Problem 3: Not enough time to think before you write

Suppose you're able to avoid innovation bias, and you were able to play through the game thoroughly. There's still another problem. Tomorrow, you're going to have to start the cycle all over with a brand new game… but you haven't written anything yet for the game you just finished. There's a substantial pressure to get the article done as soon as possible. This introduces new problems.

First, this introduces spelling and grammatical errors. In the very first sentence of the very first article of this series, I wrote “videogame journalists have been getting a bad wrap [sic].” It’s rap. Not wrap. There’s no w. That’s the VERY first sentence of this series. Did you catch it? Why not? How about in Dead or Alive 4? “You have a throw button, a block/hold button, and a punch and kick button.” You might think that spelling and grammar are trivial points. Hire a copy editor and you’re done, right? No. More often than not, reviewing and proofreading an article helps you make edits to the content to clarify your thoughts.

That’s the second element of this problem: there's less time to reflect on the experience you've just had. Have you ever met someone that you thought was cute or hot the first time you saw them, and then the second time you met them you realize that they're not as attractive as you once thought? Or thought someone had a really awesome personality, but that after a while you realized that they were one-dimensional and no longer as interesting? Or even had activities or food that grew on you? Games definitely have this element as well. Your first impressions are always important – the journal/blog-style articles that I occasionally do are important for capturing this element. On the other hand, you become more objective with more time simply because you have time to think. For games that are story driven, you often don't have time to really reflect on how well the exposition was as you could with a movie. Do you have a chance to think about the risk/reward issues of the game, or consider if there's a good sense of accomplishment with each level and appropriate motivation to continue?

There's another problem with trying to write a review as quickly as possible is that reviews start to fall into a cookie-cutter approach. Take a look at my Dead or Alive 4 review again. I start off with the cheesy intro which tries to talk about history of the series. You already know from the tone that I'm being negative about the Dead or Alive series because I'm about to say that that this new version is better. Why couldn't I have jumped straight into the review? True, it helps DOA3 fans to get a sense of DOA4 when I review the history, but part of this captures the "innovation bias" that we've got. Likewise, if I’ve done my job, the rest of the article should tell DOA3 fans exactly what they need to know. When you don't have time to write an article, you're not going to try to come up with anything new. It's easy to write an intro this way.