Other companies followed the lead.
Last year, Codemasters, a British game developer, took journalists to a gym in Las Vegas to tout its "Mike Tyson Boxing" game. The company paid a professional boxing trainer to give them a few lessons, and then let them box while two bikini-clad "ring girls" looked on. One writer got a bloody nose and another a dislocated shoulder.
Take Two Interactive hosted an event in the Arizona desert to promote its new combat driving games. Writers, dressed in camouflage, practiced drive-by shootings with 9-millimeter Glock handguns while driving Jeeps at high speeds.
For "Syphon Filter 2," published by 989 Studios, the writers were given SWAT team training in Tucson and supplied with facemasks, goggles, paint guns and maps. After the training, they played out a mock rescue operation that left some bruised and bloodied.
A game set in a dungeon was previewed to the press in a 12th-century English castle complete with jousting knights and bows and arrows as parting gifts. A jet skiing game was promoted at a Dana Point resort, where writers spent the day getting massages and soaking up the sun on actual jet skis. A horror action game was unveiled at a haunted house in the Santa Cruz mountains, where the evening's entertainment was a Blair Witch-style treasure hunt.
When such trips are strung together back-to-back, life on the junket circuit can be grueling.
"I was home for all of four days in July and August last year," said Todd Mowatt, a veteran freelance game reviewer from Toronto. "It was nuts."
But swanky accommodations and other perks can ease the pain.
Junket writers have stayed at the Mondrian Hotel, the Standard and the St. Regis in Los Angeles, the Hudson Hotel in New York, W Hotel in San Francisco, the Four Seasons in Tokyo. Limousines courier them from place to place.
"I had a personal butler once come press my clothes and shine my shoes," Ham said.
For the companies, it's worth the expense--anywhere from $20,000 to $100,000. They compare the tab with the often higher cost of advertising in magazines or on television. The events also bring dozens of writers to one place, obviating the need for companies to go on long road shows to promote their games or fly journalists to development studios that may be scattered throughout the world.
