December 1, 2007 -
If the highly detailed rumors surrounding Jeff Gerstmann's firing are true, then the people who run GameSpot have, by their own hand, utterly trashed a great media brand.The Spot has long been regarded as the most professional of all the game-oriented news and review sites. It's a personal favorite of mine, so this news makes me especially sad. When GamePolitics occasionally links to a review for a particular game, it has always been to GameSpot.
I don't know Jeff Gerstmann, although I met him once or twice at various E3 shows. But any working journalist can summon righteous indignation over what appears to have happened here. Fired because an advertiser didn't like your review of their crappy product?
Disgraceful, if true.
Impossible to defend.
There's no official confirmation, of course, and that may never come. Corporate apparatchiks - like those at CNET who apparently pulled the trigger on Gerstmann - will invariably hunker down in times like these, preferring to ride out the storm behind vague press releases which pretend they are protecting their victim's privacy. And Gerstmann may have obligated himself to keep quiet in return for some type of severance package. But the mounting unofficial evidence is so detailed that it rings true.
If there's any legitimate damage control to be done here, CNET should do it, and quickly. Frankly, I don't expect any.
And GamePolitics readers shouldn't expect to see any more links to GameSpot.
UPDATE: Check out this compilation of Gerstmann news by GameSpot reader Subrosian. Penny Arcade has a great cartoon (we're showing one panel at left) and commentary on the scandal.
This Valleywag post, citing an anonymous commenter with the screen name "gamespot" is probably the most daming information on the Gerstmann affair:
...I'm sure management wants to spin this as the G-Man being unprofessional to take away from the egg on their face... This management team has shown what they're willing to do. Jeff had ten years in and was fucking locked out of his office and told to leave the building...
There has been an increasing amount of pressure to allow the advertising teams to have more of a say in the editorial process...
When companies make games as downright contemptible as Kane and Lynch, they deserve to be called on it... everyone at GS now thinks that if they give a low score to a high-profile game, they'll be shitcanned...
Joystiq has tracked down more commentary from past and present GameSpot staffers.
Comments
On the one hand it sounds like the guy wasn't the greatest of reviewers. So it's within the realm of possibility that management finally had enough and decided to rid themselves of him over the Kane & Lynch review.
On the other hand, it sounds like he hasn't done anything that different from his fellow reviewers, and furthermore his review work on K&L has been pulled. Staffers and former staffers find the situation fishy, and notably they aren't exactly putting forth a lot of effort to defend Gamespot. Additionally the main complaint from the company's side seems to be Jeff's "tone", and unfortunately that can easily be taken to mean that they didn't like that he was panning a game that they were currently selling a lot of advertising for. And so on, and so forth. So it's sounding a lot like he indeed was fired due to advertiser complaints, or feared advertiser complaints.
I'd like to give Gamespot the benefit of the doubt, but things are currently stacked against them, and no one is really doing a good job of defending them. Certainly we'll never know the truth for sure, but right now it's looking a lot like the truth is Gamespot management wants to avoid giving well advertised games poor reviews, and Jeff was the scapegoat to that effect. Unfortunately for them, they seem to have not realized the realities of trying to execute such a policy without destroying their credibility.
The funny thing about the whole "blatant advert" is that I was simply responding to earlier posts in the thread asking what people suggested for alternative review sources. I am in no way affiliated with GR and I don't stand to make any sort of profit from pointing people their way.
Perhaps you would prefer that I just add some sort of generic "well that sucks, screw the review industry" comment, but I prefer to actually propose a solution I feel is relevent. Before you dismiss the comment as "poorly executed" spam, try actually checking out the site in question.
If they did have a clause int he contract as zerodash suggested, that the advertisers cannot discriminate for bad reviews, than gamespot could have sued eidos over this to protect their employees, but no, this clearly paints hwere their priorities lie, with the payroll, not their people or their journalistic integrity.
If the contract is worded as such, then Eidos need not have leaned on Gamespot over current advertising contracts, but instead leaned on C|Net over future advertising contracts. Basically given C|Net the nudge they needed to fire someone they seem to have been partially inclined to let go anyway.
The timing stinks, and there's no way Gamespot or C|Net can BS their way out of this. If it truly has nothing to do with the review, then their timing is terrible.
Not to come off as a semantics arguing dick or anything, but the phrase is actually "The proof of the pudding is in the eating." Just saying. Otherwise, good points.
Metacritic may be owned by CNET, but they do not review games, they only compile reviews by other online review sites and average the scores.
Here is an article from a few months back regarding Metacritic and other meta-review sites like RottonTomatoes: http://www.gamerevolution.com/features/mind_over_meta
The article is primarily a criticism, but points out the weirdness that can happen when they try to compile reviews from a bunch of sites using completely different rating scales (graded, numbered, starred, etc.).
I use Metacritic occasionally, but usually ignore the numbers they assign, and instead read the top few and bottom few reviews to get a better idea of what to expect.
To put it another way, it is the media's job to demonstrate they are trustworthy, not the public's job to assume they are trustworthy until proven otherwise. All the circumstancial evidence points to the rumor being true, some of it rather damning. If GameSpot wants to be trusted, they need transparency on how they prevent conflicts of interest. The ball is now in their court.
Is this a decision made in light of the vast demographic of children who only come to this site to look at the pictures?
He probably nabbed the version floating around that was already censored. I've seen both versions on various sites. My guess is that he cut it from a strip posted elsewhere that was already censored.
As for nobody saying why he was fired, that is par for the course anymore. We live in such a litigious society that you just don't say anything that could leave you open to be sued. It's hard to get anything from a company other than "yes they worked here from X to Y" and maybe if they would hire them again. Maybe. Most times they just confirm the dates.
If Gerstmann can be bought out to not speak out about being treated poorly by his former employer then why couldn't he be bought out to not speak out about a bad game?
I beg to differ. Just ask Kotaku.
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Papa Midnight
It comes from a Gamespot blog, and the author states :
"Also thanks to Penny-Arcade for use of their image, which has been re-oriented vertically and (unfortunately) had the s-word censored to comply with the blog formatting and TOU."
http://www.gamespot.com/users/subrosian/show_blog_entry.php?topic_id=m-1...
It's unlike GP censored the PA comic. Rather there's a censored version floating around on various sites where it would be censored, and it's likely Dennis just cut the panel from that one rather than the original.
I sure hope someone else hires Gerstmann soon. Whoever does will earn instant credibility for their reviews in my eyes. I will still watch Gamespot reviews until that happens, as they do make pretty well produced video reviews. It's hard for me to blame Gamespot very much for this, since it's hard to stay in exsistance if you make a habit of losing hundreds of thousands of dollars in ad money.
I'm also going to repeat myself from the last Gerstmann news item: someone noticed that Jeff's XBox Live gamerscore had only one progress achievement listed. Until I hear something about THAT, I'm going to believe that C|net did the right thing.
What on earth happened to have him be quiet about his termination?
If I was in his shoes and got canned unjustly like that? I'd be making hell...
Something else must be happening here or it's just rumors at best dispite clues and such to being true. No way he'd sit there and button his lip unless he has a good reason too.
GP: Good question. A couple of things could be at play. First, he may have been given severance money conditioned on not discussing his termination; also, the game journalism biz is a fairly small universe. Lashing out doesn't look good to your next potential employer and, believe me, the entire biz is watching this case. Jeff looks like a martyr and victim here. That's to his advantge.
Culled from the Gamespot blog of one BobC:
Also love the wannabe Nancy Drews who are pointing at Jeff's lack of K&L XBL achievements as "evidence" that he didn't play the game. Publishers often send final console code on gold-master discs that will only play in special developer consoles. These consoles are not hooked up to the consumer version of Xbox Live which is why achievements are not logged. That's why he doesn't have as many achievement points from the game as you'd expect. But it's great that so many of you are proud of yourselves for looking up this information and leaning on it as some kind of truth -- it merely exposes how little you truly know about professional gaming editorial, and how woefully under-qualified you are for making disparaging remarks.
Here's the link:
http://www.gamespot.com/users/BobC/show_blog_entry.php?topic_id=m-100-25...
That subrosian guy linked to in the GP article lists him as one of the current or former Gamespot staffers. That answer any of your questions?
http://www.gamersinfo.net/
They're small, and don't use a number scale to rate the games they review, but they might be to some of ya'lls liking.
Right now, Gamespot has the "tone" of the piece that they approve of. If you believe that Eidos was behind it, the score and tone they approve of as well. Does that review make you want to buy it? It's still a 6. The review still says it's a bad game not worth buying. There seems to be alot of effort going on here to change absolutely nothing.
There also seems to be alot of the confirmational bias. People want, or predisposed to believe something, and when news comes out that could make a connection people run with the rumor and act on it as if it were news. If you believe that games cause violence then any violence are caused by games. If you believe that companies are trying to buy off every reviewer is then bought off or fired and nobody waits for a connection to be made. GP didn't wait til there was some confirmation other than 3rd party anonymous reports before coming out and stating that gamespot links wouldn't be used anymore. Again, all on a rumor that is still unsourced. There are plenty of highly detailed rumors about any number of subjects. Doesn't make them true.
Nobody who is a party to this has made the claim that he was fired for a negative review. While one wouldn't expect it from Gamestop, one would certainly expect it from the person who got fired. If they fired him because he wouldn't be quiet about a bad review how is he staying so silent when being asked to give a bad review about a former employer? "Legal Reasons" is all he has said. Reading into that a grand conspiracy theory is a bit much.
My large point here is that credibility is not the same as a criminal trial. We should be holding journalistists to high standards, not just ignoring any doubts we have abotu them if we can think of a reason to do so. That sort of attitude is why Bush is still president.
The bottom line is that rumors aside, the actions of Cnet and Gamespot do match fairly well with Cnet pushing to bias the review in favor of generous advertisers.
Sure there's the matter of innocent until proven guilty, but this isn't a court of law, it's the court of public opinion. As such we don't need proof beyond a reasonable doubt, we just need undisputed evidence that it's likely to have occurred. Right now we've got that undisputed evidence, which really doesn't bode well for Gamespot.
@Cattleprod
The thing is, companies running ads complaining about the scores they get is presumably common. Reviewing websites responding to those complaints in this manner isn't. While Eidos may have asked for a change to the review, or threatened not to advertise with Gamespot in the future, it's still Cnet that decided to get rid of Jeff. Also Eidos is reportedly a bit freaked by the bad press, so I'm sure they're getting plenty of hate. It's just that Gamespot/Cnet is the worse offender in this case.
Not to mention the fact that if he indeed was fired for unproffesional work overall and not just kane and lynch he would probably say he was fired for only kane and lynch to increase his odds of finding work elsewell (or it could be revenge). So even he's not the most reliable.
Proof would have been someone coming out and publicly confirming it and that includes the victim. Proof would have been a fundamentally altered review or score. Proof would have been any number of things that would add some credibility to the story.
It doesn't matter how wide spread the rumor is. It doesn't matter how many times the rumor is repeated as fact. If that were true then we would all have to accept the claim that the Marines use Doom as a training aide because of far more notable places that myth has turned up. I find it amazing that the same people who know this fundamental truth are so willing to turn a blind eye to it when it becomes inconvenient to what they want it to be true.
UPDATE: Check out this compilation of Gerstmann news by GameSpot reader Subrosian. http://www.gamespot.com/users/subrosian"
;D
That's probably because people were spamming it with 1.0s to bring the User Score for the game down and show support for Gerstmann.
Yeah, Ace of Sevens is being slightly more specific than I was. Here, I'll elaborate even more.
The current employees and the terminated employees wouldn't be able to say anything legally. The current employees it would be grounds for termination, and for Jeff it'd be grounds for a lawsuit.
Here take a look at this link:
http://www.virtualfools.com/games/jeff-gerstmann/
it holds a round up of various Gamespot employee and former employee's reactions. The former employees speak out in support of Jeff. The current employees express a general state of shock. With the except of one Tim Tracy, whose response suggests that he too will be leaving the company:http://www.gamespot.com/users/TimT/show_blog_entry.php?topic_id=m-100-25233420
In short plenty of people are defending Jeff using their names. None are defending or attacking Cnet using their names.
So despite what you claim Mauler, there's more than just baseless rumors floating around. Cnet fired Jeff. The manner in which they did so has shaken the staff that is friends with him. That certainly lends creditability to the reports of the ground being questionable. Not to mention they did entirely remove his video review of the game. I'd call that a fundamentally altered review, wouldn't you?
"404 Not Found"
Interesting...
The money part of all of this is a real sticking point for me. Video game adds tend to quote numbers at me that I don't find impressive (such as an 80/100). If such an unremarkable number is supposed to compel me to purchase a game, I doubt that a low rating can be seen as such a large detriment.
I saw a lot less Jericho adds after it got a 6.5. Although it didn't have quite as extensive adds, GameSpot wasn't making that money any more. Kevin VanOrd's review was pretty similar to K&L's, but he still has a job... Is the money Edios spent really that much more?
People shouldn't take reviews as a unanimous decision. People should look at multiple reviews (even the ones that rate the game poor out of spite) and make an informed decision based on what is commonly referred to as "great" and "poor" within the game. Then, they should see if a reviewer has given a personal taste in the review to see if they may like the reviewer's taste.
What I also don't get, is how some believe that reviews make a huge impact on sales. Reviews don't always affect mass decisions, marketing does though. An informed customer may want to give a try to a highly rated sleeper, and may purchase it. However, local Joe or lil Timmy wouldn't think twice about trying it or purchasing it if it isn't marketed well.
I guess the reason advertisers are pissed is because the advertisements go up and have no strong rating to back it up because of criticism that is perceived to be the death of sales.
What is truly amazing, is how this is looking to be a PR disaster on a huge scale for a site that attracts many people. This may shake up people to finally educate themselves a bit more than just looking at raw numbers, but that's perhaps an implausible scenario.
Monkey's link has an extra " on the end of it that screws things up.
The fact that the editor in chief stepped down and didn't say that he did it because of pressure from Eidos or Gamestop and whatnot but because of someone hitting "a disaster button." It's clear that he didn't want him fired but that doesn't confirm the reasons behind it. If the EIC didn't see anything wrong with the editorial and he was fired for "tone" then clearly there is a disconnect between the EIC and management. Again, stepping down for that reason, and utter silence about the rumor, gives a much more likely picture than this grand conspiracy theory.
The EIC stepping down has absolutely no reason not to speak up about it. He wasn't fired nor does he have a lawsuit. He has every reason to make it public which is what most journalists do when they step down under such circumstances. They make it public. Nothing of the sort is going down.
Using rumors and comic strips of the rumor doesn't make them anything more than rumors. Again, I can find much better sources parroting the game violence theories of Grossman but that doesn't make them true.
If they fired him to improve the review then why has the review remained essentially the same?
Nobody is confirming the rumor. Everyone is reacting too it. There is a difference in the two. One makes it true and the other really means nothing.