What a well made post and yet I don't know much about any of it. Best of luck to him, I've seen that game advertised a lot on TV, looks gay.

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?

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

*Stands on my soap box*
I have always been able to see why he votes the way he does, even if I don't agree.

Hardcore gaming is dying and in part because people think that, just like on Newgrounds, if they get enough people to play, despite it being a piece of crap, then it doesn't really matter how much work is put into it or how smoothly it works. It is not a success if you hype it up, millions play, and are dissapointed, but nobody seems to care.

In the end, it amounts to how many units are sold. This means we can't alienate the casual Wii gamer, the uptight PS3 owner, or the trigger-happy, unskilled 13 year old on the XBox 360, so it is all bundled up into a neat little package that fails on all accounts.

Games like Starcraft, where people can never be the best and the game always evolves, are failing for this reason. Nobody wants to buy a game that they will lose. After all, where is the fun in the potential to lose?

Oversaturation is going to kill the art of the video game. Certain people like the kind folks at the Behemoth, and Jeff Gerstmann are trying to keep it alive, but soon it will all be part of the formulaic crap we get on the T.V.

*Is ejected from my soap box via a brick in the face*
(Sorry for ranting)

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

http://www.newgrounds.com/portal/view /413060

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.

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.

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.

On a related note: EA games.
Huge, faceless, and uncaring.
They shit out games and half ass any attempts to fix bugs. With C&C: ZH theres huge bugs even in the multiplayer, one of the biggest parts of a game.
What you did was great, you and everyone else who canceled their subscriptions hit GameSpot in the wallet.

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...

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.

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...

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.

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.

Put it better than I could have. I wish I had a Total Access subscription before just so I could cancel it.

Truth is this is how the world works. No one person can expect to do something against what the company they work for has nudged them to do. I admit it was terrible he got fired for it but somewhere down the line he knew that if he gave it a review that did not please his bosses he would get fired.
I first hand, have experienced a boss that told employees to give a better review of a game we tested as they refused. They knew that the boss would be unhappy but dignity will most commonly overpower the urge to lie and know you lied just to make the boss happy. Of course they were not fired only because the boss changed the review to better suit the clients expectations. Soon after they quit. All of this to say life is cruel and don't be so shocked by this. In our terrible world this happens all the time. It's just not mentionned everywhere and so pubicly.

I never really go to GameSpot, and like hell I am going to now, but I think that is bull sh!t. This guy honestly reviews a game and he get fired. That would be like if Honda or something was sponsoring the news, and the news reports about a flaw in all their vehicles that got messed up in the factory. He is just telling the truth, and he shouldn't be punished for it. I haven't got a chance to play Kane and Lynch, but even if I played it, and thought it was the best damn game I have ever played, I would still be behind him all the way. And another things to the makers of this game. You probablly knew about these flaws and these games and still released it. Even if you didn't, go get some guys from GameSpot to test it for free. You might not have had a enough time, I don't but it is stupid. Don't blame someone else for your bad game. Also I would have done the same thing as you MindChamber if I was subscribe there. Also I support you on reviewing the Star Syndicate like they should. I used to do that, but my reviews of them get removed just because I say exactly what they are doing. Mass voting, and not deserving the score it should get. I just fear my account getting banned, but I still vote 0 every time I can for the 1 through 5 scale. Aw well I guess that is all I can say. Thanks for making this post. I didn't hear about this til now, but I am glad I know now.

Remember Remember, the 29th of November.

VIVA LA JEFF!

Check this out:

http://www.joystiq.com/2007/12/03/bla ckout-monday-virtual-boycott-targets-
gamespot-cnet-sites/

Blackout Monday, basically it's a boycott against CNET.

the gaming industury became as bland as other media when people started using games as ways to sell bad movies.

holy shit now im more deppressed then ever.

im stealing your header ok?

It's disappointing that people get their panties in a bunch when they don't see a 10. Some people just can't seem to see a middle ground. Even if you have a great time with a game, I'm sure there's room for improvement. People ought to hang onto their tens and make them actually mean something.

its so lame that the game is getting glowing reviews from other corp controlled sites.. it makes me want to give up reading game sites... i dont take any advice to heart but it would fucking be cool to read a review and get a semi average joe's take on the game...

k i did even more research on it since my last post and it turns out even in the reviews Eidos is using.. they actually arent the actual reviews that gameinformer and other well known sites gave.. its kind of pathetic that they are going so far to save the game. Bleh why did you get me hooked on this dramaaaa

Eternal Badassery. Thank you Mindchamber. You spoke the mind I didn't know I had. Shit, I canceled my GI subscription for the overzealous 10/10 reviews.
But yeah, you're tapping on that which is the core problem of, well, that which makes us unable to "have nice things". <3

Fuck gamespot! I used to use gamespot for EVERYTHING related to games until this episode, and they just proove to be nothing but a greedy corp.

Funny thing is, i started using 1UP instead and i seriously think many of their reviews and articles are way better then most of the gamespot ones.
I seriously hope gamespot reviewers will find somewhere else to work, since i kinda liked some of them. If they don't, it just prooves they are driven by money and not love for games

After reading your view, many other peoples, and seeing the origional peice I am going to say they were deffinently using him as a scape goal. This just goes to show that all these comanys are just money hungery, but to blame the reviewers for watching thei own hides isn't totaly right, a lot of them probably have familys they have to worry about over morals. This is a sad but truthful.

on gamebump.com (me: khaoz) they only gave that game ONE out of FIVE stars!

you and chase from TN are a couple? omg

I hate it when corporations only take actions based on making money, and not based on integrity. Thats why I love the japanese industry more than the north american (or in this case English), generally. I find there's more honour, pride, and respect for the value of art from japanese productions. I find a japanese company is more likely to pour money into a new idea that might not sell enough to make lots of profit, where an american company is more likely to spend its money trying to trick consumers into buying a game that doesn't even meet standards of today's market. In one case money is sacrificed in the name of making art, in the other case art is sacrificed in the name of making money.

http://uk.gamespot.com/news/6183666.h tml
http://www.shacknews.com/onearticle.x /50157

According to these two links, Jeff Gerstmann's position being dismissed was unrelated to the Kane and Lynch review and has nothing to do with any external publishers. I believe this whole notion of giving a game a 6.0 and getting his position dismissed because of it, sounds like a conspiracy theory and like all conspiracy theories, it does not mean it necessarily happened. If that WERE the case, and this conspiracy theory is all true, then, I'd think Gamespot would have taken down the review and posted up a new one with a better score.

Furthermore, I'm a little bit confused about your media mainstream theory. By mainstream, are you saying that the industry is trying to sell their games to a large number of people? If so, then I'd say it has always been that way. Look at Mario. Look at Halo. Look at Grand Theft Auto. Great examples of mass media that have positively impacted the gaming industry. I don't think Mass Media has hurt the gaming industry in anyway, I think it expanded it.

As for the money spent on advertising, that's up to the companies to decide. Doesn't take away from the quality of the games. If they are going to bribe review sites/mags that are already profitable for their quality reviews, good luck to them! Once, everyone finds out that a terrible game was given not such a bad score, the whole company will eventually die (and I'm sure companies such as Gamespot know that). Obviously, Gamespot is taking a big hit right now with all these rumours flying around (and they know this) but they are not giving any detailed information in Gerstmann's dismissal as to legality issues (according to them) and ethical standards (though, the gaming community expects Gamespot to give reason and therefore think, that if they do not give a reason, it's a coverup).

'Game companies are hiring spoke-persons now to sell their products. (Jade Raymond anyone?)'

I don't remember Jade Raymond being hired as a spokesperson but from what I've read, she's a producer in the gaming market, having graduated from McGill University with a Bachelors in Computer Science and a lot of experience in the industry (she was doing programming for games).

Anyways, I do hope we find the truth behind Gerstmann getting fired besides all these rumours that claim to have heard it from 'anonymous sources'. I highly doubt he got fired for a bad review though and all parties involved seem to be silent on the case (even Jeff Gerstmann)...

yup

Er... If possible, you might want to change your title a bit. Seen from the front page, it reads:

Why sometimes being a straight shooter, can lead to being shot in the....

This is due to the title being too long, so... it makes for some strange and vivid mental images... But is that a good thing or a bad thing?

yea i borrowed kane and lynch from block bucter and it sucked ball sack i beat it in 2 days and the game play was shity and like it just gave me that mediocre copy cat feel yaknow? btw are you really 72?

EH Its just people, for to go with the group. Money gives happiness to people, and depending on how many people it touchs will in turn affect the everyone. People like to make people feel good, most of the time.
It is things like this that twist, and bend the minds of all weak souls who only care about short term effects, "hey as long as I keep this cash I don't really care about anyone else" Maybe something along the lines of that.