A most disturbing french column

[invock]

[Reviewing policy] A most disturbing french column

Yesterday, I received my monthly parution of Canard PC, a most respected french gaming magazine, reknowned for its outspokeness and franchise to its readers, refusing recently to review SimCity according to EA's test conditions for example, even though it meant delivering their review one month later.

Their latest monthly column is the reason why I open this thread. I am particularly concerned by its content. What interests us particularly is in bold.

Original french text :

Une fois n'est pas coutume, cet édito ne parlera pas des gros éditeurs qui nous imposent des conditions de test affligeantes, ni de ceux qui nous envoient les jeux avec deux mois de retard ou des gros malins qui réorganisent à leur guise les conclusions de nos tests pour expurger les vacheries et les coller sur des boîtes de jeu et des pubs. Nope, cette fois-ci, on va jouer à l'École des fans et remercier 2K France qui, contrairement à l'immense majorité des autres boîtes, a fait le nécessaire pour nous fournir Bioshock Infinite à temps. Ça fait bizarre de voir des gens qui travaillent comme au bon vieux temps. Surtout quand les petits éditeurs, les rebelles toujours prêts à jeter la pierre à Electronic Arts, commencent à se comporter comme la dernière des World Companies. Dernier cas en date, les gars de Paradox qui flirtent avec le grand n'importe-quoi tout en continuant à la jouer sans reproche. On avait l'habitude qu'ils livrent des jeux à peine débugués mais au cours de l'année passée, tout s'est accéléré : mise en place de tests exclusifs, suppression du système attribuant automatiquement les versions presse au journaliste, codes Review arrivant une semaine après la sortie du jeu. On sent bien que la popularité leur monte à la tête. Espérons juste que ça ne flinguera pas Europa Universalis IV...

English translation :

For once, this column will not rant against big publishers imposing their deplorable review conditions, neither will it complain about those sending us their games 2 months too late. It won't even talk about the smart-asses filtering away the dirty words from our review conclusions to keep only the positive and put it on their box or their ad. Nope, this time, we will rejoice, and thank 2K France, who made its job nicely and delivered their review version of Bioshock Infinite in due time. It feels weird to see people working as they did back in the old days. Especially when some little publishers, the rebels always eager to throw the stone at EA's face, have recently started to act the same way. Latest case to date : the guys at Paradox, dangerously flirting with nonsense in their latest decisions, while continuing to pretend they are without reproach. We were used to receive barely debugged versions of their games, but during last year, it all went downhill : exclusive reviews for certain chosen partners, removal of the system attributing automatically review versions to journalists, Review codes arriving one week after the game's release date. You can feel their success has somehow made them big-headed. Let's hope this will not influence Europa Universalis IV's quality...

(Canard PC - issue #273)


Let me make things clear here : This is not MY writing, I do not come to start a flame war. I come because I am concerned about what I read. I am aware there is a good part of satire and cynicism in this text, I don't remember of any Paradox representative attacking EA, yet the words remain.
I have been particularly affected in my relation to the video game industry since the recent Doritosgate, and reading this about a publisher I really adore and even advertise about whenever I can is terribly disturbing.
I ask some explanations directly to you on what is said in this column. What are these exclusive reviews ? What is this system of press versions, and why was it removed ? "What the actual f*ck ?!" to speak my mind frankly.

I hope this thread will help us getting some clarifications.

 

[billt568]

When someone modded an offline mode of Simcity, EA shut down all modding forums, declaring future mods hacks.

Paradox hires their modders and respond point by point to their forumites, furthermore, look at all the very angry anti-Steam posts that are still up. I am not quite a Paradox fanboi (whitewashing history bothers me immensely), but they are leagues from EA at this point.

 

[invock]

This is not the point of this topic. My concerns are not about the relations between the studio and its fanbase. On the contrary, I love Paradox for this very reason.
And this is why I opened this topic not fearing to get censored, because I know this is not the way the house works.

The problems pointed in this column are the recent flaws observed in Paradox's policy concerning reviews of their games.

 

[tompalmer]

Paradox hires their modders and respond point by point to their forumites

I wasn't :unsure:

 

[Darkrenown]

GoT did get promoted by the CK2 facebook page though I think it's been brought up in streams too.

 

[RedRalphWiggum]

How does Paradox response to the recent accusations that it is always eager to throw the stone at EA's face?

 

[invock]

How does Paradox response to the recent accusations that it is always eager to throw the stone at EA's face?

I do think the author was pointing at indie developpers in general, not Paradox in particular, but yes, the way this was written is a bit shady.

Anyway, once again, that's not really the point of the topic.

 

[Pellaken]

Attacking Paradox on this is like attacking Iran for being a "loose cannon" in an article about North Korea.

 

[unmerged(219246)]

I am really sorry to read that. These guys (canard pc) really don't deserved such "candies". I hope Paradox will play more fair-play in a soon future.

 

[tompalmer]

GoT did get promoted by the CK2 facebook page though I think it's been brought up in streams too.

Well you did better with other mods in the past (subforum, etc ..) but we don't ask anything we are fine as we are :laugh:

back on the topic, Canard PC is a well reknown french magazine and I think they are just warning paradox about some silly attitudes toward some medias. They still love their games

 

[WankoStankins]

Are they insinuating that paradox does things to try to get good reviews? They really should be doing that, paradox games getting 70 on metacritic, for shame.

 

[tompalmer]

Are they insinuating that paradox does things to try to get good reviews? They really should be doing that, paradox games getting 70 on metacritic, for shame.

I don't think so, but you have to keep in mind that is is very important for magazines to have the game before it is released, or they are not worth buying. Also internet tends to deliver reviews earlier, it's threatening them directly.

But I think that is because paradox finishes it's game rather late before publishing them and sending them to distributors, I could be wrong but Mote was tested in it's 0.97 version in Canard PC

 

[Darkath]

I wasn't :unsure:

If you single handedly made the GoT mod, you would have had a better chance a it :snide:


Now, just to add to invock and tompalmy remarks. We should give a bit more context here :

CanardPC is an independant, privately owned, PC gaming magazine, mostly print (the website only have minimal content but a huge forum), and one of the last one here that is still being profitable and worth publishing (although the price increases over time almost makes it a luxury good nowadays ). Their angle is a bit like Rock Paper Shotgun : PC only, and focusing on core/indie games that provide great gameplay experience rather than re-hashing the press release and submitting to publisher woes. It's like investigation journalism for games lol.

I for one am an active member of the thriving CanardPC community even though i stopped buying the magazine years ago.

Now, to the point, CPC editorial line is very harsh when they do not like something and their success is easily explained by the fact they don't bend to publishers and provide in depth reviews/previews and not holding any punches (so when they really like something, you know it's not BS, if your standards align with them that is)

One particular thing i remember, they mentionned that once (i'm not sure wether it happened again or not tho), EA actually blackmailed reviewers in a most disgraceful and shameful manner : They basically only sent test code to reviewers that agreed beforehand to give good marks to the game (and therefore forcing those who disagreed, such as CanardPC, to review the game after the release). As Tompalmer pointed out, not sending out test code early is a direct threat to print magazines as they can't provide the much needed review to their readership when it matters the most and therefore take a full hit from the competition (especially web based, as pointed out)

For instance if I read on RPS that EUIV is trash , i won't bother buying the EUIV special released 2 weeks later by canardPC

Anyway, Paradox, please send the test codes to reviewers at the right time, or your hurting their business ! And no, i have no shares in CPC, nor RPS.

*cough* Did I mention that many people in our community are eagerly playing and awaiting PDS games ? *cough*

 

[Fishman786]

Why is that magazine named after ducks? That's what a canard is, right?

 

[Darkath]

Why is that magazine named after ducks? That's what a canard is, right?

It's a play on words.
Canard in french means duck, indeed, but it also means newspaper/magazine in print (that's kind of old fashioned slang though)
"Canard WC" is also the name of the brand "Toilet Duck" in france.
"Canard PC" hence is quite a funny name and memorable too.

 

[Variton]

"Let's hope this will not influence Europa Universalis IV's quality..."

That's just an unneccessary blow below the belt and doesn't speak well of the magazine staff.

I usually don't trust scores given by professional reviewers straightforward, but tend to read the opinions on much larger scale (metacritic, forums etc, youtube let's play videos). It's like eurovision scores: High praises and very low scores are usually deserved, but after that the scores might be very misleading as an indicator of quality.

 

[burny26]

I'm a huge paradoxfan,and if i had to say one thing in a negative way about paradox ,it is that somestimes these kind of threads are biased http://forum.paradoxplaza.com/forum...sader-Kings-II-The-Republic-expansion-reviews

I never see one bad review between those reviews worth at least an 80 percent. That is my only complaint i can think of of PI.

 

[Susana]

I can understand that a magazine like Canard PC finds it challenging to work with publishers when so much happens in real time these days (in particular for a company as digital as Paradox) and they have lead times of 30 days or more to print their magazines. In the past games went to print 6-8 weeks before release, these days with digital distribution the lead times are much shorter. We we work very hard to keep good relations with media, however our main responsibility is and remains to the developers and the games they have poured blood, sweat and tears over & our gamers. In the past reviews were one of the only ways we could do this, these days we also work with bigger betas (War of the Roses had a 150,000 sign ups), frequent live streams, we create many opportunities where devs and media can play our games and usually do not embargo much from these. Not sure if Candard PC believes that because we are smaller we shouldn't be as concerned with giving our games the best possible chance to make it on a market where AAA titles still carry a lot of weight but I know our gamers today have much more insight into our games and what they can expect from them than they did when I started here 9 years ago and that's something we'll continue to work hard for.

Kind regards
Susana

 

[invock]

Thank you Susana for this answer.

Could we have some explanations on the three problems pointed out by the column, namely :

• "exclusive reviews for certain chosen partners,"
• "removal of the system attributing automatically review versions to journalists,"
• "Review codes arriving one week after the game's release date."

Is this due to a recent change of policy that changed your logistic, hence making it more difficult for printed magazines to receive their review versions in "due times" ?


I'll also come back to your answer and quote from it. Believe in all honesty that I only seek answers, not polemic.

• "[...] We create many opportunities where devs and media can play our games and usually do not embargo much from these."
  Yes, well, that's what would be bluntly called a supervised preview. Nothing new here, but nothing that fundamentaly differentiates your way of doing things from big companies.
• "Not sure if Candard PC believes that because we are smaller we shouldn't be as concerned with giving our games the best possible chance to make it on a market where AAA titles still carry a lot of weight"
  True and fair enough, but don't let this be a justification to use the very same methods that have been violently denounced recently.

I'll once again talk about the SimCity case, because it is to date one of the most painful deception I've had to endure (yes, I fell for EA's trap, and I grieve over it every single day).
Their marketing method has been : creating many opportunities where devs and media could play the game, frequent live streams (http://letsallbemayor.com/), and offering pre-release review opportunities to the journalists who were willing to bow to their demands, the others having to wait for a retail version.

I do not question your future games quality (EUIV, CKII the Old Gods) and you can be assured I'll be pre-ordering them whenever possible. But I'm very anxious about what seems to be said on your marketing policy.

I have asked on the Canard PC's official forum some details to whomever wrote the column (http://forum.canardpc.com/threads/7...iversalis-IV?p=6559922&viewfull=1#post6559922), because I believe too that the anger expressed in it is in direct relation to the SimCity "incident". Seeing such a display of marketing end up hiding a total disaster would make many a gamer all the more distrustful. I know it made me.

 

[Susana]

Sure:

1. Not sure he's talking about Paradox specifically, more the industry in general.
2. We basically now ask people shoot us an e-mail and tell us what games they are interested in reviewing rather than automatically push them out. The # of reviews we receive since we started doing that are pretty much the same, but we no longer send out 5000 + review copies at random. This makes total sense for us and we want to know someone on the other end is interested/will actually take the time to play the game before reviewing it. But yes it does require a bit more from the media outlets as they need to reach out to us proactively.
3. I think he's added the week after release for effect to make a point. But it's true devs put finishing touches on the game close to release and to us review code is finished code.

Other than that I think we've worked in pretty much the same way for the past 9 years, if anything I think we are more open with our games earlier these days both to gamers and media than we were before becaue we usually have something playable earlier even if it's not the final game.

Kind regards
Susana





Kind regards
Susana