So, if someone on Bitmob writes, "My only concern is that this fifteen minutes of fun won't last for a full gaming experience," will you abandon this site?

I like previews...when they are critical of a game's shortcomings, which, as you explained, is rare.

The advantage previews have over trailers is that the former takes control out of the publishers' hands and lets someone else evaluate the product - if only briefly. A trailer only shows what the manufacturer wants to be seen. In a preview, anything can happen.

The other important thing to remember is that games aren't movies. Players are active participants in the experience and thus how a game feels is infinitely more important than how it looks. Trailers are incapable of communicating the sensation of controlling a game. In some cases, that means a cool-looking game turns out to have awful controls. In other cases, a dull-looking game might be a thrill to play. Either way, I'm going to read a preview to find out which way the pendulum swings.

(Full disclosure - as a freelance writer for Wired Game|Life, I have written a few previews and always came away from the experience with a greater understanding of the game I got to try)

Personally, I thought most of the gaming community would have learned not to buy games they haven't read a review for when Enter The Matrix was released. The best selling, worst reviewed game of all time. For those who don't remember, it was released on the same day that The Matrix: Reloaded was released in theatres, sold millions on PS2, X-Box, and GC, and was a buggy, glitchy piece of @#$! whose only redeeming quality was a live action make-out scene with Niobe (Jade Pinkett Smith) and Persephonie (Monica Bellucci), and that's pretty dull compared with what's on tv these days.

I abhor standard previews. But I do like previews that tell me about the background and lives of the people who make the game and how their experiences, their histories, and how their way of looking at the world influences the games they make. I often learn something interesting and valuable from those preview stories. 

@Richard Haha no, I'd just unfollow them from Twitter! 

@Daniel Although I like trailers, I wasn't implying that a trailer will ever get me to buy a game Day 1.  That would be stupid.  I'm also sure that if you played something then you left with a good idea of how it worked, but I can't say that will always translate to the audience.  There's certain things you just have to see and feel for yourself.  I'm just not seeing the importance of previews, everything I could get from a preview I could get better from a review or podcast. 

@Edgar I loved Mercs 1 so much that I didn't even bother checking a lot of reviews.  I remember checking IGN because they had one of the first, and they said it was good.  They were wrong.

@Jason I consider including all that personal stuff to be the norm of standard previews.  If I'm reading an interview post playing the game, I might be able to make the connection about what they're talking about, but it's uniteresting to see them draw parallels to something I still have no connection too, and instead of making something less boring, it just derails it all together.

I'm not a big fan of previews either.

Humbly disagreeing with Daniel's point, a preview/demo is completely in the control of the developers/publishers. Take Lost Planet 2 for example: it had a pretty good demo showcasing the ridiculously giant creatures you thought you'd be fighting constantly thoughout the retail release.

You think the developers planned the demo to be that way? Of course they did! Think of how much opinions would have changed if they instead demoed the awful "train" stage. Oh how different things would be.

It's not just Lost Planet 2, it's every game. That's just the way things are. Sad, but true.

When I read a preview, I'm only reading to learn about the mechanics and concept of the game. I never buy a game because of how awesome the preview coverage was. That almost definite hyperbole needs to be backed up by reviews, word of mouth, or trust in the developer to get my money.

@Chase Haha damn it Chase! Why'd you have to word it better than me?!? 

@Chase So, learning about the creative process of a given game doesn't allow you to relate to it?

@Jason I think the personal stories can be a gamble, a gamble that often results in failure.  It comes down to the person they're interviewing, and if they're an interesting person, then a preview with personal information about them will be great.  Brutal Legend coverage was always fun to read because Tim Schafer is hilarious and always has funny things to say, but not everyone in the industry is a Tim Schafer.  I just read the David Jaffe interview in the new EGM, and sadly he's a really boring person and I don't really care about the fact that he loves Nickelback.  If I read a preview of one of his games that includes personal information about him, it's going to be boring.  It's not a knock on the journalists either, there's very little they can do about it.

I read a lot of the Heavy Rain coverage as well, and I don't think any of it interested me until after I played it.  Once I had, listening to David Cage talk about what influenced him to do certain scenes in the game was really interesting stuff because I could make that connection.  If I had read the same interview before I played the game, I really wouldn't care.

@Chris, I was going to mention the pre-release Heavy Rain coverage too. There was a huge interview with David Cage in the first issue of John Davison's GamePro, which I just threw out without ever having read the article.

I'm all about that sort of coverage, but only after I've actually had a chance to play the game.

The other thing is, that sort of coverage is limited by the state of the game. The interviewer can't ask anything even vaguely critical because the game's not finished, and the developer deserves the benefit of the doubt. Not to mention that the interviewer probably hasn't had any time to digest what little he's played.

I'm much more in favor of postmortem interviews. I feel that they have a chance to be more honest on both sides.

@Craig Aww why would you throw out one of the new Gamepros?  Also I diagree with you on giving developers the benefit of the doubt all the time.  It completely changes on a case to case basis.  Naughty Dog will always get the benefit of the doubt in my book, but let's say High Voltage, they have to prove something before I'm interested, and they aren't going to prove anything in a preview.  There's too many good games coming out to give everyone the benefit of the doubt, especially at a $60 price tag. 

It's not fair to the consumer to try and cover their eyes from a turd.  if journalists really want to "Do what's best for the audience", they won't hype up a piece of crap and trick someone into buying it Day 1.  Sorry, but I stand on a firm consumer first platform, and I don't have sympathy for developers that can't deliver a decent product to me.

Your best quote by far--

"publishers force journalists to cruise down optimism road until the game ships. Only at that point do they get to release their pent up feelings and tear into the final product."

I don't know why that double posted.

I'll level with ya -- I was all set to read about your interpersonal problems and see how you tied them back into your main subject, and then I was disappointed that you were just setting me up for a punchline.  I've always felt there should be more focus on game designers and the development process in gaming journalism, just as there's a lot of attention paid to movie directors and novel writers for example.  Yes, it can get sappy fast ("I created our new character Zippy Dog as a tribute to my uncle's dead chihuahua") but I'd still rather hear about the people behind the game than whatever small part of the game itself is done in time for E3.

@Kevin Sorry dude, I'm a comedian, my job IS to set you up with a punchline.  I also don't see how I could have interpersonal problems with a video game preview past thinking it's boring, and it would be forcing it to try and do so, not to mention coming off as whiny.  The current state of video game previews is broken, and until someone finds a good way to make them interesting, they should get scrapped all together.  Using personal stories is a bullshit shortcut to attempt empathy from the reader and it rarely works.  "Hey this game might be crap, but let's talk about the developers feelings."  If they can't garner actual attention, they try and garner sympathy, and that is crap.

@ Chris D.

The problem doesn't lie in the fact that game previews exist, but that games journalism still follows the rules set in the print journalism industry, and few games journalists actually fulfill their obligations to the readers.

The original seller of game magazines were the reviews. "These guys who I don't know, but are paid to play games and write about them, say a game is good? I'll trust that more than the game box!" When the popularity of online reviews pushed timely print game reviews off of the economic usefulness desk and out journalist's windows (thus crashing them), games journalists were forced to rely on exclusive previews.

Look in any games--heck, any entertainment magazine, and you'll find that the major sections are still the same as they were ten-fifteen-twenty years ago. The ratio of pages per section changed, but little else has. Letters to the Editor, Previews, Interviews, Reviews. Heck, even the Letters to the Editor section is still called the same thing and few readers even write print letters! (I doubt some know what a non-mechanical pencil is.)

Previews can be less entertaining, and useful, when they do some of the things you've mentioned briefly in your article. However, they are also a place to get a general feel for what is going to come out in the near future without a total sense of marketing department string-pulling. It is the journalist's job to ask biting questions and investigate.

While it might not seem incredibly useful to discover a developers intentions and inspiration for designing a game, it can be a tool to further validate video game design as a legitimate art form. Do we really want to have to keep hearing rants from Microsoft Sa-- I mean, Roger Ebert, about the illegitimacy of the form?

Journalists need to do their job, and stop letting the excitement of playing, seeing, touching, feeling, pulling the pants down of--er...games get in the way. Do the job right, and try new types of analytic and critical topics, or go play Home. As we all know, few people want to do that.

Chase, a demo is certainly designed to showcase a game's best features, but it is still interactive. That's the key difference.

Take Bayonetta. When I saw the trailer for that game, I was offended by the sexual pandering and unimpressed by the combat. When I actually played the game at TGS, if only for 10 minutes, I began to see some of the appeal. Mirror's edge was similar: the trailers confused/bored me, but when I actually played it I got really excited.

Conversely, trailers for Quantum Theory and Bionic Commando looked exciting as hell, but when I had a controller in my hand nothing worked as it should.