Forza 2 Media Circus Has Begun

It looks like the Forza 2 media circus has begun in earnest. What I don't believe are these so-called game critics, or, if you must, journalists brown nosing their way through previews of this game. I have no denying that Forza 2 will be an excellent car racing game, and one which I will purchase on release. But the problem that I have with this game and these journalists is the fact that they promote this game as a hardcore racing-sim for hardcore racing fans, which is a load of rubbish.

Two previews of the game have gone up today. One of them from Gamearena and the other on the Screenplay Blog. Both of these previewers have stated pretty much the same. Gamearena states, "For the hardcore driving nuts out there, this is as good as it gets." Screenplay states, "and can confirm that it's a wonderfully realistic simulation guaranteed to get any petrol hedonist's motor running." The reality of this is that Forza 2 is a little bit harder than your standard arcade fare, but hardcore racing nuts are driving far better and far more realistic driving sims on PC such as: GTR, GTR 2, Live for Speed, NetKar, GT Legends and a few others of note.

To confirm the complete lack of understanding that these previewers have of exactly what a racing sim is and what racing sims are actually in the marketplace he states, "From a gameplay point-of-view, I'm one of the driving game types who prefers to play with everything on automatic and with as much in-game help switched on as possible, and with all that in place the game played really well, but for the sake of a proper hands-on experience, I also played the game in its most hardcore form, which lead me to last position and pure frustration, though only for the depth of the game's driving and handling physics alongside the great damage and wear and tear system." This is your problem. This guy may like racing games, he may even like some Formula One racing games, but he does not understand what a racing sim is. This is the problem. Forza 2 is not a racing simulator. This can be experienced from the demo. The force feedback is definitely not as well implemented as it is in GTR and GTR 2 (where, in fact, you can feel every bump in the road, and you cannot in Forza 2).

I have a problem with people marketing a game to a specific audience when it is not what they say it is. This is not a hardcore racing simulator. This is a racing game. The cars do not react like racing cars out of a racing sims. It reacts like an arcade racing game. The reason why these games are popular is due to the sheer amount of customization that you can do with the cars. The reason why these games "do not" capture the hardcore PC racing sim market is because these games do not cut the mustard as "racing sims".

I find this kind of reporting to be misleading. It attempts to represent the game in a specific way to a particular part of the market. It has no real respect for gamers as consumers and really is a blight on the gaming landscape. If a product is good enough it will succeed no matter what the criticism. The problem is that we live in a gaming landscape that does not promote honest criticism or thought of the product. At some point in time, and I think to a certain respect it is starting to happen now, gamers will not appreciate this type of reporting about products they are going to spend $100 on. Or, think about it this way. The average wage is not a whole lot of money. There aren't a whole lot of people who have more than $1,000 per week in disposable income. Just say, that their disposable income is only a couple of hundred dollars per week (which is probably a bit optimistic because of it being disposable income). Then to purchase a $100 game costs a lot to gamers. Considering the pick up rate of the Xbox 360 is 5 games per console then this means that gamers are spending approx. $500 on games per annum. This purchase may represent 1/5th of their total software purchased for the system in that 12 month period. For this reason more thought should be put in to how gaming journalists represent the products they are not meant to have any stake in promoting.

It would be far better if these so-called journalists had a greater appreciation for the diversity of software in the marketplace and didn't believe the spiel that some paid marketing consultant has told them about the game. This is the problem with gaming journalism. There are not enough unique perspectives on the gaming industry. No one is prepared to make up their minds for themselves. They regurgitate exactly what is told to them by the companies promoting the games. They are happy to go along and get paid to play a game for hours on end. It is a nice lifestyle. Why would they want to provide critical thought about what it is they are reviewing or previewing when they can just regurgitate what they are told without any thought in the first place. One of these journalists won the "Lizzie" award for best gaming journalist this year too. Intersting to note that nominees for this award are "self-nominated". Nice.