Editorial - How Video Game PR Works
An editorial by
Richard Brownell published on 1.23.2005
When flipping through game magazines and browsing game web sites, gamers usually don't think about what goes on behind the scenes. After all, in the internet age there are many gaming sites without much behind the scenes at all. And there are some places that would be lost were the behind the scenes action to cease. This scene of behinds I am referring to is the video game public relations world. It is a vast and confusing mystery land of which most gamers have little to no experience. And as is the case with many things that aren't well known, there is a lot of confusion and misinformation surrounding it.
In looking at video game PR, it is important to understand the purpose of PR. There are plenty of
definitions out there on the web and pretty much all of them are good. Basically, the job of the PR person is to make the public more interested in purchasing the products they are pushing. This is done in any number of ways, including but not limited to dealing with game journalists, dealing with mainstream journalists, building online hype, trade shows, and working with the marketing department (sometimes marketing and PR is the same department) on advertisements, online buzz, etc.
So, when looking at what a PR rep does, keep in mind that dealing with video game journalists is only one part of their job. The relationship between a PR rep and a game journalist is an interesting one. The PR rep needs to push their products as best she can. But the game journalist only wants to hype up the games they deem worthy. Therein lies the dilemna that fuels most false speculation about video game PR. The honest truth is that PR reps do not pay game journalists for good reviews/scores. They (or marketing) do pay for advertising in publications, but we'll get to both scores and ads later.
Game journalists receive certain goods as part of how gaming PR works. These typically come in the form of preview code, review code, and the final product. Preview and review code are basically burned discs (or rewritable cartridges) with a previewable (incomplete) copy of a game or the final version. These are sometimes called masters, gold discs, or debug discs. Much of the time, particularly if the publication does not have debug units, PR just send out the final packaged product for review. Checking the mail can be an interesting affair at a gaming publication. On the one hand, you get the things you expect, like a reviewable copy of
Final Fantasy X-2 or a new peripheral product to review. And other times, you get an obscure Korean company sending their newest title or a game company sending some random game swag. The random game swag is sometimes complemented by what can best be called "real life swag." That is where a select number of journalists are invited to be flown out to some remote location to do things related to a particular game. Some examples are being taken to a driving course for GTA and being taught how to run people off the road (among other things) or being invited to spend a night in a haunted house for the newest scary video game.
Now one thing is important about this swag. That's about as close as PR come to paying for higher review scores. One of the main impetuses for writing this editorial is to dispel this rumor that has been going on since the industry first started getting serious reviews. Game companies do not pay for review scores. There are enough poor gaming journalists out there to vouch for that. The real issue at hand here is that gamers put more weight in review scores than is deserved (as mentioned in my last editorial). How high must a review score be to appease a PR person? If XYZ publication gives a game a low score, just how many people will be dissuaded from purchasing it?
So when thinking about how much of a hand the game companies have in determining how a review treats a game, you have to consider the PR's reaction to the reviews. PR many times may not read a review at all. They keep a tally of a game's reviews in a spreadsheet with the scores on it and perhaps choice quotes to use in advertising, but usually that is it. There are certainly those who read reviews as well. I remember getting a comment on one of my earlier reviews from a couple years back saying, "This is the absolute best review of this game." Luckily, I haven't gotten the opposite...yet.
What all this review talk comes down to is that PR reps want coverage for their games; almost any coverage will do. They handle games in a particular way, releasing information first, then screens, then movies and demos, after which they want the reviews. What they want is to see their game in the magazines and on the web sites. The PR reps expect to see bad scores much of the time. Some may delude themselves and not understand if a publication doesn't want to cover their titles. But many PR reps know which games are good and which aren't; many of them are gamers as well.
Basically, the conspiracy theories must stop. There's very little that goes on behind the scenes of gaming publications. In fact, in the web site game journalism world, some talk about the "Top 3 game sites" (IGN, GameSpot, and 1up) as the ones that get unamimous support from game companies. Which means for many other places, it's the opposite of game companies fighting for reviews; it's gaming publications fighting to get something to review.
Keep in mind this editorial is based on my personal experience as well as from talks with friends (and of course PR reps) across the industry. So if you disagree or have something to add, drop me a
line. I've been wrong before and have no doubt I'll be wrong again. One last thing to keep in mind is that this editorial is by no means comprehensive. Dealing with journalists is only part of what PR reps do. But not only has my experience not made me involved with some of that, it's also beyond the scope of the points made in here.
