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Gamasutra Podcast Transcript - Game Reviews Roundtable
Davison: There's like a PR assumption that we should all be agreeing, and that we should be working towards conformity, which sort of undermines the whole purpose of an aggregator in the first place. Kasavin: I think what PR does is, they gravitate to the highest scores. And to the seeming statistical outliers, to the guys that rate their games low, they say, "Well, why didn't you fall in line with these publications who rated it high?" And the answer is, because we're not all using the same rating system, and because we're not... Vederman: All the same people. Kasavin: The Borg. Yeah, exactly. Vederman: I actually did not know that Game Rankings wasn't very highly trafficked, because... Kasavin: Yeah. It's clearly an influential site - the fact that we're talking about it now. Vederman: Yeah, sure. Kasavin: But I just can't imagine that there are a lot of game players who use that as their main destination, because most game players don't really care about a bunch of different publications. They care about EGM or IGN or GameSpot or PC Gamer. They've got their couple of favorite outlets, and those are the ones whose scores they're going to look at. Vederman: We just recently did a survey, and we were actually surprised, given how much time we spend looking at Game Rankings, how infrequently our readers do it. They are far more likely to listen to us than the aggregate score on Game Rankings, which I wish more game publishers would recognize. Davison: Yeah. Kasavin: Well, I think - looking at it from the game publishers' perspective as best I can - I see why it's important to them, yeah. But it shouldn't be something that's necessarily used as ammunition against any given publication. Not to say that it is. I mean, at GameSpot, our reviews are sometimes not looked on all that favorably by game publishers, but I think we've been around long enough to where, over the long run, they understand where we're coming from and where our commitments to this stuff lie. Vederman: Sure. Davison: And talking about scores - I mean, this time of year, I think it really brings a lot of things home. Vede, you were saying that a five for you is different from someone else, but what I'm finding right now is that really sticking to being kind of tough... you really have to do it at this time of year, because otherwise, the high scores stop meaning anything. Vederman: Yeah. Kasavin: Yeah. Davison: You know, I mean, like... when [Dan] Hsu gave Gears of War a ten, whether you agreed with it or not - and even internally, we didn't - but people paid attention to it, because he doesn't give a ten very often. Vederman: Right. Davison: And this idea that, "Well, everything has to be in the seven to nine range," that we all get beaten up for on Quarter to Three and GAF and whatever... Vederman: Sure. Davison: It's... we have to... Kasavin: Well, that's like three guys on Quarter to Three, though. I mean, with all due respect to Tom Chick, I don't necessarily believe the idea that the full extent of the scoring range isn't used. I mean, all our publications have been giving Gundam Crossfire, which is like the best-selling PlayStation 3 launch game in Japan, got twos and threes from major publications. I think most games fall into an average, and that's why there are a lot of scores in the seven and eight ranges - because a lot of games have a similar level of quality. Kim: It just begs the question - what are these ranking systems for? Like, who does Game Rankings actually service? Because, Greg Kasavin, you brought up a good point that it's not very trafficked. I mean, apparently, the people who care about it most seem to be the publishers. Do these guys forget that the point of you doing reviews is you're doing this as a consumer service? Kasavin: A game publisher doesn't need to be concerned about whether a gaming publication is serving its audience faithfully; it's concerned about how coverage of its games look, and I think rightfully so. Vederman: To buyers, in particular. Kasavin: To people who might potentially pay money for the game. Absolutely. Whereas a gaming publication ostensibly is concerned with its credibility and with maintaining consistency in its evaluation of games to the best extent that it can. For me, one of the interesting ironies is that, at GameSpot, we often get it from every angle. It's like, when we post, let's say, an unpopular review, it's not like we get cases where a game publisher is really mad but our audience is really happy. Usually, everyone's mad. It's not about trying to make anybody happy, or trying to make anyone mad, it's just being consistent with our message. Davison: And you find, I think, especially in the fall, that people have already decided before they review the games whether they're going to like it or not. Vederman: Yeah, absolutely. Davison: And they're looking for vindication from the review score, so you get called out for saying something's bad, because people don't want it to be. Vederman: You just stole my sound bite! Goddammit! Davison: Ah, I'm sorry! Vederman: I was going to jump in with that! But yeah, that's exactly right. They're either looking for a reason to back up their feelings of love or hate. Kasavin: Right. |
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