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MindChamber
"If reality is dependent on what each person perceives it to be,Then reality as a collective does not exist."~MindChamber
"Do not be defined by your conditioning, Otherwise the rest of the world will define your path."~IntraFace

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School Of Visual Arts

Allentown PA

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Why Sometimes being a Straight Shooter, can lead to being shot in the foot.

Posted by MindChamber - December 1st, 2007


I always wanted to wait until something really important or meaningful warranted a blog. well, Nothing warrants that than the termination of Gamespot's more recognized and respected of Editors. Jeff Gerstmann. I'm sure you all have seen the countless articles that have flooded the net at this point.
Basically the game ,kane and Lynch by Eidos was supposed to be a success, a runaway hit title the company banked on. In an effort to make sure it was a success Eidos, invested 100s of thousands of dollars into Gamespots advertising. When Jeff's review was released, the funds were apparently revoked.
If theres any question about Eidos's integrity
know this, they know the importance of a score to their wallet

The termination of Jeff isn't just another typical corporate move slams the little game review company scenario. This is a slap in the face of what made the gaming phenomenon so profound in the first place. Its visceral, and exciting, and alive. Big media has since tapped much of that excitement out of music and films. So now it has its sights set on the budding Gaming Medium.

Jeff represented a lot of what gaming was and what it is no longer. A no holds barred ,fragfast, medium, unapologetic, and unchained by worldwide pressures of a bloated system that need mass revenue consumption to sustain. Now that games are main stream. Theres no room for fresh new, and exciting. The powers that be need to make it a cost effective profit machine, even if that means all the raw unbridled passion that originally went with it is subdued, in an effort in keeping the machine moving.

Slowly but surely, the change from gaming phenomenon to media mainstream has been taken effect. Video Games Shows are slowly being taken over with the typical E Access Hollywood flair, complete with female models and fake smiles.

Game companies are hiring spoke-persons now to sell their products. (Jade Raymond anyone?) Gone are the days that the nerdy disheveled programmer gets a chance to enthusiastically promote their dreams and goals.

We all respected Jeff because he told it like it is. A lot of people gave him flak for it, but many more respect him for it. While he may have been known as the 8.8 guy (for giving the Wii Zelda that Score) many more seem to also forget he had to fight to give that same property a perfect 10 when it first hit the Nintendo 64. He has proven himself over and over again with his expertise.

Beyond his reviews, Jeff is an incredible personality. He brought much needed fun and humor to his Video reviews and his hosting on, On the spot. Balancing out the video duds like Richardo and Brad Shoemaker, who seem to fumble and eat their words whenever on camera, Jeff was always there to keep things moving, keep things fun and fresh.

I sincerely hope the best for Jeff Gerstmann, but I have no doubt he will succeed in whatever he applies himself to. He is an incredible talent, there's no question.

It's the rest of us now that I'm worried about.

In closing, there is nothing more I can say here. Besides, words are meaningless without action. As actions speaks volumes of ones character and integrity such as Jeff. So I will end this blog with a simple, click.

Why Sometimes being a Straight Shooter, can lead to being shot in the foot.


Comments

Yup. I canceled my gamespot subscription about a week ago. But I dont truely think that gaming is commercialized, although the big ones certanitly are. Look at newgrounds. Many of our games are almost getting to commertial quality, so in a few years who knows?

Also: How did you get landed a Garbage Whistle?

Yes while the game we have may look commercial quality , its nice to know it can be as vulgar , nonsensical , and as dirty as we want.

I got the garbage whistle the same way jeff got canned, I voted low on shit Star syndicate reviews, but the flashes got protected by mass voting, thus making my zeros ineffective.

It's all politics. The higher ups feel the need that they should protect themselves rather than make the customers happy. The second their position is threatened in any way the person who threatens them is gone.

Well written, man. I thought I hated that guy for his 8.8, until you told me about good ol' Zelda 64's score of 10.

I'm already working on an animation for how I feel about the whole thing.

Anyways, Jose, I'm as cynical as the next but I actually think this could be a positive thing. I think CNet and Eidos are shitting their pants at the PR mess they have on their hands, which is sending a clear message that this shit cant be done without consequences. Bad people that do bad things get their day.

Anyways, keep making it rain on dem hoes

So who's going topless to promote the Behemoth now?

Lol, we'll probably use the same person you used to sell out your Wookie site.

lolz

I never really went on gamespot for reviews, unless it was a game i was going to get. (i dont purchase games much so i had to plan ahead) Nevertheless, someone shouldnt be fired because he disagrees with what his employer is advertising, although I'm sure it's happened before.
I thought Kane and Lynch would be good though, what with IO Interactive being the makers of Hitman and all. I guess not.

was Kane and Lynch bad?

I usually go ga-ga for anything from the makers of Hitman.. freedom fighter was a pretty good one for something that was very unhyped.

FreedomFighters was amazing, I too was looking forward to this game for that one reason,
But I never got into hitman..

There are some of us who still try to blam those stupid waste of bandwidth cartoons.

Dont give up hope

Blarg!

IGN does similar shit. If a game developer gives them enough money, they'll hype the game up as much as possible, whoring it out, only to upset everyone when the reviews come in and GUESS WHAT the game blows chunks.

This sort of crap happens all the time though. How many times has Nintendo fired the whole staff of the people who run their "magazine" only to replace them with someone else now? 4? 5?

Gaming has been Mainstream ever since the MMORPG was invented.
The internet is becoming mainstream as well.
Presidential Hopefuls having a debate based on questions from the people on YOUTUBE? The people who sit in front of a webcam and droll on for hours about themselves?

Every time a new form of leisurely entertainment is found, it's quickly mangles and corrupted by the big companies trying to insert themselves into it so they can get a piece of the action.

Anyone remember when the Sundance Film Festival was about independent films? How long ago was that? Like 10 years ago?

The media is out of control.

you are too right, I guess I know its there but turn a blind eye, until it finally flaps me in the face.

Ahh, so that's what that Penny Arcade strip was talking about. The clarification doesn't make it any more funny, though :\

Thanks to programs like Steam, the concept of purchased software download is slowly becoming ingrained in the minds of young gamers everywhere. Eventually games will be acquired more and more digitally than at present, and corporate influence will lose its grasp on inspired game developers. In the free world of the internet, gamers will depend solely on word of mouth to spread word of the next great game in a way that corporate sponsored advertising never could. Do you think a multi-million-dollar sponsored Numa Numa dance or 4chan meme would be more effective than the real thing left on its own? Fact is, we don't have to like it, because goddamn it we're gonna hear about it anyway. And if Jeff is meant to come back, he'll do it without a corporate salary (read: noose).

Worry not old friend. Neither we nor Jeff will die. Unless the internet itself is held hostage by business, we should be safe. FOR NOW...

lmao @ people crying over an 8.8/10 review for a zelda game. who cares. same goes for gamespot/CNET. they're basically making the statement that you can review a game whatever you want, but if we don't like it we'll fire you. shows how much they care about their staff. you'd think it'd be for the love of games, not the love of money. that jeff guy should just start his own site. CNET's only concern these days is fighting with google and microsoft for king of the online hill.

i spent the better half of my night last night researching this issue.. was kind of interesting how its all snowballing. Apparently a ton of people are canceling their subscriptions,i thought it was just you.

itll be interesting what happens to stop the bleeding.

oh really, thats hot, I didnt think people cared as much which is why I made a post about it.

But when you've read reviews, and watched a show with the same guy for almost 10 years, its hard not to consider them family.

At first I was infuriated (and still am), but now I'm wondering about what will happen. Of course we've seen people like you who've canceled their descriptions (personally I've always been a bit too cheap), but now, what will be the fate of the amazing Jeff?

Will he be rehired? --Probably not, and even so, he would probably refuse
Will Jeff start his own website? --Probably not, unless he can get a team
Will other editors quit? -Maybe, now that they have to worry more about their job
Will Jeff work for a gaming company like other editors? --I hope, let Jeff bring the quality to them (as long as them aren't Eidos and EA)

I'm 99% confident that he was terminated for his review, but that still leaves the 1%... Aren't we all judging things a little fast? I mean, rumors are exactly that, rumors no hard proven facts, and there's a snowball chance that we may all be wrong. Even if the situation their in right now is akin to a person standing over a still warm, dead body, carrying a smoking gun and cackling out loud "Haha! He's dead! He's dead!" with obvious glee...

Ok, then. Lets look at the facts.
1) the advertising to Kane and Lynch were removed from gamespot.
2)Jeffs Video review was removed from gamespot
3)Jeffs Written review was edited on gamespot
4)Links to the review from the Kane and Lynch site have been removed

I can keep going if ya want.

It's gotta be a tough balance for Gamespot... They need to write objective reviews, but their salaries are paid by the same companies they are supposed to be objective about. The previous management at Gamespot managed to hold that line, but it looks like the new management caved.

I always fear that sort of moment here on NG. We were dropped by two of our better ad companies during the V-Tech Rampage fiasco (and it still hurts today), but the game remains here on the site, if for no other reason than to NOT bend to that sort of shit. But maybe some day all our salaries will depend on one big advertiser, and that big advertiser will say "Hey, you need to pull this submission because we don't like it." All I know is, that day will suck and hopefully we'll do the right thing (unless the submission really does suck, in which case my conscious will survive) But I do a pretty good job at failing to ever have a big advertiser in the first place so we'll probably never have to worry about that.

As long as we let the site live, the way it is, beautiful and gross, we will be fine,
The Trick is to be able to flirt with mainstream without ever actually be consumed by it, and as long as greed is never part of the equation, that will never happen.

NG will continue to florish and remain a staple of the underground forever.

see, that only shows you just how powerful money is.
i think what gayspot did was chocolate covered bullshit with raisins.
the fact that the editor gave his review, his HONEST review was great.
but to fire him just because the game company cried about it?
"hey, your editor is picking on our game. if you don't stop him, we'll pull your cover."

i'm sure if Artie Lange was here, he'd go: "WAAAAAAAH!"

damn shame.

Mindchamber, I must apologize, I was being sarcastic. Sorry. My analogy
should have been more incriminating so as to make that clear, so instead of merely cackling, I should have wrote something "I did it! The bastard is finally dead!" or similar.

The truth of the matter is that I'm so disgusted by what's happened that I'm longer going to visit gamestop, for the time being and it was THE site I used to go to check for reviews on a game (before anywhere else, in fact). However, I'll probably continue to go to gamefaqs despite this, because, after all, it's gamefaqs...

its cool, Its right to question everything, and alot of people have said we shouldnt jump to conclusions, so even if you were joking it was a smart response.,

which is why I stated those facts. its all still up in the air but alot of the evidence is pretty damning.

I wonder though, if gamespot didn't want him to review the game that low, couldn't they have just not put up the review in the first place?

It seems to me that Gamespot was just trying to find a scapegoat for their own "mistake" so blamed the one who wrote the review.

Anyway most big review sites are like that though, more money = better review.

As that article I linked to suggests, the new managment team is at fault here. There has been requests for removal in the past of their reviews at the risk of losing money, and gamespot refused,
This new management team wasnt used to the pressures of Game companies threatening to remove revenue based on a review. They seem to have folded easily to the pressure.

and while most big review sites run with out integrity, gamespot wasn't one of them.
Just because alot of them did it, doesnt make it any less despicable.

Dude, this is so true. Funny thing though, I bet the Zelda otakus are celebrating over this. But enough about the Zelda "fans."

Fact is, any game that gets a lot of mainstream hype will get the same treatment. That's the whole deal, the companies don't want anyone to criticize their game in a intelligent matter cause they think they can manipulate people's choices when it comes to buying a game or not. Hence why Jeff got fired.

Hell the companies have been doing this for years. Look at Fallout 3 from Bethesda. Gamespot and other mainstream media companies are kissing Bethesda's ass so much that if anyone points out Fallout 3's flaws (and there are a ton of them) they basically crucify that person (or in this case, the Fallout fans and No Mutants Allowed) and treats them like a jew in Nazi Germany. They even make someone's blog entry that bashes and insults the fans based on false stereotypes and propaganda into a featured blog on their main page. And yes that happened (I wrote about it in my blog.) And the sad truth about it is, that this is not going to change for a long long time. Truth and Integrity in the media is pretty much dead.

Em. You may have provided me with a few minutes of curiousity. Do you know where I can find Jeff Gerstmann's review? I'd really like to see it. Or if you could elaborate on what exactly was so bad about it.

also, kudos to you for the picture at the bottom. I thought it was hilarious when I first seen the first two words on it that stood out: Cancel Subscription.

the words "kane and Lynch" is a link to his review.

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