I rarely post about politics, but something intriguing on the campaign front caught my eye today. A presidential candidate is advertising in Burnout Revenge. For those unfamiliar, Burnout Revenge is a car-racing video game owned by Electronic Arts.
I found Dan Hsu’s blog today. It’s about his experiences as a gaming journalist at EGM. Check out all three parts if you are interested in how advertising and pr folks influence coverage of the industry.
I was inspired to write a smidgen of a blog post about my limited experience with public relations influence over how games are reviewed. VGT is a small fish compared to sites like IGN, Gamespot, and 1up, but our reviews warrant the same critical value on sites like Gamerankings and Metacritic.
In late April, I got an invite to a media event in San Diego for the Bourne Conspiracy game. This entailed a $475 plane ticket, two night stay in the Hard Rock Hotel ($450), transportation to the event / airport and a party hosted by the development team with a open bar that dished out endless mojitos all night.
There were about twelve writers from other “small fish” sites that made the trip as well. I wouldn’t be shocked if Sierra or High Moon Studios dished out $15,000 over the 3 days. We got a brief tour of the studios and shuffled into the a couple rooms to get some hands on time with the game.
After the day trip, we were given some swag and shuffled back on the transport bus. The group was told that we couldn’t report on anything that happened that day until after the game was released. Our entire experience had essentially been embargoed until a point in time when a preview wouldn’t be newsworthy. As I drifted off to sleep in my comfy Hard Rock Hotel king sized bed that night, I pondered what their actual intention was.
They wanted to dilute the overall review average by befriending the press that doesn’t get invited to these events. I ended up giving the game 3.5 out of 5 stars, but the majority of the people at that event scored it 80% or higher. I admit that I actually felt guilty about scoring the game on the lower end and pushed publication of the review for a couple weeks.
I certainly don’t regret going on this press junket. It’s the type of event that the IGN’s of the world frequent constantly. I met a couple cool writers and really appreciated the entertaining weekend trip, despite the plane ride. It was also an enlightening look at how schmoozing can heavily influence the review process. And somewhat disconcerting.
Just wanted to give a quick shout-out to the makers of Braid. The art direction is utterly amazing as you can see above. A couple drawbacks are that it’s too short and costs too much ($15) on XBLA. It would have been priced appropriately at $10.
I did the freak-out dance today in public when a bee landed on my arm outside a local coffee joint. It’s not the manliest of movements. It’s like the spider web freak-out dance but with more frantic running. I stepped on a bee when I was about seven and I’ve been deathly afraid of them ever since.
I saw a man pushing a baby stroller with a toddler down the road today with his left hand and carrying a running weed trimmer in his right hand. He was either nuts or some sort of Nanny / Landscaper hybrid. Crazy or not, I drove away blissfully indifferent of the Cabbage Patch Kidnapper.
I tend to embrace my apathy. It’s especially fun to invoke during conversations. I’ve noticed that people automatically assume that you are of a differing opinion when clamming up; political and religious conversations in particular. For instance some liberal co-workers at my previous job thought I was a staunch conservative; all from adopting an apathetic stance. Truthfully I’m probably somewhere in the middle, but I don’t see the point in talking about something that I’d have to pretend I had the ability to change.
That’s the real beauty of apathy. I don’t have to lie to myself about how much I should care about matters of supposed importance. I get to focus on stuff that’s important to my little egocentric mind instead; work and play perhaps. Everything else gets deleted from my brain after conversations end. But on to more social topics…
I added a LinkedIn profile recently for networking purposes. Seeing how my previous jobs weren’t exactly tech-related, I couldn’t beef up my contact list. I strapped on my creativity hat and sent a mass-mailing to VGT contacts about adding me. It will help me keep track of their job-hopping movements anyway. I got about 60% to add me. Not too shabby!
I also got in on the Ping.fm beta finally. For those that don’t know, Ping.fm allows you to send the same status up to mutliple accounts. For instance, I have it setup to send my status update to Twitter, Myspace, Facebook and LinkedIn. It works with tons of other services as well (FriendFeed, Xanga, Livejournal, Blogger, WordPress, Pownce, etc…). I have a beta code if anyone wants to sign up.
I’ve may have fallen into a Mobius Strip of writing endlessly until it’s time to sleep again. I’m content to repeat that cycle over and over while my bank account gleefully greets the array of dead presidents being added every day. The lucrative lifestyle makes me want to move again, perhaps up north for a few months.
I’ve been receiving an inordinate amount of Facebook friend requests lately; many from complete strangers. No matter how many times I passively hit Ignore, they keep firing pleas at me. Facebook desperately needs to add more options for my possible response. Speaking of Facebook, the new look absolutely stinks. It’s slow to load and I have to browse those stupid tabs to read someone’s page.
I’ve been playing around with the Flip Mino for a week now. The video and sound quality is really excellent for the size of the camera. It’s about the height of my iPhone, but skinnier in width. I wish I had the camera when my sister and I filmed our Rock Band session a couple weeks ago. Unfortunately Mikey and Gerbil broke up after our three day World Tour in Rome, London and Paris.
I completed the single player campaign over the weekend and took some time to reflect today. The plight of Niko Bellic was very much a series of well constructed moments, designed to bring out the inner sociopath or benevolent soul in you. There are brief, flourishing cinematic points that sparked delight in me, Packie’s Three Leaf Clover being the most notable (Heat anyone?). But beyond those moments, beyond the hype, beyond the rushed reviews, there are negative aspects that keep GTA IV from perfection in my mind; 7 to be exact.
I’m back in Liberty City, so where’s my Double Clef FM?
There’s just something inherently classy about mass murder when listening to “O mio babbino caro” while behind the wheel mowing down pedestrians. I miss Morgan Merryweather’s pompous attitude and continual spouting of untrue facts about classical music. Over all the 18 radio stations within GTA IV, I don’t understand why Rockstar didn’t immediately jump on the chance to recreate the classical one. Not only that, they didn’t create a way to load user tracks onto the radio. I suppose I’ll just have to settle for Jazz Nation Radio and the smooth style of Roy Haynes.
Worthless green paper in my wallet
Money has become completely devalued in this version of GTA for a couple reasons. You don’t lose any weaponry at death and there’s a ridiculous amount of ammo found on each mission. While health care costs can bleed a player dry in the very early stages of the game, money has no worthwhile use for the majority of the game. I ended the single player game with about $950,000 in the bank, but it might as well have been $950 for what I needed it for.
Liberty City’s Most Wanted
OK, I’ve just killed 58 beat cops, 32 SWAT guys and 4 chopper pilots. I have a five star wanted rating and I’m racing from the scene in a stolen police cruiser. What’s the best way to lose the cops? Take a nap. Yep, the police will call off the manhunt if you find the nearest safe house and take a 6 hour nap. This should have been an automatic arrest for the police, but apparently dingy apartments are too confusing for the police to enter. (I realize this is a flaw of the overall series, but Rockstar should have fixed it by now.)
Should I wear a suit or a suit or a suit?
There are 3 unique clothing stores in the game. That’s right; a digital version of New York City only has three types of clothing stores. Obviously Rockstar kept it simple to work hand in hand with the girlfriend system, but it’s an extreme step down from the amount of clothing / customization options in Vice City & San Andreas. Additionally the clothing options are far too similar and the interface, while visually improved, is still slow.
Love the internet, hate the browser.
The brilliant, snarky humor on the in-game internet, and the television programs for that matter, is classic Rockstar and deserves praise, but the asshole that designed the browser should be fired. Why? There’s no way to bookmark a site. Every time you return to the PC, it’s back to the keyboard to type an insanely long web address or, even worse, one letter at a time on the controller. Accessing the site (whattheydonotwantyoutoknow.com) that holds the maps for hidden items such as armor, health, stunt jumps, etc. is a ridiculous pain in the butt and likely sends droves of players to the real internet for map screenshots.
Rocky Marciano, I’m not.
From the start of the game to the finish, there was rarely a time without some firearm in Niko’s hand. I choose that route because the hit detection system in hand to hand combat absolutely stinks. Character movement doesn’t work fast enough with the targeting system to accurately land punches and the combos are nearly worthless. It only took a few minutes of boxing my shadow before I permanently glued the semi-automatic machine gun to Niko’s right hand.
Easy Peasy, Lemon Squeezy
With the exception of a handful of missions, the game difficulty is really quite low for the experienced video game crowd. Without a slider to increase difficulty, popping off head shots is pure simplicity; even with auto-aim off. Over the entire 30 hour campaign, I was never busted by the cops and died less than 10 times. The rare, occasionally challenging mission was easily completed after tooling up with body armor and plenty of ammo. Besides giving the game a rushed feeling, the real shame is that many missions offer alternate dialogue between main characters upon reloading. Unless you play through the entire game again, you won’t get a chance to hear all the stories and comedic banter.
Seven days from the launch of a game that will probably hurt the box office receipts of Iron Man, I’m keeping myself in check over the deluge of information concerning GTA IV. It’s extremely tough to keep myself in the dark about one of the most anticipated titles in this generation of gaming, but a fresh entrance into the title is something that can’t be understated concerning the cinematic nature of the narrative. One story did mange to slip through the crack though; a piece over at Gamepolitics on the removal of a GTA IV advertisement from Chicago city buses. To sum up the article, the Fox News affiliate in Chicago pressured the transit authority to remove the advertisement.
Fox News, on a national level, is no stranger to ignorant reporting practices concerning the video game industry, but I see the entire national media in a full blown quandary concerning treatment of the industry. First off, airtime dedicated to the industry is completely abysmal. There are segments dedicated to weekly movie releases, but the video game industry doubled their 2007 box office take to the tune of nearly 19 billion dollars. The average age for gamers is around 34 years old (always rising) and the average age for purchasers is 40. I look at those staggering numbers and say “How in the world can news networks afford to ignore such a potentially profitable market?”
The most common answer: The industry wide stigma on a national stage is that the end users of gaming products are dominated by children. I can’t argue that’s certainly a large portion, but it’s no longer the majority. 60% of the market is comprised of 18 and over gamers; 25% of those being 35 and older. This stigma leads into the only coverage that the MSM offers to the industry, negative stories about the supposed relationship of violent video games to real life violence. Ironically, only 15% of total games sold have a Mature rating. The other 85% is rated between E for Everyone to T for Teen, which is very tame by comparison.
There are smart print organizations that have started to capitalize on the market, Newsweek being the most obvious choice. Newsweek has an extremely intelligent editor by the name of N’Gai Croal who launched a video game blog called Level Up in Sept. 2006. His blog is a highly referenced source for much of the industry and it gives credence to Newsweek, an unlikely source of gaming information. USAToday has also been very progressive when it comes to covering the industry.
Fox News, CNN, MSNBC, CBS News, and ABC News have tremendous amounts of catching up to do if they plan on capturing the attention of the gaming consumer. They need to stop booking utter buffoons such as Jack Thompson and stop jumping to blame filled conclusions when tragedy strikes at one of our schools. Hire tech-savvy reporters that can offer educated opinions on the quality of new game releases. Book industry icons to offer analysis of upcoming consoles and their respective companies. Give equal time to positive stories like Penny-Arcade’s yearly Child’s Play charity that collects toys / games for children in hospitals across the nation.
I’ll continue to offer my “18 to 34 year old demographic” dollars to the companies advertising products in gamer savvy print and online media until then. Plus I’m totally moving into this building:
