Gamespot fired Jeff Gerstmann because of his review of Kane % Lynch, in which he gave a fair 6.0.
And as you might have noticed, Kane & Lynch ads were all over the site at the time.
See a connection ?
A visit to Gamespot shows that the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 game has taken over the site very prominently, with backgrounds and multiple banner ads all pitching Kane & Lynch. Allegedly, publisher Eidos "took issue with the review and threatened to pull its ad campaign."
How was this an issue to begin with? Even if CNET didn't like him this shouldn't be the slightest of issues. He reviewed games. It was his job to be objectionable.
I hope this sparks, what am I saying?! It HAS sparked a backlash against Gamespot. Hopefully gets more reviewers out of publishers pockets (SORRY people wanting to work as journalists).
The #1 decider of if a game sells, is not marketing. It is the reviews it gets. An absurdly well made game with no advertising would sell better then daikatana, any day. And as you should all know by now, the video games industry is completely utterly soulless.
As it happens, theres very little doubt that most of the larger reviewers base their scores not just on a games quality, but on other, obviously unethical factors, such as advertising money from the publisher or simply being paid to give a good review. Gamespot gets alot of money from Sony and Microsoft. Hence many PS3 titles are rated higher then the industry average. Meanwhile, IGN is effectively nintendos pushing tool.
Don't make any mistake. The reviewing sites are one of the biggest targets of the corporate corruption, since after all, they are the primary decider of who sells what. If every big company gave top marks to all the PS3 titles, it might have out-performed nintendo these past few years.
Originally Posted by Pixelthief The #1 decider of if a game sells, is not marketing. It is the reviews it gets. An absurdly well made game with no advertising would sell better then daikatana, any day. And as you should all know by now, the video games industry is completely utterly soulless.
As it happens, theres very little doubt that most of the larger reviewers base their scores not just on a games quality, but on other, obviously unethical factors, such as advertising money from the publisher or simply being paid to give a good review. Gamespot gets alot of money from Sony and Microsoft. Hence many PS3 titles are rated higher then the industry average. Meanwhile, IGN is effectively nintendos pushing tool. Take for example the two games, Zelda Twilight Princess, and Assassins' Creed.
They are both very good games. And zelda raked 10/10's across the board, with an average around 9.6 to 9.7. Yet gamespot gave it an 8.8/10, one of the lowest reviews. Meanwhile, assassins creed is a great game, and while somewhat flawed, almost all sites recognized that and gave it in the 9's. Yet IGN gave it an absurdly low 6.0, an extreme outlier on the standard deviation.
Don't make any mistake. The reviewing sites are one of the biggest targets of the corporate corruption, since after all, they are the primary decider of who sells what. If every big company gave top marks to all the PS3 titles, it might have out-performed nintendo these past few years.
but that doesn't have anything to do with freedom of speech which is what Gamespot CNET or whatever doesn't seem to respect.
Originally Posted by Dr. Jamesa Claus Rightly so!
I hope this sparks, what am I saying?! It HAS sparked a backlash against Gamespot. Hopefully gets more reviewers out of publishers pockets (SORRY people wanting to work as journalists).
In the meanwhile, I'll write my first review for gamespot...
Alot of people put the problem as him costing gamespot thousands of dollars, or gamespot bowing to the corporate pressure to fire him after the bad review. Its not exactly either gamespot NOR jeff at fault here. Gamespots certainly playing it piss-poorly by caving into Eidos, but the real villain here is, of course, Eidos itself. Threatening to withdraw advertising money from a site simply because it gave your bad game a bad review, is a very dirty tactic. I never had respect for Jeff Gerstmann's reviews, or respect for Gamespot, but now I don't have any respect for Eidos either.
Originally Posted by Dr. Jamesa Claus How was this an issue to begin with? Even if CNET didn't like him this shouldn't be the slightest of issues. He reviewed games. It was his job to be objectionable.
And it was CNet who paid him, so it IS an issue. Specifically I think it was his tone in his reviews or something.
If you watch the video review, which was not so subtly removed from gamespot (still available on youtube), he knocked on the game very hard. But, then again, it was not a good game by any means.
The biggest moral issue in journalism is being objective. And the biggest pressure is to NOT be objective, and to bow to the payroll.
Games journalists and these big sites have always been on publishers payrolls. A shame they had to kick an honest reviewer (he gave TP an 8.. As I said, it's been brought into the public now so hopefully we'll start seeing some reviews and journalist with integrity.
This is obviously going to work backwards for Eidos;
1) Eidos game gets bad review from gamespot
2) Eidos fears bad review will make people not buy game
3) Eidos puts pressure on gamespot to fire whoever wrote the review
4) That guy gets fired, but draws massive media attention
5) All that media attention draws people to the fact the game sucks
6) The game flops
Whereas it may have done better if they just ignored it at all, because now all the attention is given to one of the lowest hardest reviews.
If anything the stupidest thing anyone could have done is fire the reviewer. To begin with:
A. The Reviewer loses his job.
B. Gamespot loses a reviewer.
C. Eidos becomes demonized by the media.
I just watched the video and I have to say that opening the review with "This is an ugly, ugly game" was a bit harsh. He mellows out towards the end, calling it "fairly standard". Also I think it's interesting, as someone pointed out in the comments, that none of the video footage shows anything after level 2 which suggests that maybe he just didn't spend more than half an hour playing it. I agreed with his TP review but what's controversial is the lack of consistency between that and his other reviews. Tony Hawk's Pro 3 got a perfect 10. What.
It's a shame if he has been fired, because he was only doing his job and in this case, probably very well. I remember reading an interview with an Australian games magazine editor who said that publishers know very well the influence that reviewers have, and these reviewers are often being offered lump sums of cash, holidays and prostitutes(!!) (Edit: Ref: http://www.joystiq.com/2007/03/28/pack-your-bags-australian-game-reviewers-offered-hookers/ ) IMO, Gamespot are quite obviously "being sponsored" by Sony. I'd be surprised if any of the large review sites have very much integrity at all to be honest.
I don't giva a damn about Jeff, Gamespot or Eidos. I just love the hype around it and the fact that people at Gamespot are massively giving it a 1.0 to rebel against this
Originally Posted by _Zigzag_ the Reindeer If anything the stupidest thing anyone could have done is fire the reviewer. To begin with:
A. The Reviewer loses his job.
B. Gamespot loses a reviewer.
C. Eidos becomes demonized by the media.
Its a lose-lose-lose situation.
yes but they didn't expect someone to reveal the story, in that case it would be a lose-win-win situation:
-Jeff loses his job
-Gamespot keep Eidos happy and ensure that further advertising deals with eidos will be made
-Eidos gets the reviewer out of his way as well as his video review.
Originally Posted by Hernan I don't giva a damn about Jeff, Gamespot or Eidos. I just love the hype around it and the fact that people at Gamespot are massively giving it a 1.0 to rebel against this
Originally Posted by Hernan I don't giva a damn about Jeff, Gamespot or Eidos. I just love the hype around it and the fact that people at Gamespot are massively giving it a 1.0 to rebel against this
Gamespot visitors are really taking this seriously.
I'm not bothered about the guy getting fired really - I'm more bothered about the fact that they let advertisers influence their review scores. The guy who got fired has been harsh for lots of games in his reviews. He gave Zelda for the Wii a 8.8/10 and everyone said he was crazy because it deserved higher. But I don't think he's ever made any invalid points in his reviews.
In hindsight he was right about TP. Fantastic game and all that, as a fan of the series I'd give it a solid 9 and not the 10 everyone else was shouting for.
Allegedly, publisher Eidos "took issue with the review and threatened to pull its ad campaign."
Isn't this more Eidos' fault for making a crappy game to begin with? Go and fire your programmers, not the guy who had to sit through and write a review for it.
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No big loss though, I never really liked Gamespot and I like it even less now. GS has had a lot of inaccurate reviews. The worst I've seen was a "The whole game plays out like a tutorial" (indicating that the reviewer never went past the first level), and I've never taken a GS review seriously since then. They give good reviews to overhyped games and almost not a glance to the unheard ones.
If you want a good game rating site, I find www.metacritic.com to be quite accurate.
Disclaimer: Any sarcasm in my posts will not be mentioned as that would ruin the purpose. It is assumed that the reader is intelligent enough to tell the difference between what is sarcasm and what is not.
Dustin Gunn Gnarly Tubular Way Cool Awesome Groovy Mondo
Registered 15/12/2004
Points 2659
3rd December, 2007 at 14:55:02 -
Gerstmann's a terrible reviewer but then again so are all "game journalists" so I'm conflicted
Originally Posted by -Slínka Claus- All reviews I've seen gave that game a bad review. =/
yeh same here but then i saw some reviews in some german mag and they said its an okay/alright/not too shappy game- made me wonder if they are just retarded. i mean nobody else likes that game but they did.
Doesn't seem to be that bad a game from what I've seen, just that it's nothing special.
Disclaimer: Any sarcasm in my posts will not be mentioned as that would ruin the purpose. It is assumed that the reader is intelligent enough to tell the difference between what is sarcasm and what is not.