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Game Journalist May Have Been Fired Over Negative Review
It started as a rumour post on Kotaku and a Penny Arcade comic strip: reviewer Jeff Gerstmann was fired from the gaming news site Gamespot for giving the co-op action title Kane and Lynch a low score, and snarking on the game in the review. The catch? The firing was dictated by games publisher Eidos, who didn't appreciate the veteran reviewer's tone in the piece. Their ad campaign (spread across the entirety of the Gamespot site) may have been used as a bargaining tool of some kind. Joystiq has a lengthy, detailed summary of this event and its implications, which is no longer technically a rumour. Gerstmann confirmed to the blog that he has been let go from the C|Net-affiliated site, but as of right now can't talk about the details. "The ramifications of the story, if true, are huge. Readers should fairly expect there to be an inviolable firewall between advertising and editorial in journalism, and game journalism (yes, that includes "just reviews") is no different. While our industry has had its fair share of accusations of impropriety, nothing so far has been proven beyond a shadow of a doubt. Giving a publisher the power to fire a senior editor is a line no outlet should be willing to cross." Update: 11/30 17:40 GMT by Z : The Joystiq story continues to be updated, and Tycho has put up what the PA guys heard about the tale in text. Joystiq also has an additional post about the story, with a brief (noncommittal) response from Gamespot.
"While our industry has had its fair share of accusations of impropriety,..."
Actually, I think your industry has its fair share of genuine corruption. What make you think you're any better than other industries?
why else are there so many fawning reviews of hardware in computer magazines... and why else doesn't Linux get any real press in the same magazines when there's no advertising money in Linux anyway... just remember the "Golden Rule" folks... who pays the piper calls the tune... magazines etc. are not gonna jeopardise their major advertising accounts... when it comes to the crunch, they'll buckle...
Donald 'Duck' Dunn: We had a band powerful enough to turn goat piss into gasoline.
I frequent Gamespot often enough that I set up a Firefox quick search ("gs gamename" in my address bar), and I recognize Gerstmann as one of their senior, more talented writers and personalities. I actually thought he was one of the founders of Gamespot, considering his seniority and tendency to review many of the more anticipated AAA titles.
The site won't be the same without him. I may even change my quick search to 1up.com or metacritic.com as a result. I can't attest to the veracity of this gossipey claim in the article but Gerstmann has earned enough journalistic integrity that I'm not surprised that he'd review high profile games honestly.
Really, is getting fired for accurate journalism a curse or a great bullet point on your resume? I'd wish Jeff luck but thanks to his outstanding track record I'm sure he won't need any.
I really enjoyed listening to Roger Ebert's opinions when he was alive and doing his movie review show. I also love the Filthy Critic and his lively take on modern movies.
But as much as I like them, I find that I disagree with them almost all the time. My own movie experience is so different from theirs, my reaction to the movies being sometimes in direct opposition, that the only benefit I get from reading their "reviews" is the entertainment value.
I can't imagine how much more divergent something like a game would make these types of opinions. After all, you're not just a passive viewer of a game anymore. You're actually taking part in it and shaping the outcome as you play. How can someone's impressions of something as personal as this be of any value to anyone else?
I like gamespot reviews because they're usually quite tough with the games. Most games get an inferior mark on gamespot that in most other sites, which I find nice. I like to know that if they give a game an 8, it's probably a really good game. And that if they give it a 7, and I like the genre, it's a solid buy too. Now I'll start questioning their reviews. If I see a game advertising at gamespot, then I'll go to read that game review somewhere else, just in case.
From Joystiq:
Update - 7:12 AM EST: Jeff has confirmed his firing to us via e-mail, but says he's "not really able to comment on the specifics of my termination." He added that he's "looking forward to getting back out there and figuring out what's next." We're still digging.
I haven't given Gamespot reviews any real thought in a long time, due to the massive amount of advertising games would get on the main page at the same time the review was out.
rm -rf
How many gamers here haven't been suspicious of Gamespot being influenced by their advertisers, I stopped going to their site for reviews after feeling burned a few times by the reviews and wondering what the hell that person was thinking.
To me, this doesn't really represent any kind of crisis of gaming journalism, so much as it just highlights how pointless most "magazine" game review sites are. Does anyone still go to Gamestop caring what one of their reviewers think of a game? Or IGN or Gamespy or any of those places? What do I care what one guy who is trying to play through a game on a deadline thinks about it?
Say what you will about amateur game reviewers, the fact of the matter is that when it comes to games, the wisdom of the masses usually holds true. If I'm not sure about a game, or I have a choice between two similar games to make, I'd much rather go look at GameRankings, or heck even the GameFAQ's reviews.
Being Republican myself, I do not like censorship, which I guess is an oddity perhaps?
It only seems like an oddity because you think a single name can sum up your political orientation, especially one that doesn't really define any. It is actually little more than the name of a football team that has a high player turnover rate.
- These characters were randomly selected.
This is what happens when companies start valuing advertising revenue above all else.
To be honest I've avoided Gamespot for a while. Partly this is due to the increasing trend of locking away everthing to subscribers only, but mainly it was because I've read several reviews there that I felt were far too generous towards inferior games - and this was backed up by much lower scores on other sites.
I wouldn't be surprised to find that advertisers have had leverage over Gamespot reviews for quite some time now (ever since the CNET aquisition maybe?) and that we're finally seeing the fallout of that.
It's a double kick in the face really - not only are they selling out their core values and business, but they're effectively cheating their subscribers out of what they are paying for.
Hopefully this will generate enough negative publicity (and drop in subscribers) to make the management team wake up and realise that they've completely lost the plot.
You'd have to be seriously naive to think that such a thing would be true. Maybe I am cynical, but I think that realistically one can expect no wall at all. Any separation between money and journalism is out of the norm, and should be a pleasant surprised.
Pretty much everyone knows that game reviews have been co-opted by advertiser bias, and that this has been a problem since pretty much forever, although things always seem to be getting worse. Reviews are simply not looked at as though they were objective works of criticism, but rather as more advertising and hype masquerading as information. It's an intolerable situation, and the wonderful thing about it is that the days are numbered.
It's the easiest thing in the world stop paying attention to reviews, turn off the hype channels, and buy games based on information that you can trust. Word of mouth from friends who game is hugely more trustable than a game magazine or web site. Rent the game or download a demo and play it before you buy, or watch a video of the game being played on YouTube. Suck can't hide from direct experiences like that.
Maybe some day the video game critic will be able to throw off the oppressive advertiser dollar and write finely crafted reviews that read more like serious art and film criticism than they do press release and ad copy. Maybe the way to start is to start selling advertising space to people advertising stuff OTHER than games. Sell more ads to Doritos and Mountain Dew, they don't care if $newshineygame sucks or not. It's possible to sell adveritising and maintain a certain amount of independence and objectivity. It's not easy, but it is possible.
You see? You see? Your stupid minds! Stupid! Stupid!
There seems to be a huge community backlash in the user scores section: http://www.gamespot.com/xbox360/action/kanelynchdeadmen/players.html?om_act=convert&om_clk=gssummary&tag=summary;yousay
I've always ignored the Gamespot review score and just looked at user reviews. Nothing more honest than a pissed off user spilling the beans about bugs and crashes and what not.
Halitosis - (n.) Halle Berry's Camel Toe.
What can we do?
Avoid Gamespot like the FN plague. Do what we all have the right to do, go somewhere else.
...someone other than bots reads Gamespot? Now that's news.
If we're doing analogies, I'd say it's even less than name of a football team. At least the players on the team really want the whole team to win. Members of political parties just use the team as a means of getting elected.
Does every republican candidate truly support the war in Iraq? Is every democrat really pro-abortion?
Just a means of raising enough money to get elected.
"If they have both, tell them we use Linux. And if they have that, tell them the computers are down." -Dave Chapelle
Seriously - if your headline for a story contains the word "may", you're a lazy journalist.
But this has to happen once every few years, everyone needs to blow off steam.
I once worked for a Village Voice Media publication and a music writer was fired for giving a bad review of the local musical venues... advertisers. The clients were livid and the sales team did everything they could think of to appease them, but in the end, termination of the writer was all they could do.
It is a terrible thing when journalistic integrity it compromised by selfish business interests. But then again, it's terrible when selfish business interests compromise the integrity of just about everything. There should be SOME drive to make profit and all that, but there should be some understood limits to what a company can or should do. Unfortunately, it would also be bad to legislate morals and ethical behavior into law. But still, if someone were to pass laws stating that business interests cannot be allowed to influence government or journalistic integrity, I'd be all for it. Not gonna happen I think... at least not until we can get a more interested public.
And where is the original review by the above persons ? Or how one can see it in some sort of internet archive if it was deleted ?
C. Sagan : A demon haunted world:
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0345409469/
visit randi.org
I know to take reviews left on online retailers with a pinch of salt, ie they are probably more shills writing for most products than genuine reviews - how many times have I left a +ve review? None. How many times have I left a -ve review? Often. Even when reading reviews written by supposedly authoritative journalists working for supposedly independent journals, one must always my mindful the likelihood that the author is not just writing out of a passion for the subject, but just because he has been financially rewarded for writing +ve spin to his/her readership. Evil I know.
There is a magazine in the UK called Which? I believe it is a not-for-profit organisation that carries out reviews of a wide range of products. I recommend.
[I didn't get paid by Which? to say that]
"but in the end, termination of the writer was all they could do"
That's funny. I would have thought journalistic integrity could have been on the table. Tell the advertiser "no, you can't influence our reviews, take your business elsewhere".
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My own opinion is that if you continue to read Gamespot that you should take note any game that is prominently advertised on their site, by means of flash ads, wallpaper or whatever. Then go read the review of that game and automatically deduct 2 points from that game when considering to buy it. A 10 means 8, an 8 means 6 and so on. After all, if Gamespot is the go-to place for shill reviews, you simply cannot trust the score they give and it must be modified accordingly.
Better yet, ignore Gamespot. There are plenty of other game sites and some of them care a great deal about their editorial control. Send traffic to those sites and show the likes of CNET and Eidos that such strongarming does not pay off in the long term.
I've always found it odd that games with massive advertising budgets behind them always tend to get VEEERY high scores from the mainstream gaming sites. Case in point - Halo 3. Ok, so I haven't played it myself, but a perfect 100% score on some sites? There is NOTHING that can be better about this game? Yahtzee of Zero Punctuation fame put this best. He argues that the 10/10 score is especially strange since they go on to say in the review that the single player campaign is flawed, but the totally awesome multiplayer "makes up for it". If the game was really perfect, it wouldn't need something to "make up" for any flaws.
Being bitter is drinking poison and hoping someone else will die
...Is the game as bad as he said? Is this guy dead on with his review?
Game reviewers are like movie reviewers. There are the ones you trust. Then there are the ones you don't. Is this guy an asshat reviewer like Harry Knowles or Michael Medved? Or is he generally right on about the games?
Here in the Seattle area, we have local movie reviewers and game reviewers that I trust a hell of a lot more than some of the national ones. I only wish they'd get national attention, but maybe national publication brings with it the risk of being coopted by the purse string holders.
Politics is the art of looking for trouble, finding it everywhere, diagnosing it incorrectly and applying the wrong fix.
Which sites nail bad games? I notice long, long ago that you almost never see a bad car review at any of the big pages. I read "Edmunds" now, they don't seem afraid to say something sucks. Or "The truth about cars", it is rare when they say anything is good.
Where are the gamer equivalents?
on the larger available boards out there.
I know in IGN, their VN boards to be specific, that posts with negative comments about Turbine were regularly whacked and the poster banned as someone from Turbine made it known they would not frequent IGN or its boards unless some ground rules were in place : mainly no negative comments about the state of the game and no anti-turbine comments allowed.
It seriously tanked the boards. Needless to say within the year Turbine had their own boards as most sites balked at the restriction. Those that didn't saw their user numbers go down.
Game publishers hold big sticks. With professional level magazines they withhold money, with fansites, even big ones, they withhold their people. Works wonders until the word gets out.
* Winners compare their achievements to their goals, losers compare theirs to that of others.
There are very few companies who will actually continue to co-operate with you after a negative review towards one of their products. I tend to find that reviewing products by dividing reviews up into two 'categories' of target audience, you achieve better results. By saying
you make it look good... and then simply follow it by
That tends to mean you can average up your rating a bit... and no-one tends to notice - and your readers get to know your strategy after a while, resulting in 'accurate' reviews whilst keeping publishers happy.
No reviewers I would consider at all "respectable" gave it higher ratings then that, and many lower. Gamepro, Gamespy, and Edge Magazine all gave it the SAME score as the GameSpot reviewer.
See the Metacritic page for more details.
From GameSpy:
From GamePro:
Blessed are the pessimists, for they have made backups.
It only seems like an oddity because you think a single name can sum up your political orientation, especially one that doesn't really define any. It is actually little more than the name of a football team that has a high player turnover rate. I'm glad someone else notices the sports mentality of the arbitrarily polar U.S. party system.
As for the idea that reviews are somehow sacrosanct... it's a great idea. I've been ignoring review sites (other than my own) for years because of this. The only shocking thing here is that someone at Gamespot managed to get a negative review published before they were fired. It was really the publisher that was, I'm sure, taking the heat.
Seeing that they're willing to can an honest (and talented) reviewer rather than risk losing an advertiser is definitely a disappointment, and I'm finding myself relying more and more on user reviews and Metacritic as a result. However, consider this point: Gamespot is a business; they're trying to make a profit. That profit can come from user subscriptions, and it can come from advertisers. Right now, I'd hazard a guess that something like 85% of their income is from ads. How much of a subscription fee would you be willing to pay to remove all software and hardware advertising so as to ensure that reviews would be unbiased?
Now, you may be thinking that game adverts could be replaced by non-tech companies as mentioned earlier in this thread, such as Frito-Lay, Honda, etc. Maybe that's doable, but pretend you're the head of their sales department, and you're trying to get advertisers. Would it be easier to convince Eidos to buy ad space on a game site, or Pepsi? Because Pepsi can reach a lot of its target audience on the websites for ESPN, mtv, etc. Eidos can't really have that same level of success shilling this Kane and Lynch monstrosity on, say, MSNBC. And, after all, pick up any car or motorcycle mag that does reviews, and you'll see a whole host of car or bike ads.
This unbiased moderation brought to you by the Porcine Aviation Group!
Political parties aren't teams... they're FAN CLUBS!
I.E. You're rooting for either the home team (incumbents) or the visitors (newcomer) to win. They're on "your team", but they are actually the football players, while you're merely turning out to put money in their coffers (just like real fans do, buying all that stuff and going to all the games.) This is fine and dandy, but the fools need to realize that the team winning is merely a way of living life without actually living it. The difference between WATCHING the NFL Cup, and PLAYING in the NFL cup is no difference than the schmuck criticizing a JV team without having even been on a middle school football team. There are those who live through others (fans, political voters) and those who actually live via the means of others (sports figures, political rulers, pretend representatives, etc.)
Hope that helps.
" What luck for rulers that men do not think" - Adolf Hitler
I was the head reviewer for AGN3D (allgames.com). I gave Turok 2 a fairly scathing
review and Acclaim contacted my boss (Jeremy Alford) and tried to have him pull it
or give it a higher rating.
Thankfully, Jeremy had high integrity and he stood behind my review.
We didn't say anything about the matter on the site, but now I'm starting to think
that all sites should expose publishers/developers who try to coerce review sites.
This is why I stopped reading PC Gamer.
... all the things PC Gamer used to scream about in game reviews, trying to protect the average gamer from crap.
... and it was crap. No where near living up to the promises.
When CIV 4 came out, I bought it right away. It was massively buggy, huge memory leak problems, was not ready for release
A large percentage of CIV 4 players could not complete a single game due to the problems that got worse and worse as the game progresses, even when setting the game to a gimped version with few opponents and low graphics.
But, PC Gamer mentioned nothing about the problems, except that it was 'a little unpolished'. CIV 4 got a great score just because it was another Sid Mieir Civ game.
Of course there was no reply when I wrote to them, my letter wasn't published.
I've checked back with them a couple times in the couple years that have passed since they stopped being fair and unbiased, and it all reads like crap. It's all slanted to who they are promoting. Dungeon Siege II was similar. A huge pre-release major story on the game
PC Gamer hasn't received a penny from me since.
George Bush + Linux = "I will not let information get in the way of the fight against Windows"
You can't take the sky from me...
The DRM in Bioshock is an industry first (and hopefully last) on PC. A game that stealth installs a DRM software, counts the number of times it has been installed/uninstalled, and is designed to then commit Harakiri. How wonderful. A $50 game with a self-destruct mechanism built in. Next is the obviously missing widescreen aspect support. Everybody noticed it immediately. But 2K denied there was a problem and kept claiming that the game was tested on and developed for Widescreen. Just as they made a lot of angry posts about the forced DRM disappear. Then there's the exquisitely dumb AI, the not quite optimized Unreal Engine 3, the crappy console interface for the plasmids and inventory ported as-is from Xbox to PC, the woefully inaccurate weapons, the lack of environment destructibility and the really short singple player game with little replay value. All in all, the package doesn't rate above 70% despite the polished sound, music and graphics. And that's generous for a game that is so callously DRM'd. I hope they learn from their mistakes for the sequel.
During the heyday of Ultima Online (I think in 2000), as a Seer (rpg volunteer), we had an event based on a group who worshipped an ancestor named Zog, which if I recall correctly, was the name of the first human in the Ultima mythos. It was a minor plot point at best.
This group of characters (the Zog Cabal) and their storyline was created by Origin GMs, and acted and fleshed out by GMs and Seers.
We never saw where the end of this story went (and it was one of the few that was actually successful, in my tenure), because one day, the GMs received a letter from Gamespot outlining some "concerns" players had had about the "Zog Cabal" actually being a veiled reference to Z.O.G. (Zionist Occupied Government), which is a slanderous name anti-semitic and/or white power groups give to whatever governments they oppose (generally, the US, which they believe is controlled by "Jewish interests").
It was utterly preposterous. Richard Garriot may be many things, but a racist or anti-semite he isn't. Most of his games have been highly derivative of Tolkien and Tolkien-inspired knockoffs, and having mysterious characters with funny names is a STAPLE of science fiction and fantasy, and X and Z being pretty popular letters to add a sense of "exoticness" to newly-minted names. Xenu anyone?
What was leaked to us by other sources in EA and in Gamespot was that the "players" whose concerns the Gamespot editor had addressed were actually other Gamespot writers: essentially, they were trying to make news instead of reporting it, by inserting themselves into the story.
While this isn't related to the current row, it lessens my ability to be shocked and horrified by the idea of editorial sleaze by the Gamespot staff.
I will quote from this thread on Gamespot: http://www.gamespot.com/xbox360/action/kanelynchdeadmen/show_msgs.php?topic_id=m-1-39530902&pid=934403 I'm sure some of you are aware Jeff Gertsmann, now the face of GameSpot is responsible for the review. It should come as no surprise he played this game on an Xbox 360 for the review and like most people with a 360 he has a GamerTag attached to his account... as I gazed upon his weak gamescore I found only two achievements had been unlocked. One for beating the first mission and one for trying the co-op. It should be noted that the OP is dated prior to the firing, so perhaps Gertsmann wasn't sacked for a bad review, but sacked for not doing his job.
Sigs are awesome huh?
1797. The last President who was not from one of the two big parties was George Washington, who wasn't a member of any party, nor was Congress divided into parties during his administration. The original framers of the Constitution disliked parties and had attempted to craft a system of government that wouldn't require them (as a Parliamentary system like Britain's does). However, inevitably, after Washington, the US political scene was always divided up into two parties, and the President always came from one of those two parties. One party was always the Democratic Party (originally the Democratic-Republican Party), while the other was replaced several times (the Federalist Party, then the National-Republican Party, then the Whigs and finally the modern Republican party in the 1850s). If you only want to count Democrats and Republicans, than the last one was Millard Fillmore, President from 1850 to 1853, who was a Whig.
Chris Mattern
Many other sites have probably been compromised or "influenced" by their advertisers. Consider Slashdot for example - notice the Games section of Slashdot - all of the stories are chosen by Zonk, and none of them are from contributors. Since Microsoft advertises quite a bit on the site, and the fact that Zonk is a XBox fanboy, it's no surprise to see most news on the Xbox 360 to be positive. People might point out to the other negative stories about Microsoft - well Microsoft might not care as much about it's OS or Office business, because they have a monopoly.
There are other gaming sites that have heavy advertising from Microsoft - you'll see that many of these sites describe Sony in a snarky tone, while giving a much gentler hand to Microsoft. This is no different when PC Magazine had many, many ads from Microsoft, and you wouldn't be surprised to see Word, Excel, and it's other Office products rate consistently above WordPerfect, QuattroPro, and so on - based on dubious factors as "ease-of-use".
If you take a look at Halo 3 - look at the huge advertising campaign, full of schwag - people focused on the schwag, but the real dollars exchanged comes from advertising. It's not surprising that Halo 3 got perfect 10s, even though they criticized how short and repetitive the single player campaign was, and how the graphics were nothing special compared to other games. Mmny sites even claimed that Bioshock or COD4 were better.
Bottom line is, many sites are bought out by advertising, or behind-the-scenes bribes/schwag. Weblogs, Inc (Joystiq, Engadget), Gawker Media (Kotaku, Gizmodo), CNET (Gamespot, CNET) all have shown a correlation between the advertising dollars and reviews.
I am extremely grateful for the negative reviews of things. There will always be people that like it just fine, and then there are those (like Mr. Cranky) that can find even more todislike than I can. They will tell you the things that irked them, that made them regret it, etc -- and that helps me avoid bad experiences.
If all I had were positive reviews, it'd be hard to narrow down the field of potential restaurants (especially in an area I am visiting), or games. If all I heard were negative reviews, I'd still buy things, but either expect them to suck (and then be pleasantly surprised), or just determined to experience them for What They Were.
At the same time, I'm grateful for dissenting views, even if positive. For example, I've been interested in Assassin's Creed for a while. (In case any readers aren't video gamers, it's a "sandbox" style game for the Xbox360 which has you tooling around in Crusades-era holy lands.) Many reviewers said it was very pretty, but that some things got repetetive (and didn't really like the combat system). I was worried that I might not like it, until I read Penny Arcade's "trust us, it does actually rock" post.
I appreciated Gabe's argument that reviewers don't play games the same way many of us do, and that the review process is poorly suited for sandbox games. Reviewers play with a deadline, whereas in a sandbox game the point is to take your time, explore, and find cool stuff. Perhaps even replay to do things differently. Gabe saying this, and his subsequent "real world" review (along with Tycho's explanation of the combat system), convinced me that I will probably greatly enjoy the game. (Assuming I manage to buy an XBox360 and the game. D'oh.)
...I have little doubt of the "darker" side of the Gamespot tale.
My own tale comes from what you might call the Dark Ages, back in the dim days of the late 1980s and early 1990s. Back then, I was a monthly columnist for the now-extinct life-form known as a "programming magazine."
My specialty was comparative reviews of compilers -- back in those days, there existed A LARGE NUMBER OF CHOICES as to which compiler you could use for C or Fortran programming on PCs. And, in a review of Fortran compilers, I stated (correctly) that a certain vendor's product failed miserably at a well-known benchmark.
The vendor pulled several full page adds; I was fired. The editor was quite honest in admitting that my dismissal was entirely based on placating a disturbed source of income.
The purpose of any business -- even television shows, magazines, and commercial web sites -- is to generate REVENUE. They do NOT exist for the greater public good, or for the search for truth, or for any other reason than to make money.
What amazes me is not that someone is fired for telling the truth or expressing an opinion -- what amazes me is how many people EXPECT morals or ethics from profit-oriented entities.
All about me
It's worth noting that the large Game Review sites have put themselves in a very vulnerable position by reaching well beyond their supposed core product, the review of games, and instead becoming part of the entire game promo, news and asset cycle. They rely heavily on game producers for "exclusive" access to news, game development info, trailers, screenshots, etc. That makes it that much easier for the large publishers to squeeze off their liveblood if they don't get their way. If you can't get a response from the EA or Ubisoft teams while your competition can, and likewise can't get the newest trailer for the Next Big Game while the other guys can, there go your eyeballs, and there go your advertising dollars.
Ok, this may be a naive question here but I'll stick my neck out. I'm going to lump games, TV shows, movies, and music together here. They're all creative products.
Now, the cynical view says that there are certain games that are licenses to print money. A Harry Potter game, EA could have the programmers shit in the box and put it on the shelf and it would still sell. If we want to get all filthy and accountanty here, you could probably model a function here were you put in the price of the license and then the cost of making the game, figuring where the profit would be. I'm sure that the max profit comes in somewhere at about half the funding level to make a good game. So from their perspective, spending the money to make a good game is mismanagement because it cuts into the profits.
Ok, that may be the case. But what about games that don't have a license to go with it, where you are talking about the potential of creating a franchise instead of continuing one. If we look at movies, the script has to be the cheapest part of the production. When you're looking at spending a few million on a single stunt in a $100 million blockbuster, why not throw a million at the writers? Surely making the fucker good would be a better return on investment. If the movie is a brainless popcorner, you'll maybe get one viewing tops. But if the movie is fun and rewatchable, you'll get people buying it 20 years down the line. And to think that there's all this money spent on bribing reviewers trying to polish a turd, wouldn't it be easier if they were pushing fillet mignon instead?
Let's talk about games. When I've been blessed enough to encounter a new classic fresh on the market, I'll be evangelizing the fucker to my friends like a Jehovah's Witless on Saturday morning. They do the same when they discover a classic before me. When it comes to TV shows, networks don't see fans storming the gates when idiot knock-off comedy #3 goes off the air but they'll see the geeklerian jihad when a Futurama or Firefly gets canned. It's the quality that creates the rabid fans. So shit, if quality is what makes people happy, why don't the suits just go for quality? I still find it hard to believe that with all the money involved, it's more cost-effective to crap out a clunker than to craft a classic. I understand that you will run into clusterfucks from time to time when the team is given the proper time and resources to make it happen and things just fall apart due to personality clashes, politics, acts of God, etc. But I just don't get the willful disregard for quality that goes into most of these efforts.
Kwisatz Haderach
Sell the spice to CHOAM
This Mahdi took Shaddam's Throne
Difficult to say if it is related to the events described above, but the editor Tim Tracy appears to be leaving Gamespot as well.
His (exceedingly brief) post on the site blog: http://www.gamespot.com/users/TimT/show_blog_entry.php?topic_id=m-100-25233420
A comment or two on destructiod.com http://www.destructoid.com/gamespot-drops-reviewer-to-appease-eidos-w-r-hearst-rolls-in-his-grave-56683.phtml