Topic: So IGN got called out for rushing a review and then stealth editing it

[Flames_of_chaos]

So it looks like IGN is at it again, but actually this time a IGN review got called out for rushing the review for PixelJunk Sidescroller, by Dylan Cuthbert of Q-Games who developed it. What's even better, the IGN reviewer even edited the review to remove the evidence of him rushing the game.


This NeoGaf post shows all the pictures of the drama, even a before and after edits of the paragraph in question.

[UncleBob]

Almost reminds me of something...

Obviously, this is much worse - and on a whole different scale... but, at its heart, it opens the age-old question of "How much of a game should the reviewer play before writing the review?"

[Morari]

"How much of a game should the reviewer play before writing the review?"

...all of it?

Nevermind, film critics should only be required to watch the trailer before writing a review.

[NeoStar9X]

Or at least be completely honest about just how much of it you played and on what difficulty you played. I can understand not running through an RPG fully as they are very long. Even rushing you can miss a lot. In that case a late review is better. This is a downloadable title. It's not long. There isn't a need to be "first".

I give fan sites a pass as they do it for the love of the games, etc. It sucks when they do stuff like this but they are judged differently in the end. IGN is different. It's writers get paid. It's a job and they unfortunately carry a lot of weight in the industry. Actions like this show them to be I feel incompetent as well as unethical and just straight up liars. However this isn't the first time they've pulled this crap. There is a reason why the saying "You can't spell ignorant without IGN" exist.

[broodwars]

Obviously, this is much worse - and on a whole different scale... but, at its heart, it opens the age-old question of "How much of a game should the reviewer play before writing the review?"

Personally, I've always sided with the idea that the reviewer need only play as much of a game as they think they need to play to render a review that critiques the experience most users will have.  At some point, many games start throwing in filler to extend the length of the game, and the reviewer's probably seen all they need to see.  And that depends greatly on the game, the genre, and the reviewer's skill.

For instance, asking a reviewer to play the entirety of one of the Disgaea games before reviewing it is insane, as each game in that series could take well over a hundred hours to see everything.  On the flipside, on many RPGs I'd definitely want the reviewer to have played the whole story because it's a story-based genre and a late game plot-twist could radically change one's perception of the game.  It just depends on the game.

As for this business with IGN, I don't know why they didn't just say what difficulty mode they played it on and left it at that.  Then people could understand the experience they were reviewing.

[UncleBob]

"How much of a game should the reviewer play before writing the review?"

...all of it?

That sounds good, in theory.  So, how much of the Atari 2600 game ET should one play before writing a review?

More to this specific case, what if the game has multiple difficulties?  Should one have to play & beat DooM on Nightmare before writing a review?

What if a game has a bull-**** crazy unlockable level?  Green Hill Zone in Sonic Adventure 2: Battle?

[S-U-P-E-R]

Obviously, this is much worse - and on a whole different scale... but, at its heart, it opens the age-old question of "How much of a game should the reviewer play before writing the review?"

I've long wondered this myself, when I was reviewing games all the time. My gut feeling says 12 hours.
 
I just now got to wondering how well a reviewer needs to "understand" a game before reviewing it. Who reads reviews, anyway? Casuals? Hardcores? What kind of perspective do you need to have on a review? I myself don't read reviews because I know more than anyone ever born about video games and I don't want to be patronized.
 
One thing's for sure, though, I will never, ever, pass up an opportunity to make fun of someone for being bad at a video game. To this IGN guy playing through a game on "casual," I say to you, ahahahahah.

[Lithium]

it probably wouldn't even be an issue if he had just been up front about having to rush through it. its pretty common for reviewers to have time constraints and maybe he had to to make the deadline. However editing your review in this manner after its published is just plain unprofessional.

[S-U-P-E-R]

it probably wouldn't even be an issue if he had just been up front about having to rush through it. its pretty common for reviewers to have time constraints and maybe he had to to make the deadline. However editing your review in this manner after its published is just plain unprofessional.

Actually I'd rather see an article edited than just letting a bunch of errors rock

[Ymeegod]

"Concerning My PixelJunk SideScroller Review
October 26, 2011 by daemon-IGN


So today I reviewed PixelJunk SideScroller. I played on a PlayStation 3 test kit with review code provided by Sony. I gave it a 6.5. One of the developers was upset and accused me of not playing the game on the normal difficulty. This isn't true -- I beat SideScroller twice, once on casual and then on normal. The content was exactly the same in both play throughs. When I assured the developer I had played on normal, he said I would have unlocked an "epic last stage." I was confused, because I didn't seem to unlock anything except the hard difficulty.
 
 
 
To clarify, there are three stages in SideScroller. In both casual and normal mode, when you complete all three stages you unlock the "last stage." So I played through this last stage on both difficulties.
 
 
 
I thought this line in my review might be bothering him: "Finish the last stage and defeat the final boss and what is your reward? A swift kick back to the title screen with no more than "congratulations.""
 
 
 
That is technically a true statement, although after completing normal mode there is a brief scene telling you you've unlocked hard mode. That scene was not significant to me, but upon reflection I thought maybe I wasn't being fair. So I removed the above sentence from my review, not to hide anything but in a hope to not mislead anyone into thinking there isn't a brief little something at the end of the game, however insignificant. To me, this wasn't an important change to the review -- it didn't change my score and all the important information about the game is still there. Tweaking articles is common practice on the internet. Should we notate every change to an article we make? Perhaps, but IGN doesn't have a standard in place for doing so.
 
 
 
Anyways, I should have just left the article the way it was because there was nothing factually wrong with it and changing seems to have bothered some people, including the developer. I put the sentence back in and am writing this blog post to try and clear things up.
 
 
 
I think PixelJunk SideScroller is an "okay" game, which is what a 6.5 means on the IGN scale. I beat it on both normal and casual modes and saw the same content in both play throughs. The only perk I can find for beating the game on normal is unlocking hard mode.
 
 
 
Daemon
 


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Category: Uncategorized
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Seems like he's actually right and the developer was just whining IMO.

[Ymeegod]

"For instance, asking a reviewer to play the entirety of one of the Disgaea games before reviewing it is insane, as each game in that series could take well over a hundred hours to see everything"

Yeah, played Disgaea 2 and had well over an 100 hours and only saw 40% of the game :0.  Totally insane amount of grinding you can do. 

[Silenced]

Well, you can't tell if he's lying on his ass or not. But I would believe him.

[oohhboy]

It doesn't matter if he was lying, it's a question of transparency. It wasn't a spelling mistake or a minor grammer tweak. Even in print media, corrections get printed, which costs real amounts of money. How hard could it possibly be to add annotations to an article for corrections in electronic media?

The cover up was worse than the crime if there even was one.

[Ymeegod]

"Even in print media, corrections get printed"  But this is the net and reviews get editted quite a bit, ie in case the reviewer missed something or in case the "reviewed" copy wasn't the final build.

His score didn't change nor his opinion so the review stands.  Now if it was something major then I would expect an retraction but this wasn't the case. 

[NWR_insanolord]

My first review on the site, Pro Evo 2011 for 3DS, had a factual error about the game in it. The game had extra camera options that I wasn't aware of and I'd said the default one was the only way to play it. Since I loved the default angle, learning this didn't change my opinion of the game in any real way, so we just updated the review with the correct facts without mentioning it. I don't think making changes like this is a big deal as long as they don't affect the overall tone of the review. There are plenty of good reasons to hate on IGN, but this is just a poorly handled misunderstanding.

[Morari]

"How much of a game should the reviewer play before writing the review?"

...all of it?

That sounds good, in theory.  So, how much of the Atari 2600 game ET should one play before writing a review?

More to this specific case, what if the game has multiple difficulties?  Should one have to play & beat DooM on Nightmare before writing a review?

What if a game has a bull-**** crazy unlockable level?  Green Hill Zone in Sonic Adventure 2: Battle?

I don't think that unlockables are necessary as they are not part of the main game. Just ike film critics don't review DVD extras.

As for varying difficulties, anything less than Hard and you're not really playing the game.

[nickmitch]

People who review DVDs review the extras.

How much of a game a reviewer should play depends on the game. If there's a bonus level for beating the game on super hard mode (which is only unlocked after beating normal and hard modes) without dying, then that doesn't need to be reviewed. If the game is too terrible or hard or impractically long for the reviewer to play all the way through, the review should reflect that.

[UncleBob]

As for varying difficulties, anything less than Hard and you're not really playing the game.

I have to disagree with this.  In general, I play on the default skill level - whatever it is.  If the game is too hard/too easy, then I'll go back and change it.  If I really, really like the game, then I'll give it another play though and up the difficulty.

Though, it doesn't seem like I play that many games with variable skill levels.

[Lithium]

I have to disagree with this.  In general, I play on the default skill level - whatever it is.  If the game is too hard/too easy, then I'll go back and change it.  If I really, really like the game, then I'll give it another play though and up the difficulty.

Though, it doesn't seem like I play that many games with variable skill levels.

[KDR_11k]

"How much of a game should the reviewer play before writing the review?"

...all of it?

Nevermind, film critics should only be required to watch the trailer before writing a review.

Films continue no matter how good you are at them and only take 2-3 hours to deal with. A game should be played for as long as you enjoy it. If you hate a game enough to stop playing that's a result right there. If a film critic is too disgusted by a movie and leaves the cinema early that's also a result. Do what you think other people would do in your place and write the review after you're done with the game for any reason. If you've put in dozens of hours and still want to play more my guess is that you can just as well write a review then, if you sour on the game later it really doesn't matter anymore because you've gotten a lot of enjoyment out of it already.

One thing's for sure, though, I will never, ever, pass up an opportunity to make fun of someone for being bad at a video game. To this IGN guy playing through a game on "casual," I say to you, ahahahahah.

When I make a difficulty selector for a game I will call Easy Hardcore and Hard Casual. The modern definition of hardcore seems to be one who buys a ton of games and then doesn't have much time for any of them, preferring to bash them out quickly and move on. Meanwhile a modern casual gamer is one who buys one game a year and plays that pretty much non-stop until the next yearly iteration is released. It's fucked up but it's what you get when marketers get to define words like that: Your hardcoreness is rated by the amount of money they get out of you.