Crystal Ball Journalism

At the Leipzig Games Convention, which just finished, the winner of the award in the category "Best Online Game" was World of Warcraft. Okay, Blizzard was there and presented the beta version. But how can you give an award for "best game" to a game that is not yet available?

I'm subscribed to only one games magazine, the official PS2 magazine, for the simple reason that this is the only possible way to get playable demos for the PS2. But I occasionally buy other games magazines, to keep myself informed about all sorts of games. And I noticed an alarming trend: Previews are taking over. You get 2-page previews and half-page reviews. Most magazines I've seen this year had the preview section over twice as big as the review section. And not just once, but all the time! How can there be always more games in the future than in the present?

I don't like previews. Most of the time they are simply a bunch of lies, glued together with marketing hype. Games like Daikatana or Black & White get hyped for months and months, and then they come out and are a big disappointment. Even worse, lots of games first get hyped, then don't come out at all. UO2, UOX, Mythica, Warhammer Online, are just some examples in the MMORPG genre.

This crystal ball journalism has obvious advantages for the writers, and for the game companies that supply them with freebies. The writer can go wild with conjectures and assumptions. Writing about something that doesn't exist is much easier than writing about something that does exist, because reality doesn't get into the way of your imagination. And for the companies its free advertising.

But for the readers those previews are just bad. Even if the journalist had a very good crystal ball, and described the game accurately, it still doesn't help the reader at all. He can't go out and buy the game based on that recommendation, as it doesn't exist yet. The official PS2 magazine in its 50th UK edition boasts that it wrote about the EyeToy a full 3 years before it actually came out. And that has achieved exactly what for their customers? Especially since that accurate prediction of the EyeToys greatness is probably the result of praising 100 different games, and getting it right once by pure chance.

I'm making things artificially hard for me here, but I will try to keep this blog in the present, not the future. Of course I will occasionally mention games that are about to come out. But I don't review anything of which I haven't at the very least played the beta. A crystal ball belongs into a gypsies tent on the fun fair, not on a writers desk. You can predict trends, but not how good an individual game will be.
- posted by Tobold @ 3:58 PM Permanent Link