Anecdote: My THQ media experience

There’s a superb feature on Polygon today about the collapse of THQ, and I highly recommend that everyone read it. With all this new info about THQ’s inner workings circulating the internet, I feel like it’s time to re-share a little story of Veteran Games Journalism that I posted on tumblr a while back. Here, for your reading enjoyment, is a small account of my experience with tragic-in-hindsight company wastefulness, which I originally wrote in early 2012.

… I’d like to recount my own THQ-related story.

In 2008 I was doing a lot of work for What They Play, a website geared toward parents informing them about games and developments in the game industry. This, of course, meant analyzing and playing titles that… lie outside of my circle of interest, to say the least.

One day in late summer, I got emails from my higher-ups asking if I could take a last-minute trip to New York City for an event being held to promote an upcoming THQ title. New York? Sure! I’d already been there for the first time earlier that year, and had a great time. I was also hoping I’d get to see my friends again while I was there. I didn’t – there was far less free time than I expected, though I at least managed to hit up one of the better comic/toy stores in Manhattan.¹

Last-minute flight from Oakland to NYC, check. Limo to the hotel? Check. (I sent my parents a picture of this, as they didn’t seem to fathom how much was being expended for my sake.) And the hotel itself? The Royalton, in a $280-a-night, single person room, with unlimited access to the minibar and any other facilities. (After years of having hotel minibars taunt me with their deliciousness within overpriced arms’ reach, you bet your ass I went to town on that thing. Took a T-shirt, too – I still wear it!) (edit: some jerk in the laundry room stole the shirt >:( ) big flatscreen TV, iPod dock with Bose speakers, jacuzzi bath/shower, the works.

The game I was seeing?

Yep.

That wasn’t even the end of it, though – during the time I was there, I got driven across NYC in another limo (with an outspokenly chatty and rampagingly conservative driver – that was an, uh, interesting trip) and taken to the studio where an episode was being filmed. Myself and the others who had been invited on this press tour got to see about five minutes of a taping before the director (who, it seemed, might not have been informed of these plans) angrily shooed us away. We’d just have to wait upstairs in the demo station until they stopped and we could talk to the actors.

A few of the devs were around to discuss the game, and while they weren’t completely devoid of pride in their production, you could just sort of tell that this wasn’t exactly the title they had a lot of enthusiasm for. There were THQ folks there, as well, but they were strictly business types: I’d talked to a few of them the previous night at the Royalton bar and got the impression that a good chunk of them didn’t really play games. (I have to wonder how many of these folks are still there, given recent events.) Eventually the actors came up, allowing us to do some interviews. I think I was actually the only person there from any sort of gaming-related publication – there were a few folks from parenting mags, as well as reporters from world-renowned, hard-hitting publications J-14 and Tiger Beat. (Unless otome games take off, this will likely be the first and last preview event I’ll attend where I’m stuck having to wait for my interview until the girl from Tiger Beat is finished.) Actually, most of the event attendees were kids, and even they didn’t seem all that interested in the game part of the event, which was ostensibly the focus. Never a good sign!

I left with a brief preview, a briefer interview (I don’t think the kids even really played their own game), and a bagful of Naked Brothers-branded toys, games, and DVDs, most of which I wound up donating to Toys for Tots later that year. In all, I’d imagine THQ spent a couple thousand dollars on taking me to an event for a game that I earned a few hundred writing up in a preview that was, admittedly, somewhat difficult to compose. This is common when you have to preview a game that clearly is not good, and WTP wasn’t in the business of reviewing or otherwise passing judgements on titles. (In other words: I couldn’t outright say “this is kind of terrible.”)  The game’s quality certainly isn’t difficult to guess, though: you can currently get it for $4.41 on Amazon (edit: now it’s 99 cents! Microtransactions!) for the Wii version, and while there’s not enough reviews for a Metacritic average, the sheer amount of red is telling.

With all this in my memory, I think I can kind of understand why THQ might be cutting costs and getting out of the licensed kiddie games business. Perhaps.