EGM once did an article where they talked about and showed pictures of some of the weirdest stuff that game companies had sent them. Stuff like toys squirt guns filled with alcohol, real swords, etc. A lot of it is pretty cool and stuff I would like to own, but I wonder how effective some of it is.

One thing i've always found odd is why publishers send review copies of games to site that don't review games (like Kotaku). I guess it's for the same reason, basically trying to bribe them to talk about the game.

It's up to you guys to decide if you want to talk about a game. I suppose it's OK if you decide to talk about a game because of the free swag, as long as you don't let it influence your opinion (i.e. if you think a game looks bad, you should still say you think it looks bad).

Well, I can't pretend to understand how PR and marketing works. But here's how I see it...

In the videogame industry, it can be hard to get yourself noticed, especially if your game is a new IP and the company is relatively unknown. The best way to get yourself noticed is to be creative with how you present and sell your game. Something that grabs your attention right away. The more effort you do the more likely the product gets noticed.

Not to mention that the creativity put into the PR material shows that the company believes in the game, that they are willing to push the game hard. Even if the game doesn't end up being the best at the very least they tried to sell the game.

I agree that it shouldn't influence how you view the game, but they do earn respect and, in my honest opinion, deserve to get some coverage.

That way, we may inspire other companies to offer their services and be creative with how they sell their games.

Oh, and I HAD heard of Squeeballs before. But I learned about it as an Xbox 360 game that used the 360 remote (a third party peripheral). Then a Wii port was later announced. There was even a video on the Nintendo Channel a few weeks before release.

I've noticed that swag quality tends to be inversely proportional to current success.

Kotaku does review games, just selectively, and without scores.

They didn't use to, it's been a few years since I checked their site. I always thought it was stupid that companies would send them games all the time even though the site never reviewed them. I think that publishers should make any site/magazine/etc. agree to review the game if they want to get a free copy of the game.

I don't agree.  Media shouldn't have to agree to anything since that breaks objectivity.

Squeeballs - 10/10

"One of the best games of this or any generation" - Jon Lindemann, Nintendo World Report



I'm sorry, but when I hear the name "Squeeballs" I can only picture somebody's twig and berries being squeezed until they scream in pain.

I'm not saying they have to give it a good review, but why should a site get a game for free and not have to review it? I know I wouldn't keep sending games to a site if aren't reviewing them (especially if the site gets a copy of the game before it releases).

I guess we will just have to disagree on this.

TJ, your judgment is clouded by the prospect of free games.  I think we have all been there before.

The fact of the matter is there is a fine line between being a legitimate games site that has the readers in mind and being just another arm of the corporate PR machine.  Game companies should be begging for any coverage they can get from a site that has significant traffic.  Kotaku (or any other site) doesn't owe them anything just because they received a "free" copy.

When companies control the press in any way, it's no longer the press anymore.  For a great case study, look at Penny Arcade.  They receive buckets and buckets of free games and swag.  All the companies that send them stuff realize that they talk about a relatively small number of games on their site.  They don't get mad when their game doesn't get talked about, that's what the expect.  However, they still send games on the outside chance that PA will speak highly of their game, which will most like result in thousands of additional purchases.

Sending a copy of the game out costs the game companies pennies.  It's not like they are paying retail for the game.

You just addressed your own concern. If they were worried about it, they would stop sending free copies.

I think it's better to have posts revealing the exact special treatment that comes with copies of games they receive that they decide to review.  Sure, it gives the game extra press, but it also allows us to see that there was a little bit of an outside source that possibly influenced reviews.

That said, I abhor any time publishers "treat" reviewers to events across the country, through wild adventure scenarios, and things like that, where they take the reviewer and bring him or her into an unnatural setting.  Often, reviews for games when this happens are inflated, and it's in seriously poor taste for reviewers to accept things like this.  Boxes with unique presentation are one thing, but free vacations, limo rides, or events that surround a handful of journalists with dozens of people who represent the game/company trying to market their game.  Those events are just bad news.

Damn, where are my free vacations and limo rides (not including the PGC BIG CONTEST I won before I was staff)?

I think Kotaku, GameSpot, and IGN get the most, along with guys that used to write for magazines that seemed to score games that took advertisements in their magazines higher than the ones that didn't.  Mostly those cats.

And it shows, too.  Those sites absolutely adore many of the companies that pull those stunts.

As someone who has partaken in these events in the past, I disagree.

I'll use Quantum of Solace for Xbox 360 and PS3 as an example. The event i went to last year before the game's release was absurd, and I know a lot of journalists came away being impressed with the game. The game came out, and it scored poorly. I chalk those events up to the opposite of what games like Dead Space: Extraction got blasted for at E3. Those events are demos in great conditions. Dead Space: Extraction was a demo in terrible conditions.

Also, you can't blame PR companies for organizing those events, as their job is to influence the public, and one way of doing that is by pampering journalists. The job falls onto the journalist to isolate the swag they get and the events they go to from actually grading the game. People that let moneyhats sway their scores fail as journalists and become veiled PR reps.

On that note, I know for a fact that Joystiq and the AOL Blogs will not accept free trips like that. Personally, if Activision wants to pay my way to California and put me up in a nice hotel, I have no problem with that because I trust myself and I know that even if I come away from the event thinking "Quantum of Solace looked pretty good," that by no means guarantees it'll be a good game.

And thatguy, I think throwing Kotaku in with GameSpot and IGN is offensive to them, and I don't even really like Kotaku. IGN and GameSpot have both had bad track records with the fine line between PR and journalism (that Hero rhythm game page on IGN is a shining recent example). Not saying Kotaku is golden, but they seem to shoot from the hip. And as someone mentioned, Kotaku does review games, but they don't score them.

Kotaku is the single-largest "hardcore" gaming hype blog.  They favor their attention to the games in which they receive special attention from the developers and publishers.  There will literally be five stories a day for game X, where no new information is presented, and one or no new stories from game Y.  Sometimes it's because they're interested in game X, but often it's with games where they've previously published interviews or snippets showing something happened between them and the company's PR.

Don't forget that reviews aren't the only way to give impressions of a game.  You mentioned the Quantum of Solace issue, for one, and that's a good thing to bring up:  Game reviewers and media give previews and impressions based off of this type of thing.  Even if the impressions don't match the review score, they do determine a lot of the "informed" consumer's outlook on the game.  In this case, it was positive far beyond how the game actually measured up.  Sure, reviews weren't great, but interest in the game, specifically from earlier impressions, was skewed.  When a reviewer talks about how a game is shipped, people can see it doesn't actually effect impressions of said game.  However, the case was completely and entirely different from the QoS event, and it's one of many that have had this issue.

I don't buy into your conspiracy theory thatguy.  Kotaku is my favored spot for multiplatform coverage and I can't think of a time where I really felt like they were spouting biased crap.

I think the behavior you're describing has less to do with them being biased and more to do with them being only human.  With a blog style site, people write and post about stuff that they find interesting.  If they did a good interview with game developer X, they are more likely to follow X's game and thus find more reasons to write posts about it.

That is the essence of what a blog is and that is why I enjoy Kotaku.  The writiers stay true to their personal guns and it just so happens that about 70% of their guns seem similar to mine =P.

I'm not saying it's a conspiracy, I'm saying it's bad journalism and it's unprofessional, in a lot of ways.

As far as whether or not Kotaku is a blog, that's up for debate, too.  They monthly bundle up just about all their stories and act like they "could" be a magazine.  They go to press events created for games journalism, and they get a lot more exclusive interviews and similar things than actual games journalism does.  The "blog" idea is simply used as a defense to not be held accountable for their sometimes shoddy journalism.  There will be days when you'll see four or five stories up on Kotaku with quite a few factual errors and invalid premises.  They'll post stories with incorrect post times on them, to look like they're more consistent.  Just all around, they're very bad journalists, and they seem to use the "blog" label as an excuse, rather than as a method to exercise editorial opinion.

It's just a bad website, and that's all.  Their appeal is that they do pick up a lot of news, from just about everywhere, but it's not their editorial or writing abilities.  Since Kotaku does pick up exclusive stuff, they're visited over sites like IGN and GameStop because they've got links to anything interesting on those sites.

In all fairness, though, recently they have been trending toward more and better written opinion pieces.  Over the past few weeks, I've noticed fewer mistakes and inaccuracies, as well.  Perhaps they're trending for the better, I don't know.  I think a lot of issues were from one of their editors who hasn't posted stories in a month, Luke Plunkett, but they've been the epitome of professionals who hide behind their name one day, then whine and/or gloat about how they're better than the news sites because of the original stories they make and create.  To me, that's a serious identity crisis that's fostered many of their problems.

I hope to god you don't visit GoNintendo thatguy....  That is an example with what is wrong with a journalism blog... not Kotaku.

I don't think GoNintendo is a journalism blog, or that it claims to be.

Nah, I go to GoNintendo very, very rarely.  Don't like them very much, and every time I do visit, it reminds me of why I don't.  At least Kotaku tries to give proper credit when they pull things from someone else.

So, what about the game?

It's a minigame collection that is developed by a peripheral maker (PDP) there was supposed to be a 360  version as well which came with a Wii Remote knock off but I guess that version has been taken down and only lists Wii,DS and iPhone versions. When I saw the DS version at a gamestop, it comes with this weird toy or peripheral thing.

Read as: I love the teddy bears and they are MINE ALL MINE!

The best piece of schwag (from a review title) I ever got was a letter that implored me to love this game.  The unnamed title actually told me how to play it (not how the game is played but how I should personally play it for review).

Besides that unintentional comedy, it's probably a leather pouch for DS games I got for Dungeon Explorer.  Believe me, this did not influence my score... go see the review for proof of that.

As far as Squeeballs is, we got a bunch of emails about that game.  The PR team has been very active.  They've also become more sophisticated. More informative, less "What the hell is this" hilarious.

Say what you will about some people from Kotaku, but Stephen Totilo (formerly of MTV Multiplayer) is probably the best journalist I have seen in recent video games journalism. He's also one of the main reason I return to Kotaku.

What you're saying is not bad journalism. It's not unprofessional.

What is unprofessional is Gawker blogs not citing sources clearly, but GoNintendo offends more than them in that regard.

We've always tried to review all the games sent to us, but there are always some that fall through the cracks due to busy staff, insufficient man-power, shipping problems, technical problems, etc. PR reps understand the pressures of running a website and rarely say anything except to check up on a title and ask whether we plan to review it. Many review copies come with a letter and the phrase "for your consideration". We consider everything -- whether we can realistically review everything is another question.

My friends used to ask me why companies sent me free games. I always said that if I write something about that game and cause one other person to buy it, the publisher has already made enough profit to offset the cost of my free copy. That's probably not true if you factor in the PR rep's time, but the potential advantage is still obviously enticing enough that virtually every game publisher sends out review copies. It's one of the most cost-effective ways to market your game.

Definitely.  The worst news is no news.  Spyborgs shows that, clearly.  I think NWR was just about the only site with any pre-release coverage aside from whatever generic video might have been sent out.

Dang, those Squeeballs are awesome! My wife would love them...actually, our corgi would, too.

The game is all about abusing these poor creatures, so feeding the plushies to a dog or cat would be most appropriate.

do they sell the stuffed anmals i would like some