Madness ensued. Some people were jealous. Some people were cautiously accepting, and some were just mad -- one guy in Tobold's comments section went nuts.
Unexpected and unfortunate.
You've been fairly even-handed with your thoughts on Warhammer so far, but no matter how you dress it up you're going to sound like a paid stooge now.
I love how you try to brush it aside as no big deal since you're still going to pay for it so you can play on Euro servers.
I wonder...how many other bloggers out there are on Mythic's payroll?
So, should we care? What should be done?
I think we should care about this, and what we need to do is educate people.
Critics
In the Entertainment world there are these people called "Critics". "Critics" write, or "critique" pieces of entertainment. There are all sorts of critics. There are book critics. There are movie critics. There are music critics and there are television critics and, unbelievably, there are also video game critics.
How Critics Review Stuff
Generally, the publisher or distributor of the will provide the appropriate type of critic with access to the piece of entertainment. Book critics will get a copy of a book ahead of time. Movie critics will generally get a press preview. Music critics will get copies of music and tv critics will get advance copies of certain episodes of tv shows. Video game critics will get advance copies of video games.
And, here's an important part of this : these things are all free. The cost is generally negligable, and there's not a lot of worry about corruption, since critics are given access to pretty much all appropriate media according to their stature and not their opinion on any particular venture.
Now keep in mind that in some fields it is a little too expensive to allow critics to keep their "review copies". Car critics and PC hardware critics are generally just given loaners since these things cost large amounts of money.
How MMORPG's are completely different
Now, we've seen how it's well accepted and ethical for ordinary entertainment reviewers to accept free access to the material they are reviewing. But it's important to keep in mind that MMORPG's are a completely different ballgame.
For starters, an unlimited MMORPG account is worth a lot of money. But wait, isn't it just worth a lot of money over a long time? Wouldn't that be the same for everybody? A movie critic might just get a single $10 pass to a movie, but the same distributor might give them 40 passes over the course of a year. A book reviewer only gets a $25 book, but they might get five or six books from the same publisher every year. A video game reviewer only gets a $60 game, but they might get five or ten games from the same publisher every year. So maybe MMORPG's aren't that different.
If you think about it another way, none of those other things quite provide the entertainment bang-for-the-buck that MMORPG's do. The $10 movie might only last 90 minutes. The $25 book only takes 5 hours to read. The $60 game can be completed in 6 hours. But for $15 you can get a whole month's worth out of entertainment from an MMORPG. And since the game keeps changing it makes sense to provide continued access to critics.
But Wait
But Wait. Tobold isn't a professional game reviewer. Is that why it's not ok? Well, I'd guess not. In our modern world of blogs and flying cars there are a growing number of amateurs covering not just MMORPG's but books, movies, etc.
And this amateur coverage is particularly important to the MMORPG community, because we just aren't served by any substantial professional effort right now. I visit a "professional" site when they have some exclusive news but otherwise rarely. In fact, most mainstream gaming sites eschew MMORPG's. They'll have news when an MMORPG is released or patched or when there is some Big News, but the day-to-day intrigues are generally left unexplored.
What Is Actually Bad
Now this is not to say that the commercial interests can never get out of line when it comes to critics. It's not appropriate to threaten the critics, and it's not appropriate to give them much more than what they are reviewing. A subscription to Warhammer is OK, a subscription to Warhammer and a New Car is not.
In Conclusion
Like I said, we need to be concerned about the reaction to this news and try to educate people. In this post I hopefully explained why bloggers getting review access to MMORPG's is no big deal.
Posts
6 comments:
Can't say I really have a problem with what happened. Tobold was up front about what happened and pointed out he's actually paying for a European subscription. Given the European Open Beta problems and the fact that Tobold posted about preview weekend not being available in Europe, I can only imagine Mythic wanted to give him a chance to see their game in its best light.
Tobold said it pretty well, "I can't be bought that cheaply." [grin] Not to mention that he's NOT a journalist, so there's really no journalistic ethics issues here.
But...I can see how some people can worry about how things like this might end up coloring what readers hope are fair and unbiased blogger opinions. Even no-strings-attached favors make some people suspect a quid pro quo.
Take a look at this post from Eating Bees ( http://www.google.com/reader/view/#stream/feed%2Fhttp%3A%2F%2Featingbees.brokentoys.org%2Ffeed%2F ), another fantastic blog. It's an interesting look from the other side, about what marketers might expect from writers who accept "freebies." Note it's very clear in the piece that there's no talk about expecting a FAVORABLE writeup, but it's pretty explicit about the expectation of some kind of coverage to "repay" the "favor" being done a writer. That cautious dance between marketers and reviewers has been going on forever.
Again, I don't see anything wrong with that as long as no one is trying to hide anything. Tobold certainly wasn't (and, again, he's not a journalist) -- so no harm, no foul. Still, to paraphrase the Eating Bees piece, sometimes it's just easier to pass on the free steak :)
Doh, here's the right link:
http://eatingbees.brokentoys.org/2008/09/08/quid-pro-quo/
Quiet frankly I don't see a problem when companies provide freebies to bloggers as long it's public!
I can understand it if one is getting now suspicious about Tobolds reviews, but it's nothing to get too personal (e.g. insult Tobold).
No one is forced to read the blog and if someone thinks that Tobold is too biased because he gets the free subscription, than that person can stop reading the blog.
I'm more concerned about the bloggers who are getting a free sub and HAVEN'T said so. As Tobold said this morning, he can't be the only one.
A quibble: An MMO subscription is not expensive to produce. Cars and computer hardware have material costs which make them epense to produce. They can't give them away because it costs them a large sum to manufacture. Books, Movie and video games have a low material cost to manufacture -- so it incurs little to no burden to give away these things for publicity.
Yes, I am a bit jealous if we are to be honest here. But truthfully, my post was not so much about that as it is to ask, "What's the criteria here?". I mean, what criteria are game developers using to determine that blogger A and editor B get freebies, but others don't despite their efforts.
Tobold would be silly not to accept the free sub, and I love his blog. I never meant to take any type of shot at him, although others felt the need to do so. I can tell you all right now, you can take your free shots at me if you want....but if I got a free sub I'd be happily playing for free as long as I like the game. And I'd still speak my mind about things I like or dislike.
Anyone who thinks some "higher ground" needs to be taken here needs to wake up and smell the coffee. This is capitalistic America, not a Buddhist Monestary and Tobold has shown more character than most by his full disclosure. Again, I'm just curious about selection criteria...but I'm sure I'll never really know the answer to that one.
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