Slashdot Mirror
Gamecenter Gets Fragged
Banjonardo writes: "Cnet's Gamecenter, for years one of the greatest sources of gaming news and the most reliable source for good ratings, is quitting the business. The story is that since Cnet acquired ZDNET, they're gonna go with Gamespot now. We'll miss them." Useful, fast-loading Web site replaced with nested-tables monstrosity, story at 11.
You obviously didn't read the review for Tresspasser I nearly got kicked out of the lab when I read this one the first time, and I can still remember some of the lines years later.
My problem with Gamecenter was that they seemed to give "famous" games a couple of points automatically. For instance, Mechwarrior III got an 8/10 while Heavy Gear II (a decidedly better game IMHO) got 7/10.
Down that path lies madness. On the other hand, the road to hell is paved with melting snowballs.
I read the internet for the articles.
Well, I used to work for gamecenter, just preface.
I never really cared much for their content, I mean, I don't much care for articles about games, reviews, etc. I have other sites that I feel are more in tune with my thought process. But the one thing that Gamecenter had was more hardcore articles. I mean, they have articles on how to overclock your computer, how to overclock your video card, etc. When I worked there I did a ton of testing on Voodoo 2 overclocking. How far could I get each card before it started to fuck up.
Well, Gamecenter will certainly be missed. I hope everyone I knew who still worked there has other options and places to go.
-Serfer
Hell, half the reason for reading a review on a game you've pretty much given up for bad (Daikatana) is to see which reviewer will spill the most blood during their piece.
I would say that slashdot is pretty much a nested table monstrosity
Doesn't it always seem as if mergers end up hurting consumers rather than helping them? I'm sure from an economics standpoint there's something to be said for economies of scale, leveraging assests, etc. But I have yet to see the truly positive aspects of mass corporate mergers. c|net acquires ZDNet and we lose a great game site. My cell phone company morphs into Cingular and suddenly has no record of me being a customer. Fleet buys out my bank and suddenly my free student checking account is $10/month and I have to pay $2 to speak with a teller (in person or over the phone). Nynex becomes Bell Atlantic becomes Verizon, and all I notice is that it costs more to use a payphone. And of course in all these cases I'm overlooking the workers whose jobs are "no longer necessary." I realize this whole argument is rather cliché and early-nineties, but I'm honestly wondering--has anyone's life been improved by the last decade of megamergers?
I'm surprised nobody else on here caught this in the letter at F*ckedCompany that somebody else posted here, but SmartPlanet's employees are getting the axe too. But somehow they twist it around to say:
But creating courseware and handling customer maintenance as well as developing courses, is extremely resource intensive, and not a core focus of our business. We feel that by focusing on our core strengths, we can actually make SmartPlanet even more successful than we have to date.
Huh? How do you lay off most of the staff and at the same time make it more successful? Unless most of the staff was involved in sending out the spam I usually got from them, I can't quite understand how that would work.
Part of the original strength of SmartPlanet was knowing that the people behind the tutorials actually knew what they were talking about. SP had guys with doctorates teaching the classes, and when you interacted with them, you walked away with the impression that they weren't just holding paper certificates they got through the mail. These were smart people.
So now they're going to downsize to a few monkeys and make it a better site? Huh? Hope my company doesn't take that same attitude.
What's your damage, Heather?
The only thing Gamecenter had going for it was a pretty good layout. The content was absolutely god-awful bad. I felt the page was a constant embarrassment to CNET and had really been wondering when they were going to pull the plug.
An interesting note, with the merger GameSpot is hiring a total of ZERO of the Gamecenter editorial staff.
GameSpot does have a pretty assy layout but their staff has a clue which I value quite a bit more.
-Steve Gibson
-Steve Gibson
Shacknews.com
gamecenter wasn't all that. biased opinions, dumb reviews and comparisons (pokemon vs. quake?) and painful loadings. a lot of the game sites are going the way of the dodo, i hope some of the real ones aren't next..
Fucked Company has the letter sent to CNET employees about this. It's always a delight to read of the misery of others.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Interesting point. I'm not sure whether I agree about readability or not, but just wanted to add a bit of trivia: in the empire's premiere Word processor, there's actually an option to get a white-on-blue color scheme. That was put there, way back when, at the request of a certain Jerry Pournelle (of Byte fame, among lots of other things). If I remember correctly, Jerry required this to switch, because that was the color scheme of the word processor he was used to. Can't remember the name of that (probably ancient) program, though... OK, that's all from the meaningless-trivia dept, go back to whatever. ;^)
main(O){10<putchar(4^--O?77-(15&5128 >>4*O):10)&&main(2+O);}
It's a loss, no question. The current business model of hiring 50+ employees to work on a content driven, ad-financed web site is over. It doesn't work that way. Ad income is just too flaky, and too little to support even a 30+ employee company unless you're a huge portal, like Y@hoo, and even then, it's a shaky future. Get 4 good techs in a room to create/manage a game related site... rely on user feedback for major content... get inside the industry through experience... that's a profitable game site. Oh, and you need an admin assistant to deal with the real world; 5 people on the payroll. No big deal. The demise of the .com world is overbloating and dreams that blew off reality. Egos clashed with reality. For source, just look at the head count at any major e-tailor who's screwed. Big numbers there.
It will all balance out, like a porcupine shaking off it's quills.
Right. No, your other right. No, the other other right.
"Useful, fast-loading website replaced with nested-tables monstrosity, story at 11."
You're just upset because Konqueror /Mozilla can't render it correctly? ;))))
"Mary had a crypto key, she kept it in escrow, and everything that Mary said, the Feds were sure to know."
Why is it that popular web sites consolidate when they're bought out? Two sites may provide similar services, but serve distinctly different types of users, especially in terms of "look and feel." When a site is eaten up by another, the company simply loses audience share and revenue. If the lost site was not profitable, then why did you acquire it? If it was profitable, why did you abandon your established users? Did you really think they would move to your other property simply because pointed the old URL to your preferred URL? Silly Rabbit!
I read both of those sites relatively frequently, but even now I couldn't tell you the difference between the two.
--
you know when I first saw that comment, i thought "everyone uses nested tables (even slashdot), how bad could it be..."
I guess I'll know when it finishes loading...
Doesn't phase me, Gamecenter lacked personality. I never saw a scolding, blatently honest review on there and sites without negative reviews have no credit in my book. Obviously not every game is good. I recommend sites like http://www.shugashack.com and http://www.firingsquad.com.
----- sXe
Yeah, I don't know any site like that. =)
*cough, cough*
Shouldn't that be a telefrag since Gamespot took their place?
It used to be that Gamecenter had extremely interesting and poigniant editorials. The editors had personality, creating within the mass that was Gamecenter several small subcultures.
A while ago, they squelched the editors (except GamerX, whom they kept on as a much-toned-down reflection of his former self, to provide blurbs and sidebars).
The Top10 lists that Gamecenter does are one of the few vestiges of their former "interesting" status.
What happened? Did people lose interest in the editorial lines? Did Gamecenter Corporate decide that they wanted a homogenous front?
In my opinion, they killed off Gamecenter a long time ago. This is merely making it official.
GameSpot's longer features (I especially liked their story on the rise and fall of Trilobyte. See here) elevate the site beyond the normal review crap.
The only thing I ever found interesting about Gamecenter (IMO, of course) is they had some good "top 10 blah of all time" type articles, but so many other sites carry such similar content that I can afford to live without it.
If you want tips, cheats or reviews, then head to GameFAQ's. This is by far the BEST games related site on the net for anything other than game news. Hell, very few other sites deal in ALL platforms and even have translations up for Japanese import games.
Always a shame to see a well known site go down, but Gamecenter is no big deal. As for it's replacement... BLEURK! Nested tables are the work of Satan.
Synchronized cocks!