Fat Jeff fired from GS...reign of hate and bad taste over.

[Green Goblin 1964]

Say what you want about Jeff, but personally I am outraged that an advertiser can get someone fired for giving a negative review of their product. That is the power of the press being pulled out from beneath the feet of reporters. When advertisers can dictate the score that their product is given, the reviews completely lose credibility. I mean honestly, does anyone really believe Kane and Lynch deserved more than a 6.0? It looked stupid and generic as anything, but that apparently won't stop Eidos from throwing a hissy fit over an honest review, apparently. If Gamespot really did fire Jeff for not inflating a review score, then I think I'm pretty much through trusting Gamespot's reviews.

"The power of the press triumphs!" -JJJ

 

[GFreeman]

You should be through trusting anyone's reviews, because they all do it.

 

[Timstuff]

User reviews are worse for love-or-hate games, because the people who actually buy the games typically want to like it. If a game gets unanimously bad user reviews, there's a good chance it sucks. But if it gets over all "pretty good" reviews, then you can't tell, because a lot of the reviewers might just be in denial that it's not a good game.

This is the real fundamental problem with having game companies advertise on a site that reviews their products. You can't expect to give an honest review of a product without facing potential retaliation from your advertisers. IMO the only real way around this is to focus on getting advertisers that sell products that you don't review.

 

[TNC9852002]

Heh...I never really liked how he reviewed games...

-TNC

 

[Zenien]

http://kotaku.com/gaming/advertorials/1up-shows-support-for-gamespot-reviewers-328882.php

In the growing wake of the controversy surrounding GameSpot's alleged firing of editorial director Jeff Gerstmann comes a little bit of surprising solidarity.

A bunch of Ziff Davis staffers (including 1Up) made a banner to show their support for fellow game reviewers and marched it the two blocks to the GameSpot building on Friday. The banner, and impromptu march, shows that despite being competition, what may have happened at GameSpot could have wide-spread implications in the game publication industry.

http://kotaku.com/gaming/advertorials/1up-shows-support-for-gamespot-reviewers-328882.php

Obviously, being part of the Ziff Defense Force is going to make me biassed, but I think this is absolutely awesome on 1UP's part. It's great that other members of the mainstream enthusiast press (you know, as in not the blogosphere) are showing solidarity against some of the biz's more ****ed up practices, and I really hope that the various IGN teams take a stand, too. As immature, rote, and potentially crooked as the business is, this is one step towards making games journalism more legitimate (and yes, I know the irony of this statement).

Here's some pics from the 1UP Show Flicker, with some sexy pictures of

Spoiler

Donahoe.

 

[WhatsHisFace]

Where is this Donahoe?

 

[Electro UK]

What a wonderful waste of time.

 

[Zenien]

Better they do that than do nothing.

 

[TheCorpulent1]

At least Destructoid's waste of time was funny.

 

[Jerry!]

Gametrailers gave it a 9.7, but said a whoooooooole lotta bad stuff about it.

Yeah but it all comes down to the numbers. "Hey it got a 9.7, its near perfect" is just what they care about. Assasin's Creed got a disproportionate score compared to what some of the reviews said about it. I mean IGN's 3 reviews of the game ranged from great to downright horrible. How do you explain that? That really baffled me.

 

[Timstuff]

I'm glad to see such solidarity emerging from the game journalists in the wake of Jeff getting fired. The fact that this display they put on reached across multiple, competing game media outlets was even more encouraging. As I said before, whether or not you like Jeff is not the issue here. This issue is that Gamespot fired someone for giving an honest review of an advertiser's product, which was not very good, and was fired because of this. There are laws on the books stating that giving an endorsement of a product for payment without publicly declaring the transaction is illegal, so if Jeff was wise, he could probably sue Gamespot over getting fired.

To the people whining that this is a "waste of time," keep in mind, games are these people's JOBS. If you're a scientist and you got fired for making a scientific discovery that big science didn't want you to study, then would it be a waste of time if you and other scientists banded together to protest it? No. So why is that any different from protesting how Jeff writing a bad review for an advertiser's game, and then got fired because big business didn't like it?

 

[Zenien]

We never know for sure if the commentards are who they claim to be. But one prodigious poster with the new account "gamespot" is telling what reads like a credible insider story -- it's written in editor-speak -- of what happened to ex-CNET GameSpot reviewer Jeff Gerstmann, supposedly fired for low-scoring an advertiser's new game. "Gamespot"'s posts are in need of a 100-word-versioning, but it's Friday so forgettabout it here's the whole thing pasted in. I've bolded the newsy parts.

We're very clear in our review policies that all reviews are vetted by the entire team before they go live - everything that goes up is the product of an entire team's output. Our freelancers are especially guilty of making snide comments, but those are always yanked before the review goes live, because everyone in the office reads these reviews and makes sure they're up to our standards before they get put up.

If there was a problem with his reviews, then it would've been a problem with the entire team. Firing him without telling anyone implies that anyone else on this team can be fired at the drop of a hat as well, because none of us are writing any differently or meaner or less professionally than we were two years ago before the management changed. I'm sure management wants to spin this as the G-Man being unprofessional to take away from the egg on their face that results after a ten-year employee gets locked out of his office and told to leave the premises and then no one communicates anything to us about it until the next day.

This management team has shown what they're willing to do. Jeff had ten years in and was ****ing locked out of his office and told to leave the building.

What you might not be aware of is that GS is well known for appealing mostly to hardcore gamers. The mucky-mucks have been doing a lot of "brand research" over the last year or so and indicating that they want to reach out to more casual gamers. Our last executive editor, Greg Kasavin, left to go to EA, and he was replaced by a suit, Josh Larson, who had no editorial experience and was only involved on the business side of things. Over the last year there has been an increasing amount of pressure to allow the advertising teams to have more of a say in the editorial process; we've started having to give our sales team heads-ups when a game is getting a low score, for instance, so that they can let the advertisers know that before a review goes up. Other publishers have started giving us notes involving when our reviews can go up; if a game's getting a 9 or above, it can go up early; if not, it'll have to wait until after the game is on the shelves.

I was in the meeting where Josh Larson was trying to explain this firing and the guy had absolutely no response to any of the criticisms we were sending his way. He kept dodging the question, saying that there were "multiple instances of tone" in the reviews that he hadn't been happy about, but that wasn't Jeff's problem since we all vet every review. He also implied that "AAA" titles deserved more attention when they were being reviewed, which sounded to all of us that he was implying that they should get higher scores, especially since those titles are usually more highly advertised on our site.

I know that it's all about the money, and hey, I like money. I like advertising because it pays my salary. Unfortunately after Kasavin left the church-and-state separation between the sales teams and the editorial team has cracked, and with Jeff's firing I think it's clear that the management now has no interest at all in integrity and are instead looking for an editorial team that will be nicer to the advertisors.

When companies make games as downright contemptible as Kane and Lynch, they deserve to be called on it. I guess you'll have to go to Onion or a smaller site for objective reviews now, because everyone at GS now thinks that if they give a low score to a high-profile game, they'll be ****canned. Everyone's ****ing scared and we're all hoping to get Josh Larson removed from his position because no one trusts him anymore. If that doesn't happen then look for every game to be Game of the Year material at GameSpot.

http://valleywag.com/tech/jeff-gerstmann/gamespot-editor--on-fired-reviewer-328775.php

Gamespot has also closed any user submitted reviews of Kane and Lynch because their own members were firebombing it with 1.0's. A lot of Gamespot forum posters are being banned currently.

 

[GFreeman]

I was actually going to buy Kane and Lynch before this.

 

[Zenien]

At least Destructoid's waste of time was funny.

I'd start running if I were you.

 

[GFreeman]

Who is that?

 

[Zenien]

Someone who looks like he's going to set a building on fire.

[blackout]Jeremy Parish/ToastyFrog[/blackout]

 

[GFreeman]

So do those people actually work somewhere, or are they just NeoGAF people? If they work somewhere, they probably shouldn't be complaining, since I'm sure they've done it too. Everyone gets paid for reviews.

 

[Mr. Smash'n Bash]

Take that person I don't know.

 

[Zenien]

So do those people actually work somewhere, or are they just NeoGAF people? If they work somewhere, they probably shouldn't be complaining, since I'm sure they've done it too. Everyone gets paid for reviews.

They are 1UP/EGM Staff Members. I don't know if they ever accepted money for a favourable review, but Hsu has talked about how 1UP/EGM has lost tons of revenue support from publishers for not fluffing reviews.

 

[GFreeman]

I don't believe them. Maybe they refused to fluff up kabuki warriors, but I know they fluffed up Gears of War.

 

[Zenien]

They drink on their podcast.

 

[GFreeman]

Alcohol is how the devil enters your body and makes you give ****ty reviews.

 

[Max J Power]

While I disagree with some of his (and other Gamespot writer's) reviews, the reason for firing him is bull****, and makes Gamspot look a lot less credible in reviewing.

 

[TheCorpulent1]

Yeah, I can't see myself trusting any of GameSpot's reviews anymore (not that I really did before, since I disagreed with a lot of the ones for games I'd actually played). 1Up's looking good if they really don't fluff their reviews. I have a hard time believing any ad-based review site doesn't fluff their material at least a little bit, but I'll check some of their scores on games I've played and see if they match my tastes, at least.

 

[Zenien]

The 1up crew talks about the firing in the latest podcast at the 1:04:40 mark.

http://www.podtrac.com/pts/redirect.mp3?http://download.gamevideos.com/Podcasts/120707.mp3