GameSpot addresses Gerstmann-gate concerns in depth

Do you check your list twice?

http://i77.photobucket.com/albums/j72/GoldenS1104/youwintheinternet.png

Nah, this is irreversible damage. Someone messed up big and everyone is suffering.

Short of complete reinvention, with a new brand, this shop will not retain any value. Its a game site that has demonstrated complete and utter incompetence, poor judgment and internal chaos in so many ways (and continues to do so) that it has no reason to say anything to the gaming community anymore.

I think Jeff's review may have been slightly inflamatory (which is stimulating), I think somebody in corporate has indigestion after overindulging over thanksgiving (which they probably spent kissing Eidos hiny). This shitty combination resulted in whole lotta crap for weeks!

And then, in the middle of cleaning up, they fart out this microphone issues stuff. Has anyone invented corporate maalox?

It was 1up that yanked and rewrote the NVN2 review. There was minor squawking, but nothing like the manure storm this induced.

The people who are wondering "what laws" are preventing the true scoop from coming out must not have worked a job higher up than manual labor because in Corporate America there are all sorts of privacy rules in place. If C|Net said that Jeff was stealing office supplies and jerking off into his co-workers hand creme jars, he could sue them for megabucks.

I had a boss who had a girlfriend who worked in another building for the same company. He went to her site and got into a big fight and security was called and he was thrown out then fired. It's been about three years and no announcement that he no longer worked for the company was ever made. The woman who sat next to be came back after a 2 months medical leave and then disappeared after two days and suddenly came a terse note that she was no longer with the company and her replacement would be so-and-so. The grapevine brought word that she and her husband were stealing laptops, but not a peep officially was announced.

It is entirely possible that C|Net is guilty of nothing more than tone-deafness and bad timing, but there are waaaaaaaay too many coincidences and obfuscations to be totally plausible.

GS's statement does not show character or a clear attitude toward Jeff. They could express that without violating California laws. You fired a guy - show some backbone, dont tell me it was all a coincidence. You are not giving me anything to love.

Jeff, on the other hand, for better or worse, showed lots of character. It may be heroic or a-whole character, but I relate immediately to him.

This is the message I want conveyed:

Games are inherently more social than movies. One gains much less satisfaction from a movie seen by more people beside oneself than from a game purchased by more people (especially in the age of online gaming).

With his review Jeff made a clear recommendation against purchase of K&L to the public at large. He in effect told me that others are less likely to buy the game, independently of whether I would like it or not. Number of buyers is important to me, because I can still enjoy a game I dont like, if I play it with friends. (I think this is the main reason why game scores are inflated and why Eidos was so unhappy with the video review).

What PISSED Eidos off was that Jeff called the game "ugly ugly" and the developers "sloppy and lazy", which is personal, angry and probably unfair. Eidos must have thought they are standing up for their people when they complained to CNET (and pulled or did not renew their ads - whatever).

GameSpot and CNET is wrong for firing Jeff. As a critic, he is allowed to be nasty, unfair, subjective and wrong. People who are familiar with criticism (and K&L is an M-rated game) know this. The review was competent by critical standards - it gave a supported opinion in a personal and interesting way. He thought the game sucked - hey, its his call!

Maybe GameSpot and CNET is right for firing Jeff. They didnt like their top (unsupervised) editor being unfair and wrong (in their opinion), he is an at will employee and they dont have to stand for it. Firing him was a form of criticism too - business-based criticism.

However, business-based criticism obeys different rules than game criticism. Its all about bottom line, timing, strategy, customer satisfaction, brand value, positioning. By those standards, firing Jeff was an incompetent call. Exhibit 1 - two-week post-"separation" shitstorm, resulting in deterioration of all business positions.

At this point I cant help but think that whoever made the firing decision needs to be fired, too. Maybe there is another way of resolving this, I have to think about it.

I believe them if only because Gerstmann was terrible at his job and his video reviews were embarrassing

also why would anyone be surprised that this kind of shit is going on at freakin GAMESPOT

I like to give people the benefit of the doubt too.

Not corporations however.

I have worked at a large company, and that's why I KNOW they're up to something. You could be right, Jeff could have been doing anything, but this situation all seems very odd. I gotta say, if it walks like a duck...