"How is this 'Gaming for Adults'?" you may ask, if you're one of those people that care about the tags on a blog post. I can't imagine that anyone actually does, but hey, more power to them if they do.

Previews of a game are a funny thing. Honestly, I consider it more "adult" in that as you get older, you have less time to play games, and typically you're more critical about which games you do play - while when younger you have more time to play, and are more willing to give a completely new game a shot, as well as be more enthusiastic about a game that isn't even out yet.

(I know those are crass generalizations. I also am way too lazy to create a new category for this kind of post, given how little I use the other ones I have and not knowing how often I'd write something like this.)

Follow up:

But what's funny about previews is the fact that it's almost impossible to be truly critical of them.

If you've read Ophelea's blog about editors, you've seen where I made one of the classic preview flaws. But let me explain a bit more, especially to help with people who don't seem to understand WHY companies put out previews.

A game company does not put out a preview to have people slag their game.

If a journalist does get too strongly critical of a game, it will make it less likely that said journalist gets to see more previews from that company. The company wants GOOD publicity.

But that's also a bit of a difference between the various types of previews. I'll give some examples.

1. The company ships us - say, GamersInfo - a preview copy of the game. This shows up a good amount of time before the game goes gold (i.e. that it's ready to ship) and is typically a beta or alpha version of the game.

Therefore, the game has problems. It will have bugs in it. It will have unfinished graphics and/or audio. The gameplay will still be in the process of being tweaked.

What this means for the previewer is that he (or she) needs to think about these factors when writing about the game. You don't concentrate on the flaws, except, perhaps, to mention that "they're being worked on" if they're particularly egregious. For instance, I started in on a preview build of a game that switched from English to Russian halfway through; that's the kind of thing that they will fix, and might be worth mentioning in a joking way (to show why I couldn't progress further) but not one that you should hold against a game.

It's a win-win for the game company and the journalist. The journalist gets something to show off before everybody else - "HEY EVERYONE LOOK AT THIS NEW THING" - and the game company gets publicity.

2. The game company sends the journalist a copy of the "gold", or final, version just before release.

Then it's not a preview, it's a review.

3. The company holds a "press event".

Typically what happens here is that the company invites a set number of journalists to see (and possibly play) their game. If you remember back in January I did one for a game; E3 is a big example of this.

If you get to play in the game, it's usually a level or part that's been thoroughly vetted by the developers first. Is it possible to break things or find bugs in them? Heck, yeah! These games are often still in alpha or beta. I managed to break one game so badly that I got a free jacket for figuring it out. Another one had consistent landscape problems that the reporters pointed out, and they put it in to have it fixed. Consider it playtesting.

But it's not worth it to mention those in any sort of a critical way. You might say "Hey, I impressed the devs by finding a bug!" but to hold that critically against a game that is still months, if not years, away would be bad.

In addition, press events often have demonstrations and information from the developers. In this case, the information will be strictly rationed. The developers simply can not answer certain questions.

But, more often than not, it's our job as journalists to explore what's good about these games, not the bugs that may or may not be fixed. Are we cheerleaders, then? In a way.

Again - any time you get a non-open beta or preview of a game, it's completely at the game company's whim - which means if you're not enthusiastic about it, they may not want you to look at it again, unless you manage to bring out really good points.

4. The game goes into open beta or an open preview.

All bets are off; that's basically a review.

5. A reporter writes an editorial.

Now, that's something completely different, too. Let's use a certain first person shooter coming out soon.

I've been looking forward to this game for a few years, ever since I first heard about it. However, I've been overdosing on coverage of that game recently and I'm starting to burn out.

In fact, the more I hear about it, the less "revolutionary" I find it, despite their claims, and the more pedestrian it seems.

If I were to write a long editorial about that, it has nothing to do with any choice the company's made in letting me see anything - I'm basing it all off public sources. I can slag it to my heart's content. "This game will suck, and here's why."

Then again, I can probably rely on NOT getting any other previews from that company. Why would they want to? Unless it's reverse psychology. Or regular psychology. Or something like that.

What does this mean to you, the reader, the end consumer of these previews?

Well, first off, and most importantly, it means that YOU need to stretch your critical thinking skills. Look at what the preview covers. Look at what it DOESN'T cover. Look at what's being said between the lines.

It also means that you need to get off your high horse. If you think a game is going to suck, for whatever reason, and the previewer seems to like it, it doesn't mean he's dumb, or drank the kool-aid, or whatever. It means that while you, as (usually) the slavishly devoted fanboy, are desperately looking at what parts of the game are going to suck, he's looking at what parts of the game are going to be fun.

And, in all odds, he's not an old school fanboy of the game. If he is, he should disclose that. I did my best to do that with my previews of Halo-related games; I admit I'm a huge fan of them. Therefore, my previews and reviews will be less objective about them, because I'm willing to cut more slack. I tell you that up-front so there's no question on that fact.

It also means that if the preview doesn't tell you something, don't hound the reporter on that. In all odds, he's telling you everything he possibly can. If something is left out, it's for one of three reasons:
1. He wasn't told it.
2. He's embargoed from telling you that until a certain date. (And breaking embargoes, even for "your closest friends", is a quick way of never seeing anything else embargoed again.)
3. He missed or forgot it.

You do need to remember that reporters are human. In my last preview of one game, I made the mistake of saying something wouldn't be in the game, only to be corrected by a manager on the game. I remembered distinctly hearing that it wouldn't be in; things change, and sometimes the developers make mistakes in what they say. But I'll let myself take the blame on that, because I'm the one who was there.

In another case, on another game, I made two factual errors. Those were completely my fault, thanks to misunderstanding what was being told to me and not doing enough follow-up work, and I owned up to them as soon as they were pointed out. Mea culpa. My bad. It happens.

In a final case, one that Ophelea pointed out, I simply got tired and got overly critical of a preview of a game. I honestly don't consider it as bad (in the critical-ness) as she did, but that was mostly because the game is supposed to be live next month, I thought. But still, I was looking at a preview build.

In the end, what I'm trying to say really is that you cannot look at previews and reviews in the same light. One is intended more as publicity, as a scoop, the other as a critical look. A preview is more akin to People or Entertainment Weekly telling you "so and so is working on a movie!" and the other more akin to a critic's review of the movie when it's out.

But don't look at the reporter as the bad guy in this. He's reporting what he's been given. He hasn't "drank the kool-aid", necessarily, or "sold out" or succumbed to marketing pressure. What people want are looks ahead of time at a game, and what a company wants is to show off why their game will be great (even if it sucks, like many of the games that I've reviewed), and the reporter's job is to facilitate that.