Who are they trying to fool?

A couple of weeks ago I talked about how Sony and Naughty Dog were illegally copyright striking Youtube channels who were even talking about the leaked spoilers concerning The Last of Us 2.

Now that the game is out, there is a brand new sort of controversy.

As with all highly anticipated releases all the major gaming news outlets raced to get their reviews out as soon as possible. The vast majority gave the game 10/10 with statements like “Game of the Year”, “Best game of this console generation”, etc. etc.

Then the user reviews started to pop up and they tell a very different story. The vast majority of gamers (at least the ones that bother to write reviews) hold negative views of The Last of Us 2. Very negative views in fact.

A quick look at Metacritic shows that the professional critic score is a whopping 95/100 while the user score is a paltry 3.7/10 as I'm writing this. So how is this possible? Speculations started to fly immediately that Sony and Naughty Dog had bribed the outlets to get good reviews, but there is no actual evidence of that.

No, the sad fact is that the major outlets are terrified of being blacklisted by Studios and Publishers. To them, being blacklisted means being thrown out into the cold, and not getting preview copies. In order to stay on the Publishers good side, they kowtow and bend over to every whim thrown their way, instead of doing their jobs and being journalists. It has come to light that Sony and/or Naughty Dog had “requested” only positive comments about The Last of Us 2 and forbade the “journalists” from mentioning the second half of the game at all! With these caveats there is no earthly way to write a real review. Might as well have the marketing department write it for them.

I'm old enough to remember the time before the internet, when you got all your gaming news from magazines. These gaming mags were the only way to not only find out if a game was good, but to learn it was being made in the first place. You could trust that the magazines were reasonably honest since the gaming companies needed the magazines, and the magazines needed their reputation to remain intact.

But now... it is a sad state of affairs, and it doesn't have to be this way either. If even a small number of these outlets put their feet down and said, “No, we're going to make up our own minds and tell it like we see it” things would get much better. Sure, they might get blacklisted, but so what? All they really need to do then is publish that fact, and their integrity and redership could rise over night. People respond to that. And if enough outlets follow suit, what are the game companies going to do about it? Not tell anyone about their upcoming games? Stand on the street corner with a sandwich board and yell “New game is coming out next fall!” Or maybe hire some old fashioned paper boys? “Extra extra, Sony to publish new game next year! Read all about it!”

But as with all cases where an authority is abusing their influence, it takes someone to make that brave first move in order to motivate others to follow suit, and I don't see that happening.

At least gamers have other means to discover the truth about a new game. It just takes a little longer and a bit more work than reading an article. Do your research, people.

Whew, rant over. Join me again next time and until then, wash your hands and have a great week!