Could you imagine reviewing hundreds of games, filing each review just hours or maybe one day after finishing the game you were scoring? Don't you think you'd second-guess yourself?

Well, the death threats used to give current Giant Bomb reviewer Jeff Gerstmann pause. And former GameSpot reviewer Alex Navarro, who said he has written about 700 reviews, could give me the number of reviews he regrets.

But, no, they don't really second-guess.

"I'm at a point where I rarely second guess what I think about a game upon finishing it," Gerstmann told me. He said he's long gotten over the doubt that could set in "when you are facing the raging fury of the Internet." He used to get death threats about some of his scores. "Now that stuff just rolls off. It's the ranting of insane people, which you could say about a lot of internet stuff."

Gerstmann is known for many reviews. But some scores he issued while at his former outlet GameSpot stick out. The 8.9 he gave "The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess" earned him scorn from many "Zelda" fans. The 6.0 he awarded the console version of "Kane & Lynch" may have cost him his job.

"Over the years you eventually take that long view," he told me. "There are some reviews I've written over the years that stand out more to some people but I feel fine about that stuff just as much as the games that people don't come out of the woodwork for."

I wondered if he ever went back and re-played games he scored, only to get the sinking feeling his score was off. Like, maybe he had second thoughts about "Kane & Lynch." He said he didn't go back to the 360 version after writing his review but, within a week of filing it, was trying the computer edition. And then the controversy over his dismissal from GameSpot erupted. "I was already in the process of playing the PC version of that when all of this went down, so I was already playing another version of it when that review had run. So that was me going back to it in some sense." He didn't second guess. "Yeah, that game, had some problems… The funny realization is that the PC version was a little worse because the multiplayer was kind of broken. So sadly that review never got a chance to run [laughs]."

Gerstmann believes top reviewers can trust their gut instincts of a just-finished game. And his former co-worker agrees. "I think I've maybe regretted three or four review scores I've ever given," Navarro told me. "It was never by a particularly high margin. Maybe by a point here or a point there." He wouldn't tell me which games, but said he had reviewed over 700.

So a reviewer shouldn't second-guess much? The seasoned reviewer just won't, Navarro said, not even if they're reviewing a game in a crunch. "Once you've written a few reviews and kind of gotten a feeling for what your tastes are and what you like and what generally is good or bad, you don't need a lot of time to sit there and marinate on what you just played."

Second-guessing? It's not for the pros.

For much more about game reviews, check back all week to follow my reviews series here at MTV Multiplayer. Got a comment you can’t bring yourself to share below this post? Drop me an e-mail.

Several stories in this week's series demonstrated the role game review scores play in the business (Note that no one ever said they guarantee higher sales!). I asked two of the game development studio leads who have been quoted throughout my series what they think about the need for the number and letter scores.

Denis Dyack, Silicon Knights: All reviews need is a 'thumbs up' or 'thumbs down.' If I was writing a review I would write a detailed review about where I thought [a game] was strong or weak. I would write is as if I was talking to a friend who I liked or appreciated -- which should be the customer, for a reviewer. ... You see all these 10 out of 10 reviews for 'GTA.' A 10 out of 10 doesn't make it perfect. Just have people score it with thumbs up or down. To say this is 'highly recommended by most people,' I think, is more accurate. To me this makes much more sense."

Ted Price, Insomniac Games: As a consumer I like seeing the numerical scores. It lets me know if I should go spend my money. If something is under a certain score I probably won't give it much consideration. I think as a developer I think we all appreciate the numerical scores because it justifies the work we put in the game. .. I understand the problem with numbers because there is no consistent system that people use. But generally when you see a good game, it's getting scores within a certain range and when you see a bad game it's getting scores in a certain range.

And that is a debate I suspect will never cease. Stay tuned for one more post in this series, fittingly enough, about second-guessing.

For much more about game reviews, check back all week to follow my reviews series here at MTV Multiplayer. Got a comment you can’t bring yourself to share below this post? Drop me an e-mail.

What I heard about print reviews for "Metal Gear Solid 4" was different.

I've been told by two gaming media sources who asked to remain anonymous that Konami representatives had been asking print reviewers to keep some technical details out of their reviews, namely the length of the game's cut-scenes and the size of the game's installation on the PlayStation 3.

Such details wouldn't have been plot spoilers, but perhaps the publisher was concerned that they would be viewed as negatives?

Konami representatives declined to comment to me about any of this, as did editors of a few major video game magazines.

A couple of weeks ago, gaming blog Kotaku posted back-to-back links about the two supposedly off-limits topics. The size of the game's installation was spotted on the "MGS4" box. The other was a disputed report about the length of the cut-scenes.

So that technical information -- accurate or not, I don't know -- is getting out there. And that information about the game has been acknowledged by Eurogamer, which ran an "MGS4" review that mentions both things.

Whether Konami really has put these limits on reviewers and if such limits are tolerable to game reviewers is something I can't answer. It's something worth keeping an eye on as print reviews of "MGS4" start trickling out.

For much more about game reviews, check back all week to follow my reviews series here at MTV Multiplayer. Got a comment you can’t bring yourself to share below this post? Drop me an e-mail.

An excerpt:

Reviews may deliver designer notes, but they also deliver dollars. Denis Dyack, the long-tenured president of Silicon Knights, developer of upcoming Xbox 360 game "Too Human," said that a development studio's review scores, or Metacritic average, are one of the key things a publisher will look at before deciding whether to fund the creation of a game and green-light a particular studio's idea and involvement. "That's extremely important in getting a deal with a publisher," he said. "In the development world, you're only as good as your last game. ... There's two ways of determining if you were good: One is through sales, which is the most important one, and the other is through quality of title, which is generally, believe it or not, perceived as Metacritic."

For the rest of this piece, including how developers deal with the pyschological blow of a negative review, check out the full story at MTVNews.com.

For much more about game reviews, check back all week to follow my reviews series here at MTV Multiplayer. Got a comment you can’t bring yourself to share below this post? Drop me an e-mail.

This happens because of a common -- but not widespread -- industry practice I heard about several times while reporting on the topic of game reviews for the past month.

Here's the way it works: a game publisher agrees to finance the work of a development studio and includes a stipulation that certain bonuses or royalties won't be delivered unless the game achieves a certain Metacritic score. If you're that developer and you agree to that deal, you better hope reviewers give you a fair shake, no?

One developer, who asked not to be named told me about an instance in which their company didn't receive royalties for a game that sold more than a million copies. The reason was because -- as had been stipulated in a contract with the publisher -- the Metacritic score for the game was too low.

Does a developer with a million-seller deserve royalties? I asked some other game creators and reviewers about this practice.

Image: Joe Raedle/Getty Images

Former GameSpot reviewers Jeff Gerstmann (Giant Bomb) and Alex Navarro said they've not only heard of this practice but even know developers that were caught up in it. "I've gotten e-mails from developers over the years who have said, 'I don't think you realize what you're doing to me with this review' because my review knocked them out of the range of some bonus that they were up for," Gerstmann told me. That's something that really troubles me… When I'm sitting down to write a review I'm never setting out to think: 'I am taking food off this guy's table.'"

Silicon Knights president Denis Dyack and Insomniac Games president Ted Price said they are both familiar with the practice and disapprove of it. "I don't think that's the right way to have a relationship with a publisher," Price said. "The relationship needs to be based on trust that each party is doing the best it can and open communication to ensure that during the process both parties are doing their part." Both creators said they don't believe the practice is widespread, though Dyack said it was "kind of avant garde about three or four years ago."

Game producer Pete Wanat said that the kind of deals the anonymous developer cited earlier in this piece are impractical. But he said that a variation on them is not only common but logical: "I think the stuff is far more active in the sense of: 'We're going to work with you' vs. 'We're not going to work with you' -- as opposed to 'We're going to work with you and, based on what kind of game it is, you'll get a bonus.'"

Wanat thinks the more common approach matches what former head of Warner Bros. gaming Jason Hall instituted in 2004. At WB, according to the Wall Street Journal, Hall instituted "quality ratings" as part of contracts for games under development at the publisher. I wanted to know if Hall thought the process worked but he is unable to comment on his former employer. A Warner Bros. rep declined to comment on the publisher's current policies and whether Hall's review-score standards proved beneficial or not. [UPDATE: To be clear, the Warner Bros. comparison is a bit apples to oranges, since Warner's deals are with publishers seeking licenses of Warner product, not with developers being published by Warner Bros.]

What I hadn't realized before reporting on this series was how directly a bad review score can affect a development studio's pay. Developers reminded me how tenuous the accuracy of review scores can be.

So next time you see a review that marks a game down lower than you think is deserved, it's worth wondering what kind of affect that might have on the people behind the game. And it's also worth wondering: why would a development studio ever tolerate publishers setting up deals like that?

For much more about game reviews, check back all week to follow my reviews series here at MTV Multiplayer. Got a comment you can’t bring yourself to share below this post? Drop me an e-mail.

Downloadable games for major consoles are, across the board, reviewed fewer times than disc-based games. This is an issue people in the games industry and the media are aware of, and for some, it's a frustration.

"You can look in the games media and you can see the difference in coverage between traditional retail products versus digitally distributed titles," Capcom spokesman Chris Kramer said to me. "The overall perception is that if you can't go into EB and buy it over the counter, then it's not important."

Do game reviewers unfairly neglect downloadable games? Read on for both sides of the story.

Capcom's bestselling Xbox Live Arcade game, "Street Fighter Hyper-Fighting" has been reviewed 33 times by gaming outlets, according to Metacritic. That's fewer times than the latest "Phoenix Wright" game, less than half of the reviews generally garnered for disc-based games such as "Devil May Cry 4" or "Lost Planet." And if you think that number of reviews is proportionate to the XBLA game's relevance, consider that other Capcom downloadable games, such as "Rocketmen" have reviewed barely 20 reviews.

Game reviewers say the problems are relatively small staffs facing an overwhelming number of games. "I think it all comes down to a matter of resources," Tal Blevins, v.p of games content at IGN, told me. "With hundreds and hundreds of titles released each year, keeping up with the flood of boxed releases is difficult enough, so I can understand why downloadable games and content are a secondary concern for most outlets."

IGN, though, has been pretty good and reviewing the downloadable stuff. Want to know how the original, download-only 2008 PSP game "Ape Quest" was? IGN is the only outlet listed in Metacritic to have reviewed it. Joystiq's PSP Fanboy site did too, but no other major gaming site scored this Sony-made game. A gamer encountering "Ape Quest" on the PSN store via their PC or PS3 would have to figure out if the game was any good themselves. Thankfully, the first chapter of the role-playing game is free.

Downloadable console games aren't going away, so reviews of them do have relevance. Downloadable games are staples of the Xbox 360, PS3 and Wii line-up. Kramer describes such games as "a growing part of our business," pointing out the Capcom recently held a press event just for the company's downloadable games and hinted that a new take to a familiar Capcom franchise -- "Capcom's first big digital-only title coming from Japan" -- will be announced at E3.

The games media is struggling to find the right way to cover downloadable games. Recently, Game Informer carved out a dedicated page for the games. On the other hand, former GameSpot reviewers Jeff Gerstmann and Alex Navarro said that the decision to try to review every Virtual Console game on the Wii proved to be too much of a time drain.

But is Kramer onto something about downloadable games? Is there a bias against product that isn't physical? That isn't sold on a store shelf or shipped in a box to a reviewer? He said Capcom sends more than 200 codes for its downloadable games to reviewers to unlock the games and play them for review. The result, on average, is a third of those codes result in reviews. When sending out disc-based games for review he said the average is closer to 75%.

Ron Eagle, a senior games publicist at Sony, said his team sees about a 50% review follow-through on disc-based games sent to press, compared to less than a third for keys they distribute for downloadable PSN games. Eagle said he too thinks review outlets are simply too short-staffed to handle all the downloadable games. The result is that the games can be de-prioritized in favor of disc-based games. "The real challenge is getting the mind share of the journalist to get them to see it as an equal."

A game publisher might not care about a lack of reviews if that lack doesn't hurt sales. relatively small number of reviews for the average download. Jeremy Wacksman, marketing manager for Xbox Live and a go-to man for Xbox Live Arcade questions, said that he's seen coverage of XBLA games "trail a little bit." But he said he's not worried because he sees the downloadable scene for consoles as young. Plus, Microsoft has other ways than reviews to promote their games. "For us, a trial is a great marketing and press vehicle for a title," he said, referring to the fact that any 360 user can download a free demo of any XBLA game. [My interview with Wacksman preceded Microsoft's announcement that XBLA games that score poorly in reviews and aren't bought by more than 6% of demo users will be delisted after a set period of time.]

In talking to people in the game creation side of things, I detected a wariness about whether more reviews of downloadable games would bring immediate improvement. Ross Erickson, former portfolio manager of XBLA and now vice president of content acquisition of Sierra Online (publisher of 10 XBLA games) told me that early reviews of downloadable games on the 360 service were sometimes hard to take. "It felt like they were getting a patronizing pat on the head," he told me.

Echoing comments I heard from Eagle, he said price has become a sticking point, one he saw handled inconsistently as reviewers sometimes penalized what he thought was a good cheap game without accounting for the value it offered at a lower price point. Decent downloadable games get panned without the consideration that they don't cost the gamer as much as a slightly better but significantly more expensive disc-based game, Erickson and others in game publishing commented to me. Whether it would be fair and appropriate for reviewers of downloadable games would be to cut the games slack because of their low prices is not something the dozen people I interviewed for this story could agree on.

Given gamers' free access to any downloadable game on the Xbox 360 and several on the PS3 (but none on the Wii), the argument could be made that reviews are not as essential in this part of the medium. If you're the person trying to gather as much info as possible to determine whether to spend $10 on the latest PSN/XBLA/WiiWare offering, would you agree?

For much more about game reviews, check back all week to follow my reviews series here at MTV Multiplayer. Got a comment you can’t bring yourself to share below this post? Drop me an e-mail.

If you wanted to know if "Peggle" was any good, you could download it. But maybe you'd like to read a review. There isn't one on GameSpot. There isn't one on IGN's PC site. I didn't recall seeing one in Game Informer or … anywhere.

And when I checked Metacritic, that review aggregation service showed me why: almost no major gaming site has reviewed the heavily-downloaded "Peggle." (Until the iPod release a year later, that is.)

I asked some major reviewers and one of the people behind "Peggle" what they thought of this turn of events. Was this an indictment of the reviews system? Or the system serving its audience appropriately?

First, here is what reviewers said:

Skipping "Peggle" was a mistake -- possibly. That's what I learned from former GameSpot head reviewer and current Giant Bomb editor Jeff Gerstmann, who said he finds "Peggle" to be "pretty awesome." He told me it was part of his job responsibilities at GameSpot to decide whether "Peggle" should be reviewed. Bear in mind that we're talking about a game not typically targeted at GameSpot's gaming crowd. So reviewing it wasn't a no-brainer. "That's a call I made. I played 'Peggle' and said 'We are not going to review "Peggle."' That was a mistake. I think it was because there was a lot more stuff coming out at the time. That was kind of a below-the-radar [game]."

None of Gerstmann's readers complained about his decision, he told me. "I think 'Peggle' was below their radar for a long time as well," Gerstmann told me. "The audience isn't necessarily always looking to be turned on by something new and quirky and cool. When you get to that mainstream level of reaching however many millions, the largest portion of your audience wants to know about 'Halo' or 'GTA' or 'Madden' or whatever is big at the time."

IGN's Tal Blevins admits his outlet just missed the PC version of the game. "Yes it was a popular game," he told me in an e-mail, "But since it was on PC, it was one of those titles that just got overlooked until it made a big splash with gamers. Downloadable content on the consoles is available in a more centralized manner than on the PC, so it's a bit easier to keep track of. With that said, I imagine we will do a review of Peggle when it's released on Xbox Live later this year." IGN has reviewed the iPod version, giving it a 9.0.

And what says Greg Canessa, former XBLA general manager and now a vice president at "Peggle" publisher PopCap?

"It’s up to the gaming press to meet us halfway here," he said to me in an e-mail. He's pleased with the positive press the game got in USA Today, The Wall Street Journal and The Onion, but said he wished the gaming press had shown the game more attention. He believes there were three factors keeping that from happening:

"First, I think that many of the gaming outlets are focused on console these days, moreso than PC. When we bring 'Peggle' to video game platforms, as we plan to do for XBLA and others, I expect that the amount of coverage will increase.

"Second, I do believe that the major gaming outlets have a hard time evaluating 'small games' in general. These games simply don’t compute to them, and don’t fit into the typical review model. Major gaming outlets have a hard time judging 'small' games on their own merit, since they cannot help but evaluate them on a comparative basis in the context of big retail games. To them, it seems unfair to favorably rate games with simple and accessible play mechanics that take a fraction of the time and money to make, relative to 'big' games (i.e. how could I gave a 9.5 to 'Peggle' when I gave 'Halo 3' a 9.0 – that isn’t fair!). This is an unfortunate reality today, and will require a shift in mindset amongst the game reviewers to look past how much a game cost or how many people it took to design it or how cool the graphics are, and judge each game on its own entertainment and artistic merits.

"Think about movies – a great review can go to the biggest Hollywood blockbuster or the smallest indie film (more often the latter), regardless of budget or time or sophistication. Movies are judged based on how well the reach an audience and achieve the objective they set out to accomplish, be it entertainment, enlightenment, or whatever. The game review space needs to evolve to that level.

"And third, marketing budgets are tiny to non-existent for “small” PC games and casual games in general, and 'Peggle' is no exception (marketing is a foreign concept to many of these companies). So, it can be hard for companies to reach the gaming outlets and get attention without all the hype and buzz that major publishers throw out there for their big games."

***

I'm not sure this is an open and shut case. So someone else must decide.

For much more about game reviews, check back all week to follow my reviews series here at MTV Multiplayer. Got a comment you can't bring yourself to share below this post? Drop me an e-mail.

This, he said, demonstrated the way the communication sometimes works. "I have a note in my hand that came from a PR person surrounding a certain Wii launch game," Navarro told me. 

This is the note he was sent by a publicist whom he declined to name:

If the review is 9.0 or higher you can post immediately. Lower than 9.0, could you please hold until launch day, November 19th? Thanks.

"And that's not the first time I got something like that," he told me. Navarro said GameSpot ran their review for this game based on a copy bought in a store. And they panned it.

For much more about game reviews, check back all week to follow my reviews series here at MTV Multiplayer. Got a comment you can't bring yourself to share below this post? Drop me an e-mail.

What if it could all be perfect? I asked a few top game reviewers to tell me their desires for the perfect review experience. I put their requests in a list. The result is the first draft of:

The Game Reviewer's Bill Of Rights
(rough draft!)

Item 1: A final, boxed copy of a game will be provided to a reviewer prior to the writing of a review

Item 2: The review copy of a game will be made available to the reviewer at least a week prior to a game's release

Item 3: Developers and publishers will not be present while a game is reviewed

Item 4: Reviewers will be given access to a game's online mode during the review process

Item 5: To be determined -- this is a rough draft

Now does any of that sound implausible? Maybe it should. Read on to see what game reviewers and game creators have to say about these issues. And let us know what amendments should be made to this list.

1) A final, boxed copy of a game will be provided to a reviewer prior to the writing of a review

This one is essentially impossible for any print magazine reviewers. They need to review a game a couple of months before its release. But you'd expect it to be a possibility for online reviewers. Former GameSpot reviewer Alex Navarro, who expressed his desire for items #1 and 2 on this list, said this "almost never happens because game production schedules don't really allow for that kind of thing."

This is how former GameSpot chief reviewer and Giant Bomb founder Jeff Gerstmann expressed his desire for item #1: "I think all a reviewer should really have in their disposal is exactly what the person purchasing the game will have. A copy of the game that is the final version of the game and the instruction manual. "

Providing a review with anything less than final boxed copy leaves the reviewer guessing. Says developer Denis Dyack: "They have to make predictions into the future of what the game will be like." Typically magazine reviewers -- but even sometimes online reviewers who are working just days in advance of release -- will be provided notes on what will change or improve in later versions than the one the reviewer is working with.

Proving Dyack's point, here's part of a note I was sent from Microsoft's Xbox PR team ast week regarding the review disc I received for next week's "Ninja Gaiden II." The note explained that load times for the game may be slower in my build than they should be due to the way the review copies of the disc were burned: "In the final boxed copy of the game, which you will receive once the game ships to retail on June 3 in the U.S., you will not experience any lag in load times." As Dyack indicates, a reviewer must decide if they're willing to predict that future.

Some companies get around this by actually getting boxed copies of games to reviewers early. Navarro said Nintendo does a good job making boxed copy available to press a few days before a game is on store shelves (I can confirm this) but said few other companies are that ahead of things. "If everyone operated on the same sort of wavelength that Nintendo does, reviewers' jobs would be a hell of a lot easier."

2) The review copy of a game will be made available to the reviewer at least a week prior to a game's release

Navarro said this is a pie in the sky request, even though he's asking for it. "Every release is so up to the wire that there's never really that room for the critics to get heir hands on it maybe a couple of days ahead of time if you're lucky."

It's not just reviewers who'd like reviewers to have more time with a game. Dyack says the rush to review quickly hurts review quality. He lamented the result of IGN, GameSpot and other major review outlets, all of whom express the desire to have reviews run as close to a game's release date as possible, operating under this pressure. "The majors, in order to get the traffic and penetration rate for the magazines, have to do the reviews very quickly. [The resulting Metacritic average is] more like a Gallup poll of how people are feeling that month rather than how they feel in the long-term about the quality of the game."

Not everyone thinks the rush ruins the reviews. Gerstmann, who once had to binge on "The Legend of Zelda: The Ocarina of Time" starting on a Friday to post his review on a Monday said: "The best game reviewers are ones that can marathon through that stuff but can understand if they let it sink in or simmer over the course of a week or two weeks, how would that experience have differed and they factor that in?"

Still, is getting a game a week in advance of release of when a review needs to be filed too much to ask?

3) Developers should not be present while a game is reviewed

It's become common for publishers to host pre-release review sessions in controlled locations like a company headquarters or hotel room. This is done in lieu of sending out an early copy of the game. At such events, a major game is made available for review, but the reviewer can't take the game home or back to the office. This is how Microsoft handled "Halo 3" and Rockstar handled "Grand Theft Auto IV," just to provide two recent examples.

Sometimes publishers and/or developers will come to a critic's office and request to sit with a reviewer while they start playing the game for review. I thought it was nice to have a representative of Bungie sit in on my play-through of "Halo 3" at a midtown Manhattan hotel and when the creative director for "Assassin's Creed" dropped by MTV HQ to watch me start his game. But I wasn't writing a review of these games; I was just covering them for my reporting and found the special access informative. Had I been reviewing the games, would it have been a problem?

Gerstmann said having developers present is never a good idea. "There was one game that was released last year where the publisher wanted to have the reviewer sit with the developer for the first three hours of the time playing it," he told me. "Every time I hear something like that I think, wow the publisher must really not be confident about the quality of this game."

Tal Blevins, vice president of games content at IGN is in agreement. "We also prefer to be apart from the publisher when critiquing a game, so reviewing a title in our office or at home is preferred over a closed review session at a hotel or the publisher's office."

Navarro said he thought game creators' presence during a review session undermine the review or the reviewer. "I think the second you let a developer or publisher or PR person look over you're shoulder while you're playing it [for a review] maybe it's just me being paranoid, but it just feeds into this feeling of they're watching how you're playing the game. They're looking for excuses to debunk what you say about it, if you say anything negative about it."

In an e-mail to me, 1up.com executive editor Ryan Scott expressed his frustration about publisher-attended review sessions and took a swing at the justifications those publishers make for them. "We (like everyone else) have engaged in the occasional offsite review when dire timing-related circumstances warranted it, but we've always taken care to disclose this sort of information in the reviews themselves. All told, though, I think it's a shady practice--publishers always cite 'fear of software piracy' as the primary reason for orchestrating these types of sessions, but I've never once had such a publisher honor a request to arrange a 'normal' review alongside a signed NDA, despite our spotless record with regard to credibility."

4) Reviewers will be given access to a game's online mode during the review process

Navarro tells me that this is a no-brainer but still isn't the norm. "Companies are absolutely abysmal at planning for online testing… I can't tell you how many times -- for the same game released every year with online -- we've had to go to [publishers] year after year and say, hey, are you doing some sort of online session for this? Are you doing something where the reviewers can get together and play this?" He said his fellow reviewers at GameSpot would often wait until the retail release of a game, try its online mode against early consumers so they could assess it, and only then run their reviews.

***

So when is this all going to improve?

Navarro is pessimistic, blaming just about every complaint on the same problem: time crunch. "What I consider to be a perfect review session probably isn't going to exist any time soon simply because of the way the industry works," he said. "I wish the game industry worked a lot more like the film industry or the music industry where there is a hard date, they have the product in hand a couple of weeks ahead of time, and they're actually looking to get the critical scores out there before a game comes out. But that's just not the way it works. People are too panicky, too pressed for time. That's just the way it is."

See any solutions here?

What do you think should be part of the Game Reviewers' Bill of Rights?

Got a comment you can't bring yourself to share below this post? Drop me an e-mail.

How a top reviewer thinks...

"'How can I save people money today?' is basically the kind of mentality that I tackle this stuff with."

--Giant Bomb founder and former Gamespot editorial director Jeff Gerstmann

***

What a Metacritic score of 85 gets a game developer...

"Knowing you got a certain Metacritic score allowed you the chance to take bigger chances… The difference between a 65 and an 85 [is that] with an 85 you have a much broader degree of freedom on your next game."

--Video game producer Pete Wanat, who has worked on "Scarface: The World Is Yours" and "The Chronicles of Riddick"

***

On whether reviewers get it right...

"This year we also did some research on 'Resistance' after it was released and got very good feedback from players. And it was nice to see players saying what reviewers said, both good and bad. That was cool. It gave me more faith in reviewers' opinions."

--Insomniac Games president Ted Price whose studio is at work on "Resistance 2"

***

One way reviewers are kept honest…

"When someone would give an 'EverQuest' expansion a 75 percent, I knew immediately I would get an e-mail [from my boss]: 'Find out what this guy did.' I'd say, 'Okay John, this guy played 25 hours. Sorry.' If we got a low score, we would go into the guy's account and look. I guarantee anyone running an online gaming service does that."

--Current Capcom public relations man Chris Kramer, recalling his days at Sony Online Entertainment

***

Check back all week for MTV Multiplayer's report on the state of video game reviews. For a schedule of the week's offerings, check out the first post in the series.

Got a comment you can't bring yourself to share below this post? Drop me an e-mail.