Tomb Raider Underworld UK Review Pressure?
Sometimes, when review scores look like they are going to be very bad for a game, instead of trying to control the message, publishers may try to control the timing. That is apparently the case with Tomb Raider Underworld reviews going live in the United Kingdom. John Keefer wrote an article about this in Sept. (see From the Pulpit: Are Embargoes Really Necessary? ) , and stories like this only further the need to examine the use of embargoes.
The first hint that this was happening came from a twitter post from Gamespot UK journalist Guy Cocker, who said that Eidos’ UK PR representatives had asked journalists to not post a review if the score was below 8.0.
This did not sit well with other UK journalist, who started contacting Eidos PR firm, Barrington Harvey, to get their side of the story. According to a VideoGaming 247 follow-up story, a rep from that firm said: “That’s right. We’re trying to manage the review scores at the request of Eidos.”
The company is trying to stop the bleeding until Monday, when it will apparently let publications publish their reviews regardless of scoring. The idea is to maintain a high Meta Critic score in the early days of the game’s release.
Simon Byron, one of Barrington Harvey’s directors issued a follow-up statement disputing some of what was said, but it’s kind of hard to unring that bell:
Barrington Harvey is not in the position of telling reviewers what they can and cannot say. We love Tomb Raider and believe it merits a score of at least 8/10, but if someone disagrees that’s entirely their prerogative. No problem at all. Seriously: no problem.
Our original NDA stated that in order to receive an advance copy of the game, reviewers agreed not to post reviews ahead of 5:00pm, Wednesday 19th November 2008. Nothing else. No further obligations whatsoever.
As you can clearly see from the scores posted so far, Barrington Harvey has no issue with scores of below eight out of 10 being posted online. The Eurogamer review in questions caused “problems” in so much as it originally contained a couple of minor factual inaccuracies which, to its credit, the site has quickly rectified and addressed (without, quite rightly, changing the context of the review).
Any site, be it Gamespot or whoever, is entirely within their rights to post whatever score they want and no-one is under any sort of obligation to delay any review.
As an ex-journalist myself, I firmly believe in editorial integrity and the right to express an individual opinion. As an agency, we never - ever - make demands of the press in terms of awarding scores; at the end of the day, they are free to score as they wish.
Barrington Harvey has been working hard to ensure the launch scores of Tomb Raider Underworld are in line with our internal review predictions over the launch weekend - but to suggest that we can in some way “silence” reviews of the game is slightly overstating our influence.
This seems to be a common practice of some publishers, who use non-disclosure agreements and embargos to punish those publications that publish negative reviews. The philosophy is that the first reviews are the most influential and controlling them keeps the scores high for consumers in a hurry to buy a certain product. Atari did it with Alone in the Dark and Eidos has done it with Tomb Raider Underworld if we are to believe GameSpot UK.
