Reviewers Should Finish Games, Says Zampella

Respawn co-founder and former Infinity Ward boss Vince Zampella says that there’s nothing more frustrating than reviewers not completing games before they write about them.

Have you ever read a review, and got the sense that the reviewer maybe hadn’t played it all the way through? Vince Zampella has, and says that as a game maker, there’s not a lot that’s more annoying than a review based on only a partial experience with a game.

Speaking on a panel at QuakeCon in Dallas, Zampella said that he had read reviews that contained things that were untrue, or spoke about features that didn’t exist, which he said made it obvious that the reviewer in question hadn’t finished the game. He added that aside from being frustrating, it was unfair to the games.

Also on the panel was Bethesda’s Todd Howard, who agreed with Zampella and said that developers needed honest and complete feedback in order to make better games. “If [reviewers are] going to give you criticism and they’ve obviously played the game and thought about it, which we all get, it’s actually helpful.”

While few would argue that reviews should be as fair as possible, insisting that reviewers must complete a game to be able to make a fair assessment is overly simplistic. It is perhaps more useful to say that a reviewer should “fully investigate” a game, something that isn’t necessarily tied in with seeing the credits roll.

Source: Eurogamer