IGN responds to concerns over exclusive GTA IV review

IGN you're so full of crap...

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lol

Heh, they referred to Hillary as a woman.

Eventhough IGN was the first review out of the gate, it was also the most suspicious IMO. And that is their own damn fault.

"I will put it here if you let me have this"

Out of context quote of the day right there.


As for the article, why bother even asking IGN? Are they really expecting them to say yeah we were paid off? Give me a break

it was suspicious.......until all the other publications rated it the same (or close to it). now can we please stfu about it and play it?

video game journalism is all a big crock anyway.

Hilary! you rock dude!

I read all the big websites reviews and I have to say I think I really get the most out of the IGN reviews, description wise at least I don't really pay attention to scores very much.

I think on most of the polarizing games (i.e. Assassins Creed, Army of Two, etc.) they do the best job at pointing out the flaws in the game as well as things done well in the game. I really think if people objectively looked at their reviews they would see the same thing.

homerj

Who cares? The game is fucking awesome, so it's not like they were lying or anything.

"Our bargaining chip is to basically say, 'I will put it here if you let me have this,'"

My ex-wife used to say that all the time.

OK but at the same time, everyone gets all irritated when movies/game studios will not release their games for pre-release reviews. Everyone gets suspicious that the product is crap and they are afraid of criticism. Plus, apparently they just traded it for free advertising space, seems fair.

"We in no way trade scores for an exclusive..."

Riiiight. And politicians in no way trade favors for campaign contributions. Really. Just ask them.

Let's be honest: Placement = money. Increase in money goes into Goldstein's pocket, whether it's continued salary, bonus, whatever. That Goldstein negotiated the deal and then wrote the review is such a blatant conflict of interest that it's *BAFFLING* that when the reviewer suggest the possibility, his response is basically, "huh?"

Anyone wonders why videogame "journalism" is never taken seriously, it's because of crap like this - the fine folks at Gamespot and IGN simply have no concept of journalistic integrity.

Think of it this way: IGN needs Rockstar's advertising $$ to survive. Even if Rockstar/Take Two had no access to the text of the review and no promises were made about the review score, how low do you think this world-exclusive review could have scored, given Rockstar's past behavior (where a 9.5 is considered an atrocity), and still have allowed for the possibility of another exclusive when GTAV comes out? And how long do you think Goldstein would have kept his job if Rockstar had gone to the higher-ups at IGN and cancelled future advertisements based on the score/text of the review?

The promise was implied by the structure of the deal. Don't kid yourself.

your grammar sucks in the last paragraph.

It seemed like IGN was being very biased because GTA is nowhere near a f'n 10 (9 at the most). However theres enough other websites that are kissing rockstars ass with perfect 10s, that I can't single out IGN and say they were any worse in their biases. Nor can I say that rockstar paid off every game reviewer, because honestly they don't need perfect scores to sell the hell out of this game and break all existing sales records.

Who cares...? The people who read/watched IGNs exclusive review, were probably people who were already going to buy the game.

Good work IGN for securing that deal. With every video game blog in the world linking to their review when it popped added mega page views to their site which netted them some healthy revenue, and I'm sure whoever got to play the pre-release copy was happy as well.

If IGN was the only outlet to give the game a ten, I think we might have reason to complain, but clearly this is not the case. And as someone has already mentioned, most of the user reviews on metacritic were there long before the game came out, which in my opinion makes them not credible.

People are STILL talking about this? The game's already out. Most of us have formed our own opinions on the game, who cares about IGN's anymore?

are you serious? does it really matter?

truthfully if one were to look at the whole picture, one would realize that if the traded a good review for a sneak peak, then all the other good reviews (almost every one of them) would also be botched. there is no way in hell that 90 percent of the 9+ reviews are because of deals with rockstar.

the game is fantastic, there's no doubt, so why does it matter if everyone is saying the same thing?

either way this game is great. if i had reviewed the game myself, i'd also have given it a 10. maybe hillary just really enjoyed it, much like everyone else i've talked to.

the process doesn't matter, they still reviewed the game, and it doesn't really matter how they got to it. maybe if the review was the only perfect score, then i'd be skeptical, but at this point, they just got it before other people because of how large the site is.

if it turns out that the did take a bribe, then i retract my previous statements, but to me, a score is a score, and as long as every other score is close to that one, then the game socially accepted as a strong title and will be remembered.

Okay - think of it this way - there was a moment, during the 2000 election, where the networks declared that Bush won Florida. This wasn't what actually happened, but that's what they said, and as a result, it became the status quo.

Those initial impressions matter. In the public eye, Gore was now "challenging" Bush for the win, even though the statistical difference between the two was insignificant (this is why it sucks that most Americans are basically math-illiterate - try explaining statistical significance to someone at a time when it actually matters. Whoo - painful).

This put Gore at a foot of a massive uphill battle. The same thing happens with these kinds of subjective judgements. Much as you'd like to believe that each individual opinion is its own precious snowflake, the thing that marketers know is that "public opinion" and peer pressure play a *huge* part in perception of quality. It's much harder for a critical review of GTA IV to be taken seriously when the rest of the internet is awash in cries of "10/10!"

Look at the huge number of reviews. Have you read any of them that mention that the camera control is garbage? That the player controls are incredibly sluggish? That many of the missions are incredibly tedious? That the phone text is almost too small to read on anything but a huge TV? Reviews are supposed to be critical, but GTA IV's have had reviewers at the major sites falling over themselves to see who could lavish the most praise on it.

Yeah, it's a great experience - the size and scope of the city are astonishing. But there are parts of it that are legitimately, straightforwardly awful and no one mentioned those *at all*.

The tide had already turned. The consensus opinion was that the game was a 10/10. IGN's initial salvo helped establish that. You think that was one person's honest opinion? One person who negotiated the commercial sale of major, major advertising on one of the biggest game sites on the 'net?

Don't make me laugh.

I can't believe we have "review site fanboys" in addition to console fanboys and game fanboys. Personally, I don't read any site exclusively.. I just read the ones that happen to have the information I want at that time.

But I gotta say, i've never really had any problems with IGN. They seem pretty honest and open.. at least compared to gamespot.

They also seem pretty above board in this situation. (though in the case of Cover Exclusives on magazines it did often seem to lead to inflated scores for mediocre games.)

Please Pease PLEASE Joystiq writers, when you link to a news story or interview that spans multiple pages, link to the FIRST page!

I agree with Quanras. It's good to have a link to the basic area where you get the information but most people bothering to click all the links for all information want ALL the information so the READ link should be set for the first page.