Sites with user driven content sound great, but are they? N4G can be viewed as an example to many who have used it over the years of a site which started out great and has become little more than a corporate mouthpiece in recent months.

If you have tried to submit a story containing video or images to the site recently, chances are that you have been met with hordes of individuals directing you to embed the video/images. That wasn’t always the case. The site used to be much more laid back and willing to reward the sites hosting the content as long as they had a link to it on their own. So what has changed? Well, one thing that hasn’t is N4G’s official policy regarding the inclusion of video and images (shown below):

Attach Video (Step 3)
This step is optional, but if your story is linking to YouTube, GameTrialers.com or any other video site you can embed the video into your N4G news post. To do this copy and paste the video code into the “Attach Video” form. To find the video code look for words like “Embed” or “Add Video to Website” on the video sites.

Adding Story Images
If your news post link to some new Halo 3 screenshots you can also upload those screenshots to N4G.com. Many readers are unable to visit the source sites because their workplace blocks access to game sites like IGN and Gamespot. By uploading some of the screenshots to N4G these readers will also be able to view the new screens.

The policy does not say that you must embed the video or images in the post you make, it simply says that you “can”. So, if the policy hasn’t changed, why are so many of the people that use N4G to promote news getting so much slack? The answer lies in the vision of the site’s moderators (some of which run their own gaming sites which clearly causes a conflict of interest on some level).

It seems that these moderators have decided to create their own law (one that is not echoed in the site’s official policy outlined above). Below is a post that appears in the site’s forum (the place everyone goes to look for official policy updates – not):

Time for a bump, as this came up today.

Embedding videos is optional for this reason only: Some sites do not provide embed code (major news networks, for example).

If there is embed code, it has to be embedded.

Let me tell you what is really going on. N4G merged with gaming site Gamesradar not long ago, and now acts as the news feed for that site. Having worked in the web design/user interface industry for nearly 10 years before starting Ripten, I can tell you that companies like to minimize clicks. A user coming from Gamesradar would have to click the news link on that site taking them to N4G and then click once again to see the actual video or image hosted on the source site. But that is way to many clicks for a Gamesradar reader. So while the policy on the site says you have an option, it seems that N4G is more than ready to force its contributors to embed content to help their cause even if it means hurting those who helped them build their presence in the first place.

N4G used to be a great site to help get news out to the masses if your site was just getting started. In fact, when Ripten started, I had been asked to help promote N4G by one of their founders through the addition of a social network button allowing our readers to submit our content to their site. I believed in what they were doing and saw the benefit of working with them. However the dictatorship that exists now with the site’s moderators has left a foul taste in the mouths of many.

This is not about Ripten’s “beef” with N4G. The reality is that we rarely create our own video content, however there are large gaming sites, and even lesser known outlets like HipHopGamer, who are creating their own video content and being forced to embed that content on N4G. HHG has openly expressed his distaste with the strong arming tactic, and I have personally spoken with individuals responsible for distributing the video content created by even main stream outlets, and it is safe to say that they have also experienced the embedding strong arm of N4G.

You may not like our content. You may not agree with our opinions. All of that is fine. What you should however agree with is that what drew contributors to N4G was in large part the ability to drive traffic to the news they found/created (the elite were even offered bonuses to do so, some of which are rewarded with the site’s moderator title today). That appeal is fading, and it should serve as a warning to us all the next time we consider helping a site that revolves around user generated content get its feet off the ground. I don’t “hate” N4G, but I do find the direction the site is heading to be an unfortunate one.

In the immediate future, it seems that sites creating original content will need to do away with the embed feature or insert multiple ads into their video to offset the loss of direct traffic. Sound off in the comment section below.

I clicked on a pending article with the title “CNN: Microsoft Xbox had a 95% Failure Rate” because it sounded interesting. Much to my displeasure, once I got to the article page, I was met with a paragraph outlining what I assume is the ending of Gears of War 2.

My second run-in was when I spotted an article in the “incoming news” section. This asshole was bolder than the first, putting spoilers in the actual title. He also seemed to be smarter, as he had worded it in an odd way, I assume to get around some sort of keyword blocker.

I was talking to our editor-in-chief Chad Lakkis about the ordeal. And by talking, I mean that I was yelling at him because the internet has pissed me off. He brought up a good point and one that ultimately depresses me. N4G has a pretty rigorous process that one must go through to become able to submit news. That means that these people put in the time and effort to reach this status, just to post this bullshit.

Chad also brought up another great point. Remember this whole MetaCritic user ratings debacle that happened over Little Big Planet and Gears 2? In response to the incident, MetaCritic is planning to institute an approval process for fans that want to rank games. Well, that obviously isn’t stopping the bullshit on N4G, so how much is it going to do for MetaCritic?

Both spoiler stories that I encountered have since been deleted off of the site, but you can be sure that more will pop up, so be careful.

UPDATE: People have been getting PMs on N4G containing spoilers as well, so be cautious when opening anonymous PMs. People have also been leaving spoilers in the comments section of the N4G post regarding this story, as was expected, so I wouldn’t read that either.

After reading about the suspiciously low Metacritic user score of 6.3 for Media Molecule’s LittleBigPlanet, I decided to dig into the story a little deeper. For those unfamiliar with the situation, allow me to fill you in.

Metacritic, who by and large is considered the main source for aggregated scoring on the web, offers two score flavors (one for critics and one for users). This is the case across most sites. The problem is, when you are considered the “go to” resource for pretty much anything, there’s a chance that people will make a big deal out of something on your site that they would normally overlook on another.

That said, this specific instance pertains to the scores currently presented on Metacritic for the LittleBigPlanet game. The first, a 9.5 at the time of this article, represents the aggregated score based on several well accepted gaming review sites such as GamePro, IGN, and EuroGamer. The second, more controversial score, is a 6.3, and is compiled via the average score given by a pool of 2,225 user votes.

Gaming news site N4G, which pulls related news from various websites around the web, features a blog post titled “Fanboys pull LittleBigPlanet’s Metacritic score down”, discussing this very topic. Reading some of the furious responses to the score piqued my interest, so I visited the Metacritic site to see first hand what all the fuss was about. Clicking on the “Read user comments” link near the overall user score brings you to the bottom of the page, where the following statement by Marc Doyle, the sites founder, awaits:

“My advice for our faithful users is to focus your attention on the Metascore for this game and not the thousands of user votes, most of which have been submitted before said users have played the game. This is a gaming community, and if people want to stuff the ballot box, there’s not much I can do at this point. When we upgrade the registration requirements for participation on the site in the near future, this type of thing won’t happen. We’ll post the full legitimate user reviews upon the game’s release. As always, thanks for using the site.”

This prompted me to contact Marc directly in order to get a more complete picture of the situation from his end. Specifically, I felt that gamers would want some clarity regarding the portion of his comment stating that most of the user reviews submitted for LBP were made “before said users [had] played the game.”

Firstly, I wanted to know if he would consider eliminating user reviews submitted before the full release of the game, i.e. reviews clearly submitted based on the open beta alone, or even worse, no experience with the game at all, to which he responded:

” … we won’t be clearing those old scores from LBP when it launches, but we will only post reviews from people who have clearly played the game. All the reviews from fanboys and haters who haven’t played it will just be left out. That is true for all products on Metacritic. Humans actually read all of those user reviews (so we can delete profanity, spoilers, etc.), and those humans are told not to post reviews from people who clearly haven’t played the game.”

He then added that the burden of proof they demand from users submitting reviews prior to a game’s release date is be much higher than those doing so after the fact.

Slightly confused, I asked Marc for some clarification as to how the game could have such a low score, if his team was manually looking over each user review submitted. He stated:

“All the [numeric] scores “count” in the overall user average and total votes tally, but we only post a subset of those as [written] user reviews.”

When talking about the future of the site, as well as other things they are doing to help eliminate this type of fanboy nonsense in the future, Marc had the following to say:

“There will be a Metacritic re-design in the future (can’t say exactly when), and as a part of that process, we’re going to beef up our user registration and community functions so that “stuffing the ballot box” won’t be nearly as easy.

The original idea behind allowing users to write user reviews (and vote on them) was to allow those people (like me) who see advanced screenings of movies and sometimes play games ahead of their true release date to write reviews and have them posted on Metcritic. That’s still the case now.

Over the years, people have, by and large, not exploited the fact that you can vote early. Only recently have people started voting en masse for (and against) games like they’ve done with LBP.

Metacritic’s primary “product” is the Metascore, which is the weighted average of scores from professional critics. We include user reviews for obvious reasons, but because that score can never be 100% reliable, it’s given secondary importance on the site. For example, you can’t sort or search by user scores for any products. That will likely change with the redesign.”

Marc obviously has a solid understanding of the space, its evolution, and the challenges that lie ahead. The fact of matter though, is that currently, anyone can visit Metacritic and leave an abnormally low user score, skewing the average, without necessarily saying anything of value at all. I asked him if this was something the site would be revisiting in the immediate future.

” … nothing should change in this regard until we do the redesign. That tally will remain a raw tally, and only the printed user reviews will be “vetted” as useful reviews from people that we think actually played the game … “

He closed the topic by adding that the specifics of “whatever [they] do with the voting system moving forward [have] yet to be established.”

With October 27th just around the corner, LittleBigPlanet is four LittleBigDays away from being officially released. So while the current 6.3 Metacritic user score has been getting most of the attention on the net, I (like Marc himself), kindly ask that you shift your focus to the 95 out of a 100 Metacritic score the game is receiving from the mainstream media. Everything else will sort itself out in due time.