Duke Nukem's PR threatens to punish sites that run negative reviews | Hacker News Reader

Duke Nukem's PR threatens to punish sites that run negative reviews

arstechnica.com

69 pointsevo_930 comments

If I found any sites pulling punches on Duke, I wouldn't trust their reviews any more. It's plenty clear how bad the game is thanks to all the honest reviews, and anyone who stands out is going to wish they didn't.

I'd hope that's a bigger threat than this PR person's.

Also: Why does he still have a job? It's obviously that he doesn't understand that PR is supposed to be GOOD relations, not bad.

His company should be immediately stepping forward and promising EVERYONE that got a review copy that they'd get more review copies in the future, even if they'd normally be blacklisted for being complete lying jerks. (Which someone reviewers are, unfortunately.)

Their company is called "TheRednerGroup" it seems while the guy himself is named Jim Redner. I guess no one's gonna fire him from this job..

Apparently 2KGames has severed ties with The Redner Group now. https://twitter.com/#!/2KGames/status/81056724546633729

That's exactly how a company should respond to something like this! Excellent on 2k's part,

Right, very unprofessional to publicly state their private policies that would obviously reflect badly on the company.

The video game publisher is better at PR than the PR consultant. Sad.

Not surprised. I've been following it on Kotaku - Jim Redner just posted a huge apology: http://kotaku.com/5812131/negative-duke-reviews-could-lead-t...

I wish I read these reviews before buying the game, because every last one of those reviews is well-deserved.

I know no game can ever be good enough to match the 13 years of false starts and anticipation inherent in DNF. If I waited 13 years for Half Life 3, even a Valve masterpiece would feel a little anticlimactic (BTW, pretty please, Valve, please don't make us wait 13 years for a Half Life sequel).

I expect some degree of toilet humor and raunchy jokes, because that's what Duke Nukem was all about. But DNF is fraught with slow loading times, tedious cutscenes you can't skip past, and in general from the hour or so I've played it, it just isn't that fun.

The load times are a feature. I figured it out last night when I sat down to play it. It takes so long so you have time to go grab a beer, snack, etc.

The game got better the longer I played it for some reason...

With how many times it seems to stop to load, I'll go black-out drunk if I went for a beer every time the game offered me the opportunity.

I'm playing the 360 version and haven't loaded it to the internal disk. Maybe that will help the load times.

It definitely will; the demo load times weren't nearly as bad.

Microsoft should add a requirement that any loading screens that require an action to continue (DNF requires you to press "A" once loading is complete to start the game) make some kind of noise when they finish.

The load times are remarkably short on my machine. There is an almost imperceptible flicker at save checkpoints. Though it is kind of a monster.

DNF is exactly the game my teenage self was hoping for. As an adult, it's a little flat but I can't see it as heinously bad as many reviews are painting it.

Maybe it just seemed to get better as more and more braincells died?

I think that's the joke...

So ... this means that sites will be punished approximately 15 years from now?

I'm sure that they're shaking in their collective boots.

Just to play devil's advocate...

Surely the company isn't obligated to provide free software to every reviewer, right? Why should they subsidize a review that they know will likely not benefit them?

And I have no data to back this up, but I bet really BAD reviews get more traffic than reviews that fairly discuss the pros and cons of a mediocre game. I think there's at least a temptation for less scrupulous reviewers to really slam mediocre or overhyped games more than is deserved.

There's no question that game reviewers can be cruel, but it tends to be limited to games that aren't produced by major publishers, because they can strike back by withholding review copies. Blackballing isn't about cost; (which is trivial) it's about early access to the game so that the review comes out immediately after the press embargo lifts. Gamers want to read reviews before the game hits shelves in the same way moviegoers want to see the reviews before heading out on Friday night. In exchange, game publishers get free publicity. It should be a symbiotic relationship, but the publisher has more power than the reviewers, and in my experience the bias is almost always toward over-kind reviews.

To back you up, I never read game reviews and am not a serious gamer, but I had read the ars duke review.

Publishers don't always distribute review copies ahead of release. That, however, is usually a bad sign.

Oops. Well, another reason for me not to buy the game. Thanks to everyone who wrote honest reviews, because audience goodwill is far more important than pleasing one game publisher.

This is why I rarely buy anything that has just come on the market. The publishers whose business model depends on being first to market with the reviews has an incentive to water down criticisms to avoid upsetting big advertisers, and thus the first wave of reviews is heavily tilted in favor of market heavyweights. This made a certain amount of sense back in the days of print dominance, since review copy needed to be prepared weeks ahead of a product launch in order to remain current. In the age of the internet, though, advance access is worth much less than it used to be, and is certainly not worth the cost of lost credibility.

It might be interesting to see a review site built around the necessity to purchase the product being reviewed rather than getting it free from the manufacturer.

Wait, they're going to punish them by not sending more games?

Not being able to review a game until weeks after your competitors would be a problem.

Publish a review on release day with everyone else: "Now, based on our poor reviews of their poor previous releases, their PR agency declined to allow us to review the game before release lest we review a poor game poorly once more. That said based on their previous poor releases, and without ever seeing the game, we give it 4/10."

Or, "the publisher declined to give us a review copy, so here's a golden oldie from the archives: Duke Nukem Forever."

This PR firm was probably paid good money to make sure the reviews are good and that the game sells. I guess they just went a little far, but they did apologize in the end at least.

Negative reviews or no, it's just a review. The writers may be able to influence some portion of the game-buying populace but in order for it to work they have to be honest with their audience. It seems disengenious to try and manipulate that relationship in your favour.

This PR person needs to read the Cluetrain Manifesto, because he doesn't quite get how the world works now.

Yea, I have been saying "legacy" PR based on controlling the message is fundamentally flawed for a while now.

This is something every PR company does tacitly. Why wouldn't they? If you give journalists your product and they shit on it, you're going to go to other journalists next time.

I'm surprised a PR doesn't know enough to not state that publicly, but still.

Ironically, I get the feeling 2k won't be sending any more games to this PR agency.

edit: "2K Games does not endorse or condone the comments made by @TheRednerGroup and confirm they no longer represent our products."

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