The business of reviewing games can be hard to understand. The publishers hold almost all the cards, which means if you want readers, you have to have reviews early, and if you want an early copy of the game, you better not do anything to annoy whoever is in charge of handing those games out. The art of handing out "exclusive reviews" is mostly a clever way of hiding what amounts to a bribe in terms of guaranteed readers. Being black-listed from events, having your ads pulled, not received review samples of games... no matter what you want to think about the power of the press, the gaming companies have much more power over us than we do over them. A recent post over at the Sore Thumbs blog contains thoughts from someone in the industry who wields this power, and he wants you to know: the journalists are just as guilty. For him, this is war.

"A great unspoken truth is that those involved in games development and publishing feel that many journalists feel a sense of entitlement—that they deserve to have their asses kissed because of the power they wield over the sell-in (convincing retail buyers to take a game) and the final sell-through of games to gamers," the anonymous poster states. "The fact is game journalists—of which there are hundreds at the moment—are living off the blood, sweat and tears of creative people who love games and regularly work 100 hours [sic] weeks. The fact they casually rip on a game gives others involved in the development and marketing process good reason to pissed."

Dan Hsu, the former Editor in Chief of Electronic Gaming Monthly, vouches for his source's authenticity. It's a good thing, because the poster pulls no punches describing the ways he can hurt a journalist. "I have been one of those people... I have pulled ad buys in protest of what I felt were unfair review scores. I have spoken to the 'boss' of publications before, and complained about certain journalists. I have 'banned' certain media outlets from getting pre-release access to games, because of previous unfavorable coverage."

This is the stress that writers at the biggest gaming sites deal with, and with ad dollars being more important than ever, you better believe that your critical thinking skills should be in full effect when you see the words "exclusive review" next to coverage or you see ads for the game flanking the site's front page. A sponsored collection of codes and coverage on the game, in its own branded section of the site? That's an advertisement, and should be treated as such. The web sites reviewing games mostly want to get as many readers as possible, while the publishers want the highest scores possible, and they're willing to work together in a slightly unholy way to make sure both of these things happen. And woe unto him who breaks the covenant.

It's an interesting world to work in, and when you're punished for coverage it can be subtle. Sometimes you'll notice review samples dry up, other times they simply come a little later than normal. Communication can be cut off entirely, with phone calls and e-mails not returned. You may not even know why, but you'll suddenly find yourself in a very cold place when it comes to some companies after an article or two that doesn't paint them in a favorable light.

The source blames the shoddy work of the writers for these underhanded tactics. "Let's say you have a game that takes 30 hours to complete, and reviewer plays two hours of it and gives it [a] mediocre review based on the first few levels... Or when an editor of a big games website gives his FPS guy a sim racing game to review. Or when someone looks at all the other reviews online for a game, and just follows the crowd by posting a similar review... These things happen all the time." He points to the Too Human reviews as an example of this group-think.

There is no easy solution for the acrimony between PR and game reviewers; readers simply have to be aware of how the business works. It's also possible that PR professionals need to realize that reviews may not carry the weight they once assumed, Too Human still seems to be selling well despite the lukewarm reviews, and many games that were trashed critically go on to be commercial successes. No matter what side you're looking at, the process of reviewing a game is political, complicated, and often bitter... is the writer muzzled by his site's ad campaign any more or less angry than the publisher who feels slighted by an unfair review?