Did you all hear about that Jays vs. Rangers game a while back? It was pretty crazy – the Rangers got credit for a run that came home after the plate ump called time out, for reasons that ESPN can explain far better than I can. Now, the Rangers went on to completely squander that lead, and our boy Jose Bautista sealed a Jays victory with an impressive home run, but what I found interesting was the behavior of the Toronto fans after that controversial call. They, in a most un-Canadian fashion, threw a hissy fit, tossed beer cans onto the field, and started yelling that the game had been fixed.
What did those fan shenanigans accomplish? Well, one jerk got arrested after spraying a baby in the face with beer, and annoyed stadium staff had to clear the debris off the field. In the future, fans at the stadium may no longer be able to buy beer in bottles or cans. This is why we can’t have nice things, folks.
The whole incident makes me think about common reactions to video game reviews. it’s hard to find a comment section for a review that doesn’t contain at least one accusation that the reviewer was paid off or in league with either the game’s publishers or a shadowy (and entirely nonexistent) social justice cabal. First of all, these accusations usually completely unfounded. I know some fans have a warped view that publishers hand wads of cash directly to reviewers for positive reviews, but that’s just not how it works. Most publishers and PR reps are more ethical and professional than that, and those that aren’t tend to use much more indirect forms of pressure on game sites – pressure that most actual reviewers are shielded from. Even on the occasion that there’s a grain of truth to the accusation, yelling your conspiracy theory into the great void of the internet does nothing to reform anything.
Here’s the difference between baseball calls and video game reviews. Baseball umpires have the power to make decisions that can determine whether or not a team wins a game. Game reviewers do not have direct power over how well a game does or doesn’t sell. You have that power. Sure, you (the collective you) give us more power if you glance over Metacritic scores to decide whether to buy a game rather than actually taking a few minutes to actually read reviews or ask your friends about their experiences. You also give reviewers you don’t like more power by rage-clicking on their articles and drumming up traffic for their sites by spreading their links all over social media. In a click-based economy like ours, there really is no such thing as bad press.
If you really want to help improve whatever problems you have with the gaming press, there’s a few positive steps you can take. Save your clicks for reviewers you like and trust and turn off your ad blockers for those sites, rewarding them for the work they do. I wish we didn’t have to rely on ad-based click revenue, but that’s the way the web works right now, unless you’d like to go back to paying subscription fees. Also, don’t buy games before the reviews come out for them. One of the biggest tricks that publishers play when they know they have a stinker on their hands is to either place that game on a last-minute press embargo or worse, refuse to even send out advance copies of the game to reviewers. We reviewers aren’t actually that easy to control, and companies have found that it’s far easier to force us not to publish advance reviews than it is to try to cajole us into giving positive reviews for a questionable game.
Baseball fans throwing cans on the field doesn’t accomplish anything but a bunch of work for the stadium janitors. Video game fans spewing invective and ill-conceived conspiracy theories all over the ‘net doesn’t accomplish anything but a bunch of work for our virtual janitors, your friendly local community managers and comment moderators. Unless we take positive action and put our money where our mouths are, nothing’s going to change in the game industry, and nobody’s going to get any beer.