Reviewers have no problem shitting on bad games no matter where they're from. Then you have plenty of folks that do the actual work who know that yeah, this game that is internally forecasting an 8.3 because the owners kid is producing it is totally gonna review in the 60's.īut either way, I'm not putting too much stock in a singular incident from a singular outlet in terms of being evidence of any kinds of broader trends. Depends on who you talk to, but there are levels of management that are genuinely that out of touch and who won't listen. They threw some big money behind it with the expectation that it would do pretty well and very much did not treat it like a title to 'fire and forget', you don't put that kind of marketing muscle behind those games.īecause even with mock reviews giving those publishers an early idea of how media may review them at launch, it's super common for them to think every dogshit game they ship is supposed to get 9's. It wasn't a 'fire-and-forget' so much as a, 'We need a big hit to get rid of this giant hole in our balance sheet.' which.yeah, that didn't happen. The whole-ass reason Forspoken was made was for Squeenix to try to recoup expenses on R&D for the Luminous Engine, reportedly. They did write off Anthem, sadly, but they've stuck with BF2042 and after like 18 months of work it's in a pretty good spot finally. Anthem was a huge investment in new IP, 2042 the continuation of a key franchise for EA. That's still planned and happening apparently, but without BF2042 as the initially planned core/anchor for it. And that game was supposed to be the core of a connected BF universe. Forspoken was not a cheap game, nor were other titles like Anthem from EA (which has also been mentioned), or hell, even BF2042 which they shipped at the end of 2021 and was similarly shat on. Bit of a different situation.Kinda sorta? 'Those hills' are, at times, incredibly expensive.

The mentioned reviewer however criticized Sony's big hitters, games that are meant to sell whole systems, like TLOU2 and Dad of Boy: Ragnarok, that were otherwise given solid 9s and 10s. Squeenix and other major publishers are not deluded, Forspoken was a fire-and-forget that will still bring enough money not to leave the studio in shambles. In case of Forspoken or a few other titles (Balans Wonderworld comes to mind), big publishers seem to be self aware enough not to die on those hills.

If this was happening Forspoken wouldn't have been reviewed pretty poorly (60's ain't great) and had a slew of reviews that seemed more interested in having fun dunking on the game than anything else (no criticism there, there was a lot of humor to be had) because outlets wouldn't want to jeopardize their access to FFXVI later this year, for example.In case of Forspoken or a few other titles (Balans Wonderworld comes to mind), big publishers seem to be self aware enough not to die on those hills. There are far too many examples of big AAA games getting shit on at launch for this argument to hold much weight. Not even a pattern with that singular reviewer, much less more outlets. No, because that's a singular instance with an individual reviewer. Media/content creators remain a key part of marketing and promotional strategies and likely always will be. If this was happening Forspoken wouldn't have been reviewed pretty poorly (60's ain't great) and had a slew of reviews that seemed more interested in having fun dunking on the game than anything else (no criticism there, there was a lot of humor to be had) because outlets wouldn't want to jeopardize their access to FFXVI later this year, for example.īut they did.because while Squeenix may cry about it and while they may decide that one smaller outlet that shit on Forspoken won't get a key (probably not even), they have just as much interest in maintaining positive and professional relationships with media as well. In that case it's a publisher openly saying he's not going to keep supporting reviewer with review copies because he criticizes said games? Doesn't it kinda go back to the beginning of the argument, with publishers openly supporting reviewers only if they are sure the reviews are going to be positive?No, because that's a singular instance with an individual reviewer.

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