Topic: General Gaming Industry Questions

That used to be the case for me, sure, but I decided that it was ridiculous to keep stuff here gathering dust when other people might have a use for the games. I'm not allowed to sell or trade them, obviously, but I mainly pass them on to local friends or give them away in forum contests. With more and more stuff turning up digitally, I've got less choice in the matter anyway.

Tried to take all my old PlayStation 2 stuff to a charity shop one time - must have been about 200 titles there, all marked as "promotional copy only" - and they turned it down as being "old crap." Bloody charming! Ended up giving it, and the PlayStation 2 to the local children's ward instead.

I still feel guilty about handing them that copy of Cheggers' Party Quiz on PlayStation 2 as part of the pile...poor kids.

Back in the day magazines (like Zzap 64 - showing my age lol) used to include individual scores for sound / gfx / gameplay / originality / value etc. They also used to include summaries by the different reviewing staff too so no single opinion could sway the overall conclusion. Why doesn't this happen any more?

Have you ever had a publisher/developer contact you asking why a review wasn't up yet? It happened to me yesterday (after I had had a copy for five freaking days) and it really rubbed me the wrong way. I could understand if it had been weeks and every other outlet had their reviews up but to my knowledge my review was the second one to go live so it just seemed unprofessional to me.

I think this is down to the fact that GameRankings and Metacritic (which are very good traffic drivers for sites) reguire a single score.

Sure, you could still give the individual scores and then a final "overall" score, but you just need to look at IGNs comments system to see why that doesn't work. "LOLZ u gave it 6.2 for graphx and then it gets 9.1 overall LOLZ this site is a joke LOLZ."

People can't get away from the idea that seperated scores means that the final score is an average or a total, when that's not usually the case.

Yes. And when replying, I generally don't provide any further comment other than going along the lines of "Thank you for your enquiry. The review is scheduled to go live on XX/XX/XXXX."

I don't give excuses. I don't give reasons. If they follow up and ask me specifically why the review won't go live until the date that I've specified, I tell them that it's because we're busy. No more, no less. I'm always polite, of course.

They're chasing to ensure that their PR is co-ordinated and as many reviews as possible hit at the same time, so that potential purchasers are buffeted with reviews at every angle. That isn't my problem. My review isn't designed to serve their PR plans, its designed to help my readers to make a purchasing decision. Therefore, they don't get to tell me when I publish, no more than they can tell me the score that I have to give.

Only one company has ever removed me from their press list for taking this approach (admittedly, they didn't agree with a score I had given, either) and they went out of business whereas...oh, yeah...I'm still here.

Thank you for the tip, Ken. Will be sure to do that in the future.

Have you ever been to TGS? I've always wanted to go despite its increasing insignificance.

Nope, never had the chance, nor the desire, really. Don't know why. I love Japanese stuff and Japanese games, so you'd think I'd want to...but...meh.