Yesterday, while browsing Twitter, I saw that Peter Willington was riled up about something beyond his desire to see Overdrive remade. Given that, generally, he’s an intelligent man, rather than just another angry person shouting via/at the Internet, some investigation of his feed seemed to be in order, where I was directed to Games Republic. This is a service that allows you to create a custom storefront for games that you can link to from your blog/website/whatever, as well as allowing you to create embeddable widgets that can accompany articles about said games.
Peter took offense to this for a perfectly good reason – it’s kind of gross:
So the process is, what… you say how great a game is, then direct people to buy it from you? Isn't that MARKETING as opposed to CRITICISM?
— Peter "Chip Mansfield" Willington (@xeroxeroxero) May 1, 2014
I can’t really argue with him in general here. This is a sort of weird mechanic that feels a bit too direct. Sure, good reviews for a game may well boost its sales, that’s one of the main points of criticism (I’m not denying there are nobler, less commercial elements of critique, but telling people when a thing is good so they can enjoy said thing is pretty core to the whole endeavour). Selling games directly to the consumer though, via a store that you’re at least curating and profiting from, if not necessarily managing, feels wrong to me.
While I’m certainly sure there’s a way to include a Games Republic store on a site without it affecting the way that site reviews games, the perception of such a mechanism isn’t exactly fantastic. Many people, although by no means all, seem to have this notion that all games critics must be corrupt because they receive free copies of a game, or get to go to PR events and eat tiny burgers. I often wonder if critics of other mediums are suspected of corruption in the same way. Being able to make money directly from the sales of a game is hardly going to change this perception; actual cold hard cash is changing hands, not just tiny nourishment or necessary tools to write a review.
Beyond perception, it would certainly be tempting to skew your games coverage when there’s the money to finally get your gold-plated yacht up for grabs. While it wouldn’t necessarily lead to review scores being nudged subtly upwards in an attempt to shift more copies of the game, simple reporting bias may well creep in, with only reviews of games you enjoyed making it onto your website. I’m by no means hinting that I know of anyone who does such a thing, or engages in similar behaviour – this is all purely hypothetical.
You could, potentially, end up with a record shop recommendation sort of issue. If you don’t know what I mean, some indie record stores (yes, such places do still exist) have recommendations or short reviews of recent releases in the store alongside those new records/CDs. While I don’t doubt that they really enjoyed the songs that they’ve put their support behind, you never see them saying “Don’t buy this, it’s a piece of populist rubbish” unless you have accidentally stepped into the world of High Fidelity (although they might give you a faint look of disappointment as you hand over your choice).
However, when thinking about this issue further, I do wonder why I don’t find it gross when people have a “buy this game on Amazon” link or widget accompanying an article, which sends money back to the site linking via an affiliate program. That, to me, seems perfectly acceptable, yet what Games Republic is doing is only a few steps beyond that, and it seems weird.
Perhaps it’s the whole customisation element of the thing that puts me off, that you’re actually associating yourself with the act of purchasing, rather than just saying “Hey, buy it via a huge retailer where you’d probably buy it anyway, just we get a cut now.” Even so, you’re still making money if people follow one of your recommendations; objectively it doesn’t seem that different.
The question of where you draw the line, and why one is even necessary to draw, is pretty ambiguous, and not one that I actually feel capable of answering. Is there even any real distinction between what Games Republic are offering and an affiliate program via Amazon? Again, I’m not sure whether or not there is actually any meaningful difference in the basic mechanics of the two systems, yet I still know that the former doesn’t sit right with me and the latter causes me no real issues.
Maybe the answer is simply that sites critiquing media shouldn’t be exposing their readers to a mechanism for buying the same media in anyway at all. I mean it’s not like navigating yourself to Amazon or ShopTo or wherever is actually difficult, it doesn’t exactly require any specialist knowledge.
I’d be very interested to hear from anyone who has a view on this issue, regardless of where you sit on it.
tactical20
Yep, it’s bullshit. Most reviews are bullshit though, tbf. Like when someone has just spunked 2 grand on a tv, they are hardly gonna write on Amazon how whack it is. Reminds me of club promoters always saying “get down early, it’s gonna be a roadblock”, you know that means they’ve sold fuck all tickets, lol!
Barney
How about “Let’s play” series, they are bullshit too?
Steelhead
Yeah, seems very dodgy to me. Not to mention its a foolish way to buy games, via the person who is informing you on the quality of the product.
tonycawley
What about specialist retailers that also do review, eg shopto? How does that sit with you?
tonycawley
Jesus I’m rhyming again and I didn’t even mean to this time!
ron_mcphatty
Id never thought about this before and know nothing of Games Republic, so it’s all news to me. Over the years TSA has played host to ads that aim to sell games the site has either reviewed or discussed recently, so you could say that’s a bias, but to me it’s just topical ads on a topical site and occasionally both refer to the same thing. I certainly wouldn’t blame TSA for taking money to advertise say a Killzone game, whilst at the same time reporting on hype and maybe publishing a review, that’s a sensible way to fund the site and sits well with the theme of things. Advertising a link to buy a game at the end of a review does seem odd though and would definitely make me question the integrity of the review, probably also the site it’s written for. I don’t click on ads so I wouldn’t follow one like that, but I don’t know where I’d sit with the idea of a link to an SEN store page at the end of a review, to be honest if I wanted the game I probably would click that and just chalk it up as convinient.
Tuffcub
I should point out that as none of the TSA staff get paid, even if the site hosts advetising none of the money ends up in our pocket so we can’t be “bought”.
ron_mcphatty
Yes, sorry, I knew that and didn’t mean to imply otherwise. You guys do a great job.
gazzagb
I think this is the problem with games journalism, yet sadly, you have to expect it. In this day and age, it is (sometimes) very hard to know what the reviewer’s background is when you read their article. Every gaming website out there needs a way to pay the bills, as do all full-time gaming journalists. Sites have used affiliate links for years, and storefronts are just the next evolution of these imo.
I don’t think gaming journalists have ever been completely impartial. Didn’t MS give out free Xbox 360 Slim’s to every journalist at E3 one year, and didn’t Sony do the same thing too at some point?
These ‘bribes’ have always taken place, and still do today. Take Ubisoft for example, who at a recent PR event in Paris, they gave tablets to all of the ‘journalists’ for free, just so they could try Watch Dog’s companion app. Are we seriously meant to believe that these people don’t already own phones or devices capable of testing the apps? Of course not. It was basically yet another bribe, because clearly a free trip to Paris wasn’t already enough!
So IMO, Games Republic haven’t crossed an imaginary line; they’re just doing what most games journalists and sites have always done – look after themselves.
Barney
I think that most of the people won’t risk his reputation just to promote bad games. You can sell any game from Games Republic in your front store. One can buy from the widget or just enters dedicated store. I would say it’s just modern version of donation to blogger or vlogger or even your friend. You can also buy games in yours store – yes everyone could have a store and get 15% refund/discount.
So buy any game you like and decide who will get extra 15% of it – you, your friend or someone who you support. I don’t see that it will decease level of game journalism or someone objectivity.
cubituss
Hello,
My name is Cubituss and I run Games Republic as project director. I will do my best to clarify the independence issue.
When we were first thinking about Games Republic, the issue “what about blogger integrity” came almost on day one of our meetings. How can someone who expresses his or her opinion on a product benefit from sales of that very product? At the same time we were absolutely sure that bloggers and vloggers do generate sales of games – most of them usually just casually speak about “getting this game on Steam” and often even post a link.
That’s when I understood (and I come from hardcore old-school paper journalists of gaming, where bribery is often attempted but very seldom “consumed” so to speak), I understood that there is a multitude of forms of speaking about games and reviewing them – which is the case here – is just a fraction of what can be done.
Music videos, walkthroughs, letsplays, “let’s-all-laugh-about-Surgeon-Simulator-and-accidentally-make-it-a-Steam-number-two-for-a-week” and tons of other things came to my mind – but not reviews. We are NEVER talking about reviews on Games Republic because those are always biased and could become tainted in the mouths of people of hmm… lower moral principles.
But really, reviews are OK too. If you hype a game that is bad, your viewers and readers will know and remember it and you will lose them. Pimping a title that is not worth it is extremely short-sighted and we will never encourage it.
That said, I think that Games Republic is uniting “buy this game” and “support me on PayPal” into one action. One that could seem controversial, yes, but after giving it a lot of thought I am convinced that it will not be misused. And when it will be misused (with review materials only), such event will not last very long as readers and viewers are much wiser that we all tend to think.
If you have any more issues, I will be glad to clarify them.
freezebug2
Stunning!