Game Drool is a cool new blog that talks about the industry from a game journalist’s point of view. Very interesting stuff. Primary problem: not enough updates, and it ain’t Bloglineable.

Psychochild sent me the link to the blog (thanks, Brian!) to point out this story about our mutual former employer which is, of course, no longer with us. The story is an interesting read: it’s a letter from Trip Hawkins, CEO of 3DO, to the editor of Gamepro, defending 3D0’s recently-released-at-the-time Portal Runner. Paraphrased, Trip said, “You’re gonna give us low ratings? Fine. We’ll take our ads elsewhere.” Still, there are moments while reading it that you’re sure the Portal Runner team is going, “Sing it, sista!”

In any case, your reviewer blew it on this one. And we are re-evaluating our relationship with GamePro as a result…If you disagree with me, you do so at your own peril. The industry is in a malaise. As you know, most game publishers are losing money and have cut back on advertising.
….

It reminds me of boys at junior high school dance. With their fragile egos, they stay on the sideline and say the band sucks, the girls are ugly, and that those brave enough to dance are lousy dancers. Your reviewers have no idea how to make a great game. None of them have ever made one. But they sure have fun telling us in a nasty tone how inferior we are to them.

And it is game industry advertisers. If you need to be able to be constantly negative you need to accept that you are like a parasite that is killing its host. In God’s millions of years he has not created nor evolved a creature that would have such a stupid strategy for survival.

Wow. Who knew Portal Runner could evoke such passion? Trip’s statement of, “Hey, whyza hardcore gamer reviewing this kid’s game anyway?” is debate-provoking as well. It’s all worth a read.

Trip’s letter does appear to confirm what many have accused the games industry of doing — buying reviews and pressuring reviews. Interestingly, Jamie Fristrom thinks that the rise of ratings aggregation sites like GameTab and GameRankings may force an end to these shenanigans.

One other thing: JP pointed out that game reviewers can be bought. Yes, true. But to get that really kick-ass score on Gamerankings you have to buy all of them. Apparently Atari got caught buying some good reviews for Driver 3. It still didn’t get Driver 3 a good score on Gamerankings.

Just to bring things full circle: Portal Runner – 56%.