“Why do games suck so much” is a topic that has been going around since the dawn of time. Many developers have spoken out on the rising cost of development, disinterest in original games by publishers, and so on. But what exactly is it that makes the studios push out such crap? According to Salon writer James Wagner Au, it’s the press previews.
I found it at an E3 cocktail party in Beverly Hills, shortly after I’d begun introducing myself not as a journalist but as a writer with the virtual world Second Life-not a game per se, but close enough, evidently, for folks on the business end of the industry to lower their shields. The topic was the gaming press, and on that subject, the opinion of a top exec from a major publisher was decidedly bottom line.“Press previews are very important to our sales,” he casually mentioned to me over martinis, as if it was the most obvious thing in the world. “Retailers don’t know anything about games. So we show them previews of our titles from the game press, and they reserve shelf space for our games on the strength of those.”
And just like that, the gaping mouth of suckage was staring me in the face. Or rather, it had always been there, but I just hadn’t noticed until then.
In his post he states that Kotaku will begin a “Preview Ho of the Month” feature starting next month that will take a look at the most “egregious, blatant promotion for unreleased games from across the gaming press.” Looking forward to that!
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