Re: 1st HL2 game memories from 2004...

On 22/11/2024 21:34, Zaghadka wrote:

When Jeff Gerstmann was fired, some 3 years later*, for failing to give a
good review to a corporate partnership game, my opinion was sealed.
 https://bit.ly/4fWpZmn
 (The bookmark link on Wikipedia had problems with pasting. So bit.ly)
 I thank Dan Adams for giving me the heads up.

I'm pretty sure it does happen so to me the question is how prevalent it is and how explicit. So two examples from UK newspapers. Sources at The Times (Murdoch owned) have said although they wouldn't be told directly which stories where acceptable there was an understanding of no making the owner look bad. The court case involving another Murdoch title, The News of The World, was conspicuous underplayed in The Times even though it was headline news.
The Daily Mail is quite different in that there the editorial staff are told what they should be running with to create the whole narrative of baton down the hatches as society is collapsing so the only solution is to give more money to rich people.
I assume that this type of 'direction' also happens in games magazines and has only got worse since the balance between money from actual sales and the adverts in 'magazines' has shifted almost completely to the latter. It's one of the reasons I rely more and more on Steam reviews and not a professional review pointing out how mundane the game is, all the bugs, technical issues etc. but still giving it 8.5/10.