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Gamasutra Podcast Transcript - Game Reviews Roundtable
To go back to the point I was saying about nobody's embraced the Youtube, Podcast and Myspace thing yet. They're not looking outside of the ordinary for opportunities. I think the quicker they adapt to that, the more information they are going to get out of the games. There are going to be less games next year so we all need to be writing and doing more about fewer topics. There are going to be some big gaps next year that we need to just pull out of our ass. OK there are no screenshots for six months on this game, let's get the level designer to talk about why he is doing things a certain way or we going to want access to do that. No, just give me the guide. Vederman: I agree with that, but I think the issue also runs deeper than that. It's that people are afraid of getting that sort of viral thing going on. If Youtube was so easy, more people would be doing it. I guess to your earlier point on about how people think they need to produce the stuff too much so they spend a lot of time doing that and they can't get anything out early and frequently as a result because they are just spinning their wheels on production values that they don't really need. I think it's a scary thing because nobody is sure what sticks. We've all put stuff out there that we thought would be great and we thought would get a lot of traction and it doesn't. So, I grant you that the sooner the industry gets on board with getting us those types of materials earlier will stumble upon the right formula for what works, but it's still a scary thing. So it's hard right now for me, fault necessary publishers for that, from my end obviously I'm not dealing with as much video as you guys are. For me it's just a general access to resource that I need more often and in greater quantity that has always been a problem, it's not getting any better- it seems to be harder. Now more than ever there are more approvals than ever to get anything you need- Davison: Yes, say you have a story with four screenshots attached to it and no cover art. Great, nice pitch, thanks. Vederman: Terrific, and they're upset when you don't take the deal! Davison: Yes. Vederman: They don't understand why you're not taking the deal. It's going the wrong direction. We need to turn the car around and start driving it back the other direction start the process earlier and we need more help, we need more resources earlier. Kasavin: OK, from a developer-centric or even a publisher-centric point of view, they want coverage but they perhaps don't understand stupid things that they do or great things that they do that enable you to give them more traction or that absolutely put banana peels under the wheels. Vederman: I still find, this has been the case ever since I've been at the magazine, a lot of developers and publishers are concerned about getting preview code out too early. They are regardless of our pedigrees. No matter how long John, or myself, or Greg have been doing this, they're concerned that if we see code too early, we will slam it. Though it's never happened before, though PC Gamer could never be accused of having done a sort of review in a preview-format, there are still concerns. So we don't get code early enough, we can't cover something and then we can't give them the covers that they want, that we want to give them, and opportunities pass by time and time again. There is no one publisher who is better or worse at this. It's sort of a problem throughout the industry. Developers and publishers are far too concerned about what we are going to think about early code and they shouldn't be. We are very used to working with very early code and we know what's going to happen. We know we are going to get crashes, we know we are going to get blue screens. We know textures are not going to be there but we do this for a living and we can be trusted. [laughs] You can get us the stuff and we'll get you better coverage and our readers will thank you for it. Kasavin: Frequently from a developer's side, a game doesn't seem to come together until maybe the last 5-10% of the process. You're working so hard on all the systems and putting everything together, but it doesn't seem to gel and even internally, it's kind of a leap of faith. You have vision for what you want to build but you don't really start seeing that come together until a lot of the systems are already in place. I think part of it might be that insecurity on our end. John, you were alluding to this earlier, there are things they can do to give you access in other ways. They can send you concept art, they can give you access to people on the development team, they can let people talk to you directly about whatever- some interesting or funny story or something associated with the development, your readers and listeners and viewers are just as hungry for that as they are for a screen shot sometimes. Vederman: I think there is just a very delicate balance and that's why there is no easy answer to this. I think part of what leads to the publisher restraint, it goes beyond just the fear of publications reviewing their game before it's done as it were I think there is a lot of competitive pressure to keep their hand close to their vest and not give away everything they are doing, even though the media, essentially is going to want to know everything. I think we are pretty good about not saying, "hey tell me what the end of the story is going to be" or, "show me every last boss fight before the game comes out" but at the same time the demand for pre-release information is basically unlimited so publishers need to decide what is a reasonable amount of information to put out there before we start ruining the experience that people are going to have or worse yet tipping off the competition which can probably react pretty swiftly in some cases to what our key features are going to be about. That is a really tough challenge and it's going to come down to who is going to find the line fastest and best. I do agree with the point made earlier that publishers have to make time to work with the media and that it is not good enough to say that all of our time is going into making the game because obviously the marketing of the game and working with the media is important too. There are these games out there like Gears Of War, I mean their success was basically pre-ordained. Even if that game turned out to be horrible, it was still going to sell pretty well because it got people so excited about just what they had seen thus far. I think with that game, obviously Microsoft was really behind it and they actually let people play it. The coverage of that game went beyond the videos. A lot of the people who previewed it went as far as to say, "We don't know if this game is going to be the best game ever, but from what we've played it was pretty fantastic." Did that help the game? Of course it did. That all just comes back to giving people access to play it, to see it, to hear from the developers, hear about their vision for the game, see it all come together and when it finally does it's just a really great success story. |
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