Ars Technica is leading the charge against a group of game critics who participated in an Activision-run event for the recent Modern Warfare 2 release, in which Activision put a bunch of writers up in a hotel for a few days to play the game all the way through before it came out. For security’s sake, instead of just sending out copies of the game as many publishers do, they brought the game in on hard drives, took it home at the end of each day, and basically provided all of the equipment for the writers to play on. I didn’t actually go out to the event, but I know someone who did, and I talked somewhat at length with him about it, both before and after it happened. Ars has it right: PR people were there, but they didn’t hover or try to influence the game in any way. From what I can tell, it was basically just Activision’s easiest and most secure way to let people play the game early without it leaking out into the world.

Now, lots of people are yelling foul over this, claiming one of two things: one, that writers and reviewers would be unduly influenced by getting a few nights in a hotel for free to play the game, and two, that writers are playing the game in the wrong situation. Games are meant to be experienced, they say, in your home, and not by going out to a fancy hotel, getting waited on by PR folks, and playing the game on premium, provided systems.

But I think both accusations are out of line, if not actually disrespectful to the writers involved.

To the subject of PR influence: Impartiality is the job of the professional writer. Any writer that does let their opinions or insights be swayed by “gifts” (I’ll get to why there are quotes around that word in a second) like the two days Activision gave at the hotel with Modern Warfare 2 doesn’t deserve to be writing game reviews. Modern Warfare 2 is an excellent game, and we all know that not because some writers who got put up in a hotel for a few days wrote it — we know that because we bought the game, played it, and enjoyed it. If any writer willingly gave a good review to a bad game because he or she got free food or a free hotel stay from a publisher, we’d know it: we’d play the game, and we’d see that they were wrong. As I said, this was the best and easiest way for Activision to show off this game before release, and it’s a bad assumption to believe that any writer worth their salt would be wrongly influenced by what was given to them. If you don’t like what a writer writes about a game, or if you don’t agree with them, don’t read them. Trust me — writers who don’t get read lose their jobs, especially if they earn a reputation for not being impartial.

To the second accusation, that the way this game was played wasn’t ideal: you’re right. It wasn’t ideal. Not for Activision or for the writers. I haven’t reviewed many games professionally, but I have covered many events, both in and out of the games industry, and I will tell you that work is still work. If you’re doing your job, even at an event with a big spread laid out for you and nice game systems to try, it’s still a job. The writer I know who went to the Activision event had the same reaction I would have had: I wouldn’t have been happy to lose two days of my life just to go on the road and play this game. Sure, playing Modern Warfare 2 pre-release would be fun, and it’s nice to get away. But for most of the writers who really went there to professionally review the game, I can guarantee you that it wasn’t a walk in the park. Even they knew that rushing through the game in two days was not the ideal way to review it, and playing multiplayer on a LAN with developers was not the way to test it. And their reviews reflected that. That’s why I put quotes around the word “gift” earlier — for most gamers, going to these hotel rooms and vegging on the game would be a dream come true. But for the writers tasked with intelligently analyzing a game in that situation, it wasn’t necessarily a “gift” they enjoyed being given.

That’s not to say that I don’t enjoy going to press events — it’s one of the things I love most about being a writer (and one reason I moved out to LA, as there are many more events like that out here than elsewhere in the country). But if you’re committed to doing your job at any press event, you’re more worried about getting the right notes down, taking the right pictures, and talking to the right people than what kind of sushi they have laid out or whether you can take one of those gift bags home. Any writer who’s more interested in picking up swag than they are in picking up the story shouldn’t be there in the first place.

Am I saying that it’s OK for PR to give writers all kinds of gifts and that we should just trust them to do the right thing? Of course not — PR also has a responsibility to let writers do their jobs, and that means getting them objective information when they ask for it. And of course it’s up to writers to guarantee that their audience can believe what they say — Joystiq, the blog I write for occasionally, has made it very clear that they will not accept anything from publishers at all without a) revealing it, and/or b) giving it away to readers. And of course they did state at the end of their Modern Warfare 2 review that they had attended this Activision event. Of course I abide by that policy whenever working for Joystiq. Personally, I think the policy is pretty limiting (I’ve worked for other organizations that allow their writers to keep review items and other swag, and certainly many other publications do so without scandal), but it is the Joystiq policy nonetheless, and I do agree it’s definitely an admirable one. That’s the step they take to make sure that their readers can trust them, and though not all writers and publications go that far, certainly all writers and publications have a responsibility to the people who read them.

But this Activision event was a situation where both PR and the writers were doing the best that they could, under the given circumstances, to serve their readers. To suggest that writers were unduly influenced or that PR was attempting to tempt them with a free hotel stay is, in my humble opinion, out of line. Sure, maybe there were writers at the event who didn’t remain impartial. Maybe you played Modern Warfare 2 and were confused as to why critics loved it so much, and you think that a lot of the reviews you read were influenced by Activision’s event. In that case, I’d advise you to not believe those reviewers any more, and find some that you trust. But claiming that anyone attending this event is forced to lose their impartiality doesn’t give these professional writers nearly enough credit, and borders on disrespecting them and their ability.