Larian’s Swen Vincke on Being Selective With Journalists

In a new post on his personal blog, Larian’s CEO Swen Vincke reflects on his experience with gaming journalists and explains why he’s ultimately come to the conclusion that it’s better to be selective with them rather than try to get out as many previews/coverage of your game as possible. Here’s a snip:

So imho, in the situation where the previewer or reviewer doesn’t like a certain style of gameplay, he has no business writing about a game in that style, and you shouldn’t ask him to either. You won’t ask your doctor to do an evaluation of the quality of your house’s plumbing, even if there may be similarities in the job description

Or to give another example, you don’t want me to review a FPS. I don’t play them, they’re no fun to me, so all I can do is discredit them by either writing stupidities about them or describing them in such a factual way that you’ll start wondering what is wrong with the game.

Give me a RPG though, and I’ll review it in detail and if you like RPGs too, you’ll know if this is something you might enjoy. Not so if you’d ask me to review a FPS all you’ll know is that you can change weapons and shoot stuff, that’s about it

Now if you ask my doctor to check your house’s plumbing, he’ll tell you to ask somebody else. If you ask me to review a FPS, I’ll for sure tell you to ask somebody else. So why don’t reporters do the same ?

I guess it’s because it’s their job and so they just do it, but that’s really not in the developer’s best interest. It’s also not very nice of the editor who sent them knowing that there’d be a mismatch he or she should know better, and actually, have the decency of telling you. Of course, certain editors might tell you that you should be happy that they’ll write about you at all, but that’s really not true. There is such a thing as bad publicity.

Because the editor isn’t guaranteed to do it for you, it’s really up to you as a developer to watch out for mismatches. There’s really nothing to be won when there’s a mismatch between game and journalist, and the damage to your game may be devastating. Journalists are herd animals too and one negative article on a popular site can herald a string of negative articles, even if it’s for no good reason.