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JD Walter -> RE: Playtesters? (7/4/2007 3:30:42 AM)
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* ...Ahem...*
If I may beg the Gentlemen's indulgence (before returning to our regularly scheduled game of CAW), I would like to add the following in this regard...
quote:
As long as I am handing out blame, then the gaming community review web sites are to blame too. Very few of them will really expose a game as unplayable pile of CTDs and bugs. Very few of them will bury a product for being a cinch to beat after only a few days worth of play experience. So many of these sites are whores who are in bed with the products they are responsible for objectively reviewing. They are not consumer advocates, but in fact just extensions of the marketting apparatus of the industry. Look at some games which are a few years old that are widely known to be only mediocre. Now, go back and look at the reviews which they games received a few years back. For the vast majority, the review will relect a much more upbeat assesment than the product actually deserved.
I have a friend who presently works in the game review magazine industry. She recently changed publications. After this move, she relayed to me that, at her previous publication, due to the pressing need to be the first to print with a "timely" feature on whatever was released that month, the majority of reviews were based on a single playing of the game at the easiest possible setting. This was generally completed in one day, then used as the basis for a 250-300 word "review".
Only the most egregious faults were ever seen, much less written down and reported on. She remarked that in her own personal experience, only a CTD or BSOD would warrant a note that the game had a "bug".
After this, it was thrown on the shelf (or, more accurately, into a pile on the floor of a spare office), and it was back to WOW for the rest of the workweek.
Employees who were given two such writing assignments were considered overworked. They would complain loudly about losing 16 man-hours levelling up their character(s) in WOW, and falling behind the rest of the office.
This trend got so bad, some reviewers started quoting from internet sites instead of playing the game thoroughly themselves, in order to catch things they might have missed in their cursory look at it for the article, so that they could be sure to note something in their write-up that was common knowledge on the 'Net, and not be embarrassed at missing an obvious flaw that was becoming too well-known and talked about in the "early adopter" gaming community.
Moral: Readers who subscribe to such magazines should be aware that many print reviews are based on, at most, an eight-hour session with the game, at the easiest setting allowing the ending to be played. Be forewarned.
We may now return to our appointed forum ...
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