Reviewing a single-player game is relatively easy—you just need to hunker down and play the darned thing. Multiplayer gamers are a different beast: they require multiple players to evaluate, and those players can be hard to come by when you get a copy of the game days (or even weeks) before release. You can always review the single-player portion of the game and come back to the multiplayer portion after launch, but that's not the best solution when your readers are desperate for thoughts on how the game plays online.

So what happens? The publisher sets up play dates where the press plays the game against the developers. This is weird for a number of reasons, chiefly because those individuals know the game much better than we do. It's also in their best interest to make sure we have a good time playing their game. Reviews written based on games played with the developers and other press are incredibly common, but the issue is very rarely discussed. Let's change that!

Here's how it works

As a reviewer, when you get a new game in the mail it often comes with a nice piece of paper that gives you some information about the game, as well as times and dates you can log in and play on a fully populated server. You show up, play for a few hours with the developers and other members of the press, and then you write your review.

This is problematic for a few reasons. First is the fact that you don't see how well the game works with a full load stressing the servers. That's why few reviews mention crashing servers in cases where a game is released with online play problems. The second is that you're playing with people who have a very large incentive to make you feel good when you're playing.

Oddly enough, it's hard to find PR professionals who are willing to talk about this sort of thing, but Chandana Ekanayake, the executive producer and art director of Monday Night Combat, agreed to chat about the times he played against the press before the game was released on the Xbox Live Arcade and then Steam. "We're tempted not to 'pub stomp' when showing off the game," he explained. "No one likes to feel like they got completely rolled by another team while they're still learning how to play. It all depends on the skill level of the press, but we won't make it easy, that's for sure."

Getting the press to like the game is essential for any developer, and it's important to show off the best of a game in the limited time the press has before launch. "First impressions from press are important, and we tend to get the game to a polished state before giving it out to them," Ekanayake explained. "We understand the amount of games the press need to play in a given week and we try to make sure they have a good and lasting first impression."

He also pointed out the feedback they get from the press while playing the game is invaluable. That's an interesting point: online "play dates" are a good chance for those of us reviewing the game to ask questions, gain some insight into the design of the game, and understand it better. This is a double-edged sword in some ways: it's not a "normal" playing situation, but more like a guided tour through the game.

Take it easy!

Nick Chester is the editor-in-chief of Destructoid, and from his point of view, play dates are just another way to play the game. "For me, these play sessions are usually pretty straightforward affairs. A block of time is set up for the play sessions, and we all just meet online and play as we normally would," he told Ars.

Chester said that he's never had any uncomfortable interactions with PR or a developer while playing online. "I don't even know what that would sound like: 'Man, did you see that cool thing we just did? Wasn't that cool? That's like a cool thing that would happen in a game that would get a minimum of an 80, right?' Nope, nothing like that." He has received tips and even some explanations about why a game is the way it is, but he likens that to playing with any helpful people with a good working knowledge of the game.

Chester acknowledged the balancing act of writing an informed review while making sure it's early enough to help readers make their buying decisions the day of release. "No one wants a review that's inaccurate, not indicative of the actual experience, or rushed out the door. You have to take the opportunities given to you—whether it's playing on retail servers against other consumers or on private servers with developers or PR—and make the call as to whether you've been afforded enough opportunity to evaluate a game's online component," he said. "Of course, there are cases where our prerelease play-sessions run smooth as butter, and once millions log on it all goes down the crapper... But there's absolutely no good way to predict that."

The problem is that those you're playing against may want to boost your ego more than their own stats. Mitch Dyer has written for the Official Xbox Magazine, @Gamer, PlayStation: The Official Magazine, GamePro, GamesRadar, and Paste, so he has been around the block once or twice. "I was at an event to write a multiplayer guide for [a first-person shooter]. My editor was there to review it, but we spent the day back to back playing multiplayer with the developers," Dyer told me. They were doing well, joking about how the quality assurance team had to be taking it easy on them. "My editor left a few hours early for a flight, but I stuck around for a few more hours to grab screenshots."

And that's when the other shoe dropped. Once his editor left the room, Dyer began to get slaughtered. Round after round, he failed to get a single kill. He described it as going from "empowering to embarrassing" in a very short span of time.

"After a while, I went to ask the PR guy to talk to people for some info for the guide," Dyer said. "He walks me over to the QA area, and the first thing I hear is, 'Oh, I thought the press left.'"

This is a common experience when you play against the developers. It can be tough to figure out if you're doing well, or if the situation has been engineered to leave you with a warm feeling.

So how should it work?

Ideally you're able to play the game with a variety of players, on live servers, after the masses have descended upon the game. The problem with that timing is that the majority of readers—no matter how many say they're willing to wait for a quality review—want to know about a game before it's released. By waiting until after launch to review the game or to talk about multiplayer, you're sacrificing a large portion of your potential readership.

"Recently, I was tasked with reviewing THQ's Homefront, and that game's multiplayer is probably its most important component," Chester told me after I asked about ideal review conditions. "I was fortunate enough to be able to hop online with a retail copy of the game many days before release and find, to my surprise, a lot of folks already online playing it. I can't say who they were or how they obtained a copy of the game, but they certainly weren't developers... at least I'd like to think a developer wouldn't call me the names some of the players did."

Chester was able to play against other real-world players, on live servers, with retail code—an incredibly rare occurrence.

When the press was able to get our first look at Hybrid from 5th Cell, we were escorted into a small room with stations to play the game, and the majority were taken by writers. There may have been one or two developers or QA folks manning the stations, and those who worked on the game were circulating to answer questions. That's the situation I'm always looking for. I don't mind if I'm playing against people who made the game or are being paid to promote it, as long as the majority of players are just as clueless as me.

Bonus content!

While researching this story I spoke to a number of seasoned writers and reviewers, and it's telling how common it is for us to spent time playing games for review or preview with the developers, and how it differs from the way everyone else plays these games. We're almost never allowed to video our time with games, so when I cracked a high score at Bulletstorm and the PR team themselves started filming, it was a rare chance to show what it's like to play a game with the developers watching.

Now, I don't want to claim that the gentleman in the video is being insincere, but being told that you've done something no one has seen before in the game is very common. It makes you feel special and smarter than the rest. You can also see how the press is given tips and ideas on how to play the game. We are always free to say "leave us alone and let us play" in these situations, but you can always get as much help and feedback as you want. This is especially true during the ever-popular review events where the press plays the game completely under the watchful eyes of PR.

The best solution may be to make sure these games are also played extensively by the press post-launch, in order to report on the server conditions and player load. Multiplayer games can be reviewed well, but doing so is at odds with the heavy pressure to do it quickly. By taking the time to play the game under a number of conditions against many different kinds of players, you can paint a detailed picture of the quality of the experience.

Of course, by that time there's already another pile of games on your desk.