Gamers' Perks, or 'Playola'?

Tom Ham has strapped himself into the back seat of a barrel-rolling fighter jet. He has duked it out in a Las Vegas boxing ring. He has tumbled thousands of feet in free fall from a plane. He has spent the night in a creepy medieval castle in England. And he has attended the premiere of "Ocean's 11" with its stars Julia Roberts and Brad Pitt.

Ham lives a life any 10-year-old boy would love. When he's not flying first class, riding around in limos or attending the Super Bowl, the 34-year-old spends eight hours a day--five days a week--playing video games sent free to his Reston, Va., home.

As one of several dozen opinion makers in the $20-billion global games industry, Ham is showered with gifts and travel by publishers and developers eager for him to bless their latest shooter, racer or dungeon crawler.

"There are times when I'd be on a trip Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday. Then I'd go home on Friday in time to drop off and pick up my cleaning and be off again," said Ham, who's racked up more than 100,000 miles each of the last three years in frequent flier miles on video game junkets. Called "playola" by some in the industry, the exotic trips and over-the-top outings are used by video game companies to drum up buzz for their titles. Once relegated to obscure fan magazines, the reach and influence of game reviewers have spread to mainstream magazines and newspapers as revenues from the video game industry eclipse movie box office receipts.

So it's little surprise that video game junkets now rival the lavish, flashy soirees sponsored by the movie and music industries.

Although there's no evidence that the junkets generate more positive reviews, they do produce more publicity for some middle-of-the-road games that might otherwise draw little attention.

"It's the nature of marketing," said Glenn Rubenstein, a longtime game journalist from Petaluma, Calif. "It creates vast awareness and sometimes gives some games a false sense of priority."

Games differ from other entertainment media in that they are interactive. Players control the action, and they are demanding ever-higher levels of realism. Since few have ever raced a stock car or piloted a jet or called plays for the NFL, sponsored adventures give reviewers such as Ham unique firsthand experience. A reviewer can better appreciate the physics of, say, an aerial combat game if he loses his lunch in an F-14--or so goes the rationale.