jeff-gerstmann posts

Part of any game's development cycle is its advertising efforts. Done to drum up interest in a title that might otherwise go unnoticed, there are various approaches a PR staff can take. They can appeal to a gamer's intellect by displaying a bullet point list of key features. They can evoke a sense of competition by challenging the player's pride in his abilities. They can even rely on nostalgia in the case of a sequel, or if the game is a reissue of an old game for a new platform.

Going along with the publisher-generated hype is media coverage of the game. There are dozens, if not scores of game-related sites out there, all ready to give you their opinions and competing with each other to provide first looks at screenshots and gameplay. Given these two forces in action, it can be difficult to avoid oversaturation. By the time a game arrives on store shelves, you might find that the excitement and anticipation you felt upon first hearing of the title has been drowned in the sea of clamoring voices, all vying for your attention. Worse yet, you might find that playing the game itself does not provide the experience promised by all the hype. What's to be done about this?

If it's been said once, it's been said a thousand times: the best advertising is word-of-mouth. What's meant by this is that a person is more likely to try a product or service if someone they know has recommended it to them. The reverse is also true: if a friend or family member recommends against something, the referee is similarly likely to avoid it. What makes this phenomenon work is trust. We trust the opinions of those close to us, because we've spent enough time with them to understand in which ways their tastes might overlap ours.

But does this still work with game reviews, when the only way you've come to know the reviewer is through reading their reviews? Can a trust relationship evolve from what is, essentially, one-way communication? Is a commercially-funded review source more or less trustworthy than a writer's personal blog? Can numerical scores relate actual value?

In what might prove to be the most meta post ever, I'm going to talk about gaming journalism and how it's changed in recent years. Now, the mainstream media -- by which I refer to traditional magazines like Time and Life, and news outlets like the Wall Street Journal and the New York Times -- have always worked diligently to maintain a high-quality standard for themselves. As a collective, they follow the rules set down in regulatory tomes such as the Chicago Manual of Style and the AP Stylebook. Of course, every publication has its own house style to which its writers must adhere, but by and large there are many generally accepted guidelines concerning tone, editorial slant, and the like.

As video games grew as a phenomenon, it quickly became evident that the mainstream press wasn't going to give it the coverage its enthusiast audience demanded. Typically adopting an outsider's approach, traditional news outlets left their coverage at "Here's a new trend. It's kind of strange and we don't understand it, but the kids seem to like it." This journalistic void left the field wide open for a new generational voice to inhabit.