Nothing is really confirmed yet, but it seems like this is probably true (or at least partly true). I'll just get a summary from Wikipedia for now: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jeff_Gerstmann The Penny-Arcade comic can be found at: http://www.penny-arcade.com/comic One of the guys that runs the site had this to say about the comic: http://forums.penny-arcade.com//showthread.php?p=3689682#post3689682
It was bound to happen and it is why the Magazines and websites that are paid with advertising dollars are not trustworthy. The guys who do it for free, those are the real reviewers. I am sorry for him though, I have met him a few times, he is a good guy. And Eidos sucks. DD
Well there goes Gamespot's credibility as a game review site. Atleast I can still use it to view screenshots.
isnt he the same guy who rated Zelda a 8.7 and considers Tony Hawk 3 (10.0 rating from him) to be the gold standard in video games?
lol i thought the same thing. BTW EA has gotten low scores from Gamespot before, and Kane and Lynch is definetely not one of their high profile games, so I'm a bit skeptical about this. I can't access gamespot but if anyone can, you can check it for yourselves.
Games are huge money now and Gamespot has a huge following. Is there any wonder that EA would exert some PR muscle to get good reviews for it's game? Word of mouth advertising is still king.
So everyone is just ok with the assumption that Gamespot fired one of their reviewers because a sponsor was unhappy with a review of their game? Look at this logically. Gamespot has a huge following, why would they risk their integrity for one game, especially Kane and Lynch. Don't just assume that is the reason he was fired. There has to be more to the story and that will come out in time.
Uh... EA != Eidos. Eidos is no where near as big as EA or some of the other publishers out there AFAIK (and I think they've been really struggling in recent years). So if they have this kind of "power," you can only imagine what these sites do for the big publishers.
lol, it's hilarious that everyone just assumed it was EA...EA isn't all bad but as RC said, this wasn't even EA, it's Eidos who is the publisher
Lol, it's just like they are assuming that he was fired because the game publisher had that much pull with Gamespot. Jumping to conclusions and what not.
Supposedly, Eidos threatened to pull (or did pull) future ads, which would be worth hundreds of thousands of dollars. That would probably be enough to risk their integrity...what little they have anyway. That said, I don't think we have the whole story either. I don't doubt for a minute that there was probably more to the firing of Gerstmann than just this incident (maybe he accepted Activision/Neversoft moneyhats, but not those from Eidos ). However, I tend to trust what Penny-Arcade and a few other sources say, and if they have reason to believe that this is how it happened, then I'd probably tend to believe that as well. Doesn't help that I don't really think highly of professional reviewers though. While this is probably the worst incident involving this kind of thing, it isn't really a stretch given some of the other common practices going on. BTW, Penny-Arcade did talk more about this:
My favorite was when the then-editor of GameSpot panned the original splinter cell because he was too dumb to know that you have to actually hide the bodies.
To be fair, Tony Hawk 3 was totally sick when it came out. Me and my friends in college played that game incessantly for several months when it was released. I guess it just depends on what kinds of games you like.
After reading more about the situation, I see two unsettling parts of the story. First, if game developers believe buying advertising space on a website, entitles them to a better score or at least more leniency with the scoring, then that is a growing concern people that trust websites like Gamespot will have to be aware of. The integrity of a website is the last thing a customer should have to worry about. The second thing, that is more of a peripheral problem in this story, are reviewers that want to be arses (overly critical) for no reason or only to go against popular opinion. Did he seriously believe the review he gave Twilight Princess or Tony Hawk? Or did he decrease Zelda's score and increase Tony Hawk's score in relation to other websites and reviewers? Instead of reviewing the game, it seems as if he is making a statement instead of reviewing the actual game. That bothers me personally. I read and watch reviews to learn about the games, not for any other reason whatsoever. In fact, about 3 or 4 weeks ago when Street Fighter IV was first announced, Gamespot (Jeff Gerstman and others) basicly refused to talk about the Street Fighter franchise because "no one plays 2D fighters anymore." In a very arrogant fashion. They seriously didn't care if anyone in their audience played the games or not. I definitely saw a problem with Gamespot's mentality at that point and this just goes to further echo that sentiment.
yea plus all the WMD'ing gets annoying... in the current round I have been attacked conventionally maybe 5 times... but ive been hit with so many wmds by a bunch of crappy players. Oh well.. you should check out mafia wars.
