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.

Comments

pot kettle black

[glen]

I would say that slashdot is pretty much a nested table monstrosity

More of the same...

[zdryer]

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?

Re:More of the same...

[chuqui]

> Doesn't it always seem as if mergers end up hurting consumers rather than helping them?

Not always, but one thing I've noticed is that once a company gets too big, it stops wanting your business, and only wants your money.

I'm planning on swapping banks for just that reason. The reason they are going to lose me after 15+ years is simple: when I was out of state on a trip, I went to an ATM to get monoey -- an ATM run by the same bank I bank with. And because it was out of state, they charged me a fee to take money out of my account -- using own bank's ATM, just not in my home state.

That's being interested in my money, not my business. it's not the only way they've proven it, ti's simply the last straw. So I'm going to move to a smaller bank that deals with customers, not spreadsheets.

SmartPlanet staff getting the axe, too

[Brento]

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.

On Fucked Company...

[shadrax]

Fucked Company has the letter sent to CNET employees about this. It's always a delight to read of the misery of others.

Meh.

[strAtEdgE]

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.