[Feature] It’s harder to write honest game reviews than you think it is.
The number one thing I think people don’t quite understand about this industry is that developers are people. We seem to believe this silly facade that only the folks who make good games are people. That for some reason the developers of games like Call of Duty, Madden- or even Carnival King and Wheel of Fortune- are not people. “They must be emotionless robots!” we seem to think, simply because they put out a product that comes off as lazy and profit-driven.
Just a quick bit of enlightenment: They are people. I have had dealings with a fair amount of developers and publishers, from Square Enix to Scholastic to Activision (who won’t return my e-mails!) to Popcap, and the impression you get from every single team is that they’re impassioned, honest individuals who are trying to make the best game they can with the resources they’ve got. It’s just a matter of how far you can get with the time and money you’ve got.
“Our games are never truly finished, and they are never perfect.”, Jools Watsham (Mutant Mudds, Moon, Bomb Monkey) told me over e-mail today, “One day I hope to fix this issue, but for now that is how it is due to time and money constraints.”
You want to know why this makes it hard on smaller reviewers like myself? Let’s say Jools was coming out with a game that looked terrible, and after playing it, I knew it was terrible. He and the team at Renegade Kid did the absolute best they could, but the final product just wasn’t good because they ran out of either time or money. So I’m sitting at my desk, thinking about writing my review, and you know what I’d probably do?
I’d fudge the truth. I’d use words like “decent” or “alright” instead of “mediocre” or “bad”, because I know these guys- at least to an extent- and having to send an e-mail to a developer with a negative review you’ve written about their game stinks. I hate it. It’s my least favorite e-mail to send in the entire world, because you never hear back and you know they looked at it and saw that you didn’t like it and augh. It really sucks. Then I sit there and wonder how they take it. I guess maybe it’s giving up my integrity as an honest game reviewer to change the way I state my opinion due to some external factor, but I can’t help it!
“If our game receives a score that is lower than expected, my first reaction is sadness and disappointment” Jools says, “and then I realize the fact that everyone has a unique perspective on everything. It is a fact that not every reviewer is going to score any of our games the same. On the other hand, if our game receives a score that is equal or higher than expected, I immediately assume the reviewer ‘gets it’ and has exquisite taste!”
It’s true, game reviews are totally subjective, but it’s still gotta hurt a bit when someone says that your product- within which you’ve placed several months or years of your life- stinks. I don’t like- and systematically avoid- having to do that. My point? If you notice a smaller gaming site give a game a 7/10 when the internet-wide average is closer to a 5/10, you can place a safe bet that they’re not giving it a higher score because they were paid off or so they can get favors down the line. They’re doing it because they know the guys who made it, and don’t want to tell them that their game just plain sucks.
