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Gamespot's Editorial Problems in Perspective
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."
"GameSpot's cheat site" is called GameFAQs. The poll wasn't "hacked" - an employee apparently created it as a joke and let it go up on the site for 45 minutes, either intentionally or accidentally (the official story from Allen Tyner, the GameFAQs editor, was that it was accidental).
>For game criticism of a more literary caliber there's no real source that I know of.
http://www.escapistmagazine.com/articles/view/editorials/zeropunctuation
Edge and Games TM, both UK publications from different publishers, are well worth seeking out a subscription for. Both are very well written and appear to be without bias, I would thoroughly recommend either of them as they are both designed well (Edge beautifully so) and have a much more mature side to them then many of the XBox/Ps3/Ninty Official etc mags out there. Also, flick through Edge and you will find very few game ads in there - their main ad revenue appears to come through ads for jobs in the games industry, which is one section in the back.