Redner Speaks Out On His Duke Nukem: Forever Tweet
If the name Jim Redner sounds familiar to you, then you most likely have been following the issue that rose from the PR lead whose tweet about the Duke Nukem Forever reviews that got his career cut a bit short. If you don’t, we can fill you in. Redner was the public relations contact at The Redner Group, the company responsible for PR work for Duke Nukem Forever. Going through reviews of the game, Redner became flustered and sent a tweet out over Twitter stating that read, “Too many went too far with their reviews… we r reviewing who gets games next time and who doesn’t based on today’s venom.” Now Redner is speaking out over this “brain fart” of a mistake, in attempts to explain his side of the story.
He stopped by 2K Games last week, the publisher of the new Duke title, to talk about his calling out of reviewers for their “venom.” According to Redner, the frustration which caused the fiery tweet was one review in particular, which he explains.
“It was a scathing diatribe masked as a review. Hate is a strong word, but I believe after reading his review it is fair to say that the reviewer hated the game. I overreacted when I read the review and I vented on Twitter. It was an act of passion on my part that lacked objectivity. In my opinion, someone had gone over the top to attack the game and those who spent their lives trying to make it. Ultimately, I committed a cardinal sin in marketing. Publishers are under no obligation to send out copies of their game for review. They reserve the right to pick and choose who they want to send their game too, just like writers have the right to publish a review in any manner they choose. It’s call[ed] selection. It’s a choice. I personally have sent first person shooter games to one editor knowing that he likes FPS games, but then not sent him a copy of a game based on our national pastime because I know he finds baseball boring. That’s not blacklisting. It’s a selection process.”
Through this little interview, Redner continues to explain the process by which he oversees hundreds of requests for preview and review copies of games, a process which is mainly governed by Metacritic weight, and a certain outlet’s coverage of the game before consumers’ interest is at its highest point near launch day. He then goes over how outlets receive which games, and how he never used the actual term “blacklisting” in the actual tweet. Either way, Redner made a mistake through becoming frustrated. On one hand, he’s only human and humans make mistakes regularly. On the other, as a PR manager you’ve got to follow certain guidelines, which he clearly did not. For more information on what Redner stated during the talk with 2K Games, head to the post here. After seeing all of this, what is your take on the issue?
