Culture Clash

(June 2007)

The Stages of Griefing

I'm one of the lucky ones who gets to do all kinds of things in the industry – consulting, speechifying, self-indulgent rambling, journalism in general. In fact the only thing I don't have to do is make games, which keeps me free to enjoy them. But I got started as a reviewer, and it's still one of my favorite parts of the job. And thus it was that not long ago I played a bad game and dutifully penned a bad review. As it happens, Metacritic and GameRankings show that other reviewers, while generally nonchalant, didn't hold quite as low an opinion of said game.

To this end, the U.S. publisher emailed me, asking that I change the score. Why? Because my score was lower than everyone else's, which made them sad. And, of course, because the forthcoming U.S. release would be patched. “40% just buries us,” wailed the publisher. “In exchange for this favor, I will make sure you are on our first ship for review list for life.”

I politely declined, though secretly flush with evil pleasure at being considered so influential that my little tiny review, and not even one I consider representative of my best work, would “bury” an international release. Being a more flies with honey than with vinegar sort of fellow, I just said that other scores don't influence my own. And though they may dislike the verdict, I'm no stranger to the franchise and know what I'm talking about when it comes to those games. I also mentioned that asking me to “wait for the patch” was probably not the best way to a journalist's heart, since part of the job is arguably to protect consumers from sloppy product.

When it became clear that the score wasn't going to change, the messages slowly transmogrified from plaintive supplication to threats. Specifically, and in a process reminiscent of the Kübler-Ross Model's Stages of Grief (anger, denial, etc.), my correspondent proceeded thusly:

• Begging
• Bribe attempts
• Very large fonts
• Accusations of piracy
• Promises of legal action

The whole exchange was, in a word, awesome. He'd clearly enjoyed success with such tactics before and couldn't understand why they weren't working on me. Apparently he didn't realize that I'm a professional and perfectly acquainted with actual facts about industry distribution rights and exclusivity agreements, so his collection of scary-sounding made-up legal stuff was just smirkworthy to me. His assumption was that the outlet in question was small and easily bullied.

The site may be modest, but I never claimed to write for them for money or fame. I do it because I love the place. The community is intelligent, articulate, mature and tight-knit, and the staff is fiercely supportive. When this guy gave up on me and started threatening my editor, she snapped him back so hard that he's likely still looking for his pride. This inaugurated the sixth stage: sullen silence.

It's hardly the first time I've been threatened by a publisher. Heck, being threatened by a publisher is like a career milestone for videogame people, part of the Career Milestone Hat Trick: being threatened by a publisher, being called an idiot (advisedly) by Jack Thompson, and losing the Design Challenge to Will Wright. But that doesn't make it okay, and while I'd never suppose that all publishers resort to such tactics, more than a few are guilty as gear.

Nearly everyone is a human being, and no one likes to read bad stuff about their work. In a way it's more difficult in games, because to so many on the outside, “making games” is just a matter of playing them, and new ones simply spring, fully formed, into glossy boxes. Having your incredibly hard, thankless and often despised labor of heart and years further demeaned by strangers hurts. And sometimes people react unwisely.

David Jaffe's, ahem, recent pontification exemplifies this. And while David's reaction was ill-advised, I feel a spoonful of sympathy for him… at least, I understand the mood he was in when he wrote it. When a product of your passion and effort is ridiculed, rightly or wrongly, it's easy to take it to heart, and react in an impolitic way.

Creators who manifest their scorched feelings with the occasional tirade are easily forgiven. The same is not true for the bureaucrats, the executives at the publisher level who often don't play games or even know what they're all about. There's no true hurt there; they just don't want a bad score to interfere with the purchase of their summer home. The situation is somewhat exacerbated by content aggregators of the Metacritic variety; my friend kept saying I gave his game “a 40%,” which I didn't; in truth I doubt he even read the text of my review. We can only assume that these aggressive tactics work sometimes, or else the aggressors wouldn't bother with them.

Which is where the real problem lies. Industry press has made some good progress in maturity and thoughtfulness of reporting, but it will never be truly respected if there's even a hint that corporations can control the news through intimidation. This is corollary to the issue of some journalists failing to take their profession – or the art form – seriously enough, and it actually threatens to be more damaging. How can we possibly rely on a press with a reputation for simpering spinelessness?

The results of appeasement are well-documented, and it falls to the press to stand up for itself, even if doing so means potential consequences. The vast majority of press, even the small websites, already does that. But this is a situation where even a handful of retreats can have major longitudinal consequences across the business.

Games are weird in that more than any other entertainment medium, reviews probably don't have that much impact on overall sales. Poor reviews might drive consumers away, but most people go to the store having intended to buy the object of their desire for months or years. While from a journalistic standpoint this means writers have an opportunity to treat their work as criticism rather than sheer review, it also creates a strange disconnect between the real and perceived impact of a piece. Rather than servile pleas or angry bullying, companies might be wise to read the work as criticism and use it to make better games in the future.