You have an ugly child! [part 1]
![You have an ugly child! [part 1]](/content/features/24/header.jpg)
OPINION
An interesting phenomenon: Most review scores are either really positive or really negative. Very few games score in between. How so? We take a long hard look at the industry.
If you were to take a look around the industry, in particular those magazines and websites that offer reviews and previews of games, you might note an interesting phenomenon. Of all of the (p)reviews that you see, you will find a substantial number of critiques that essentially say "Great game!" There will more than likely be a greater number of (p)reviews that distill down to, "Pretty good." There may even be several, "Good, but with a few reservations" conclusions. But then there's a big gap of qualitative analysis until you get to "Awful!" and "Truly bad!" and maybe even a "Contender for worst game ever!"
Why the gap? Why does it seem that a game is so rarely (p)reviewed as merely, "Okay"?
To derive that answer, it helps if you understand the industry. It consists of publishers, who have a vested interest in the success of the final product. It includes marketers whose primary interest is in getting you, the customer, to put down hard currency for whatever it is their clients are selling. There are developers that take an original idea and mold it into something that -they- think will appeal to many, many consumers. And then there are the designers who created the original concept, and generally put in most of the actual work into making the finished product. All of these people have every motivation to want the project to succeed as much as possible.
Naturally, they don't particularly want to be told that their game isn't all that great, much less that it is total crap. "Great!" and any form of "Good!" is acceptable to them because such comments are left-handedly saying, "Buy the game!". "Okay" and "So-so" actually suggest "Maybe this game's not for you," which is something they don't want to have anybody hear or read. But, "Awful!"? Well, a game has to be really pathetic to get that kind of (p)review and if it is, even the people making the game -must- know it's bad. And how can you honestly defend something that pitiful? Going public with a rebuttal would actually get the negative message out to more people as the debate heats up. But somehow that "Okay" critique is something that just calls for an aggressive defense.
Any forum that provides reviews and previews of games is not someplace that operates in a vacuum. There are any number of influences that affect what appears in the forum. In magazines, content is one thing, but the biggest influence is the source of most of the company's cashflow: advertising sales. Now, not so surprisingly, any magazine that does game (p)reviews does so primarily because Management believes (p)reviews will be of interest to the readers of the publication. And if such (p)reviews are of interest to the readers, then game manufacturers -will- be interested in that publication. If the circulation is large enough, those manufacturers may very well consider throwing some advertising dollars at the magazine. However, what does it look like if a magazine accepts those advertising dollars, runs the ads, and then runs (p)reviews that are less than favorable to the games manufactured by that advertiser? You can imagine it poses a conflict of interest for the magazine. If a forum operator (magazine or internet) takes money from the same game manufacturers that provide the games to be (p)reviewed, then the operator has a dilemma: What happens if the source of a major portion of its revenue produces a marginal product that would most likely warrant a less-than-favorable (p)review? With very little imagination, you will most likely conclude that the game manufacturer will decide that it is foolish to help bankroll an outfit that says bad things about the game manufacturer's products. Very quickly, a significant amount of the forum's income disappears.
Meanwhile, forum operators are trying diligently to attract advertising dollars -and- grow readership. Not surprisingly, they recognize that they don't want to offend the people giving them money. So, frequently, "Okay" becomes "Good!", and "Good!" becomes "Great!". And anything worse than "Good" is generally simply not (p)reviewed. Even in condemning a game, (p)reviewers on such sites frequently "soften the blow" by including praise about something in the game, just so the article won't be entirely negative. But in doing so, such comments perform a disservice to the consumers: I've actually backtracked some of the blurbs manufacturers put on the packaging of marginal games only to discover that the overall articles the comments were gleaned from were, in fact, overwhelmingly negative. Yet, the manufacturers can in all honesty claim, "But those are direct quotes!"
Such is the world of advertising.
(end of part 1)