New Study: Game Previews are Actually Advertisements!

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Originally Posted by Slashdot

Kotaku has a great feature up today written by James Wagner Au, formerly embedded reporter in the world of Second Life. He's now doing his own thing, and he's got a fairly cynical discussion over at the Kotaku site about the real purpose behind game previews in industry rags. From the article: "For the thing of it is, game magazine previews are almost uniformly positive, even for the most undistinguished titles. So it unrolls thus: publisher makes mediocre game; press previews depict mediocre game as being good or at least worth a look; excited gamers read previews, foolishly believe them, start making pre-sale orders of mediocre game; driven by preview press and pre-sale numbers based on that press, retailers stock up on mediocre game; publisher makes money from mediocre game, keeps making more games like it."

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Thank you, internets! I would have never guessed this on my own! Game magazines... are advertisements? INCONCEIVABLE!

This is one of those things so stupid it shouldn't have it's own thread.

We also now get ads (like one for the next Far Cry in EGM) that are made to look like mag previews, further blurring the line between the two.

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excited gamers read previews, foolishly believe them, start making pre-sale orders of mediocre game;

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Excited gamer becomes jaded gamer, learns lesson, the circle of life is complete.

James

That quote reminds me of Next Gen's Knockout Kings cover.

Typical gamer looks at pictures, doesn't read preview, and preorders game even if every single word written about it says its trash. Then go on gamefaqs and defend said game to the death without having played it, only to move on to a different game when that steaming pile is released.

Yet another hard-hitting expose from Duh Magazine.