Recently, EA sent out checks for $200 USD to game reviewers. This is presumably a marketing ploy related to the upcoming Dante’s Inferno, and the ramifications for EA are obvious; they’re doing a gimmicky ad campaign that will generate a huge amount of word of mouth no matter what. While they look ’corporate evil’ by doing it, they gain so much publicity that it probably works out in their favor.

The real question is its impact on the reviewers. There are tons of choices you can make with the check, and interestingly enough what seems like the immediately obvious moral choice isn’t a perfect decision. I thought long and hard on this... what does one do with such a check? It’s a serious issue to any writer who values their integrity. I ran through several scenarios, and realized they all had positive and negative aspects. Let’s go over them.

Scenario 1 - Burn/refuse/etc. the check, or simply keep it as a neat collector’s item and never, ever cash it. By far the most obvious choice, and at least one writer (including Kotaku’s Brian Crecente, in the links above) has already done this. This seems like the right thing to do; you show you are a writer who takes integrity very seriously, and would not give your readers a very good reason to doubt your honesty for a mere two hundred bucks. Yet if you look further down in Kotaku’s comments section, you will see many people took him to task for burning the check. Several people are stating he should have cashed it and donated the proceeds (plus the box the check came in) to Child’s Play. I was surprised by that reaction, suffice to say. The ’obvious moral choice’ seems to have several effects, as follows.

Positive Effect 1: You look as though you’re unable to be bribed. By urging EA to donate the money to charity instead, you put the decision back in their hands in a seemingly slick move of moral Judo. Many of your readers will think more highly of you and trust you, so you basically just ’bought’ a lot of positive publicity at a low price.

Negative Effect 1: If you do that, EA gets to pull off their skin-tight mask to reveal they’re really Revolver Ocelot and they expected this outcome; they were using you all along! Then they get to look moral and kind by donating to charity. Or they can just keep the money and some marketing executive gets a nice pat on the back for a brilliant and low-cost ad campaign.

Negative Effect 2: Some readers get after you for not directly donating to charity, so you look like you just threw away a chance to do some good in the world for the sake of your ego and pride.


Scenario 2 - Cash it, but donate part or all of it to Child’s Play. Essentially the ’best of all worlds’ choice in comparison to the negative points of Scenario 1 above, this also seems like a good move. But this one has several flaws of its own, including potentially compromising your integrity to some readers. The problems and benefits of this approach are...

Positive Effect 1: You took EA’s attempt to ’do evil’ and turned it into something positive. By doing this, you transformed their icky, nasty bribe into fun video games for sick children who could use happiness in their life! You’ve just shown you’re willing to operate outside the normal expectations of society to have a positive benefit on innocent people. Good job with another fine display of moral Judo, Mr. Gaming Writer!

Negative Effect 1: You just took a bribe. Many readers will now begin to have a very good reason to doubt your integrity when you do reviews, write editorial pieces, and so on. As some of them may put it, you took a bribe and used the money to advance a cause you approve of. Sure, most of your target audience isn’t going to complain when you donate to Child’s Play of all things, but the ends won’t justify the means to some of these people and they may have a point.

Negative Effect 2: It’s a Revolver Ocelot Ending for EA, again. They can just claim they expected you would do this, and thus they fully anticipated they were basically making several $200 donations to Child’s Play through reviewers, so they get positive publicity to cancel out the negative stuff. Meanwhile, your integrity is still compromised.


Scenario 3 - "Playing To Win" in a very extreme interpretation of the Sirlinist philosophy. You reject the idea this has moral implications and cash it for your own purposes. Probably the ’obviously wrong’ choice in this situation. Has some short-term benefits to you, but has some serious consequences on your integrity and hurts you long-term.

Positive Effect 1: Game reviewers are not all that highly paid. Even $200 can make a very real impact on their lives; they can get some repair work done on their car, pay a minor medical bill, replace a broken item in the house, or just eat comfortably for a while. EA has just made a positive impact in your life.

Negative Effect 1: You just took a bribe, and used it for your own enrichment. This will come back to haunt you, because the check-cashing is a matter of bank record and easily verified. Your credibility is shattered, and you can’t even defend yourself with "Well, uh, I gave it to Child’s Play!" Welcome to Screwedville, Population: You.

Negative Effect 2: When your boss finds out, you’re probably going to be fired. Your credibility is shattered, and their company’s good name is at risk unless they sharply cut ties with you. So you got $200, but just lost a regular paycheck and most other publications won’t hire you now. Oops.

Next: More scenarios.