The Black Ops Review Experience

The hullaballoo surrounding Activision's five-star treatment of Call of Duty: Black Ops reviewers has some fans pointing fingers and accusing critics of writing biased reviews because they played the game in a posh setting. Allow me to share Game Informer's stance on such things, and tell you exactly how my Black Ops review went down.

Activision flew out reviewers, many on the mega-publisher's dime, out to a fancy resort in Ojai, California for the Black Ops review. The company flatly refused to send out review code (99% of games are reviewed in our own offices, playing "gold master" builds that have identical code to what you buy at retail), insisting that reviewers play the game on Activision's terms. This practice isn't unusual for blockbusters like Black Ops, as publishers loudly insist that piracy (though the game was pirated before release anyway) and spoilers (though most publications including Game Informer regularly sign non-disclosure agreements to prevent such things) for their triple-A titles must be avoided at all costs.

Game Informer refused the fancy resort, negotiating a visit to Treyarch's offices instead. It should be noted that Activision understood our situation and helped us set up a review that met both our terms. So I flew out to Santa Monica, California and played the hell out of Black Ops in a focus testing room next to Treyarch's quality assurance department. For reference, yes, I did play it on a big-ass flatscreen TV with nice 5.1 surround. Just the way I would play it at home or in the office.

Per our policy, GI paid for the entire trip. I stayed at a moderately priced hotel and spent a whole day twiddling my thumbs in airports on the way back because the only reasonably priced flight involved a several-hour layover in Phoenix. I don't say this to complain; travel is what it is and it's not like I was staying in a vagrant hostel or anything. I merely bring this up to point out that I wasn't exactly living it up on the trip.

GI is not a fan of these events. Disbelieve us if you want, but I can speak for everyone from our editor-in-chief Andy McNamara on down: they're a pain in the rear and make it harder for us to do our jobs. We just want to see and play the games, maybe meet with and interview the team. All the other stuff is unnecessary to the reporting process.

We don't mean to throw any other publications under the bus. So long as editorial policies are reasonably transparent and editorial content provides quality insight to readers, that's mission accomplished. The argument that posh review junkets like this have the danger of tainting a critic's opinion does hold weight – why else would publishers do them? – which is why we refuse them as a matter of policy and wanted to make our business practices clear.

This is a complex issue that gaming publications have struggled with ever since there has been such a thing as a gaming publication. We do our honest best. This is a professional career for all of us at Game Informer. We literally make our livings off of the worth of our words, and our reputations as critics and commentators. If you see hypocrisy or bias in our policies or our content, let us know via email or the comment sections online (which we do read, I assure you), because it is absolutely not our intent.

Thank you, as always, for reading.