Gamespot's Editorial Problems in Perspective 79
Sam Kennedy is a guy you can respect. As the Editor of the 1up site, he's overseen some great features and some unbelievable breaking news; he also has a great point of view on the games industry. So his massive blog entry posted today talking about Gamespot's sad state of affairs post-Gerstmann-gate is something you should take seriously. Sam runs down the sordid affair itself, the changes to C|Net and Gamespot management that led to unreal expectations at Eidos, and what this could mean for the future of game reviews. "Shortly after Gerstmann was fired, I got a call from a friend at one of the major nationwide news networks asking me what I knew about what happened, as he was considering trying to pitch a story to his editor. You want to know what it was? 'Game Reviews: can they be trusted?' Basically, 'You're a parent and you're going to buy a videogame for your kids this holiday season, but can you trust those reviews you're reading on the web?' That's why this story matters so much. Gerstmann-gate ... made him want to give the industry a nice kick in the pants. I applaud his motives, but again, it's a shame to have this sort of doubt hanging over us all."
Speaking of good journalism... (Score:5, Informative)
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Instead, I go onto usenet and look for reactions from the regulars there. These will be the folks who not only paid for the game with th
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And then there is the other type, the fanboy/hateboys, that ha
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I've found this to be the most reasoned approach. Often times professional reviewers don't have the time they need to fully review a game and what they might think of "innovative new feature" can actually be a game breaking issue for the gamer. The best example I can think of is that there was all the hype surrounding Oblivion (while I didn't play the previous installments of this ser
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Gamespot sold out. That's the problem. (Score:5, Insightful)
But Gamespot went over the line.
It's one thing to inundate users with annoying ad after annoying ad, as Slashdot does, and quite another to modify site content to pander to advertisers. It's the difference between barely-watchable, ad-saturated broadcast television and unwatchable, ad-saturated broadcast television with product placement.
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Re:Gamespot sold out. That's the problem. (Score:4, Insightful)
What exactly is your point? Ebert tells people not to go to movies all the time and calls movies terrible. Are you saying Ebert deserves to be fired?
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Re:Gamespot sold out. That's the problem. (Score:4, Insightful)
I KNOW, THIS IS THE WHOLE FUCKING POINT OF GAME REVIEWERS
omg am I just missing the sarcasm because I'm tired and drunk or is this post insane?
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if it's the former, i can assure you that he was, in fact, accurate.. and if it's the latter.. can i please point out that he was objecting to the gratuitous and 'lazy' use of the word, that he felt that it was used as an excuse for sloppy writing, and that if someone watching the review was offended, well.. they may also have been offended by the game?
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Even though I have no p
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As i said in the previous post, if people are offended by the word 'fuck', Gerstmann basically did them a favor by pointing out exactly how gratuitous and unwarranted the use of the word was.
Sadly, Gamespot is more than just their management. Until recently, Gamespot was a credible site with ridiculous advertising. Since the people in charge of said advertising started messing with the editorial con
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I really don't agree with this. There is a long tradition in mainstream journalism of giving no holds barred bad reviews. Sure you don't say "this movie was fucking shit", but you might well see something along the lines of "the movie started badly and by the half hour mark my brain had crawled out of my ears an
Re:Gamespot sold out. That's the problem. (Score:5, Funny)
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Gamespot corrupt? What is the world coming to? (Score:5, Funny)
A reputation (Score:5, Insightful)
Except they didn't, because they realized the value of their reputation. Ghost may have made a chunk of money in the short term, but it could have tarnished the reputation. And reputation ensures that the next great Blizzard game cuts through the noise and makes it to the top of people's shopping lists, instead of becoming yet another Ico or Beyond Good and Evil.
A reputation does not ensure a hit. But it does ensure that things deserving of becoming hits, do so.
GameSpot isn't selling advertising space. It's selling viewers. Its reputation as one of the better news sources out there draws in viewers. Selling off that reputation in the long term sells off viewers, and reduces what they have to sell.
I hope GameSpot finds itself soon.
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Blizzard has a great reputation because all of its games have been popular. Starcraft: Ghost was canceled because the development team quit and the project was FUBAR. No noble intentions involved at all.
It's not as if "Blizzard" is an entity with any decision-making power that matters -- they are a wholly-owned subsidiary of Vivendi, who does not have any reputation for customer service or satisfaction.
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Kind of ruining your own argument with blizzard (Score:3, Interesting)
Until WoW SOE was the big (western) MMORPG company and seemed to have the market in its grasp. People tought that the half a million or so subscribers to EQ at one point was the maximum market.
And then Blizzard came along and didn't so much raise the bar as send it into orbit.
Currently SOE has a lousy reputation, which makes me extremely reluctant to try any new MMO from them, Pirates of the Burning Seas is the latest and altough it was developed outside SOE, well so was Vanguard.
I on the other hand woul
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The value of a reputation is difficult to quantify. Blizzard has a great reputation because all of its games have been solid. But what is the value? A Blizzard title may sell just as many as many other titles that year. So suits may look at that and say that the reputation itself has no value. They they calculate the profits from a cheap spinoff title, and release Starcraft:Ghost.
Reputation has a great deal of value. They operate in a market that usually sells titles in the hundreds of thousands on average. They sell millions. They release a small 30s snippet from a game and get more free advertising then most titles receive in paid advertising. They have a user base that will buy the game first and then look for reviews only to re-affirm the value of their purchase. I know that if Diablo 3 comes out, I will first check into a rehab isolation clinic.. then check out 15 min later ch
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Are you being serious?
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Blizzard old out a long long time ago. You speak affectionately about a company called VU (Vivendi Universal). This entity is all about the bottom line like any other large corporation.
Blizzard's success is one that is of pure dollars and zero sense. Their games are well, their games and their EULA and TOS will beat you over the head about how you are blessed to be playing their game and
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Re:Gerstmann Was Nothing More Than A Halo Fanboy (Score:5, Insightful)
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Parent should be modded troll. First of all, Halo 3 was praised [metacritic.com] by pretty much every reviewer, not just Gerstmann. Gerstmanns score, 9.5, is just 0.1 above the average on Metacritic. Every reviewer out there is an Xbox fanboy? Right. And besides, Gerstmann could hardly be considered a Halo fanboy. Citing Gerstmann's personal blog [jeffgerstmann.net]:
If you had told me a year ago that I'd be sitting here, telling anyone who will listen that Halo 3 is one of the year's best games, I'd call you a liar. Then I'd kick you in the stomach, because that's what liars get. Between its cliffhanger ending and its asshole-filled multiplayer, I had a real disdain for Halo 2 and saw no real reason for Halo 3 to be any different. Back when the multiplayer beta came out, it looked like it was just going to be more Halo--exactly what the Halo faithful wanted, but not really the sort of thing that's going to change anyone's mind. ...
Parent post is full of misinformation. All evidence points to the conclusion that Gerstmann was fired because he was too harsh on high profile games such as Kane & Lynch, no
Trusted? (Score:4, Insightful)
Of course game reviews can't be trusted. Or I guess they can be trusted insofar as your experience matches the reviewer's. It's like movie reviews- you find a reviewer who seems to share your likes and dislikes and stay with them. This is, of course, if you look at reviews as purely a buying guide. For game criticism of a more literary caliber there's no real source that I know of. Frankly I don't think most games would stand up to that, and I've been playing games since 1980.
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http://www.escapistmagazine.com/articles/view/editorials/zeropunctuation [escapistmagazine.com]
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This is one of the biggest reasons I enjoy reading Gabe and Tycho's (of Penny Arcade, for those under a rock ;)) views on games. Tycho likes really stran
Driv3r (Score:5, Interesting)
Either you believe what I consider a lie, and then reviews are worthless because they're based on hype, or you call them liars and reviews are worthless because publishers pay for them.
Take your pick. Personally, what I'm looking for (and what I rarely see) is a good description of how gameplay goes down. I don't need an arbitrary score, because the reviewer and I might not have the same tastes. We all like differen genres of games. But if the review does a very good job describing objectively what gameplay is like, then I might be able to decide for myself whether or not I will enjoy the game.
Re:Driv3r (Score:5, Insightful)
+1 Spot-On.
I wrote computer game reviews for more than 10 years for a handful of niche-market websites and even a magazine or two, more as a hobby than anything else. We were fairly small potatoes, and the money was trivial.
So I definitely had less riding on the reception of my reviews and my continuing as a writer for a specific outlet. But at various times I felt both the overt and implied pressure from games companies, one blatantly saying "if you don't change that review, you'll never see another game from us" - not much of a threat, since if we'd really wanted to review it we'd have bought it anyway and in any case they were really relying on US to get their game publicized. But the fact that they'd have the nuts to come out and say it was stunning.
From the point of view of someone who's been in that market, I'd make some recommendations:
- A review should state clearly if the reviewer or his firm was GIVEN the game or BOUGHT the game. The cost of an individual game is a meaningless amount of money for a business, yet there is still a large step up in credibility and editorial freedom when one is not beholden to the game company by even that small amount. There's a reason Consumer Reports has done it for all these years on all the products they review.
- the game reviewer's machine specs need to be stated clearly in the review. Optimally, the game should be run on both 'min spec' and 'recommended or better' machines.
- the game should be reviewed AS RECEIVED; no last-minute patches, no 'supplemental' disk that the consumer isn't going to get. Anything that's not a 'gold' version going on the shelves is a PREVIEW not a REVIEW. (Another reason why buying a copy off the shelf is a sound practice.) *Any* other swag from the company should be refused or donated away.
- I like reviews that set out the reviewer's bias at the beginning; it lets me know outright if they want to like the game or not. Usually that's clear from the text, but stating it explicitly is more transparent.
- As the above-poster said, a review is strongest when it's descriptive. Hyperbole should be at a minimum, and the best reviews never say anything as bluntly as "this is a good game"...such should be clear from the text.
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Game reviews should, at worst, be based on the golden master. This is the version that is sent to manufacturing, meaning, it's also the version that shows up on shelves for regular folks like you and I to buy.
Game reviews based on "near final" versions or earlier are almost useless. Sure, you could get a r
Ars Technica (was Re:Driv3r) (Score:1)
Long-Term Impact (Score:5, Insightful)
Best article on the whole nasty affair (Score:2)
Lameness filter encountered.Reason: Don't use so many caps. It's like YELLING.
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Are there really any trustworthy reviews? (Score:1)
I know that a game review is mostly a thing of opinion and matter of taste...but the way most of those magazines kept portraying games was so shallow and obviously trimmed for "buy this, get that, spend money here" that I was afraid so
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Some controversy (Score:5, Insightful)
This controversy is only known to a handful of geeks and will be forgotten a year from now.
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WTF is THAT supposed to mean. Since when has wikipedia banned controversies involving living people (and well-known journalists no less)!?! I suppose they're no reference to the Stephen Glass or Dan Rather controversies either?
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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Biographies_of_living_persons
"Biographies of living persons (BLPs) must be written conservatively, with regard for the subject's privacy." from the policy. Basically, since there's no actual confirmation of the events from either side, only speculation and (honestly) rumor being discussed, they won't put it on there. Rightfully so, in my opinion. If Wikipedia wants to be taken seriously, it should act seriously. No place for tab
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Still, they've lost me as a customer, and not really because I'm angry or anything, but rather that all my favorite reviewers like Alex, Greg and Jeff have left. So why stick around?
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As for the effect of this whole deal on the company, I think you're being a trifle naive. The majority of Gamespot'
I always read Gamespot reviews (Score:1)
Sounds like I can't exactly trust them for honest coverage anymore.
Where can I go to find honest reviews, plus FAQs and the like?
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That might be true ... (Score:1)
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Plus GameFaqs is owned by CNet, who is the parent company of Gamespot. CNet's management is where most/all the blame lies for this Gamespot issue.
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one review is better than a whole forum of tweens going "Hal03 rulz 4eva!" "Nuh-uh!" "STFU N00B!"
I also usually chec
EA (Score:1, Interesting)
As much as people hate EA in these parts, they understand the business and the
Sam Kennedy (Score:1)