This shit is crazy, blowing up all over the internets, blogs, gaming industry news whatever. One of my best friends is an editor at Gamespot and has been for a while and he is totally distraught b/c it's ripping their office apart. It kinda has a more symbolic breaking point of review critics vs. advertising dollars.

Rumors have been swirling today that Jeff Gerstmann, executive editor at CNET-owned major video game site GameSpot, was fired after giving a generally unimpressed review of Interactive's Kane & Lynch: Dead Men. Gerstmann awarded the game a 6.0.

According to the reports, the layoff came after Kane & Lynch publisher Eidos took issue with the review and threatened to pull its considerable ad contract. GameSpot's front page is currently almost entirely re-skinned with Kane & Lynch imagery.

The rumor began bouncing around various industry circles over the past day, and this evening was reported by Kotaku. Popular webcomic Penny Arcade posted a strip about the alleged incident tonight, outside of its normal publishing schedule.

Gerstmann had been an employee at GameSpot for about a decade, and took the place of former executive editor Greg Kasavin when Kasavin left the company to work for Electronic Arts as a producer.

11/29/2007 11:53:05 PM

what critics

11/29/2007 11:56:13 PM

haha wow. that will do wonders for the credibility of gamespot reviews.

11/30/2007 12:01:06 AM

in their defense, the entire office is pissed off to absolute hades about this. office is in total meltdown....PR nightmare.....obviously it is their parent company CNET that made the call and fired him for his review.

Will be interesting to see how this evolves...but yeah, absolutely devastating for their brand.

11/30/2007 12:08:49 AM

this guy gave tony hawk proskater a 10 and Zelda: Twilight Princess an 8.8...who cares.

11/30/2007 12:11:26 AM

nerd drama is the most pathetic kind of drama.

I stopped reading that horrible site once I got a job and once they queered up the site design and made it all ads.

11/30/2007 12:12:03 AM

You think Zelda Twilight Princess getting an 8.8 is bad? Explain that one to me...

It's not his reviews thats on issue here, it's the ethics behind it. basically how many critics are slanted by their revenue streams. Probably a lot as this would suggest. GS was the highest grossing video gaming critic site out there.

11/30/2007 12:23:56 AM

should have been at least a 9.5.

11/30/2007 12:30:36 AM

lol...that game was not that great. I played 8 hours and fell asleep. 8.8 is a give.

Regardless, tats the whole thing - reviews are SUBJECTIVE. There is an integrity to journalism that is totally trounced when someone gets fired because of something like this.

11/30/2007 12:33:08 AM

A 6.0 is probably the avg. this game has been getting anyways.

This sucks though and I don't even read Gamespot.

11/30/2007 12:41:23 AM

Don't know if you listen to The Hotspot - but that's a weekly podcast by the folks at Gamespot. Gerstmann is on almost every episode, but wasn't on this week and there was no reason given. I found that odd. Another of the guys on the show (Ryan Davis I think) was in a pissy mood that this might explain.

I also see that their weekly video podcast On the Spot, which Jeff hosted, didn't come out this week, and isn't on the list of gamespot projects coming out next week either.

I really liked Jeff, he's a major loss to their organization.

[Edited on November 30, 2007 at 6:20 AM. Reason : On the Spot]

11/30/2007 6:01:35 AM

i use gamefaqs

11/30/2007 6:43:02 AM

I have a feeling there is more to this story than we've heard. This isn't first time Gamespot has given a shit review to a game that it plasters ads of all over it's front page. It's actually a pretty regular occurrence on that site.

11/30/2007 7:24:11 AM

i still don't trust any f'n game reviewer

11/30/2007 8:05:06 AM

There's a pretty long list of games GS has reviewed and people strongly disagreed with, but CNET basically killed the site's credibility beyond any doubt now, whether it's true or not.

11/30/2007 8:40:45 AM

wtfmate that's not right

11/30/2007 8:46:58 AM

11/30/2007 8:50:11 AM

the game probably sucks

11/30/2007 9:22:41 AM

yep, gamespot is done now

11/30/2007 9:25:06 AM

11/30/2007 9:27:36 AM

bwahahaha



down with gamespot

11/30/2007 9:39:25 AM

yeah well i'm definitely not going to trust any of the shit they spew now...

11/30/2007 9:51:56 AM

Well give the staff credit for basically standing up to corporate bullshit and sticking by his score. and others are now quitting. I'm hearing a senior editor walked out yesterday and hasn't been heard from...another guy posted on his blog that he quit today.

Also, I've heard that IGN is just like this if not worse with the way the mix editorial and sales. Which is a bullshit concept. All news is tainted more or less by $ agenda, and it's a serious problem...which is why this is kind of a fascinating situation - b/c the internet community is so strong that the uproar is sizable. Eidos and CNET both derive their revenues by consumers that are heavy into online circles, games, interactive media - so this is a blow up in their face.

But give the actual GS editors some credit. it's the suits - it's CNET, not Gamespot. Ultimately the guy who made the call was a corporate guy that was moved over to direct activities at the site, but has nothing to do with gamespot.

11/30/2007 9:55:47 AM

Pretty crazy, but seriously no one really knows if the guy was fired for this or not. Could be some stuff going on behind the scenes that we don't know about. This guy has been doing this for a really long time and has given a lot of horrible reviews. Either way I haven't really trusted this site in a while so I'm not too worried about it, but not jumping to conclusions quickly just because it makes a good story.

11/30/2007 9:57:52 AM

i cant say the guy's name but dammit dude, he works there and had for half a decade and said this is the EXACT reason why. Why would he lie about it?

You don't think other people quitting pretty much says that also?

It's all in front of you, ockham's razor.

11/30/2007 10:06:28 AM

Eidos made the Hitman series, and those are pretty good. That's all that comes to mind though.

11/30/2007 10:55:34 AM

didnt they publish tomb raider for a while?

11/30/2007 11:05:35 AM

Quote :

"Have you ever thinking to become the most famous and the most adventuros archaeological in the world???? Yes? Well, If you play TOMB RIDER you can realize your secret dream............ First of all the game introduc the player in the story with a great movie: the grafic is perfect and the animation, sound and the dubbing are good too. After that you can set the options: sound, gamma, loadgame etc. The downloads isn't very long but you must be patient. The first impression is good: the grafic is in 3D and the sound isn't bad. On the game you can running, jumping, walking, swimming, and other actions. TOMBRIDER is qite long and so if you like this game, you spend a lot of time with this very good classic game. The levels are very, very big and if you want complete them you must exploring for along. the enemis are varied but there are some humans: in TOMBRIDER infact you must killed above all ferosious animals but the hard enemies are the enigmas that you meet during the game. This is a perfect an a original game, it's hold but for saturn is one of the most buty action game. It's a classic so you can't don't play with TOMB RIDER!!!! Reviewer Zero Cool"

11/30/2007 11:10:42 AM

Let's have a game reviewer strike!!!

11/30/2007 11:15:06 AM

eidos did legacy of kain, tomb raider, commandos, and a bunch of other games, but they are subpar at best.

11/30/2007 11:16:17 AM

Tycho from Penny Arcade weighs in:

Quote :

"I will tell you the Gerstmann Story as we heard it. Management claimed to have spoken to Jeff about his "tone" before, and no doubt it was this tone that created tensions between their editorial content, the direction of the site, and the carefully crafted relationships that allowed Gamespot to act as an engine of revenue creation. After Gerstmann's savage flogging of Kane & Lynch, a game whose marketing investment on Gamespot alone reached into the hundreds of thousands, Eidos (we are told) pulled hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of future advertising from the site. "

In terms of quality, Eidos is like EA to me in that they put out a lot of crap, but have their hands in so many jars something good eventually makes it out the door at some point.

11/30/2007 12:33:18 PM

he is the same bastard that gave bioshock a 9.0

he sucks at times, but doesn't deserve to get fired

11/30/2007 12:41:03 PM

I doubt the review is still up on the site...if anyone has it, I'd like to read it myself

11/30/2007 12:41:41 PM

Yeah Eidoss made a major PR nightmare with this one. They absolutely will lose more $$$ over bitching about the review then if they just would have grit their teeth and accepted the 6.0

11/30/2007 12:41:58 PM

so it sounds like edios is paying this site for good ratings? is that what is going on?

11/30/2007 12:43:16 PM

Never mind..it IS still up on the site...here it is if you care to read it

http://www.gamerankings.com/itemrankings/launchreview.asp?reviewid=821563

Quote :

"Io Interactive is best known for its stealth-focused Hitman series, but there's nothing quiet and sneaky about its latest release, Kane & Lynch: Dead Men. This time around, the developer put together a crime-themed shooter that starts out with a couple of simple, heist-like objectives and then rapidly spins out of control until, without much warning, you're gunning down soldiers in the middle of a foreign revolution. While the journey sounds interesting at first, and has a few bright points, it's weighed down by bad storytelling, a real lack of character development, and a host of gameplay-related issues. The end result is a game that squanders much of its potential and just doesn't come together as well as it probably should have. Kane and Lynch don't get along--not in an especially interesting way either. The story mode opens with you in the role of Kane, a death row inmate on his way to his execution, apparently convicted of being a very savage criminal as part of a notorious gang called The7. You're on your last ride with a quirky guy named Lynch who tells you to cover your head. After an explosion, you're both busted out and on the run. That might sound great, but it's a fate worse than death. The surviving members of The7 have busted you out to force you to recover something they think you stole from them. They consider you a traitor and will kill Kane's family if he doesn't comply. Lynch is sent along for the ride to watch over Kane and report in if anything weird happens. Circumstances change over time and the back half plays out like a revenge tale, but it's a revenge tale where you don't actually care if anyone actually gets their revenge. Every single person you play as or encounter is despicable and wholly abrasive; thus, it'll probably be tough for you to find anyone to latch onto and care about, even if you typically go for this sort of crime drama on TV or in movies. You can play through this story alone or with a friend in co-op mode, though this mode is only available locally and takes place on a vertically split screen that makes it difficult to follow the action, even on a widescreen TV. The core gameplay in Kane & Lynch is your standard third-person shooter with cover elements and a light dusting of squad tactics. You can fire from the hip, but it's somewhat more accurate to fire while aiming. Unfortunately, even when you're aiming, hitting your targets is more difficult than it should be because your automatic fire has a wide spread on it. Kane is supposedly a badass arch-criminal; he should be able to hit his targets with short, controlled bursts. You're able to get behind cover and either blindfire or pop out for aimed shots, but there's no easy way to stick to walls. You don't press a button or anything; instead you sort of get up against a wall and turn sideways. Then after jiggling the controls back and forth a bit, you'll eventually snap into place to get behind cover. It's such a pain that you'll rarely want to use it, and it seems like you're always snapping into cover behind something at the most inopportune times, making the game quite frustrating. There's no health meter, but if you go down, you don't die immediately either. You can be revived by one of your teammates with an adrenaline shot. If you get that shot too frequently, you'll overdose and die. If your teammates don't reach you in time, you'll die too. Also, if one of the guys on your crew gets dropped, you have to make sure he gets revived. If he dies, the game ends. Between your poor accuracy, the enemy's sharp accuracy, and the boneheaded AI from your squadmates, this all adds up to you keeping your squad on a very short leash. When you've got a team with you, you can order team members around individually or order the team all at once by telling it to regroup to your location, move to a specific spot, or attack specific targets. Telling team members to move to locations is the most effective move because you can keep them close and revive them when they get shot down. Sending them after targets results in your squad running around aimlessly and trying to get too close to targets. That leads to them getting dropped in the line of fire, where you probably won't be able to rescue them. So whether you're doing the shooting yourself or hanging back and letting your men do the dirty work, the game is a real disappointment, especially when you consider how well this same sort of stuff worked in the developer's previous squad-based game, Freedom Fighters. There's only one multiplayer mode in Kane & Lynch, and it's a great idea. Unfortunately, the idea doesn't translate into a great or long-lasting experience. It's called Fragile Alliance and puts up to eight players in one team of criminals. Then, it sets the team off to steal money, cocaine, and jewels from various locations seen in the single-player game. So you might start out in front of a bank, run in, collect a bunch of cash, and then escape from in a van out back. The catch is the way the money is split up among teammates. If you all work together, the money is split evenly. But at any point, a player can go rogue and gun down one of his teammates. This brands you a traitor; thus, any money you collect and escape with is yours to keep. Of course, this also means that other players who are still part of the team will try to waste you before you escape with their hard-stolen loot. So every round is a tentative affair where you always expect the worst--you're just never sure when someone's going to finally turn on you. When you die, whether it's from the AI that opposes you or another player, you respawn on the other side of the heist. Now you need to stop the heist by eliminating the other players and you earn money by collecting it before the criminals collect. It's a bummer that the multiplayer is mucked up by a few different things. First, you're still playing Kane & Lynch, so all of the inaccurate firing issues and poor cover tactics from the single-player still apply. But another problem is that you can see the names of the other players over their heads from a distance and through walls, even if they're on the other side. While you can run while crouched to make your name disappear, it's pretty weak that you can see the names of the police team members as they head your way. There's no element of surprise. Also, there are only a handful of different scenarios for this, and they play out the same way every single time. The security guards are always in the same positions in the bank and the cops are always waiting for you right outside, so it gets old fast. While it might seem like a basic heist game, Kane & Lynch does a good job of moving the action around, and you'll see a variety of different environments and situations, ranging from banks, to prison breaks, to full-scale conflicts in the middle of illicit poppy fields. It also has some good-looking player models, with Kane and Lynch both looking appropriate as over-the-hill criminals. And even though their faces don't animate much in-game, they still look good. Most of the animation isn't so hot, though, and you'll see a few ugly textures here and there too. Some of it looks a bit unfinished, like the way you see guys go through the motion of hitting you with an adrenaline shot, but their hands are actually empty. The multiplayer mode is a really cool idea that leaves you wondering who's going to turn traitor on you, but it isn't strong enough to make you forget the game's other problems. The soundtrack is probably the best part of the whole game, delivering some tense music when the game calls for it. There's a lot of voice acting in the game. The voices are appropriate for the characters, but the dialogue is hokey and filled with gratuitous cursing. The good ol' F word is certainly appropriate, given the nature of what these guys are doing, but when it's every third word out of every character's mouth, it comes across as a crutch that drags down the rest of the game a bit. Lynch frequently responds to your squad-orders by just shouting "F*** you!" Things like that just make the game feel purposely abrasive, and not in a "gritty" or "cool" sort of way. The game is available on the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 as of this writing, and the differences between the two versions are minimal. Both games have occasional frame rate issues and the control issues with finding cover and hitting targets are noticeable in both. The only real difference is that the PlayStation 3 version doesn't seem to have voice chat support. The multiplayer mode only really clicks when you can talk things out with other players and try to convince them that you're not going to turn traitor--only to turn traitor on them and then laugh about it. Without that, the whole experience feels a little dry. The Xbox 360 version also has the standard set of 1,000 achievement points, a few of which reward you for specific moments in co-op, like having the player controlling Lynch put a few cops out of their misery, rather than leaving them to writhe on the ground. Kane & Lynch: Dead Men is a premise with promise, and if you've been waiting patiently for a game to really dive into the whole "crew-based heist tale" concept, you might be able to look past some of the story flaws. But when you consider the nearly ridiculous number of extremely high-quality shooters available recently, there's not much room for something like Kane & Lynch, even taking into account the somewhat unique nature of its story. That said, the multiplayer is a smart idea that's worth seeing, even if playing it makes you wish that it was used in another, better game. "

[Edited on November 30, 2007 at 12:44 PM. Reason : x]

11/30/2007 12:43:36 PM

Quote :

"i still don't trust any f'n game reviewer"

yea, when ever i try to find reviews for anything now i scour any forums i can find

11/30/2007 12:49:06 PM

i guess it comes down to, why did he say the game sucks...if its true what he said i'd be pissed if got fired for that

11/30/2007 12:54:11 PM

all i need to see is gameplay vids, and how the game controls and i can make my own decision. i read reviews just as part of the hobby of playing video games.

11/30/2007 12:58:09 PM

lol

GAMES JOURNALISM

11/30/2007 1:02:57 PM

it makes a SHITELOAD of money so although seemingly comical, a huge business.

11/30/2007 1:05:44 PM

I don't trust singular reviews. I just see the aggregate score (metacritic) for games I already want to play, if it gets above 80%, I buy it. If it gets below that, I start reading reviews or just rent it.

11/30/2007 1:08:02 PM

There is nothing wrong with game reviews, it's the scoring system that is utterly flawed. The problem is, most people just look at the number and take it at face value. If you actually read the review text from some of the more credible sites, you can get something useful out of it. There have a been a number of reviews where I completely disagreed with the final score, but thought most of the comments and complaints made in the review itself were legitimate.

Which sites are credible? That's hard to tell because most of them have several reviewers, each with their own personal taste. I personally stick with the ones that I agree with (the text, not the score) most often, and then check an aggregate score site just to make sure they weren't smoking crack when writing the review. Gamespot usually has well written reviews, but they do tend to put out controversial scores, most likely to generate hits. The solution would be for the entire gaming journalism industry to do it like movie critics. A simple 1-5 star system or even thumbs up/thumbs down.

11/30/2007 1:22:10 PM

they should post all their words and the final score should be Pass Rent or Buy

[Edited on November 30, 2007 at 1:36 PM. Reason : .]

11/30/2007 1:36:49 PM

They game Mass Effect an 8.5

They deserve to burn.

11/30/2007 1:46:08 PM

I think its funny how people get pissed off at a review score, like ^ and the guy that was upset that Bioshock ONLY got a 9. Its their opinion, so why does it make a difference to you? If you like the game it shouldn't matter what someone in the media thinks of it.

11/30/2007 1:58:13 PM

If it doesn't make a difference, then what are they there for?

In that case they should stop reviewing games altogether.

11/30/2007 2:03:09 PM

yeah that's becuase they are wieners and couldnt handle the combat in mass effect. I've heard that complaint before - AWWWW it's not like an RPG, you have to actually fight baddies like a Gears of War game instead of doing a homework assignment.

Grow a pair!

11/30/2007 2:04:05 PM

people shouldn't get upset over numbers--a 9.0 is still really good. i hate it when people start foaming at the mouth without reading the text of the review.

in any case, i really like EGM's system of having multiple reviews.

11/30/2007 2:08:34 PM

People get pissed at review scores because they actually do have a pretty significant effect on game sales. If a game doesn't get reviewed well, it won't sell well. If a game doesn't sell well, then there is no chance for a sequel. So people who liked the game and wanted a sequel will get pissed because low scores mean less chance for a sequel. This isn't like the movies where anything with boobs and explosions will sell tickets. Gamers are actually some of the most informed buyers out there.

11/30/2007 2:11:16 PM