It’s been a long time since anyone really cared about Adrenaline Vault, once one of the most popular game review websites. They were famous for never using one word where seven would do, leading to 5000 word reviews of truck racing games or something equally silly. It’s been in turmoil and on hiatus for months.<\/p>\n
In any case, it has returned from the dead<\/a> and published an interview with John Romero<\/a>, a game design icon who should be hitting urban legend status any day now. He’s working on an MMO (of course) and thinks that console gaming is doomed. Yeah, consoles.<\/p>\n But it’s the last question that really annoys me.<\/p>\n “Avault is proud of its independence from publisher agendas. Do you think this is wise or should we also be sucking up to the man like most other gaming sites?”<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n You want to know the truth? Bigger game sites are likely more free from publisher agendas because they are, in fact, bigger. If Eidos or Ubisoft start pushing Gamespot or 1up around, they are likely to push back. “Independence from publisher agendas” is probably near the bottom of my concerns about the major gaming press. Smaller sites are much more likely to lose access and, consequently, can be pushed around.<\/p>\n This doesn’t mean that experienced and professional game media types can’t be wowed by a slick PR presentation or corrupted by over-familiarity with development and publishing figures. Access to exclusives, limited review conditions, calling people back…the PR people are professionals, too, and their profession is getting the best coverage for their game.<\/p>\n But for all the accusations of gaming press being in bed with publishers and developers, there have been very few specifics. Yeah, Dan Hsu claimed that competing magazines sold their covers, but he wouldn’t name names. Occasionally a developer or fan community get bent out of shape over a review score and charge that the publisher, editor or writer is corrupt or biased. But if this is such a huge deal, you would think that the story would have broken wide open by now. There is a lot of turnover in this industry, and not all partings are sweet sorrow.<\/p>\n Running around saying you’re independent doesn’t mean anything. It’s like saying that your website is “by gamers for gamers” or that you have “an irreverent take on the day’s news”. <\/p>\n