Why games and not movies or books

In his interview of Jennie Bharaj, David Pakman asked why games journalists and not, for example, movies.

Speaking for myself, it’s this: I wouldn’t spend between $50 and $90 on a movie ticket if I wasn’t sure I was going to enjoy it. That’s the typical cost of a video game for PC (my preferred platform as I’m terrible at using console controllers) here in Australia. I don’t rely on movie reviews to know whether or not I’m going to like a movie, I rely on trailers and my own judgement of what I do and don’t like in a movie.

Trailers for computer games aren’t going to give you a good enough indicator. It’s not comprehensive enough by a long shot.

I’m not a young gamer. I’m 30 this year, and have been playing computer games since the days of Donald Duck’s Playground and Space Invaders. Over the years, I have come to realise in the past few days, one thing has been increasingly disappearing: Playable Demo’s.

Thanks to Steam (praise GabeN!), I can now find them again easily, but they are by no means a comprehensive list. Wolfenstein: The New Order (which I would like to try) is available on Steam to buy, but isn’t available in a free demo, nor is any of the popular Assassin’s Creed series.

As things stand, I can either read about it from journalists who we now know for a certainty are corrupt and have potentially received some kind of incentive by the game’s maker to rate it well, or I can read reviews from other gamers like TotalBiscuit, since they have stepped up to the plate for the rest of us.

Games journalists have broken gamer’s trust in them by engaging in what Jennie rightly identified as a conflict of interest.

As to how we know it isn’t happening in the book industry, well I can’t speak comprehensively, but allow me to quote from a member of my family who is a freelance editor and heavily involved in the local Speculative Fiction group and has work published and is highly respected as an editor:

However, reviewing becomes tricky when one is involved in the publishing community. I read a reasonable amount of work written or published by people I know. I do this partly to keep up with what’s going on in the industry, partly out of curiosity over what my acquaintances have been working on and partly out of genuine interest for the work itself. One of the reasons I started this blog was to share what I read with people who are just as excited about books as I am. Can I do that when I know the people whose work I’m reviewing? I got a few looks of horror at Conflux when I suggested I might attempt it.

That’s evidence that there is ethics in the book reviewing industry. When I mentioned GamerGate to this person the other day, they replied to the effect of “You can’t be in the publishing industry and not have heard about it”, suggesting that GamerGate is having a ripple effect to other industries who’re sitting up and taking note.

They went on to note exactly the issue GamerGate is trying to address:

[…] experienced reviewer (redacted for privacy) suggested that a review had to be sympathetic to three people: the publisher, the author and the reader. Being too kind to a publisher or author can give a reader the wrong impression about a book. This wastes the reader’s time and money at best and ultimately breaks the trust between reviewer and reader. On the other hand, criticising a work too strongly–whether warranted or not–can hurt the feelings of someone the reviewer knows and will have to encounter again in the future. It is a difficult balance.

In a nutshell, GamerGate is a backlash against reviewers for being too kind to publishers and thus breaking gamers trust, and also in part against critics like Anita Sarkeesian for what is perceived by gamers (myself included) as criticising too hard.

In summary, expensive games without a way to “try before you buy” has forced gamers to rely on reviewers like only the book industry has done in other areas, and I have evidence shown above that they are more ethical in their approach than it has been proven the game journalism industry has been. And for the love of all that’s holy, will game companies please bring back playable demos!

I’ve not linked the blog where my quotes are taken from to protect the individual from possible harassment.

Sunset in the Australian Capital