Apparently Indie Game Magazine (IGM) has a policy of charging indie developers $50 for the “privilege” of a “review” in their “magazine”. Sounds like the trough of the slippery-slope to me.
Argument For - Chris Newton, Publisher of IGM
Argument Against - Chris Priestman, Indie Statik Editor-in-Chief
What’s your opinion?
Yeah it seems like a big site, and $50 is not much if it can actually get you some views.
Horrible move…
That has nothing to do with a non-biased “review” for me, anymore.
Also it’s just another avenue for all these wannabe people that see their marketing move as just that. If the game does not sell itself, i’m just getting some paid reviews and it will make me millions in return.
I find it so funnysad how all these starting indie devs have access to this middleman services now “pr”, “reviews” and whatnot and they don’t realize that none of that stuff works for them but only for the venues.
Not such a bad idea to me. If it gets your games some attention, then hey, why not?
If it gets you good exposure then it’s probably worth it. There are far more less cost effective ways of trying to advertise your game.
So how big crowd is reading IGM anyway?
Good point if the main readers of IGM are other game developers then is it worth it?
I also used to think its ok if the said review has plenty of targeted traffic etc etc… but lately im thinking its wrong.
Game reviews should not be bought. I dont see this happening in the film industry… not that i am an expert on that. Paying people to say nice things about what could possibly be a piece of crap is false advertising and is not beneficial to me the buyer.
But how much to advertise your game in IGM.
This is its very problematic in terms of being objective and unbiased. If this is to become one of the major revenue streams for maintaining the website/magazine, then its in their interest to get as many ‘paid’ reviews as possible, that will only happen if developers feel they are going to get a good/glowing review. I mean no-one is going to pay for a review that says their game is crap are they?
Eventually this could lead to a downward spiral, readers lose trust in the reviews and move somewhere else, less readership means less reach so less developers pay for a review.
In addition I don’t really understand the $50 price point, its no where near enough to cover the cost of a decent 1 page review or the time required to play a game in order to review it, let alone support all the incidental costs of an online magazine. That much is obvious if the apparent going rat else where is $200 which is often muted in many similar articles about paying for reviews.
However its tricky for online/digital magazines these days, ad revenue is rarely enough to sustain them yet people want to read them for free; which is actually a good practice for ad based stuff since it automatically maximises you reach and readership. You can’t in good faith charge for reviews or articles since it brings bias into them. So what other options do they have?
Perhaps a slightly better solution is to offer free reviews, but once written a preview of it is sent to the developer, who can then decide if they want to promote it in terms of saying buying a ‘featured’ article space or perhaps pay for additional screenshots or a video review version. Obviously it can still have the problem of being biased in order to encourage the developer to pay up, but importantly unlike the current method it actually allows for it to be unbiased because the developer is not paying upfront and only so many products could be featured per day/week/month and thus only a few spots would be up for grabs.
Edit:
Actually what I find really confusing is having browsed around on the IGM site, i’ve yet to see an actual advert for an indie game. The only adverts are self-promotion of the digital magazine or cross-promotion with Indie Game Stand.
Ah, had to disable adblock, now the site is flooded with mostly unrelated adverts from DoubleClick and some dodgy looking stuff from iSocket. I don’t know if this makes them much money, but if it were me, I’d be heavily promoting ad space to actual indie developers and having a dedicated ad server that isn’t picked up by adBlock, or offering entire web page, or even site wide promotions for games like some of the big magazine sites do. Using standard ad companies and pushing unrelated ads just seems so counter-productive, especially for a niche magazine and market.
Thing is its a very grey area, the problem here is that IGM are being very open about it and have probably chosen the worse model.
Just think of all those places you read reviews for films, now have a look at how many adverts there are for films from the same production company, distributor or adverts for dvd/blurray/digital releases of previous films. In one way or another it is frequently the same people paying for adverts who also get reviews. However in the old days of print it was often strictly controlled to avoid the calls of being biased. You wouldn’t get an advert for a product being reviewed in the same edition, or if it was the review and advert would be as far apart as possible.
Of course this hasn’t stopped shady practices, “you want a review in our new edition, sure, could I interest you in this nice A4 spread advertising space?” 
Strangely google has done the exact opposite, in that they allow you to buy adverts that are directly fed to specific search results. The only difference here is often the user is searching for the product and not for a review, but its still an interesting reversal of the approach print media had.
yes its a bit of cat and mouse everybody wants to make a buck… I guess for me over time I have become more and more aware of all said shady means to promote an object or spread a message and this has resulted in a mindset of not been sold on any one time impressions or front page hype / propaganda.
This makes it much harder to for me to get to the point of buying something Im sure I would like. You are right though about film distributors punting there own products.
Take for example our local government television has 3 channels , yup count them … three. On one of these channels the majority of all music videos or bands you will ever see aired can be tracked back to some sort of distribution agreements or other endorsements. So you are not seeing something because its cool or because somebody buying the programs has good taste… its all driven by money sadly.
Very true, although in the old days this was often gated through publishers, so there was at least some quality control, you may not of liked everything from a publisher, but generally it could be considered of good quality simply due to the cost to promote a product and get it air/tv play.
It was a business and one publishers got very good at and generally although shady was rarely biased, at least to the extent of paying for ‘good’ reviews. Even nowadays the worse case that comes to memory wasn’t about a ‘buying’ a baised review but the alleged sacking of a journalist of a ‘poor’ review due to pressure from advertisers - i.e The Gamespot ‘Kane and Lynch’ debacle.
In the online world those gatekeepers vanished for a while and even now maybe have a bit of a back seat, indeed its often said its one of the great things for indies (of any product), is being free of the shackles of publishers, but of course the flip side now is the cost of entry has disappeared, flooding the markets with content and discoverabilty has become a big problem.
I can’t help feeling its going to be a gentle tug of war between being independent and using publishers. Every so often a new ‘shop front’ (e.g. iTunes, Appstore) will come along and those early adpoters will get high visibility for free. Then after a while it will be saturated and publishers will move in again to provide the backing, funds and contacts in order to get your product discovered. Then the whole thing will start again.
This is the question. By getting our stuff in that mag are we talking to our audiences or to other developers?
That is not a question at all. You can be sure that the overwhelming majority are game developers or aspiring game developers. I would guess the majority of those are aspiring game developers and naïve ones too, it they are paying $5 to get a review at such a low traffic site. You’d be better off buying Facebook advertising or better yet, advertising in local college and high school newspapers, those that have it, most don’t. Certainly you can buy advertising in your local newspaper(s) and hope to get someone to try your game that isn’t another game developer, or looking to be paid for a review, or is family or friends.
That that website charges $50 for a review is proof that the game developer audience and in particular, those that visit their website, doesn’t generate enough ad revenue to support their business.
From the late 1950s :
became known as “Payola” - and is illegal.
A slippery slope for IGM?
cheers, gryff 
It’s only naive if they’re doing it for the traffic. There are plenty of other reasons to get your game in as much media as you can.
Also, charging for reviews might not be about the money, so it might not be an indication at all of their quality or traffic. It could be that they get so many review requests that they needed to put some low barrier to entry in place as a first pass sorting mechanism. Some kid who did a Unity tute and put it on the app store is likely to not even bother if there’s a price tag on the review.
Charging for reviews does imply that they’re going about things backwards, though. They should find good games and tell people about them because they’re good games, not because the developer asked them to. It implies a developer-centric model rather than a gamer centric one, which seems to me to defeat the purpose?
Well for advertising $50 is nothing so I guess the idea is you wont even care if it doesnt work.
That’s what I was thinking.
Then you should read the second linked article…