Yes, video games and the reviews are “broken”

It’s no secret that the relationship between powerful game publishers and the press has a long history of conflict of interest. To stay in the good graces of game studios to ensure continued early, confidential access to forthcoming products, it’s in game  reviewers’ interest–and the interest of the outlets where they write–to write favorable reviews.

Game critic Jason Evangelho stepped forward last week in Forbes  to declare that both video games and the way they are reviewed by industry press are broken. He called on his colleagues in the reviewing business to stop running reviews that primarily serve their respective sites and the game publishers. “Remember who reviews are for,” he admonished. They’re for consumers who count on reviews to help them decide whether to spend their money on specific games.

Evangelho pointed out how reviewers are not doing their jobs properly: “…the gaming press is shielding your eyes from serious issues,” he wrote. “If we want fewer games to launch broken, we have to hold publishers accountable.” Jason admits he’s guilty of the reviewing practices he feels need to change. “I’m not perfect, but I’m trying my best to course-correct and do what’s right for the industry and especially for its consumers.” Jason, I so totally agree…even though you aren’t talking about the seizures that games can provoke.

What he’s really getting at

Jason’s particular beef is that publishers are increasingly releasing games before they’re fully functional, and that reviewers turn a blind eye to this practice. Reviewers don’t penalize incomplete products in their ratings but instead rate the game as though all the features are already in place. This is routinely done even performance suffers due to inadequate server capacity, or some features are still missing or aren’t working right at product release. Readers are then misled by reviews that give the publishers a “pass” on missing functionality.

He then calls on readers to speak out on the review process:

“If we want fewer games to launch broken, we have to hold publishers accountable. But that first step absolutely starts with me, and with my fellow critics in the game industry. And you need to tell us that’s what you want. Ultimately, the games and the coverage of games is done for you. So wield the power you have and make your voice heard.” 

So, in a nutshell: studios should stop lifting the embargo the day before product release and should stop releasing games before they’re ready, news outlets should wait to run reviews until their reviewers can evaluate the same product version that users receive, reviewers should call out missing features and rate games accordingly, and users need to speak up about the status quo.

Kudos to Jason, especially for calling out the lack of candor by reviewers due to their focus on priorities other than their readers. Of course, in so doing, Jason’s piece brings to mind other ways that reviewers could help and advocate for their readers, if they chose.

Reviewers could alert consumers to games likely to provoke seizures, while signalling to publishers that this issue deserves their attention.

Tell reviewers you want them to assess games for seizure risk

If you agree that game reviewers should be more accountable to their readers, more responsible and more cognizant of their potential to influence publishers, then why not urge reviewers to address the seizure issue? It wasn’t what Jason was asking readers to do — but it’s all part of better serving readers. Certainly reviewers could influence the industry by writing about video game seizures and thereby holding publishers accountable.

I responded to the Forbes piece, commenting that consumer product reviews should address product safety issues. Here’s what I wrote (with a few minor edits):

Holding publishers responsible goes further than what you’ve described. Responsible reviewing for any consumer product should consider basic safety issues, and this has never been the case in video game reviews. We don’t expect consumers to test product safety, but in the case of video games, reviewers have left crash-safety testing to the consumer.

Many games expose consumers to a serious health hazard: seizures–many of them undetected— provoked by excessive flash, but game reviews fail to identify those games with a higher likelihood of inducing them.  It would be very beneficial to readers if games were evaluated on this risk. Applications exist that scan images to find those with the potential to provoke seizures.

For more than 30 years game manufacturers have been acknowledging the seizure risk by routinely slapping a warning on their games. This protects the studios from legal action and allows them to continue producing images that can be a serious health threat. Including seizure risk in reviewers’ rating criteria would certainly encourage game developers to adhere to seizure reduction guidelines established for visual media.

Not every game contains image sequences that could provoke a seizure. But since all games carry the seizure warning, those consumers who know about the risk have no way to know before using/buying whether a particular game contains images likely to cause them a problem.

Regrettably, most consumers still have little awareness of the seizure risk from flashing graphics or that regardless of whether there’s a seizure history. People with this genetic vulnerability (photosensitive epilepsy) typically don’t realize they need to be cautious around particular visual stimuli, that is until they experience a seizure that’s noticeable enough to be identified. Most people don’t know—I certainly didn’t—that seizures don’t always look like a big event.

Seizures can go on for years before being identified. Certain populations—kids with ADHD or autism in particular—are at higher risk of seizures, and the symptoms caused by unidentified seizures in these kids can exacerbate and hide behind existing behavioral difficulties. Nobody is holding publishers accountable.

Perhaps the reviewing community will show some interest in the visual safety issue in the future…Anyone else want to weigh in with Jason on this? He’s reachable on Twitter and Facebook.