I know many of you who read this regularly are PSN users, so I wanted to drop this article here.
The jist of it: Sony Japan says they’ll try to have PSN back online May 31st.
If Joseph Bernstein is telling the truth in his article, he gives a great reason of why there’s a growing suspicion of big gaming news sites. Take a look at this excerpt:
“When I was handed my first game to review, an amusement-park simulator called Thrillville: Off the Rails, an editor told me that if my final score diverged from the Metacritic mean by more than a given amount (I cannot remember if it was 20 or 30), I would have to justify myself to the executive editor. I was surprised, though I shouldn’t have been; a story had been circulating about a PR representative haranguing another website’s editor over a review, not because of any substantive critique, but because the score sunk the game’s Metacritic average below an acceptable threshold.”
There’s a couple alarming things about that statement. First, if a reviewer has a well-written, well-supported opinion, they should be able to write whatever the fuck they want. If a reviewer says “Nintendo is the absolute worst thing to happen to games ever, and here’s why…” and that statement is then followed up by hard facts contained in a well-written article, an ethical editor will run that opinion, and defend it to death. Company policy shouldn’t be “if you disagree with the someone, see my in my office.” That’s completely spineless, and flies in the face of what makes up good opinion.
On the other hand, if a review is written intentionally to bait readers and has no backing facts, an editor has every reason to make that author explain his or her self, and then decide if the article should run. Hopefully it won’t.
The point is, one article is a well-formed dissenting opinion, the other article is a poor opinion with no backing – something which is potentially damaging to a publication’s credibility.
Alternatively, here’s what else will ruin a publication’s credibility: letting PR henchmen run your show. Any ethical publication should allow its writers to print their opinions, given they are backed by fact, and they are well-written. However, it is completely unethical to call into question an opinion because it goes against the grain, and that might upset someone whose purpose is making a company look good at all costs. Who cares if some PR asshole is breathing down your neck because one of your writers told the truth? As an editor your job is dealing with people like that so your writers can be honest. An editor caving under the pressure of some PR rep is like a Police Chief telling his deputies not to arrest some drug lord because he might get upset. It’s not your job to care about the criminal. Your job is to do whatever you can to help your subordinates do their jobs.
Giving your writers the impression that they’ll be reprimanded for an honest review is exactly the reason why readers openly theorize about cozy relationships between gaming publications and video game companies. You might think that giving a developer a soft review helps you, and for the short-term you’d be right – they’ll grant you better access to exclusives, reveiw copies, and other special privileges. But that big sloppy score has a downside.
Your credibility will slowly decline over time as people realize that your company policy is to be nice to everyone, even at the expense of doing your job. No one reads a publication they can’t trust. Morons will. But morons will do anything. And eventually even those people will stop reading.
But hey, if you’re the Police Chief, and you don’t want to upset criminals, don’t worry – they’ve got plenty of money to throw to someone like you.
Don’t worry though – Bernstein’s article gets even worse. As he goes on to explain how he reviews two games, Off the Rails and Naruto: Path of the Ninja, it becomes apparent that Bernstein shoulders some of the blame as well.
“I wasn’t nervous to defend lower scores for either game, exactly; rather, I felt a stinging depression at the prospect. I’ll admit it. I just did not want to see myself as a person who argued over whether a 20 was a fair score for a minor videogame based on the formative years in the life of a comical ninja, especially if that argument was being had because my editor did not want to have another dispiriting argument with a flack about how that 20 was pulling the Metacritic average down to a 49. Pride is a sin, I know, but it’s my favorite one.”
Look man, you’re already working at an organization whose sole purpose is to evaluate what many people think are children’s toys. Get over yourself. As an ethical writer, you have to be frank about your opinions. You cannot skirt the truth because you’re feeling lazy. Sure, what you’re working on isn’t the most earth-shattering piece of literature ever to be created. But when you work as a published reviewer, you have an obligation to publish your honest opinion regardless of how pointless it may seem.
It’s possible for a good writer to be born out of a system where bad editors run the show. But when a writer lets his or her ethical standards drop down to the level of a bad editor’s, you’re worse than they are. At least an editor can deflect some of the blame by claiming there was external pressure from management, or a PR rep (which there will always be). But as a writer, you can’t make that claim. You can say that you had a bad editor who demanded you acquiesce to even worse policies, but when you don’t try to challenge those policies by writing good material, you have no excuse. If you have no drafts to show how your work was completely mangled by your editors, you’ve got no evidence. In fact, by making that claim you were just caught telling a lie again. So don’t try to put the blame on those higher up than you when you know damn well that you aren’t doing your best work.
If there’s something to be learned from Bernstein’s article, it’s this: don’t be afraid. Don’t be afraid to be honest, don’t be afraid to stand up for yourself or your colleagues, and don’t be afraid to do your best work.
In a hearing for the House Subcommittee on Commerce, Manufacturing, and Trade, security expert Dr. Gene Spafford claimed that months ago Sony knew PSN’s security software was outdated, but did not fix the problem.
I’m by no means a legal expert, but my guess is Sony is about to get their pants sued off.
Check out The Consumerist for more info.
With stuff like this (NSFW) floating around, it’s not hard to figure out why young men are interested in video games, and why women generally aren’t. I don’t speak Russian, so I had to rely on google translate, but from what I can gather, these pictures were taken at KRI 2008, a developers’ conference in Russia.
The sad fact is, as long as things like booth babes are still a widely accepted marketing practice within the games industry, video games will go down in history as nothing more than the pastime of homo man-childus. Why would the average woman care about something that doesn’t care about them?
That’s a problem because within any form of expression, it’s important to have participants that are from varying backgrounds and worldviews. Different experiences lead to a wealth of different stories to be told, which keeps things fresh, interesting, and ultimately engages a wider audience. For games, bringing in new perspective means appealing to women – encouraging them to consume and create games. Though things have gotten better (you’re more likely to find a woman playing games now than you were 15 years ago), games are still primarily consumed by a very narrow audience – young men. Even then, it’s hard to deny that games appeal only to a certain subset within that group.
That’s not what I’d call variety.
Opening gaming to people who don’t fit that mold is beneficial for creativity. A wider audience means there’d be more interest in games that don’t pander to one group’s tastes. This would encourage developers whose abilities are being stifled by 20+ years of industry trends. Believe it or not, it gets just as frustrating for a developer to toil away at the same games hours on end, years at a time, as it would be for you to only stick to a single franchise for ten years. Variety is stimulating, and good work comes from people who are stimulated – which would lead to an overall improvement in the quality of games released today.
If improving the quality of work within my favorite hobby means getting rid of boothbabes for a friendlier image, so be it. I’ll personally write the memo.
In a moment of weakness I bought Cataclysm, the latest World of Warcraft expansion.
It’s strange. No matter how many times I swear off WoW, I managed to get sucked back into Azeroth. Though, this time I know exactly why – my guild. They’ve been having a rough time fielding two raids consistently, so I felt like I should hop in to help them out. The strange this is, I had been swearing off WoW for some months now, and I haven’t raided since 2007, when I realized it was poisoning my life.
But for some reason, I’ve been rolling around the idea of not only resubscribing to the video game equivalent of a controlling girlfriend, the thought of raiding has re-entered my head. Only because it’d help my guild, of course.
I can’t help but wonder, am I using my guild’s plight as an excuse to play the hero by coming back in when they need raiders? Why would I want to raid just to help someone else play a game that I find morally questionable? I fully admit that I probably won’t enjoy raiding much, and I’ll get tired of it within a couple months. I feel like an old athlete who remembers his glory days, and he wants to get back onto the field one last time. I remember the glory I had main-tanking 40 player dungeons. Everyone focusing on me, dependent upon my ability to play the game at an exceptionally high level. Every conquest we made felt like a point of personal pride – like a star athlete would feel when his team takes the championship.
On the other hand, like a retired football player, I know the game isn’t good for me anymore. It’s rough on me. Nothing good can happen if I step back onto that field. Sure, I might get a couple shots at reclaiming the old days, but I don’t need to prove anything to anyone anymore. Furthermore, I know that playing WoW can be self-destructive.
WoW taps into my sense of achievement, and my desire to be someone important – to be a part of something bigger than myself. To be important in the real world, it takes decades of hard work and persistence. In WoW, it took me 8 days of play time – 192 hours. WoW also gave me the luxury of not being that person when I didn’t feel like it – Michael Jackson can’t just stop being himself because he’s tired of getting mobbed when he goes to the grocery store. WoW is addicting in that way. When I played heavily, there were stretches of weeks where all of my free time was spend in Azeroth. It scratches a psychological itch in a way that nothing else has ever done for me. That’s why it’s so dangerous.
That’s why I keep getting sucked back to Azeroth.
There’s a great article on Giantbomb about PSN’s recent security problems. If you’re interested in knowing more, take a look.
Some of you are probably going through withdrawals from the PSN outage that started last week. Well, I’ve got good news, and I’ve got bad news.
Let’s do the bad news first. This comes straight from Sony’s blog.
“Although we are still investigating the details of this incident, we believe that an unauthorized person has obtained the following information that you provided: name, address (city, state, zip), country, email address, birthdate, PlayStation Network/Qriocity password and login, and handle/PSN online ID. It is also possible that your profile data, including purchase history and billing address (city, state, zip), and your PlayStation Network/Qriocity password security answers may have been obtained.”
The jist of it is, you’ll want to change your PSN password ASAP and keep an eye on your credit card.
The good news? Ummm… your PS3 probably hasn’t exploded yet, right? There you go. Be thankful for the little things.
Drink more Ovaltine. That’s often the takeaway message for an alternate reality game. After all, they’re marketing tools. And around April Fools Day, Valve started an ARG nicknamed “PotatoFoolsDay”. It involved the Potato Sack Pack, which was a collection of 13 indie games – all contained clues for solving Valve’s ARG.
Valve’s ARG went on for a couple of weeks, when on April 15th PotatoFoolsDay seemed to come to a head – the day the website GlaDOS@Home launched. This site made it clear that the prize at the end of the road was an early release of Portal 2. The catch: players had to play the Potato Sack games for an undetermined amount of time to finish the final stage of PotatoFoolsDay. Naturally, thousands jumped at the opportunity and played all weekend with the hopes that Portal 2 would be released sometime Saturday or Sunday.
Sometime around Sunday night, when Portal 2 hadn’t unlocked on Steam, it became apparent that the game would open for play at most a couple hours before the scheduled 7 AM release date on Tuesday. Consequently, a popular resentment of Valve began to spread. The general complaint seemed to be that Valve asked way too much from participants in the ARG. People didn’t like that they had to pay $30-odd on a bundle of games just to participate, then play those games all weekend to unlock Portal 2 sometime early Monday morning.
Naturally, as resentment towards Valve’s stunt grew, the following Monday was stuffed with vitriol towards the development house. Message boards practically exploded as disappointment turned into anger.
People seemed to forget that an alternate reality game is a marketing tool. In the case of Valve’s ARG, this was marketing for Portal 2 as well as the Potato Sack indie games. I think Valve deserves a lot of credit for that second part. The games in the Potato Sack Pack were developed by small companies that don’t have the budget for huge marketing campaigns. And let’s be honest with ourselves – advertising sells games. How many could honestly say they’d have bought all, or even some, of the Potato Pack games had they not been a part of the PotatoFoolsDay ARG? I know I wouldn’t have bought a single one.
Even though Portal 2 didn’t release days ahead of time, I’m still glad to have participated in the ARG. Without it, I wouldn’t have heard of AAAAA: A Reckless Disregard for Gravity, and I wouldn’t have bought Amnesia. It’s hard to stay mad at Valve when they do great things like market small games. Would Bobby Kotick have done something like that? I seriously doubt it.
I understand why someone would get upset at Valve. The perception was: play the Potato Sack games, get Portal 2 a couple days early. Even though Portal 2 didn’t come out days early, you’re not getting completely screwed. If you bought the Potato Sack, you own an inexpensive collection of fun games. Thirteen games for around $30 is a great deal. You can’t be too upset with that. Additionally, you got to be part of one of the best community events I’ve seen – even if it didn’t turn out the way you expected.
But I guess that’s the trouble with ARGs. No matter what the resolution is, someone is going to be disappointed. This time it turned out to be a lot of someones. People will always have a bigger expectation of what the outcome could be than what it actually is. Every time I heard someone giddy with the idea that this could be about Episode 3 (before it was certain this was about Portal 2) I wondered how they couldn’t come to the obvious conclusion that this was about a game whose release date was less than three weeks away.
Ultimately, PotatoFoolsDay, like every ARG from a gaming company before it, is a piece of marketing. It’s a reminder to drink your Ovaltine.
Gameranx.com just posted up my article about L.A Noire. Go read it!
Max Crit! 
What integrity?
Ars Technica has a great article on the kinds of… benefits that come with working for a big-name reviewing outfit.
It’s amazing that there’s ever any objective criticism of games with shit like that going on.