In case you haven’t heard about it, the internet publication Gamespot recently fired one of their lead video game reviewers shortly after giving Kane and Lynch, a game that was then being heavily advertised on the site, a relatively bad score. The forums then exploded with accusations of Gamespot firing Gerstmann solely based on the game review and the ensuing fallout from Eidos Interactive, the publisher of “Kane and Lynch”.
The bad press has finally got Gamespot speaking on their own behalf, by way of this special report that “answers” many of the questions being asked by livid gamers. The real question being asked is whether or not publishers have an influence over game reviews. Big publishers like EA, Eidos, and the new behemoth Activision/Blizzard spend a ton of money on sites like Gamespot and IGN, making me a bit skeptical over whether or not that money does not in some way influence the outcome of these game reviews.
The guys at Penny Arcade have a wonderful way of expressing their opinions on these issues by way of their hilarious comic and blog, and usually have a good point hidden in-between the lines. This debacle raises some of the inherent problems with review scores, not just for video games, in general, something I hope to discuss on this blog in much greater detail soon.
3 Responses to “Gamespot responds on recent firing of Jeff Gerstmann”
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My skepticism is more about some minor influence that the publishers have with review sites. My problem with game reviewing doesn’t really lie there, it’s more with the 100 point scale that these reviews are based in (but i forgot to mention that in the post). I don’t think Jeff was fired for this incident, but I think there is some validity to the idea of gaming sites having “some” influence from their advertisers.
It’s not the first time that a reviewer for a major publication has given a videogame a mediocre review (bear in mind that 6.0 in the videogame-reviewing world is not “shitty” but “mediocre”) and it is hard to believe that all of a sudden advertisers have gotten the better of the press and suddenly have leverage over editorial content. A certain Jeff Gerstmann gave Metal Gear Solid for the PS1 an 8.5 back in 1998, and various other Ziff-Davis publications were at the time giving other hyped games with big financial backings , e.g. Final Fantasy VIII and The Legend of the Dragoon, shitty reviews. And in 1997, Gerstmann gave another Eidos game, Tomb Raider II, a 5.7, and obviously no termination resulted. Same reviewer, same publisher, shittier score, and no termination, and I doubt that Eidos had a substantially smaller share in the advertiser pot then than now, so I’m a little suspicious of your assertion that there is a systemic problem in videogame reviewing.
Yeah. That completely sucks. I remember reading his reviews, I was surprised that he gave Twilight Princess a 8.9, but it also adds credibility to him, if he’s not giving everything near-perfect review numbers, like IGN seems to do.