“It Was a Weird F*cking Place to Work”

Judging by activity in online forums and letters to the editor scribbled in red crayon, it's not uncommon for readers of game magazines and websites to believe that nefarious dealings and company loyalty (bias) often come into play when determining how a game will score in a review. While no one we spoke to said that they had witnessed or participated in seriously underhanded behavior to win good scores for their games, most publicists believed that their efforts had some affect on the outcome of reviews.

“I think PR can influence scores, definitely,” says Zuniga. “At least by a half point (in a 0-10 scale).” It sounds like small change, but for Zuniga during his tenure at Rockstar, every half-point counted. The company, he says, put heavy pressure on their PR department to deliver stellar scores. “At Rockstar there was a fear factor,” says Zuniga. “Our bosses tried to intimidate us into doing everything we could—it was total mental warfare. The big guys knew in their hearts that we couldn't change a journalist's mind, but they still pushed hard for us to try, just in case we could.”

To further this push, the higher ups at Rockstar emphasized person-to-person contact between publicists and editors, which included transcontinental flights to hand-deliver new games for review. “Rockstar is very big on personalizing things,” says Zuniga. “So, we'd go out to deliver code by hand. We'd get up at 6am, fly to the west coast, deliver code all over the place by hand, then we'd leave that night and head to Minnesota [home to the offices of Game Informer magazine]. For journalists, it was embarrassing and wasn't special at all. But the higher-ups wouldn't believe it.”

Illustration by Joshua Ellingson

As part of the effort to personalize, Rockstar's PR department tracked scores for reviewers on a person-by-person basis, often hoping to influence which writers were selected to review their games. “Rockstar was big on trying to get specific people to review specific games,” says Zuniga. “But it’s a fine line—you can't just come out and ask, because it seems like you're trying to take away editorial control.” They went so far as to track seemingly pointless personal details of some writers. “Hilariously, we even had a list of journalist preferences: Likes cake, married, went to school at Indiana U. Shit like that,” says Zuniga. “It was a weird f*cking place to work.”

In the end, the efforts never earned the kind of scores head honchos wanted. “The score would never live up to the expectation,” says Zuniga. “If it scored a 99, the expectation was for every other review to be 100.” What the higher-ups wanted was what business tends to want: predictability, something that can be planned and executed. “They wanted to feel comfort,” says Zuniga. “They wanted to know that when we went to Company A and talked with Person B that we could expect result C.”

Pressure from above on publicists to deliver good review scores for the games they represent isn't limited to Rockstar Games. It's a given for a profession that's expected to work miracles with the press. Flagship's Tricia Gray: “I was once in contract negotiations with a nameless publisher. 'The bonus scheme,' says nameless publisher's nameless boss, 'is determined by how well our games are critically received.' I've felt bullied by superiors in the past to get review scores altered.... So, I told this potential employer that I'd like to strike this particular review bonus from my contract. That's not my job. I don't sway scores. I inform. I advertise. I even spin and investigate.... I do not threaten, bribe, kill, et cetera.”