Ars Technica Takes a Look at Black Ops’ Review Event

When Modern Warfare 2 came out there was some controversy surrounding the way in which the game was reviewed. Sites and magazines were being shipped off to hotels where they had three days to review MW2 under the watchful eye of the game’s developers. These so-called ‘review events’ left a bad taste in some peoples’ mouths (mine included; I wrote this piece in reaction).

The same events happened this year for Black Ops. Ars Technica has been looking at these events once again and examining a few sites who have been forthcoming with their disclosures. GamePro simply laid down that Activision had paid for the majority of the trip while Joystiq (who seemingly broke their own ethical policy when they went to the junket last year) went to the event but did not let Activision pay for anything.

As Ars points out, they’re not picking on sites’ decisions to go to the events, simply detailing what goes on. There’s plenty of questions surrounding how that experience affects the review score however, not least with online play.

My personal opinions are that review events do have an effect on reviewers and a hotel room with a load of developers present is certainly a different experience than the average gamer gets. Agree or not, you should read the Ars piece (and also check out a piece we linked to a while back by Kyle Orland which looks at the same subject).

Update: Kotaku has posted a note explaining why it doesn’t attend events.