[Multiplatform] Midway, Sony Sports and Ubi Soft Hate EGM...

Long ago, I stopped visiting 1up, IGN and most other videogame review sites. It's always been painfully apparent that certain developers were/are given a promotional bias. Look at how far in advance the coverage for GTA: Vice City began; even 18 months before the release, EGM was pushing four-page spreads with recycled screenshots and interviews with the guys who brought the programmers their coffee. It's no wonder sales were through the roof, the hype was unprecedented.

At the same time, other games barely received as much as an acknowledgement to their existence. A great example is the old PSX game, "Rogue Trip: Vacation 2012". It's hilarious, plays like a dream and provides a strong challenge. Yet it barely earned as much as a blurb in 1998. I only heard of it because a friend worked at an EB and played it in the back room. I still own and play my copy regularly. But Singletrac didn't pony up the bucks for promotion since they were having internal issues (the company split and formed 989 Studios a few months later), so nobody in the media gave two shits.

Do you want to know where I always go for my game reviews? It might sound dumb but GameFAQs hasn't steered me wrong yet. The reviews are posted by people who've actually played the game, and it's easy to distinguish between rabid fanboys and honest critics. It stands to reason that anyone who takes the time to write a review for GameFAQs has a shared interest in the game's genre, so you'll be hearing the words of someone who actually knows and cares about RPGs or shmups. This is a lot better than reading the insincere words of some weiner at Game Informer who was told that his review of "Mass Effect" had better be positively glowing or else he's out of a job. Or worse, the disgruntled ramblings of someone who usually reviews sports titles but was forced to cover for another writer by spending time with Monster Rancher, and giving it a 4 out of sheer spite. If a game is poor, most GameFAQs reviewers will admit as much and back it up with explanations. While the boards there are atrocious, the reviews are pretty damned accurate.

How ya doing, buddy?

Originally Posted by Rotorblade

The reason you aren't going to see "Rogue Trip: Vacation 2012" in a gaming publication such as EGM is that most of those major publications are targeting the mainstream demographic.

I didn't choose "Rogue Trip" as my example out of sheer randomness. It makes for a fine example of payola bias because its developer, Singletrac, also produced the phenomenally successful "Twisted Metal" games.

But "Rogue Trip" was also a car-combat game, released at the zenith of the genre's popularity, by the design team that was responsible for the most successful entries in the field up until that point, and well, ever. So why wouldn't the magazines provide coverage? It was certainly an established demographic and the producers were very credible.

The sad truth is that, as I briefly mentioned, Singletrac was experiencing some internal division. The design team didn't agree with many of the executive decisions handed down, issues relating to pushing inferior products out the door with increasing rapidity just to capture a larger market share - a quantity over quality approach to sales.

Ultimately, the designers were granted their last hurrah before Singletrac was reformed under the masthead "989 Studios". "Rogue Trip" was released and the designers were later quoted as saying that it was everything they'd always envisioned Twisted Metal being before orders from upstairs turned the games into something slightly different.

But what does a game magazine care about these details? Their job isn't to report on internal scandals within mid-sized studios (though they do this anyhow). Their purpose is to find quality games and review the hell out of them. As stated above, "Rogue Trip" met every review criteria of the day, save for one: it didn't get a final push in advertising due to the impending split. Without the check in hand, no magazine felt compelled to give the game a second look; there was no profit in reviewing games just because they were actually, you know, good.

The end result is that a remarkably fun game was overlooked by the masses. While it's certainly the developer's fault for not standing behind their product, a fair portion of blame can be put on the review industry for caring more about kickbacks than fulfilling the purpose of their existence. I understand that journalism is a business too, but still, a significant portion of readers care just as much about the smaller titles than the larger ones. Look at the sleeper hit that "Puzzle Quest: Challenge of the Warlords" became due to some gratuitous praise by a few unaffiliated sites, particularly Penny Arcade. It's possible to support games simply for being of high quality without expecting some kind of compensation. It worked out for PA: a month later, the developer returned the favor by purchasing banner space. And it's not even like PA needed more willing advertisers; 1st Playable was just that appreciative.


Incidentally, for all their bluster, 989 Studios went on to flood the market with countless sports and action titles, most of which were found to be merely average or worse by the gaming community. Eventually, 989 developed a reputation for pushing games out the door long before they were polished and ready. Even the reviewers couldn't dismiss this fact. I don't know what happened to them but it's been quite a while since anyone's heard a thing out of 989. They were probably absorbed by Activision or something. But you see where the mass-market onslaught approach can go dreadfully wrong when you care more about shoring up solid reviews than creating a worthwhile product.

There's nowhere I can't reach.