IGN responds to concerns over exclusive GTA IV review

by Kyle Orland { May 2nd 2008 at 12:15PM }

Earlier this week, Variety's Ben Fritz expressed concern over IGN's exclusive first review of Grand Theft Auto IV, asking rhetorically, "How can we trust a videogame review when the outlet running it has been given a major commercial favor ... from the publisher of the game?" Well, GameDaily Media Coverage Columnist Gus Mastrapa went the extra mile and asked that very question to some people at IGN. And he even got an answer!

"We in no way trade scores for an exclusive," said IGN VP Tal Blevins, adding that publishers have no access to or say in the text of a review before it goes live. That doesn't mean IGN didn't make any concessions to secure the exclusive, though. IGN Xbox editor Hilary Goldstein admitted the site used promotional placement on the site's top feature bar to secure the exclusive. "Our bargaining chip is to basically say, 'I will put it here if you let me have this,'" Goldstein said. Mastrapa likened the practice to an "exclusive cover story" in a game magazine.

As for Variety and Fritz, Goldstein seemed unimpressed with with his journalism bona fides. "Nobody from Variety called us and said, 'Hey, would you like to comment about this?'" he said. "He says in blog post, 'If I had the game right now I would have broken the embargo.' To me that goes against your ethics." Nothing like an I'm-more-ethical-than-thou battle to get your heart racing in the morning.

Tags: Ben-Fritz, controversy, exclusive, gta4, Hillary-Goldstein, IGN, journalism, review, Tal-Blevins, Variety

Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)

ThePremierAssassin @ May 2nd 2008 12:18PM

IGN you're so full of crap...

BlaqueBeird @ May 3rd 2008 3:08AM

Whoa with the voted down. Premier is finally right about something. IGN blows. Period.

hvnlysoldr @ May 4th 2008 12:09AM

A number share your opinion such as you can't spell IGNorant however do so in a more mature manner like you don't like their writers and features.

rv @ May 2nd 2008 12:19PM

Filed under: Hacks
lol

Deaddy @ May 2nd 2008 12:19PM

Heh, they referred to Hillary as a woman.

MariosInferno @ May 2nd 2008 12:24PM

Ha...nice.

+1

baby sea tuna @ May 2nd 2008 12:51PM

Yeah, but I hear the news doing that to Hillary Clinton all the time too. Common mistake, I guess.

embassy @ May 2nd 2008 1:46PM

for real though, what were his parents thinking?

...

the rodham's seem like nice enough people.

Obie @ May 2nd 2008 12:23PM

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

tmacairjordan87 @ May 2nd 2008 12:26PM

"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

riggs @ May 2nd 2008 12:32PM

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?

T @ May 2nd 2008 1:24PM

It's called a "hype machine". And when a hype machine gets rolling, no reviewer is going to try and stop it.

Look what happens when a hyped game gets a slightly lower score than the norm (like an 8.x when everywhere else is 9.x). The internet explodes and the site drowns in hate mail. And everybody simply dismisses the lower review as "wanting to be different"

Because let's face it, after IGN's 7-page fangasm of a review, who was going to dare try and suggest that GTAIV wasn't anything but prefect? Knowing full well that the tone was set and anybody who dared to say otherwise would be ignored anyway?

Phinehas @ May 2nd 2008 1:35PM

Yes, other publications followed suit. On the other hand, according to metacritic, users have rated it an 8.3 on average. That's a solid score, but it isn't the perfect 10 that IGN gave. Maybe R* should have handed out some goodies to gamers too?

baby sea tuna @ May 2nd 2008 1:47PM

8.3 seems a bit low. It's leaps and bounds over all of the other sandbox games out there, not to mention previous iterations of the franchise.

Kodros @ May 2nd 2008 1:57PM

Phinehas - There were a lot of user "reviews" before the game was even released (think it was close to 300 on the 360 version). Therefore, I'd take those reviews with a grain of salt.

JakubK666 (Ninja Defence Force) @ May 2nd 2008 2:49PM

Gamespot gave it 9.5...before changing it to 10.0

Microswirl @ May 2nd 2008 3:57PM

@Phinehas: "Maybe R* should have handed out some goodies to gamers too?"

Yeah, I wouldn't have minded being "bribed" with Gears of War graphics, solid vehicle controls, and innovative and imaginative gameplay. I guess what I'm saying is: if GTAIV had been Marcus Fenix rolling around an underwater Liberty City in a katamari ball composed of Project Gotham Racing cars... I too would've given it a perfect 10.

BlaqueBeird @ May 3rd 2008 3:11AM

Micro, I think you just blew my mind.

Jody Anthony (cookingrebels.com) @ May 2nd 2008 12:36PM

video game journalism is all a big crock anyway.

homerj312 @ May 2nd 2008 12:43PM

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

Vegeta (aka Ska Oreo) @ May 2nd 2008 12:46PM

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

Mike @ May 2nd 2008 12:56PM

"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.

Jody Anthony (cookingrebels.com) @ May 2nd 2008 12:58PM

hahaha +1 to you

matt @ May 2nd 2008 12:57PM

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.

Mike @ May 2nd 2008 1:04PM

See, I think those are two separate issues.

If a publisher is proud of a product, and wants to generate some hype prior to release, why wouldn't they put out some review copies a couple weeks before launch?

On the other side of things, when you get into the practice of trading advertising space for.... well anything other than money, you run into the possibility of corruption. Frankly the marketing / advertising dept should have no connections to the reviewers. If they do, that creates an upsetting gray area where good press could become a bargaining chip. Am I saying that happened here? No - the game is great, and deserves the high scores it is getting. However, I do think it's possible that a 9.8 could have very easily turned into a 10 with the privilege of having the first review on the internets.

Keith @ May 2nd 2008 1:08PM

Hilary! you rock dude!

Phinehas @ May 2nd 2008 1:28PM

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

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

helava @ May 2nd 2008 1:47PM

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.

Antical @ May 2nd 2008 2:11PM

your grammar sucks in the last paragraph.

born2kill @ May 2nd 2008 2:23PM

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.

JakubK666 (Ninja Defence Force) @ May 2nd 2008 3:14PM

Well...Gamespot DID give them a 9.5

born2kill @ May 2nd 2008 11:41PM

Gamespot gave them a 10 buddy

Royale @ May 2nd 2008 3:42PM

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.

JPGamer26 @ May 2nd 2008 4:05PM

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.

Seroth @ May 2nd 2008 4:30PM

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?

helava @ May 2nd 2008 4:42PM

I do. The fact is, they're one of the two biggest game sites out there, and their conduct matters. If they act as a PR outlet while masquerading as an objective review site, that's not good for us, as consumers, and it's not good for the industry.

I'm glad people are continuing to hammer on these guys for their obvious obsequiousness to publishers. If IGN's SEVEN-PAGE review had even *mentioned* how sluggish the controls feel, for instance, I might be more inclined to believe that their review was at least an attempt at critical analysis. But it wasn't - it was an exercise in "who can clap the loudest."

Thing is, these big reviews set the tone for how the game gets reviewed. A handful of terrible scores sets the stage for the rest of the internet to tear a game to pieces. A handful of good ones gets everyone scrambling to worship the game the most. Lair and SSBB are two easy examples of how this works.

Publishers understand that. If GTA had gone out of the gate with an 8, or even a 9.0, the tone of the coverage would be radically different. Rockstar understands this better than anyone else out there. You think they'd risk an impartial review on a game that cost them a hundred million to make?

Some day, the few really excellent game *journalists* will seed a movement of really excellent game journalism. IMO, the blog-format sites like Joystiq and Kotaku, and a couple genuinely good jourlalists, like Steven Kent, N'Gai Croal and Stephen Tolito are setting the stage to overthrow the obviously corrupt existing "game journalism" status quo.

Can't happen soon enough.

Andrew Barrett @ May 2nd 2008 4:55PM

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?

helava @ May 2nd 2008 5:15PM

Because the process *matters*.

Without integrity, you have nothing.

Andrew Barrett @ May 2nd 2008 5:49PM

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.

helava @ May 2nd 2008 6:06PM

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.

BlaqueBeird @ May 3rd 2008 3:20AM

Why wouldn't you want to laugh? Would you at least smile a little?

ProjectTerror @ May 2nd 2008 8:19PM

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.

t_m @ May 3rd 2008 4:52AM

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.)