Why are developers held hostage by PR?

[loonyboi]

To mind comes the Chronicles of Riddick PC version of the game that has that dev commentary. All of it is really interesting and I listened to all of it. I wouldn't mind those more-or-less random, non-PR people being interviewed or speaking their mind. I wrote a little blurb on it (scroll down to the bottom of the page to find it).

That's a good example. Despite English not being their first language, the Starbreeze guys do a great job of talking about their creation process. They're also humble, which also helps.

Plus they're cool guys. I did PR on The Darkness for a couple of months, so I got to know them reasonably well.

[Marek]

Despite the title I gave to this thread, I actually find little to disagree with your posts Jason.

PR and journos. There's a chicken-and-the-egg thing here. I just don't see a lot of opportunities for things to improve right now, such as more developer commentaries like Starbreeze, or more interesting personality-driven interviews. Everything is super closed-off.

It was really really great that Soren Johnson was given that much exposure. I enjoyed that. It actually increased my respect for Sid Meier as well. However, here's what I wonder... if Meier had not explicitly wished for Johnson to be the main guy, and a member of the press had requested an interview with Johnson (maybe because they met each other at a conference and the journo decided he'd have much interesting things to tell), would PR have approved it? I guess the answer would be "no" for most PR managers, because it wouldn't have been pre-planned and scheduled and assigned to a "PR phase".

Also, while most developers might not give good interviews, how could anyone have known that someone like Johnson gives good interviews until he could do some interviews?

Also also, how could developers who give bad interviews ever get better at it if they don't get some in-the-field experience? A lot of industry pioneers were once programming nerds with little charisma, but they got really good at it doing interviews because they had to.

I understand the need for the PR rep to create some restraints and balance, but isn't there a little too much of that already? Interviews (especially online) often even need to be checked and approved by a PR guy before they can be published, so it's not like there's not already a lot of quality control in place on the publisher side.

[elmuerte]

I understand the need for the PR rep to create some restraints and balance, but isn't there a little too much of that already? Interviews (especially online) often even need to be checked and approved by a PR guy before they can be published, so it's not like there's not already a lot of quality control in place on the publisher side.

That would not be bad thing, if the PR reps would check the article for facts.

[loonyboi]

That would not be bad thing, if the PR reps would check the article for facts.

There you get into a tricky category.

It's cool for PR people to review interviews before they go out (if they're done via e-mail), and you can be on the phone or in person during a live interview, but PR people generally do not review editorial copy before it goes to print.

Doing so (and I tend to agree with this) makes it look like the publisher has approval over editorial content. Whether that's true or not, it's a slippery slope to a publisher expecting to approve review scores.

[elmuerte]

oh.. well they should review the editorial copy not the other one.

Also, reviews shouldn't be about score. A number doesn't say anything, the content of the review is important. A number doesn't speak a thousand words.

I'm against scores in (p)reviews.

[Marek]

About fact-checking: in other areas of journalism it's apparently fairly common to send a draft of an article/interview to the person who was interviewed, just to make sure the journalist got things right (not to let them back out of things they actually said, of course!). This isn't really commonplace in game journalism. I've only ever had one person ask it of me, but I don't think I would mind doing it every time.

One time my editor (for my freelance stuff) got confused and changed the interviewee's nationality from American to Brittish right in the first sentence. I was pretty pissed off about that... actually wished I had sent the final draft to the interviewee as he would have easily corrected it.

[Roderick]

Whenever I send a freelance article off to the offices, I never see or hear anything of it again until it's published, with additions and corrections and all. I guess it'd just take too much time to send stuff back and forth until it's perfect. It is the editor's job to make those decisions, whether one likes it or not.

[loonyboi]

Also, reviews shouldn't be about score. A number doesn't say anything, the content of the review is important. A number doesn't speak a thousand words.

I'm against scores in (p)reviews.

That's admirable, but irrelevant. Whether you or I think reviews should have scores is beside the point.

Buyers look at review scores. Therefore, they are extremely important to a game's retail success.

For the record, I agree with you. We never had scores on loonygames.

[nsps]

About fact-checking: in other areas of journalism it's apparently fairly common to send a draft of an article/interview to the person who was interviewed, just to make sure the journalist got things right (not to let them back out of things they actually said, of course!). This isn't really commonplace in game journalism. I've only ever had one person ask it of me, but I don't think I would mind doing it every time.

One time my editor (for my freelance stuff) got confused and changed the interviewee's nationality from American to Brittish right in the first sentence. I was pretty pissed off about that... actually wished I had sent the final draft to the interviewee as he would have easily corrected it.

As a journalist (outside of games), I can say that this isn't necessarily incredibly common. It depends on the journalist, the editor and the fact-checking staff.

Some journalists consider it bad for the integrity of the story to let the interviewee in on it before it publishes. (One of my colleagues recently changed his stance from this position to the last, most opposite position that will appear in this paragraph.) Some (and this is probably most common) only send back the specific quotes from the interviewee and not the entire article. Then the last category does send the whole article, so that the interview subjects might have some last chance at clearing up a mistake elsewhere in the article.

Those who practice the last category don't seek approval of the story, just an auxiliary fact check.

Personally, I've never sent in quotes for approval in the case of one-on-one interviews with creative individuals (with musicians, filmmakers, actors, etc.—I've never interviewed a designer). I generally tape record those interviews and the subjects generally don't have time to personally check my quotes. And I fail to see the value of having a PR person check someone else's quotes.

When I'm doing an investigative piece that's more controversial, however, I do verify people's quotes.

As an editor (and same with my experience when being edited), I tend not to send the final version to the writer unless I had to dramatically change it. Some editors don't even send it to you then.

[MrHoatzin]

I've had some pretty horror stories about editors meself. Glasstire.com edited all coherence out of some of my articles, as if on purpose. Fucking eidiotors. Ever since then I explicitly ask editors to send me the edited draft before they publish it. If you act as if you have the clout to demand something like that, they will treat you as if you do.