f13.net

*Reportedly. This IS coming from the hacks at Kotaku.

http://kotaku.com/gaming/rumor/gamespot-editor-fired-over-kane--lynch-review-328244.php

Mmmm, journalistic integrity.

I don't know if I care or not.

All it does is confirm everything we know about the gaming press.

I want people to keep telling me I'm wrong though.

And they wonder why I hole myself up in this corner of the web.

Anyone who gives TWP an 8.8 seems slightly OK in my book.

8.0 felt right to me. It wasn't technically deficient, there was no triforce piece collecting, but it just didn't grab me.

I like how everyone across GameFAQs/Gamespot wanted to rape him to death for daring to give a mediocre Zelda title anything less than a 10, but now they're freaking out because he got fired for not doling out a payola review.

I would have given it a 7 personally, but what I mean is.... 8.8 seems like he was fighting just to keep it under 9. I bet his real, honest to God score would have been lower, but at least he tried.

This industry disgusts me.

Gabe from Penny Arcade apparently heard the same thing.  In fact, they've already got a comic up about it.

(http://www.penny-arcade.com/images/2007/20071129.jpg)

Yeah I lol'ed a bit when I read reviews that slammed games for being bad but still hosts the game ads on site.
It's a conflict of interests and sacking him is a bit harsh I feel.

Is this why we don't have game ads on this site, schild?

Part of it. Other part is I'm just too lazy since the ad readout never reads like actual traffic since roughly 80% of the people block ads.

i'm pissed cause no reviewer ever gets it for posting over-inflated scores and suddenly this guy did it the other way and he gets sacked.  :ye_gods: Way to go Gamespot!

Ad Revenue 1
Gamers Interest 0

Oh wait Gamers just equalized. They are swarming the Eidos forum at the moment. What a reaction. This could be a come back!  :grin:

I actually pay real money (c) to GameSpot specifically to help them establish their self-sufficiency.

If this turns out that they fired a long-established reviewer (http://www.gamespot.com/users/Jeff/contributions?mode=ratings) for doing his job correctly because it conflicts with their sponsors then clearly I have been paying them money in error.

Looking at the average review, 7.0ish seems pretty common (http://www.gamerankings.com/htmlpages2/934404.asp?q=kane%20%20lynch) for Kane and Lynch, a 6.0 isn't big enough of a gap for me to find it problematic.

I think this may spell doom to Deus Ex 3 that is being developed by Eidos Montreal. Awesome domino effect. They waited few years to let the shit from DX2 to cool off now they're back in hot shit territory.

8.8 for TWP sounds fine for me. It's in no way a bad score. Given that 9.5 is pretty much the highest grade given out to most games 9.0 is probably a bit too high. "Mediocre" is too harsh, it's still one of the best games of that genre, but it was missing a certain je ne sais quois. I preferred WindWaker in many ways, graphics included.

Kane and Lynch is getting panned a lot and all the reviews call out the same problems - frankly it doesn't sound fun at all. I'm on the Gamespot site right now and all the K&L graphics are gone. They were there a few hours ago...the entire site looked like a K&L fansite.

I remember when the old "Die Hard Game Fan" gave a Final Fantasy a 7 out of 10 or something...good times.

GameSpot users are taking it well. (http://youtube.com/watch?v=SxMOn4iTUEE)

i'd link to that leave britney alone or something

I almost posted the barrel roll, but you know, I'm all about appropriate context.  :hello_kitty:

From the Eidos Forums (http://www.eidosinteractive.com/forums/index.html)


Orly?

There seems to be a few guns backfiring off in people's faces at the moment.

Lots of places are picking this up. Wired's picked it up and posted it, and cites LOTS of anon sources direct to them.

Scary times. If Congress can get involved in payola in radio, they sure as shit will get into GJ if this blows up.

Not the same thing.

No, but comparable. Payola at its basic level is a company paying a media channel for advertising of its product in a channel that is supposed to be advertising-free. This case fits that right down the money.

I don't think this would go that far.  Would be nice, but I get the feeling what happens is CNET ignores the internet, Jeff swings in the breeze, and I cancel my GameSpot subscription.

No it's not comparable. Parts of the EM spectrum including radio are regulated by the government here in the US as a "public good" so there are rules for using it. Gaming publications are not regulated by the government. Also neither public radio nor gaming publications are mandated as being advertising-free.

I would absolutely LOVE it if this is the straw that broke the GJ camel's back.
Since the videogame public cant be arsed to make a stand in some meaningful way, perhaps journalism can police itself.
BAHAHAhahahahAHAHAHA!! :awesome_for_real: :awesome_for_real:

As always, the problem is, what are the consequences? Anybody who didn't already know that GS and other sites have a payola element to their reviews--not consistently, but sometimes--now knows. Anybody who didn't know that already is a bit on the stupid side. GS probably figures, heck, wait it out, people will forget, and besides, our revenue stream doesn't depend much on paying subscribers anyway. They're probably right about that, though the odd thing about pressuring sites for reviews is that the value of the reviews to sell product depends somewhat on the nebulous perception of integrity. A site that's widely perceived to totally lack integrity doesn't push much product when it fellates some mediocre piece of crap. So maybe there are consequences: reputation capital = real money. At least sometimes. But of course the paradox is that the gaming companies are less eager to throw real money at a site with too much integrity. Reviews make a difference only for: 1) small or indie publishers or niche games that might not otherwise sell strong and 2) mediocre product from major publishers that isn't guaranteed to sell by virtue of association with a really strong franchise. In case 1), they help. In case 2), they hurt. But it's case 2) that has the ad money that might flow to a well-trusted site.

See, I got bored with Windwaker and never finished it. I considered it very over-rated. OTOH I enjoyed the hell out of Twilight Princess.

this is just the exposure this problem needed... we should do what we can to keep the preasure on

Radio is broadcast over the public airwaves. The licenses to use them are doled out by the agency and that is why the agency has regulatory power over the radio.
Journalism of any kind is almost entirely unregulated because the First Amendment largely prohibits it. 

The only way I can see any regulation put on gamespot is if they tried to classify the whole site as advertising (which has reduced speech protection). But that would almost certainly be a loser argument.

Well, the Gamespot users have found a pretty interesting way to retaliate against the site and Eidos as well. Kane and Lynch now has a boatload of new player reviews, ranking the game a 1.0. Certainly this is going to make any online gaming journalism site think twice about being this obvious in bullying reviewers, and any publisher is going to think twice about being obvious in bringing pressure. But that doesn't mean they won't do it--they'll just be less amateurish about it. Want to lean on your reviewers? When one of them screws up a well-planned advertising campaign, don't fire him right away. Wait about six months, can him then, so the reviewer can't easily claim it's retaliation. Do some vague horse-heads at the foot of the bed rumor-campaigning within your staff so everyone understands the cause-and-effect of the firing, though. That way you've got protective cover and you can figure that everyone gets the message for the next time there's big money involved.

Of course the smarter thing to do would be to work hard to keep your site independent, because that's both good ethics and good business. No matter how sneaky you are about enforcing discipline on reviewers, a site that whores itself out too freely is going to be obvious and it will eventually be less valuable to advertisers as a result. Most games still depend on good reviews AND word-of-mouth to sell well.

If you wanted to be really mercencary you'd start up a new game review site/mag capitalizing on the hype and internet meme of how bad journalism is. Get a reputation for being really critical, independent and fair.

Then, after some time had passed...inform the game companies through back channels that only one game per year would get their gilted, shill, "hardcore" treatment where you basically suck their balls and kiss their ass...all while pointing back to your "honest journalism" reputation.

 :grin: :grin: :grin: :grin: :grin: :grin: :grin: :grin: :ye_gods: :grin: :grin: :grin: :grin: :grin: :grin: :grin: :grin: :grin: :grin: :grin:

Eidos forums are back up and there's a blue response (http://forums.eidosgames.com/showthread.php?p=710547#post710547) to the obvious question.

Right. And then what you'd do is basically have a silent auction, with the winner getting the ball-sucking review. So publishers would have to decide which game they wanted to advertise and hype like mad because it wasn't obviously shit but they knew it was actually shit, and then chase the ball-sucking review for that one. The honest-except-for-one-night-sweetheart game review site would then make out like a bandit, because all the publishers would advertise heavily for their secretly-shitty game just in case they ended up having the high bid in the ball-suck auction. And then the site could still come out looking honest-Abe because they'd call the wrath of God down on all the secret-shit games but one.

6.0 is rather high for Kane and Lynch, if you ask me.

It's close to a 4 than a 6, I think.

I have had that approach from Day One in regards to my association with f13.net, but I guess I just come off as crazy.

Yeah, what makes this an especially dumb thing for Eidos to lean on Gamespot about is that they're getting roughly the same negative reviews from other sites, and from game-related sites like Ctrl + Alt + Del that were otherwise fairly primed to like the game based on the previews. It would be one thing if the Gamespot reviewer had given the game a harsh review when everyone else was fellating it, but when Eidos says, "Hey, motherfuckers, why do you think we paid for a KANE AND LYNCH SKIN to your shit site if we weren't going to get at least one blowjob for our asstastic game" it stands out pretty badly.

Guys, I think it's just as wrong to fellate websites to get good previews also.

The world of previews needs changing more than actual reviews IMO.

The other thing that stands out is how Gamespot would fire someone for giving a bad review for a paid sponsor.  Eidos can be assumed to want to promote their game but Gamespot should be assumed to have a bit of integrity.  I don't assume that, I'm just talking about ideal situations here.

Yeah, I completely agree, but that's a hopeless cause. It's clear that the understanding in game journalism is, "We let you see a bit of the game, you cocksuck it, you get content, we get publicity, we pay you off with an ad". It's not that far away from the understanding in all cultural journalism: access is understood to get you a blowjob or at least a handjob, this gives the journalistic outlet some content to fill up its pages, and maybe some ad revenue too. Then if the movie/TV show/whatever actually sucks, you dump on it then. But I think gamers are actually way more wrathful when a well-previewed game turns out to completely bite the big one because of the way that the demand cycle works in gaming. You have a lot longer to anticipate a game with potential, and a game with potential is a much bigger part of your entertainment time than a single movie or book or even ongoing TV show. Plus a game purchase is a big chunk of money up front: when you get deceived by preview-hype and the narratives it creates in your own mind, you feel a lot more wrathful than when you blow $7 on a bad movie.

I'm seeing this especially with kids--my daughter really really loved Rayman Raving Rabbids 1, so she reeeeeeeelly wanted the second one. The previews all looked fun, the trailers were clever. But the sequel is really weaksauce--a couple of great minigames wrapped up in some suck that took the programmers about a half-hour to knock out. It's far worse than the first one. The reviews all agree on that, but the previews were uniformly very very positive. Basically, the journalists were allowed to play the three or four minigames that were good. Well, now my daughter is a smarter consumer, I guess. But the big gaming sites have got to do a better job at contextualizing what they're allowed to see. At least with movies and TV shows, there is actually a bit of prerelease buzz/investigation that tends to push back on big hype machines somewhat, some critics writing about the industry put stuff in perspective. (For example, while every reviewer went nuts about Pushing Daisies' pilot, they all did warn readers about the question of whether the show had a sustainable premise.) Gaming journalists don't even have that limited amount of skepticism in their preview work.

Gaming... journalism... LULZ.

I'm sure if the guy gave the game a 6, it was likely a 3 in his mind. Editors and advertisers don't want honesty unless it's positive honesty. This guy gets shitcanned, maybe over the review, maybe not. But really, anyone stupid enough to read more than 3 mainstream gaming articles and still think the industry has one shred of human dignity is DELUDED.

We're all part of the hype machine, whether we want to admit it or not. You play nice with the hype machine, you get a paid gig somewhere. You don't... well, you've seen my blog.

Exactly.

So when do we start?  :grin:

It may just be me, but I think that the firing actually happened less because of the "review" and ad revenues than for him dropping an f-bomb in the video review (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aBD0cUeeEQc).

I could be wrong though.

I'm sure that didn't help.

It doesnt matter. These reviews are bought and paid for. The truth doesn't matter. Perception is reality. The review sites are so unrealistic in their reviews now that people believe the first payola scandal that pops up.

There is one kind of tough thing about gaming discussions and sites that's also true in popular culture. When I was writing about TV, I called it the "My Mother the Car Effect", meaning there isn't anything that is  SO FUCKING BAD that it doesn't have some rabidly dedicated fans who hate and suspect anyone who criticizes their precious. It's what can sometimes make it hard to sort out the shills in the forums at gaming sites from the genuine retards. At the same time, though, conventional wisdom works the same among gamers as it does in any other cultural genre, meaning that sometimes it takes a while before a genuinely smart, original, interesting game is appreciated as such. So sometimes you need to dig into forums and discussion sites to find the hidden shiny. It's only at both ends of the critical bell curve that you can be pretty sure that critical assessment and actual quality are completely in tandem (e.g., there are a few games where everybody but everybody agrees it's a must-play masterpiece, and a very very few where everyone agrees it's a unambiguous turd). Actually I'm having a hard time thinking of a game so utterly shitastic that there wasn't somebody somewhere who thought it was the best thing ever. Considering how rapturous some people got over  Dawn and its fetapults, it might be that nothing qualifies.

Clearly it was edited, so where could there be a problem? They had their chance to remove it, but they just bleeped it. I have no idea how your labour laws work in the states, but up here firing over that wouldn't fly, not in the least.

Even Pool of Radiance: Ruins of Myth Drannor (the 2001 version not the old Gold Box classic) had rabid fans on their forums shouting that it WAS TEH BETS GAEM EVAR!! even though anyone with a frontal lobe was calling it an unplayable turd that suffered from some crack fuelled design decisions.

Game fanboyism is almost as bad as the corporate assholes like Eidos.

Hell, look at the Zelda review.  8.8 means FUCKING AWESOME, but mouthbreathing morons consider it an insult to all that is holy and good.
That lady who does a bunch of hentai reviews got freaked out on for giving the Wii Fire Emblem a 5 out of 10 while fully admitting she does not like the genre and was trying to give it a chance.  While I am nearly at the end of the game and generally like it, almost every one of her complaints with the game are either dead on the money, or are things other reviews have said.

Its like the Fox News effect.  People ONLY want things that agree with them and any deviation from that viewpoint is utter heresy or some fuckass shit.

At least Eidos' reasoning is plain old shitty corporate GREED.

The game warriors' of the Internet's reason?  Not as understandable or obvious.

Some (in fact many) of states in the U.S are "employment-at-will" states - i.e. an employer can fire you whenever they want to. This of course is kept in check by our Constitution that defends protected classes (race, religion, penis size...er the last one not so much). Not only that, but further state statutes, contract principles, and good-faith restrictions exist.

Trust me, the little guy can stick it to the man if he's been wronged.

My personal favorite is the "top 10 games of next year" which are similar to the college pre-season rankings - totally meaningless.

It seems like the unstated goal of gaming sights is to put forward so much hype in advance that the actual reviews become irrelevant.

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

Ha ha. God I love this sort of stuff.

It's like Joe Klein at Time, everything he says just digs his hole deeper. GameSpot's credibility just keeps sinking lower and lower. Publishers tell them when they can run reviews? Oy.

Nice.

Valleywag? Now he's a celebrity?

According to that article, I've another reason to hate the mythical "casual gamer".

I would see that more as a reason to hate marketing drones. On the other hand, there are reason aplenty already.

Its nice watching Gamespot and Eidos getting massively bad press over all this.
Its everywhere and like all forms of corporate damage control (see Jade Raymond comic), it is only MAKING THINGS WORSE.
Which is what they deserve.  (What can I say?  I would like to see most large corporations go the way of Enron.)

Another good one on the same site:
http://valleywag.com/tech/jeff-gerstmann/gamespot-editor-says-cnet-firing-a-disaster-328827.php

The entire video games genre is focused on The Next Big Thing. Once a game is actually out and you can play it, it's old news. Which is why previews are so gloriously positive - to get players wound up over playing the game so that they buy it at launch without ever reading a review from someone who played it.

This whole thing is stupid. I try hard to not ever care what rating a game gets, but I have to admit I like to see a game I like a lot receive good reviews. Ultimately though, many games I really enjoy get mediocre reviews most of the time, which makes me think I either have great taste or just terrible taste in games.

Best thing for all the GSpot reviewers to do now would be to give massive 9.8-10.0 reviews to shitty shitty games.

I miss PC Gamer magazine reviews when they would give games 14%.

My favorite...  Swamp buggy Racin'! (http://www.pcgamer.com/archives/2005/06/swamp_buggy_rac.html)

Even then I felt like they would fellate some marginal game that bought ads and then rip something no one ever heard of to maintain their street cred.  The Outpost 93% debacle comes to mind.

This thread needs a rejigging of the Jade Raymond comic. With Gamespot as Jade, and Eidos, etc as the fanbois.

I'd do it, maybe. But I have to go to work.

I like 1up's stance on the issue. They call themselves "Professional Enthusiasts".

That's a much more honest and accurate statement than "Gaming Journalist."

Whee, the "lie to sell our pile of shit game" parade continues.

http://www.gamebump.com/go/official_kane_and_lynch_website_lies_about_its_scores

I'm honestly wondering why I was even a bit surprised by this. I mean, the console makers themselves aren't honest. Sony and their fun rootkit/thisisliving/etc. bullshit, Microsoft is uh Microsoft, and Nintendo's myriad of illegal business practices no one gives a shit about because it's Nintendo.

Companies have been lying to sell pile of shit games for a long, long time. There's like nothing new with this story.

That's the depressing part. The gaming consumer sector is like O WAIT, THIS TIN FOIL HAT SHIT IS REAL? WHOA.

I'm not surprised that people are nudged and given swag/previews to give positive reviews, but rather by the fact that someone was obviously fired for NOT giving one.

Ok to those of you who didn't know that the editorial stance for games journalists was dictated by advertising budgets, welcome to the publishing industry. Oh and by the way, Santa isn't real either.

Pop quiz time!
Why do you think gaming sites and magazines were so eager to gush over WoW when it launched? Was it:

A) Because WoW was a genuinely revolutionary game that broke new ground in games design.
Or
B) Because Blizzard had a metric crapload of advertising spend to throw at anyone who didn't have a gag reflex.

So. Assuming it's true and he was fired for writing a sub-par Kane and Lynch review (not saying it is but actual internet detectives claim it is so who am I to argue?), what this actually says is that Gamespot failed to have a suit in charge of editorial outpt who was down with what the beancounters were saying. That's not Gerstmann's fault that's C|Net/Gamespot having zero accountability amongst management.

For people who are in the internets business they managed to entirely mishandle the whole thing. I thought that Ubisoft sending a cease and desist letter to Something Awful over the Jade Raymond comic was the dumbest thing anyone was likely to do this year, but right at the close C|Net surged right past to take the tape.

What should have happened is that they parachute some humourless suit in to doublecheck everything that goes up before it gets posted, move Gerstmann to a side office reviewing Pokemon games for the next 6 months then announce a restructuring that didn't include his name on the payroll. Everyone at GS would know why and would take the hint, everyone outside would have no clue and would continue in their happy fantasy land where games journalists on sites that are heavily supported by advertising say what they think.

The reason they didn't fire him quietly is that they don't give a rat's ass what the public (or that tiny fraction that actually pays attention to such things) thinks.  They want the publishers, more specifically the *advertisers*, to know that they mean to play ball and this one loose cannon rating a game based on its merits rather than the advertising buy was not an indicator of their real editorial policy.  Taking 6 months to ease him out might send the message to the staff, but they aren't the audience that counts.

--Dave

I still don't understand why they can't just reject his article and gave him the boot, instead they choose to let it be published THEN fire him.

Gerstmann was controversial as far as game reviewers went.

Because sometimes he was pretty honest. You can't have that at a large gaming website. So sorry.

I suspect that CNET is headed up by your typical management dinosaurs who had no idea this would blow up and become anything other than inter-office grousing.

If you read the other articles on this, at Gamespot it appears that most of the editorial team reads and proofs all the reviews that appear on that site. So, although it has one name on it, a lot of people have worked on it.

So Gamespot published a review they thought was fair enough; it was only after that the review was read that they apparently started getting angry emails / phonecalls.

But yeah, this isn't surprising. When your company becomes addicted to ad revenue, you end up dancing to the tune the advertisers want. Of course, what Gamespot should have done was reply to all Kane-and-Lynch advertiser complaints with "pull your ad dollars, but your game still sucks". But that's the road less taken in this case.

A bit of  :tinfoil:.  If their goal was to send a message, then they needed something to have an example to object to.  If they wanted to show the advertisers that yes, GS could be counted on to deliver, they needed a message, which required a sacrificial cow.  Just sit back, wait for the biggest example of lowballing a AAA title, and sack.  Isn't as though it's tough finding people to review games, especially when you make a decision that this isn't your core business (it's selling ad space). 

Course, it could be the reason he got fired was because he was an asshole to work with, and people were tired of him being a disruption to others.  Or whatever other reason - it's not something GS can discuss, so we're only ever going to hear one side of the story.

Some bonus funnies, related to K&L: http://kotaku.com/gaming/kane-&-lynch/kane--lynch-site-fibbing-about-reviews-scores-329529.php (http://kotaku.com/gaming/kane-&-lynch/kane--lynch-site-fibbing-about-reviews-scores-329529.php)

I like how Kotaku is calling out another site for lies.

And that's working really well for them is it?  I'm pretty sure sites like this one exist in large part because no one feels they can trust the big corporate ones (this particular sub-forum almost certainly does).

Well, yeah, it is working out pretty well.  A huge chunk of my friends are gamers, and I'm the only one who's heard anything about this.  Fury on the blogs does not equal losses for their bank accounts.

N'Gai Croal mentions this, among other things in today's Newsweek article (http://blog.newsweek.com/blogs/levelup/archive/2007/12/05/reflections-on-videogame-publisher-and-employer-contempt-towards-the-enthusiast-press.aspx)

I like what N'Gai has to say about things.

But I hate that his paragraphs are longer than Hammer Frenzy's and he takes pages and pages to make a one paragraph point.

But I guess you get paid by the word.

Lawls. GameSpot responds with a "FAQ". And are having a "tribute" for a fired employee.

But rather than link you to that, which I'm sure you can find on your own, gentle reader...

I'd rather link you to the user-created tags for the story.

http://www.gamespot.com/pages/tags/index.php?sid=6183666&type=news&tag=tags;more

LOL. Too bad 6.0 is code for "avoid like the plague."

In other news...Axelay on the VC, yay!

That is pretty awesome, somebody be sure to save that image somewhere for posterity and the next time they do this in a more sneaky manner.

I added a few.  "Swamp poop"  :uhrr:  ftw

(http://img232.imageshack.us/img232/276/gerstmantagsdg4.png)

I don't understand this "Tag" concept, are those just the most common phrases typed anywhere?

In every GameSpot article you have the option of 'tagging it".  The bigger the words, the more often that tag was done.

Apparently, a lot of people don't want to believe the corporate line, "We didn't fire him because of the review score but we can't tell you why."

Also, apparently a lot of people don't like Josh Larson.

You fail at web2.0, I may not understand RSS feeds and Digg all that well but come on, tags are easypeasy.

Just an aside, but the whole thing with tags having different sizes based on popularity is one of the most useless Web2.0 things in a while. I want to burn the person who came up with "Web 2.0" alive.

I want to burn the idiots who put "-gate" at the back end of any scandal. It worked for Watergate BECAUSE IT HAPPENED AT THE WATERGATE HOTEL. Gerstmanngate? Oh fucking please.

Just noticed the "swamp poop" tag.

Still don't understand.

Someone has to go through and add those tags? They're not just automagically parsed out of comments/posts/etc.?

Yeah, random asshats can tag the story with "meaningful" words of their choosing. The popular ones get bigger. Slashdot has something similar where the popular ones are displayed on the front page.

Well the term web 2.0 is retarded but tags own.  Picking the right porn to download torrents for has become like 100x easier with them.