Battling Bad Press

Something, which I found interesting, is the latest in Gamasutras excellent series of articles on life and time in the gaming industry. Today they look at something that has only really become apparent in the industry in the last months. The fact that it is becoming increasingly common to see harsh reviews or bad press that devastate a game's popularity and sales performance.

ION Storm and Eidos devoted maybe even thousands of person hours and cold hard cash and Daikatana did not stand a chance from day one as it had become the joke of the industry due to the delays and much publicised problems it has been suffering. I know of one high profile web site that slaughtered the game after the reviewer had played the game for a grand total of 5 minutes, and just guessed the rest must be bad. Maybe a few thousand people read that review, some of them maybe chose not to buy the game based on its content. This is a pattern the world over

Gamasuta try to empower us to understand possible causes of bad press and become educated in methods of preventing or repairing a press assault to avoid what happened to Daikatana. This is essential reading for anyone who even considers a place in the gaming industry.