If you wanted to know if “Peggle” was any good, you could download it. But maybe you’d like to read a review. There isn’t one on GameSpot. There isn’t one on IGN’s PC site. I didn’t recall seeing one in Game Informer or … anywhere.

And when I checked Metacritic, that review aggregation service showed me why: almost no major gaming site has reviewed the heavily-downloaded “Peggle.” (Until the iPod release a year later, that is.)

I asked some major reviewers and one of the people behind “Peggle” what they thought of this turn of events. Was this an indictment of the reviews system? Or the system serving its audience appropriately?

First, here is what reviewers said:

Skipping “Peggle” was a mistake — possibly. That’s what I learned from former GameSpot head reviewer and current Giant Bomb editor Jeff Gerstmann, who said he finds “Peggle” to be “pretty awesome.” He told me it was part of his job responsibilities at GameSpot to decide whether “Peggle” should be reviewed. Bear in mind that we’re talking about a game not typically targeted at GameSpot’s gaming crowd. So reviewing it wasn’t a no-brainer. “That’s a call I made. I played ‘Peggle’ and said ‘We are not going to review “Peggle.”‘ That was a mistake. I think it was because there was a lot more stuff coming out at the time. That was kind of a below-the-radar [game].”

None of Gerstmann’s readers complained about his decision, he told me. “I think ‘Peggle’ was below their radar for a long time as well,” Gerstmann told me. “The audience isn’t necessarily always looking to be turned on by something new and quirky and cool. When you get to that mainstream level of reaching however many millions, the largest portion of your audience wants to know about ‘Halo’ or ‘GTA’ or ‘Madden’ or whatever is big at the time.”

IGN’s Tal Blevins admits his outlet just missed the PC version of the game. “Yes it was a popular game,” he told me in an e-mail, “But since it was on PC, it was one of those titles that just got overlooked until it made a big splash with gamers. Downloadable content on the consoles is available in a more centralized manner than on the PC, so it’s a bit easier to keep track of. With that said, I imagine we will do a review of Peggle when it’s released on Xbox Live later this year.” IGN has reviewed the iPod version, giving it a 9.0.

And what says Greg Canessa, former XBLA general manager and now a vice president at “Peggle” publisher PopCap?

“It’s up to the gaming press to meet us halfway here,” he said to me in an e-mail. He’s pleased with the positive press the game got in USA Today, The Wall Street Journal and The Onion, but said he wished the gaming press had shown the game more attention. He believes there were three factors keeping that from happening:

“First, I think that many of the gaming outlets are focused on console these days, moreso than PC. When we bring ‘Peggle’ to video game platforms, as we plan to do for XBLA and others, I expect that the amount of coverage will increase.

“Second, I do believe that the major gaming outlets have a hard time evaluating ’small games’ in general. These games simply don’t compute to them, and don’t fit into the typical review model. Major gaming outlets a hard time judging “small” games on their own merit, since they cannot help but evaluate them on a comparative basis in the context of big retail games. To them, it seems unfair to favorably rate games with simple and accessible play mechanics that take a fraction of the time and money to make, relative to “big” games (i.e. how could I gave a 9.5 to ‘Peggle’ when I gave ‘Halo 3‘ a 9.0 – that isn’t fair!). This is an unfortunate reality today, and will require a shift in mindset amongst the game reviewers to look past how much a game cost or how many people it took to design it or how cool the graphics are, and judge each game on its own entertainment and artistic merits. Think about movies – a great review can go to the biggest Hollywood blockbuster or the smallest indie film (more often the latter), regardless of budget or time or sophistication. Movies are judged based on how well the reach an audience and achieve the objective they set out to accomplish, be it entertainment, enlightenment, or whatever. The game review space needs to evolve to that level.

“And third, marketing budgets are tiny to non-existent for “small” PC games and casual games in general, and ‘Peggle’ is no exception (marketing is a foreign concept to many of these companies). So, it can be hard for companies to reach the gaming outlets and get attention without all the hype and buzz that major publishers throw out there for their big games.”

***

I’m not sure this is an open and shut case. So someone else must decide.

For much more about game reviews, check back all week to follow my reviews series here at MTV Multiplayer. Got a comment you can’t bring yourself to share below this post? Drop me an e-mail.

• Finished “Kane & Lynch,” making the complete scumbag decision at the end. I believe it cost me the chance to play an extra bonus level, but I did what Kane would do. I can’t compromise his morals for mine, can I? Now that I’m done, I can re-consider Jeff Gerstmann’s review. He described it as “a revenge tale where you don’t actually care if anyone actually gets their revenge.” That’s a pretty good assessment.

But good gameplay can compensate for any flaws in a game story, right? “K&L” had some fun set pieces: man vs. dumptruck; jeep vs. taxiing plane. But the cover system and the friendly squad AI were inferior to what I’ve experienced in other games. I can’t say I’m shocked at the content of his review. At least now I know for myself.

• Battled through a couple more levels of “Universe At War.” In the middle of the three campaigns, the framereate finally got bad. I pushed through it and just love controlling the Hierarchy race’s walking battlestations and walking factories. Commanding them really is a 2008 must-play experience. 
   
• Got closer to the end of “God of War: Chains Of Olympus,” a game that continues to sell me on something I never thought was possible: epic grandeur on a handheld. I know that the idea of PSP as portable PS2 led to some poor development choices, but I do hope that we will not only get PSP games that feel small in the future. The PSP can render spectacle. I’d love to see more.

• Started “Overlord” on the Xbox 360. This game makes the player an evil medieval armored lord who you command with a left thumb stick while directing a flock of mischievous goblins with the right stick. All I need to be told is a game is like “Pikmin” and I’m there, as I was with this one. Too bad no one has said anything like that since 2004’s ”Pikmin 2.”

  If you told me the game was “Pikmin” crossed with “Fable,” would I have still been there? Some of the British humor in “Overlord” is wasted when played in Brooklyn. The game is fine to control. What is exceptional, as the reviews state, is that the game is fun to watch. It’s merely nice to send 10 brown goblins into the halflings’ dining hall to ransack it. It’s sheer joy to have the goblins smash the plates, stand on the tables and gulp the drinks and the return to the Overlord’s side, each of them wearing the pumpkins they smashed as helmets and enjoying a moderate armor upgrade because of it.

Next: I may finish “God of War” PSP. I think I’m close…

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“...new management structure means that Josh Larson's position as VP, Games is being eliminated and Josh will be leaving the company.”

I wasn’t officially working in the industry when the scandal first broke, but as a gamer and an avid reader of games journalism, I was certainly very worried. Many Dtoiders felt the same way — remember the rash of “Has Destructoid sold out?” c-blogs when the site was skinned with Turning Point: Fall of Liberty advertisements? But ultimately, I have faith that the nascent industry will survive, if only because of sites like Destructoid. To read more about Larson and what CNET’s next move is, hit the jump.

[via Kotaku]

Who do reviewers think they’re kidding when they rate a game out of 100? Do they honestly feel that they’re able to distinguish between games down to individual percentage points? They can’t. Reviewing games is not a scientific process, so using such enormous scales is quite frankly ridiculous. All it does is give fodder to fanboys to argue that their chosen game is 1% better than another.

What is being suggested in a review when scores for Sound, Graphics, Gameplay etc. are given separately? That they all have equal weighting? That the reviewer understands the nebulous idea of ‘gameplay’, and is able to measure it? What the hell does ‘gameplay’ even mean? Even more laughable is when a Lastability category exists; playing a game for just a few days before reviewing it would only allow reviewers to make an educated guess surely. Time is the only judge of Lastability.

They have simply become too powerful. By averaging the ratings of the biggest sites, they have managed to become the most trusted opinions on the web without having to write a single original word themselves! There is even talk of publishers applying pressure on gaming sites to score their games closer to the Metacritic/Gamerankings average, or what they guess the average will be. Self-fulfilling prophecy?

Gaming sites make money from advertising the same games that they review. In an ideal world this wouldn’t be the case, but unless sites find an entirely new revenue model this will continue for the foreseeable future. What conclusions will publications draw from Gerstmann’s firing at Gamespot and their subsequent loss of credibility? That integrity should be kept at all costs, or that the pretense of integrity should be kept by being more discreet?

By providing sites a copy of their game before its release date, publishers are able to enforce certain rules when it comes to reviews regarding their game. A common one is that if their game is to get an unfavorable score (under 75), than the review cannot be published until after the game has been released. It’s the reason why big budget games that get lukewarm receptions get reviewed much later than AAA critical darlings.

It is entirely at a publishers discretion whether copies of their new game are provided early for review. Exclusive reviews often result in huge increases in traffic, especially if the game is highly anticipated. It’s clear what sort of behavior this encourages: consistently give high marks to a publisher’s games, and they will in turn reward your site with early copies of their games for review. It’s a win win situation…. unless you’re a gamer.

Mario Kart for the Wii is due for release at the end of April and it arrives with yet another peripheral: the Wii Wheel. Just like the Wii Zapper, previews/reviews across the web have found it to be counter intuitive, so why exactly are Nintendo persisting with it? Because it performs its function perfectly, that’s why. It was never designed as an alternative for hardcore gamers to traditional controls, but as a way for people who have never enjoyed Mario Kart before to play and enjoy the game. Looked at in this context, the peripheral makes a lot more sense. Reviews for casual games have a long way to go.

One of the fundamental assumptions a reader makes when reading a review is that the reviewer is able to properly assess a game’s merits. All too often this is not the case, even on some of the biggest sites on the web. Do movie critics limit themselves to films only from certain studios or genres? Then why do sites have people dedicated to individual consoles? In order to have a truly informed opinion, a reviewer must have exposure to more of the videogame industry than just one console.

Ocampo is Gamespot’s resident PC game expert and has been with the site since 2004, today being his last day.

The decision to leave has little if anything to do with Gerstmann’s axing though. During Gamespot’s recent HotSpot podcast he said he was not planning on leaving Gamespot just three weeks ago but was recently offered another position somewhere else and apparently decided to take the plunge.

It looks like Gamespot is really running out of their key staff and turning into a mere shell of what it used to be. Taking and replacing a staff that had a track record such as the people they’ve lost can’t be an easy task. But more importantly, how much credibility does Gamespot have left ?

News from Ars technica:

Ryan Davis is leaving GameSpot, and he says that it has a lot to do with Jeff Gerstmann’s departure. After 8 years of working for the site Ryan says it’s time to leave, “It’s been almost eight years since I started working at GameSpot, and Jeff was there for nearly all of my fondest and most memorable experiences on the job,”.

He is not the first to leave GameSpot over Gerstmann’s termination, and according to new editor-in-cheif Ricardo Torres, he probably won’t be the last. He can’t be too happy about this, but he is reported as saying that people will react and have to do what is best for them.

Sadly, it seems that GameSpot and Mr. Torres will have to work extra hard over the next few years to win back the trust of the writers and the gamers.

Full Article Here: Another editor down: Ryan Davis leaves GameSpot

GameDaily now writes that yet another long-time employee of Gamespot is moving on. Ryan Davis, an associate editor who has worked at Gamespot for eight years, has officially resigned. Davis and Gerstmann were reported to be close friends, and right after Gerstmann was fired, Davis wrote in his Gamespot blog: “I would not be in the video game business at all were it not for Jeff Gerstmann.”

The kicker of it is, no one really knows what the actual reason for firing Gerstmann was. The whole Eidos wanting him fired for making a bad video review thing was never actually confirmed. But like Frank Provo said in his farewell message to the Gamespot community, the suits at CNet (Gamespot’s parent company) are to be blamed: “GameSpot itself is NOT the problem. CNet is. CNet’s management is. The problem lies with the puppet masters.”

If you want to read more about the matter, then next to the stories that are linked to in this post, Sam Kennedy’s long post about “GameSpot’s Sad State of Affairs” over at his 1UP blog is an interesting read.

News from ars technica:

Everyone in the gaming world knows about Jeff Gerstmann’s termination. In fact, if you don’t know about it, chances are you are not totally into the gaming community, it was news even for those not involved in gaming. While that is old news and nothing that I feel like debating anymore.

Gamespot’s new editor-in-chief: Ricardo Torres.