Corporate Moneybags

Hello!
I write today in a bit of a angry mood. Not especially angry then, more annoyed. I'm quite into video games, and I ain't a 'Fanboy' so don't say things like, 'ooo yeah, the wii would ass kick anything' etc, but I enjoy keeping on top of the latest games and news.

To do this, I use a variety of websites, some based in the UK and others from the states, but mostly use Gamespot and Gamesradar, Gamesradar mainly for the randomly made articles, poking fun at the industry, and Gamespot for the videos (for those who don't know We're live And ONNNNN THE SPOOOOOTTTT'.

For this blog however, I am going to focus on Gamespot. To start with, its a core American website. Yeah there are separate sections for the UK, Australia etc but these are about as fleshed out as a catwalk model. The USA section is where its at. Now Gamespot and GameFAQs all come under a big conglomerate web organisation called CNET, who focus on new technology on there main website.

Gamespot is popular for its vibrant community in the form of blogs and forums and for its many internet TV shows such as the aforementioned 'On the Spot', 'Tournament TV' and 'Button Mashing', and a podcast 'The hotspot'. Now the guy who used to host these shows was a bloke called Rich Gallup, who was filled with charisma and used to be able to control shows naturally. He was awesome and my inspiration for attempting to make a video game show.

He left though, not too long ago, and followed in the footsteps of various other senior members of staff, who either moved to gamespot's sister sites or left the Cnet group entirely. The latest person(s) to leave have not left in the best of circumstance, which has got me and lots of long serving members of the GS community (I don't include myself within that group by the way) in complete uproar.

Jeff Gerstmann was a outspoken, loud and shameless gamespot reviewer. He started around 1997, during the infancy of the website. He was known for his typical reviewing style and created various pieces of controversy and fan boyism attacks on reviews such as giving Tony Hawks Pro skater 3 and 10 and LoZ: The twilight princess a 8.8, yet he managed to give a reason for each time, 99.9% of them valid. He was a regular on all the shows and took over the hosting job when Gallup left. He had been working there for 10 nearly 11 years and was the Editor in Chief. He was fired this week.

Now what could he of done which was so bad. Got angry about a pay cut, destroyed half the office by leaving the coffee machine on. No, he wrote a review on a bad game. He gave it a 6.0 which rates as fair. Now from what I gather, the game scored that on most game websites, with the review score on Metacritic being around 60-65. However, unlike most websites, GS's owners CNET had a very lucrative deal with the games developer to plaster the GS website in a custom advert banner and skin for the website, with a future worth of around thousands of dollers.And this was going to be pulled due to the negative nature of the review.

Now it seems that money has overtaken credibility in importance. By going to joystiq and browsing some forums it becomes quite clear that although Jeff was a fairly controversial character around the GS community, he was well liked. Now it seems that he has been betrayed by a company that likes money more than loyal employees. A recent statement by Cnet says:

"GameSpot takes its editorial integrity extremely seriously, "For over a decade, Gamespot and the many members of its editorial team have produced thousands of unbiased reviews that have been a valuable resource for the gaming community. At CNET Networks, we stand behind the editorial content that our teams produce on a daily basis."

It then appears than it is CNET policy not to disclose any information on the status of employees. All of GS's current staff also seem bound by this rule. Also, Tim Tracey, who only recently moved over to Tv.com and was a friend of Jeff's resigned. He was also a community favourite.

So now it seems that no review that Gamespot produce can be trusted to provide us with accurate information. Nothing like this has really ever happened in a internet community before and people appear to be leaving the site and cancelling member ship fees in droves. I am going to seriously consider if I go back to that website again.

But now what. Where on earth can we get a valid opinion. I always have believed that either a friend who owns the game is better than review and lots of reviews are better than nothing. But this could have consequences larger than they appear, with forms of media being shackled to High reviews due to high revenues. Although it seems that Gerstmann has being warned before about his, surely free speech allows him to pass an honest judegment, and by sacking such an loyal employee, this company has shown its true colours.

Thanks to various sources around the net where I found this info
Josh