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."

Comments

Speaking of good journalism...

[RockMFR]

"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).

Gamespot sold out. That's the problem.

[Anonymous Coward]

We all realize the importance of advertising; we're Slashdot users. We've been wallowing in it ever since CmdrTaco sold us out as a userbase to VA Software, a public company concerned only with the bottom line.

But Gamespot went over the line.

It's one thing to inundate users with annoying ad after annoying ad, as Slashdot does, and quite another to modify site content to pander to advertisers. It's the difference between barely-watchable, ad-saturated broadcast television and unwatchable, ad-saturated broadcast television with product placement.

Re:Gamespot sold out. That's the problem.

[The PS3 Will Fail]

"Its one thing to honestly point out flaws in a product, which he did and I'm not saying it wasn't a bad game. Its quite another to tell people that something is terrible and they shouldn't buy it."

Yeah, that is different. What's your point? Ostensibly, if a reviewer says a game is terrible and no one should buy it, he or she should be able to point out flaws with it. On the other hand, pointing out flaws doesn't mean that the game is not worthy of a purchase. I don't see your point because your statement is flawed. The two possible positions on a game you cite aren't mutually exclusive. Now, as far as the F-word being used in his reviews - that's up to an editor to handle. If Gamespot doesn't want video reviews with the F-word in it, that's fine but the editor would make that happen.

What exactly is your point? Ebert tells people not to go to movies all the time and calls movies terrible. Are you saying Ebert deserves to be fired?

Re:Gamespot sold out. That's the problem.

[Entropius]

I think that the product that Gamespot sells most effectively is... ... Firefox Adblock.

Re:Gamespot sold out. That's the problem.

[Yahweh Doesn't Exist]

>Its quite another to tell people that something is terrible and they shouldn't buy it.

I KNOW, THIS IS THE WHOLE FUCKING POINT OF GAME REVIEWERS

omg am I just missing the sarcasm because I'm tired and drunk or is this post insane?

Re:Gamespot sold out. That's the problem.

[The PS3 Will Fail]

I was more discussing the OP's statement that: "Its one thing to honestly point out flaws in a product, which he did and I'm not saying it wasn't a bad game. Its quite another to tell people that something is terrible and they shouldn't buy it." - not the specific reviews of Gerstmann. It is well within the range of a review/critique to call something terrible and suggest people not buy it. I'm not sure your reply really addresses the content of my post.

Gamespot corrupt? What is the world coming to?

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, at least I can still trust in the objectivity of Nintendo Power.

A reputation

[cgenman]

The value of a reputation is difficult to quantify. Blizzard has a great reputation because all of its games have been solid. But what is the value? A Blizzard title may sell just as many as many other titles that year. So suits may look at that and say that the reputation itself has no value. They they calculate the profits from a cheap spinoff title, and release Starcraft:Ghost.

Except they didn't, because they realized the value of their reputation. Ghost may have made a chunk of money in the short term, but it could have tarnished the reputation. And reputation ensures that the next great Blizzard game cuts through the noise and makes it to the top of people's shopping lists, instead of becoming yet another Ico or Beyond Good and Evil.

A reputation does not ensure a hit. But it does ensure that things deserving of becoming hits, do so.

GameSpot isn't selling advertising space. It's selling viewers. Its reputation as one of the better news sources out there draws in viewers. Selling off that reputation in the long term sells off viewers, and reduces what they have to sell.

I hope GameSpot finds itself soon.

Re:A reputation

[cgenman]

Within the industry, Blizzard has a reputation for being a massive meat-house with crushing grinds and soul-sucking levels of authority. That having been said, they're willing to iterate on a title for a tremendous amount of time until it is really done. Warcraft 3 is a great example of this: The game went through much balyhooed RPG and action iterations before returning to an RTS with RPG elements. Ghost is another example. It went through several developers (not just one development team) and many years before it was scrapped.

Blizzard has free reign within Vivendi. Nobody earns that much money that consistently without gaining self-determinism.

Sega, on the other hand, had their reputation completely shot to heck by the time the Dreamcast came around. After the mess that was the infighting between Sega US with 32x versus Sega JP with Saturn, (and the debacle that was the Sega CD), Sega's reputation was in shambles. The Saturn provided a super polished sprite-based experience, but was a nightmare to make those newfangled polygons and 3d games that everyone was so eager to try. It's no wonder that the Dreamcast did much better in Japan, where the Sega CD and the Saturn weren't complete failures and therefore weren't huge tarnishes upon SEGA's reputation.

WRT Nintendo, don't forget that the N64 (which was greatly overpromised and underdelivered) was competitive until a severe lack of titles became apparent. Titles were lacking largely because the cartridge mechanism provided such slim profit margins that it wasn't profitable to make games for, even ports. Many Nintendo fans got burned on this lack of titles, and many developers became wary of working with the big "N". Even then, the space afforded to disk-based games were just much more shiny and impressive. The GameCube suffered from the reputation that N had built up over the years.

Re:A reputation

[king-manic]

The value of a reputation is difficult to quantify. Blizzard has a great reputation because all of its games have been solid. But what is the value? A Blizzard title may sell just as many as many other titles that year. So suits may look at that and say that the reputation itself has no value. They they calculate the profits from a cheap spinoff title, and release Starcraft:Ghost. Reputation has a great deal of value. They operate in a market that usually sells titles in the hundreds of thousands on average. They sell millions. They release a small 30s snippet from a game and get more free advertising then most titles receive in paid advertising. They have a user base that will buy the game first and then look for reviews only to re-affirm the value of their purchase. I know that if Diablo 3 comes out, I will first check into a rehab isolation clinic.. then check out 15 min later check out and buy it. For SC2, I have 2 weeks vacation I rolled from last year and all my vacation this year reserved so I can use it to take a month off when it comes out. etc...

Trusted?

[rpillala]

Of course game reviews can't be trusted. Or I guess they can be trusted insofar as your experience matches the reviewer's. It's like movie reviews- you find a reviewer who seems to share your likes and dislikes and stay with them. This is, of course, if you look at reviews as purely a buying guide. For game criticism of a more literary caliber there's no real source that I know of. Frankly I don't think most games would stand up to that, and I've been playing games since 1980.

Re:Trusted?

[Yahweh Doesn't Exist]

>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

Driv3r

[Enderandrew]

I thought it was leaked that Atari out-right paid for Driv3r reviews, many of which were extremely high despite the game sucking. When it came out, many sites claimed they only gave high reviews because they tested an early very-buggy build for a few hours, and then was told all the bugs would be fixed before retail ship. When the game actually shipped as a buggy mess (not to mention, a piss-poor game) the reviewers were claiming they never played the retail game and gave a review based on hype and expectations.

Either you believe what I consider a lie, and then reviews are worthless because they're based on hype, or you call them liars and reviews are worthless because publishers pay for them.

Take your pick. Personally, what I'm looking for (and what I rarely see) is a good description of how gameplay goes down. I don't need an arbitrary score, because the reviewer and I might not have the same tastes. We all like differen genres of games. But if the review does a very good job describing objectively what gameplay is like, then I might be able to decide for myself whether or not I will enjoy the game.

Re:Driv3r

[argStyopa]

"But if the review does a very good job describing objectively what gameplay is like, then I might be able to decide for myself whether or not I will enjoy the game."
+1 Spot-On.

I wrote computer game reviews for more than 10 years for a handful of niche-market websites and even a magazine or two, more as a hobby than anything else. We were fairly small potatoes, and the money was trivial.
So I definitely had less riding on the reception of my reviews and my continuing as a writer for a specific outlet. But at various times I felt both the overt and implied pressure from games companies, one blatantly saying "if you don't change that review, you'll never see another game from us" - not much of a threat, since if we'd really wanted to review it we'd have bought it anyway and in any case they were really relying on US to get their game publicized. But the fact that they'd have the nuts to come out and say it was stunning.

From the point of view of someone who's been in that market, I'd make some recommendations:
- A review should state clearly if the reviewer or his firm was GIVEN the game or BOUGHT the game. The cost of an individual game is a meaningless amount of money for a business, yet there is still a large step up in credibility and editorial freedom when one is not beholden to the game company by even that small amount. There's a reason Consumer Reports has done it for all these years on all the products they review.
- the game reviewer's machine specs need to be stated clearly in the review. Optimally, the game should be run on both 'min spec' and 'recommended or better' machines.
- the game should be reviewed AS RECEIVED; no last-minute patches, no 'supplemental' disk that the consumer isn't going to get. Anything that's not a 'gold' version going on the shelves is a PREVIEW not a REVIEW. (Another reason why buying a copy off the shelf is a sound practice.) *Any* other swag from the company should be refused or donated away.
- I like reviews that set out the reviewer's bias at the beginning; it lets me know outright if they want to like the game or not. Usually that's clear from the text, but stating it explicitly is more transparent.
- As the above-poster said, a review is strongest when it's descriptive. Hyperbole should be at a minimum, and the best reviews never say anything as bluntly as "this is a good game"...such should be clear from the text.

Re:Driv3r

[amuro98]

Magazine reviews already come out AFTER the game anyways. Halo3, for instance, had been out for weeks by the time I got my copy of GameInformer which was practically covered in drool from the reviewers.

Game reviews should, at worst, be based on the golden master. This is the version that is sent to manufacturing, meaning, it's also the version that shows up on shelves for regular folks like you and I to buy.

Game reviews based on "near final" versions or earlier are almost useless. Sure, you could get a rough idea about the game, but until it's "Finished" - you can't really give a review of it. After all, customers won't be buying that version, so what's the point? Take the hit and wait a week to do a proper review. Seriously, if you're gung-ho on buying the game on release day (or were stupid enough to pre-order it), you don't care about reviews since you've already decided to buy the game. It's also pointless to review a non-final version since there will be bugs and unfinished items in it. There are literally reviews out there that say "Despite some crashes to the desktop, which we hope will be fixed by ship-time, this is a good game." and give it a 7/10. What the heck?!? A major bug, much less a crash, is not the sign of a good game, much less one deserving anything above a 4 or a 5...

Long-Term Impact

[kidcharles]

One thing Kennedy didn't address fully was the long-term impact on Gamespot of its behavior. In the short term, they can make some cash selling ads and boosting associated review scores to please game distributors. In the long term, if their credibility is shot among the community, they will see fewer and fewer website hits as people find their reviews elsewhere. As the hits dry up, so will the advertisement money. Internet traffic can shift quite violently when better alternatives come along (e.g. the "Friendster -> MySpace -> Facebook -> ?" progression), Gamespot would do well to take heed and clean up their act before they become irrelevant.

Kind of ruining your own argument with blizzard

[SmallFurryCreature]

Until WoW SOE was the big (western) MMORPG company and seemed to have the market in its grasp. People tought that the half a million or so subscribers to EQ at one point was the maximum market.

And then Blizzard came along and didn't so much raise the bar as send it into orbit.

Currently SOE has a lousy reputation, which makes me extremely reluctant to try any new MMO from them, Pirates of the Burning Seas is the latest and altough it was developed outside SOE, well so was Vanguard.

I on the other hand would have little trouble in putting in a pre-order for the next Blizzard MMO title (Sorry, never was much of a RTS fan).

Rep matters and the suits know it. Why do you think suit run companies change their name constantly and have huge marketing campaigns? Because when all else sucks you hope you can bluff your way into having a good rep.

Re:Gerstmann Was Nothing More Than A Halo Fanboy

[bigstrat2003]

Gamers want unbiased information about games... No they don't. They want the opinion of other gamers on games so that they can make a more informed purchase decision.

...how much absolutely loves his Xbox 360 and Halo 3 and thinks its the best game ever 24/7. If that's his honest opinion, then by God, he should be talking about that in his coverage of those things. And if you don't like it, that's quite honestly too damn bad for you, because he's there to express his opinion.

Re:Are there really any trustworthy reviews?

[Colourspace]

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.

Some controversy

[elrous0]

For all this hand-wringing and talk about how this is going to affect Gamespot in the long term, I would point out that this "great controversy" barely even warranted a brief mention on Gamespot's wikipedia entry and had virtually no effect on their site traffic.

This controversy is only known to a handful of geeks and will be forgotten a year from now.

Re:Some controversy

[immcintosh]

How big an entry do you want it to have in Wikipedia? Should the entire article now read, "GERSTMAN FIRED, GO ELSEWHERE?" Clearly there is a section which outlines the controversy, in generally the same area of the article as controversies always seem to appear. In fact, for it to appear at all on the Wikipedia entry for any length of time is a clear indicator of its level of importance.

As for the effect of this whole deal on the company, I think you're being a trifle naive. The majority of Gamespot's traffic is from this "handful of geeks," although I'd say a great many more than anything that could be called a handful are aware of this. If Gamespot takes the same attitude as you, they'd be thumbing their noses at the very people who ultimately make them a profitable venture. Not very bright.

Re:Gerstmann Was Nothing More Than A Halo Fanboy

[Vaffelen]

Parent should be modded troll. First of all, Halo 3 was praised by pretty much every reviewer, not just Gerstmann. Gerstmanns score, 9.5, is just 0.1 above the average on Metacritic. Every reviewer out there is an Xbox fanboy? Right. And besides, Gerstmann could hardly be considered a Halo fanboy. Citing Gerstmann's personal blog:

If you had told me a year ago that I'd be sitting here, telling anyone who will listen that Halo 3 is one of the year's best games, I'd call you a liar. Then I'd kick you in the stomach, because that's what liars get. Between its cliffhanger ending and its asshole-filled multiplayer, I had a real disdain for Halo 2 and saw no real reason for Halo 3 to be any different. Back when the multiplayer beta came out, it looked like it was just going to be more Halo--exactly what the Halo faithful wanted, but not really the sort of thing that's going to change anyone's mind. ...

Parent post is full of misinformation. All evidence points to the conclusion that Gerstmann was fired because he was too harsh on high profile games such as Kane & Lynch, not because he was a Xbox 360 fanboy. If you have any evidence to the contrary, you should put it forward.

Re:I always read Gamespot reviews

[amuro98]

I dunno, what's wrong with GameFaqs? Read the forum for the individual game to get reactions from folks who actually bought the game. If it's a bad game, you're going to find out pretty quick in the forums.