Someone is a little upset about not getting a review copy

[DaveC]

http://www.gamercentric.com/index.php?page=viewnews&id=2987

Maybe the PR people get 100 calls a day from people with "legit" gaming sites looking for free copies?

[Thrrrpptt!]

Tempest in a teacup. Ironically, that kind of stuff certainly doesn't buy any credibilty for the author's site.

[mouselock]

http://www.gamercentric.com/index.php?page=viewnews&id=2987

Maybe the PR people get 100 calls a day from people with "legit" gaming sites looking for free copies?

I'm not following. If what he says is true, they'll send him a free copy, but not until after the street date is broached.

He seems to be complaining not that they won't send it, but that they didn't send it early enough for him to review it before everyone can get it and play it. I don't really get that decision myself: If they're not going to send it at all, fine. If they are going to treat him as press and send a review copy, seems like he deserves the courtesy of being treated as any other reviewer they like. I don't get the idea of sending out a review copy after it's publically available.

[Mattc0m]

Funny the the very next article (http://www.gamercentric.com/index.php?page=viewnews&id=2988) is showing off Halo 2 LAN party locations sponsored by Microsoft...

[Menzo]

It's tirades like this guy's that make decisions even easier.

After looking at the site, I can't find a single review up there anyway. Clearly whomever visits doesn't go for their timely reviews.

[DaveC]

I don't really get that decision myself: If they're not going to send it at all, fine. If they are going to treat him as press and send a review copy, seems like he deserves the courtesy of being treated as any other reviewer they like. I don't get the idea of sending out a review copy after it's publically available.

No, I'm sorry but smaller sites will get treated with less preference than larger sites. It's a fact and an easy to understand fact. If the PR firm outright lied, that's kind of lame but I'd understand if they obfuscated the truth to try and get someone to leave them alone. I can't imagine how many sites probably tried to call to get advanced review copies and of course we are only hearing one side here. Ultimately, whoever this guy is, he's doing his site more harm than good. After all, we all know how successful Evil Avatar became with his site after he started to "tell it like it is".

[Sean Tudor]

The site says at the very top that it was launched on Nov 3rd 2004. Maybe he set it up simply to get his free copy of Halo 2. LOL

[Kevin Grey]

Comedy Gold- Their opening "press release" featured on the site:

Philadelphia, PA – November 3, 2004 – 16 YEAR OLD GRADUATE OF THE FIRST VIDEOGAME CAMP OPENS LARGE SCALE GAMING SITE – GAMERCENTRIC.COM

Vibhu Norby, a first year graduate of the famous Videogame.net Camp at Penn State University has opened GamerCentric.com, a premiere gamer haven online. It is significant in showing the industry’s growth and wide appeal. The site, two years in planning, was recently completed, backed by funding from various videogame aficionados. Inspired by the videogame camp, a camp specializing at first in creating and maintaining videogame websites, and designing flash games, Vibhu decided to pursue GamerCentric.com because he “feels that many large videogame sites are not honest in the way they review and rate games” and says that he has “personal experience” in the industry dealing with fixed ratings and paid reviews for advertising. “It’s an unfair process, and we seek to correct that by allowing everyone, from large gaming sites, to small ones and to the average gamer, to review, rate, manage, and talk about their favorite games without the extra information you don’t want.”

What’s unique about GamerCentric.com? “There is too much to include in a brief sentence, but to summarize, we provide constantly updated videogame news – the unique factor there being that we only take the important ones, the ones you want to hear, and we make them fun…they aren’t standard press release articles, they are humorous, short, and enjoyable. We take every single game review on the internet and link to them, calculate their cumulative scores, and allow users to sort, track, review and rate games themselves, and gain points for doing so. Points are used for our weekly contests, in which we give out games, consoles, and even computers. The unique function here is that while our competing sites allow only big gaming sites to add reviews to their database, we allow anyone and everyone to, it keeps it fair.” “We also have a great community,” he added as an after note.

How does Vibhu manage the site and school at the same time? “Well, I have quite a few people managing the site, programming, updating, but it does get to be a stretch. Late nights and long hours are troublesome, but it’s worth it. Everyone loves a geek like me, but they may just want my money.”

GamerCentric and its developers would also like to add that they have specialized back end tools for gaming site webmasters to easily add their articles to their database, and add a “pre-emptive thank you” for those who join the site and want to make the gaming industry a better place.

[Timemaster Tim]

So after looking over the site, the only thing I get from the site is that its like gameranings.com. As mentioned by Adam, there doesn't seem to be any reviews by the site itself. They link to a bunch of "professional ratings" which are reviews from other sites. And they have user reviews which don't seem to have much control exercised over them.

The little tirade from "Vib" hints that they are being locked out because they told it like it was for Halo by giving it a 60%. But I can't find any Halo reviews from the site, and a user review from a "Vib" gave it a 9.5/10. Interesting.

[Thrrrpptt!]

His fancy videogame program taught him that it would be a good idea to create a website dedicated to gaming? Are all their textbooks from 1999?

[Lum]

I hear you can make a lot of money from ad banners. *nods sagely*

[Sean Tudor]

Poor guy - he is 16 and still an internet virgin. Wait till the real world (or lack of site traffic) slaps him in the face.

[Bill Dungsroman]

Poor guy - he is 16 and still an internet virgin. Wait till the real world (or lack of site traffic) slaps him in the face.

I think it's safe to unqualify that noun and make it comprehensive, Sean.

[Oghier]

This is like making fun of the diorama some kid made for his 9th-grade science project ;)

[chet]

It took 2 years to design?

Of course, he does get the traffic, don't believe otherwise. And I can't believe someone finally designed a system to store stories in a database. He better patent that.

That videogame.net site is equally horrible and I think those kids are at least 18. Adam, do you now qualify sites to see if they passed track 4 of the grueling Videogame.net program?
Track 4 focuses on teaching students about both print and broadcast journalism. In the classroom, students will be provided the opportunity to preview and review pre-released videogame software and how to critically evaluate these games. Courses include writing for the web, developing a student news paper, and TV broadcasting.

Chet

[Calistas]

Two years to design a site that doesn't even have page titles that will get search engines excited. He's got some stuff to learn!

Yeah, too much time looking at SEO in my new job..

Peter

[steve]

As the only "honest" gaming universe, it's good to see him stand up to the sites interested in increasing traffic and REVENUE. But at 16, he's already burned his bridges with moving up to one of those dishonest sites, which is tragic.

[nixon66]

It's interesting. The outpour of "independant" gaming sites out there seems to have gone from a trickle to a flood. Slap a decent looking site design up and you've got a professional site and can demand review copies and the rest. Never mind putting the time in to earn a community through providing excellent content and actual thoughtful commentary on games. And they are usually very "fan" based sites, in that they clearly have a biased view on what they choose to cover, be it XBox centric or for their PS2.

Sad. I don't mind fan sites, but damn, can't they just stop whining?

[Thrrrpptt!]

It probably has to do with the increased ease and lowered cost of domain hosting. That and the wealth of tools that make stuff like site creation, polls, forums, content management, and databases easy. Hobbyists used to have to get hosted on and use tools provided by a network like GameSpy and its ilk, else suffer through a service like Geocities or Tripod. I can't tell you the number of times that some kid came to me looking for hosting because he had a hastily built site dedicated to gaming in general and wanting free review copies. Now if they have a little money and a lot of free time they can do it themselves.

But this is the story of the Internet, right? Technology facilitates people doing things that required wealth and expertise before, and the former aristocracy complains about it. The difference in this chapter of the story, though, is that technology doesn't yet write good content*, nor does it give you instant credibility.

*Though automatically aggregating and organizing other sites' reviews does seem like an attempt at it.

[sluggo]

I thought it was funny that he mentioned us in that rant, because for the first year that GameSpy.com existed (99-00), we got almost all of our "review copies" by going to the store and buying them. Every Monday and Tuesday, we'd bug the local Software Etc's and EB's and try to find out when they were getting games in, so we could get them in the hands of writers as soon as possible. We didn't get on everyone's mailing list overnight, nor did we whine about it -- we simply kept working at it and beating down doors.

Ah, those were fun days. The stories I could tell you about software store employees struggling to OPEN A BOX, because "the guy who usually opens them isn't here yet." Good times.

[Thrrrpptt!]

Yeah, the Tuesday game runs were great. I remember coming back with like six copies of Black & White for people who wanted us to pick it up for them. (Insert snarky B&W comment here.)

It was a pretty long road from having to buy the stuff yourself to getting exclusive reviews on AAA titles.

[VegasRobb]

So the PR firm might have done some research and decided not to go with sending him a review copy. Unfortunately, the PR firm may have said something about looking into it and he feels lied to and cheated.

Fascinating times, as people who actually went to school for Videogame / Computer Game / Internet degrees are starting to enter the workplace.