort reviews but I feel that it’s unfair to disregard the damage it can do to people who might only read that one review. It might not even be their fault that they aren’t as savvy when it comes to knowing what is shady practice and so on. It feels unfair to me to say that it’s these people’s own fault when we can easily trace the root of the problem from the ‘uneducated’ consumer to the rushed review all the way back to the poor review copy policy.

On the people looking to justify their purchase: These aren’t the people we’re talking about getting hurt by this policy, it’s the well-meaning players who might only get their news from one source by virtue of just not being as deep into the medium as us.
I’m not sure how your second sentence relates to your first, but if I understand it correctly I feel like you’re underestimating the amount of harm a rushed review from a credible and popular source can do. And this is not something we can blame these sites for either, you have to get that review out early because that’s when you’ll be generating the majority of your revenue.

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#12

I only had a minor gripe with TB about not addressing people that might be concerned about spoilers. Overall though I feel like he has good insight on this topic. I think theninsulting is because he’s blunt and cares about even an underinformed consumer.

He made an excellent point about the recent efforts companies have made to try and push for anti-consumer money grabs. Even if it was spelled out, things like Deus Ex cash shop, and if you’ve seen Cohh talk about that concern on DF you know what I mean. People becoming overhyped and has happened, and because things like late review copies and inadequate times there is a base of people getting at least partly screwed by hype trains. This impacts those gamers who decide to wait and make an informed far less than it impacts impulse buyers.

You’re right in that anyone can search and find a source to verify any decision they want to make. The big difference this offers is less time for more informed decisions whether people want to be patient or not.

I suppose personally I expect this type of stuff from TB. Hes always been measured enough to me about being very verbose about his opinions. I think overall that’s why I end up trusting him more than most.

Personally this doesn’t really impact me too heavily but I can see an audience that it does, and they deserve more information before they end up spending money they might not have if they had seen enough negative or cautious ridden reviews. We’lol see how this continues though.

(Apologies if my thoughts are scattered or dishointed, busy day :-/ )

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#13

To me it sounds like Bethesda doesn´t want any bad reviews to effect their revenues, today there´s too many good trailers and promotions and the game doesn´t actually live up to the expectations, recently one of those examples are No Mans Sky.

A gamer who looks at trailers from E3 for example, could get sold on a game or an idea of a game that are being “painted” to them and go more on their own judgement based on those promotions than from other peoples opinions in reviews - a review is just another gamers opinion, is it not?

In this day and age when trailers on youtube gets massive views (and hype through social media), do the game companies need the game reviews? the trailers sells the game, a review from IGN who gives 10/10 doesn’t sell as much as it used to do.

So they´re balancing the revenue with publicity from reviews and spoilers from reviews, plus they can afford to not be transparent about their product. it´s a win win for the companies unless the gamers refuse to buy a game until someone else says it´s good - which most gamers don’t, to be honest.

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#14

This is at the core of it. Bethesda realises that they won’t sell a lot more games based on reviews. Due to pure statistics and potential risks involved with any game release along with the recent purchasing trends, they are going to sell more games if there aren’t any bad reviews out there.

The people who look up reviews are the ones who would be deterred from purchasing if they see bad ones. It is my perception that most people experience a sort of ‘honeymoon’ phase with games, although I think reviewers are better sheltered from this just from their experience, I don’t think they’re immune from it. This might contribute them to release more positive reviews based on 8 hours of playing, than they would based on 30 hours of playing. So then if these customers looking up reviews don’t find any bad reviews then a percentage of these people will probably end up buying the game, the rest will wait for more reviews. At this point Bethesda has already made money off of their policy.

#15

its a first impressions. He does not finish the game which reviews do for the most part.

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#16

I’ll have to check out the Roundtable Podcast and listen to what they said on the topic.

To everyone: people seem to be assuming reviewers will rush out their reviews due to this policy but that may not be the case. We may see a influx of “reviews in progress” which would give first impressions and give the reviewer more time to play the game.

Until Betheda’s new games come out all we can do is speculate.

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#17

Yes but do we honestly think that reviews in progress is a good thing? It’s an attempt at alleviating the core problem which is that reviewers don’t get enough time to write their reviews before release. It’s a half-measure solution to a problem forced on them by the publishers/developers.

We assume reviewers will rush out their reviews because that is what internet journalism is all about. It’s about getting page hits and getting them when the news are hot and trending. Look to massive companies like CNN and BBC who have to amend their news after the fact to correct factual errors because they had to rush the news out there to be the first to break the story. This is a regular occurrence nowadays and no longer an abnormality.

The same phenomenon can be seen in game journalism, most people will look for reviews right before or right around release for a video game so it reviewers have a financial incentive to get the reviews out there first, and most will compromise the quality of their review if it means they will be able to pay rent.

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#18

It is anti consumer because it is taking away info that should already exist in the world about the game in terms of early copies to reviewers/content creators. Not sure if this policy extends to streamers and youtubers, but I do not see why it would not. Its a shame really if they only way the game is displayed is in a dev controlled environment, where it would be better if the game was given a lot of people so that performance problems, and bugs can be seen.

I don’t impulse buy on day one. My purchase of Dishonored 2 would have been planned on different factors. Part of is based on the previous game, but I would want to see a portion of the game played outside of what they showed in e3. That was a Dev controlled environment.

I also don’t want others to suffer because they dropped x amount of money on a AAA title or any overhyped game.

I don’t really care about those guys sorry. Sounds like fanboyism to me.

As @Typoko mentioned if its story based game, have a good chuck of the game as a demo sent to reviewers and content creators with the understanding that it is taken from the final version of the game ( or as close to that as they can). That way at least people will get to see the performance, mechanics and a general impression of the game before the release.

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#19

Its sad. Also why I don’t really care about what game journalist’s write anymore. A few sites I have on my twitter feed and click through when they mention performance issues.

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#20

I think that the policy is complete shit to be honest. The reason’s given for the policy change are, as TB discussed an excuse to try and fudge day one reviews. Leaks will always happen and restricting copies to reviewers won’t change that.
What I’m concerned with is that Streamers and Youtubers will be signed up for coverage that will be distorted by restrictions on what they can show ( like Shadow of Mordor ) , which I think is the real reason they have implemented this new policy. I tend to look to sites like Giantbomb or Jim Sterling and now probably Waypoint for reviews as I trust their process of reviewing i.e. don’t need to rush etc.
There is nothing stopping Bethesda doing this , they are in there rights to withhold copies for as long as they like , but I hope that both Consumers treat any coverage prior to 24hrs before release as purely PR Marketing and stop pre-ordering Bethesda games.

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