GameDaily reports Joshua Larson, former VP of Games at CNET Networks and the man often blamed for GameSpot's Gerstmann-gate scandal, has been named VP of Business Development at in-game ad agency Double Fusion. Please let the deliciousness of that flow over you for a brief moment.

Double Fusion's President and CEO announced Larson's hiring along with several others, saying that the new folks share a love of games and a "history of strong results and success in their prior roles." Larson's previous role was to manage business strategy and product direction at GameSpot.com. He's been dubbed the point man in the firing of Jeff Gerstmann and the exodus which followed, leaving GameSpot an editorially tarnished brand. If "success" is determined through money and not reputation, then it's probably being used to describe Larson's small roll in CNET's purchase by CBS for $1.8 billion earlier this year.

The latest episode of Glitch in the System makes it horribly obvious that the "celebrities" attending Gamespot's E3 bash had no idea who was hosting the party. That street probably goes both ways because, straight up, we had to Google almost every single one of the "celebrities" that we saw in the video. Check out the cringe-inducing footage o the red carpet interviews after the break.

PS: Thanks again to the 300+ people who attended -- or used astral projection to attend in spirit -- our Joystiq E3 meet-up. Watching something like this makes us appreciate you all even more.

When Gamespot Editorial Director Jeff Gerstmann was abruptly fired under controversial circumstances late last year, it set off a sort of domino effect. In the wake of the scandal, Gamespot staffers Ryan Davis, Brad Shoemaker and Vinny Caravella all decided to leave the venerable site to start a new project with Gerstmann: a project called Giant Bomb. A skeleton of the site has been up since March, but the project really got going Monday with an overhaul that mixes user-created, wiki-style pages with editorial reviews, videos and podcasts from the four-man ex-Gamespot crew.

We talked to Giant Bomb co-founder Ryan Davis about his thoughts on the new site and his departure from Gamespot, and game journalism in general. Some excerpts from our conversation (be sure to click the "Continue" link for the full interview):

On Gerstmann-gate and the state of game journalism
"Obviously we still have lots of friends and a ton of history there [at CNET], but we're so focused on the good stuff we're doing now. ... [Gerstmann-gate] certainly helped get our names in people's mouths in certain circles. ... Before [Gerstmann-gate] even happened, I felt like people needed to be more skeptical about what they read, with the massive influx of news-blogs giving little distinction between rumor and fact.

"We're not in the business of reporting news, but as far as the review process goes, we're being very open about a review being that person's perspective. We don't use fancy math to come to our reviews, we just go with what the reviewer feels the game merits. I think when a review has to represent an entire organization's perspective on a game, that's where you can run into trouble. Also, for what it's worth, I've never considered myself a 'game journalist.' I think they exist, but I'm a reviewer and a commentator more than anything."

Man, if peopled freaked out over their 8.8 Twilight Princess score, imagine what's going to happen when the internet catches wind of Metal Gear Solid 4's 0.0. (Note: The above did happen, but it was just a technical glitch. Please don't stick a stun knife in either us or Gamespot.) Check out the highlights for today:

Joystiquery
A week with Spore Creature Creator: Day One
BigDownload offering big prizes to see your Spore creatures
Joyswag: Win a Kojima-signed copy of MGS4
Meet the Team: Kevin Kelly
Podcast Rodeo for June 17: ... And Ear Back
The best of WoW Insider: June 10-17, 2008

News
Championship Gaming Series coming to G4
Wii Move to do "something" with the Wii Balance Board
Team Fortress 2 Pyro update coming Thursday
EA extends Take-Two offer to July 18
Crytek shows interest in PSP development
Underworld's Len Wiseman set to helm Gears of War movie
MGS4 sells 476K units first week in Japan; UK PS3 sales impact 'minimal'
Spore Creature Creator demo available now on PC and Mac
Nintendo promises 'core' gamers will be happy with E3 showing
All Tecmo employees sue Tecmo
Sega: leaked 'Crucible' video not our Silicon Knights game
Marathon 2 map pack thrown up on Wednesday
First Call of Duty: World at War trailer to roll onto XBL
Reminder: Preorder Hail to the Chimp, get $10 of Onion Store credit
Stardock launches Impulse digital distribution system
Boom Blox sales: EA content, analysts less upbeat
PS3 2.40 update includes in-game XMB, trophies
Sims Carnival is now in open beta
Force your older Mac to evolve and run Spore Creatore Creator
Screamshots: Dead Space
PS3 firmware v2.36 available now

Rumors & Speculation
Rumor: Heavenly Sword 2 cancelled; Ninja Theory 'bitter' with Sony

Culture & Community
Bodysurf: Where the Wii Balance Board meets Audiosurf
Boom, headshot! Meet the Team Fortress 2 Sniper

Gamespot's been stirring the fanboy stew with their graphics comparison features for a few years now, highlighting the visual differences between major consoles. Now in their third round of 360 vs. PS3, Gamespot has a startling revelation: it's really hard to tell them apart.

Though they ultimately rule that the Xbox 360 still slightly wins out in the overall, the difference is negligible enough that they're willing to call it a tie. The 360 rocks the boat in high-res textures and texture mapping, but the PS3 conquers in shadowing and anti-aliasing (whatever all that means).

CBS will pay $1.8 billion in cash to become the proud parent of CNet and its spawn GameSpot in a deal that's expected to close in the third quarter pending shareholder and regulatory approval. The acquisition values the company at $11.50 per share, a 45% premium over CNet's closing stock price on Wednesday, reports the Associated Press. Sheesh! Well, CBS, you've just been robbed "welcome to the internets" ... but as The Washington Post puts it, you've certainly got your work cut out for you not to become known as "CNet Buy Sunk."

We're not sure if at this point, five months after the origin of Gerstmannia, you can still point to people leaving Gamespot as a "trend" per se, or if it's just a case of people moving on. Regardless, we thought it worth bringing to your attention that staffer and host of Gamespot's podcast The Hotspot, Vinny Caravella, is leaving the company.

Again, we have no idea what pastures Caravella is moving on to or what made them seem so much greener. We are, however, continuing to use the above picture. Why? Well, in all honesty, we still think it's funny, and also, it took us a while to make and we don't know if we'll get to use it again. ... Wow, that's a horrifying look into our decision making process isn't it? Sorry about that.

[Update: Gamespot EIC Ricardo Torres has posted a fuller explanation of what exactly caused the bug. In short, Torres says the 9.5 review was not final and was changed to a ten during the regular peer review process. A glitch in Gamespot's servers caused the score to be briefly published before it was ready.]

Given the flood of perfect review scores for Grand Theft Auto IV, observant gamers were justifiably surprised when a score of 9.5/10 briefly appeared on Gamespot.com Monday. That surprise turned to confusion in some quarters when the score (which had no accompanying review) was quickly taken down and later replaced with the fifth 10/10 in Gamespot's history (complete with corresponding review text). Message boards and some blogs jumped at the change, throwing around charges of "review fixing" and alluding to Gamespot's recent Gerstmann-related credibility problems.

Don't go running for your pitchforks and torches just yet, though. According to a forum post by Gamespot's Aaron Thomas, the briefly displayed 9.5 was just a pre-production glitch and never an official review score. "We never posted a review with the score of 9.5," Thomas writes. "What you saw was a bug that sometimes causes scores to appear on the site before reviews go live. Sometimes that score is correct, sometimes it isn't. In this case, it wasn't." Nothing to see here, folks. Move it along. Save your indignation for the thugs trying to push Niko around.

(full disclosure: I write a weekly column on the game media for Gamespot)

We've joked before that, with all of the resignations post Gerstmann-gate, Gamespot's content must be generated by a lonely janitor in the offices, taking a break from picking gum out of the carpet. We're sad to report that his life is about to be even harder: Editor Brad Shoemaker (who has written for the site for eight years) will leave the company this Friday. He hasn't reveled where he's headed, but he's maintaining a personal blog to keep fans up-to-date.

The list of departures from the site is getting long enough that we'll soon have to set it to the tune of the "William Tell Overture" to remember it all. But for right now it's at Jason Ocampo, Ryan Davis, Alex Navarro, Frank Provo and, of course, Jeff Gerstmann himself. Just so we know, is this officially "fiasco" level yet? Are we at Code Fiasco?

[Thanks, Robert]

He's been teasing it for a while now, but Jeff Gerstmann has revealed where he's rebuilding his house after the Gamespot Quake of '07: GiantBomb.com, a collabo between Jeff G. and fellow former Gamespotters Alex Navarro and Ryan Davis. As you probably could have guessed, it's a site all about knitting, knitting supplies, knitting culture and (of course) knitting humor in the monthly feature "What A Stitch!" (also, video games).

This week, Gerstmann takes you behind the scenes on an exclusive, backstage tour of the new Giant Bomb offices. Who knew a start-up could be this glamorous?

The post Gerstmann-gate metagame of "who's leaving Gamespot" continues with the announcement that former editor Jason Ocampo has landed a job as Editor-in-Chief of the PC team at IGN.

Although Ocampo's leaving supposedly had nothing to do with Gerstmann-gate, the loss of almost every "known" person at Gamespot in such a short time is ... awkward. On the plus side, now there's hardly anyone remaining at Gamespot who'd be worth noting if they left. Yay, the epic is almost over and we can march forward (Ocam-ocam-ocam-po).

At this point, when we think of the halls of Gamespot, we can't help but envision one lonely janitor who, taking a break from his full day of sweeping, occasionally tries to put a video game into a console and, on the rare times when he's successful, writes 800 words about it. We know that's not the case, but our grim image of the place has only been further cemented by the news during this week's Hotspot (the site's official podcast) that PC gaming specialist Jason Ocampo was leaving the site for another opportunity.

Ocampo said that he hadn't been considering a move three weeks ago, which would seem to rule any Gerstmann-gate connections out. That said, we'd be willing to bet that having so many of his co-workers jump ship didn't make the decision any harder.

It's fair to say that the controversial firing of Jeff Gerstmann was a contributing factor to Ryan Davis' recent decision to leave Gamespot. But it was far from the only factor.

"Jeff's firing just destroyed me, and I think it shed a light on the other stuff that I had been kind of rolling along with," Davis told Joystiq in an exclusive interview.

For Davis, who had worked for the popular site since 2000, the daily grind of working at such a large site was beginning to take its toll. "It's just that I had been at the job for a long time, and a lot of the stuff that made the job fun for me has dissipated," he said. "Sometimes you don't love the job, but you make your way through it by focusing on the good stuff. Gamespot is also a huge site, and an organization of that magnitude comes with a fair amount of bureaucracy, and everyone ultimately ends up spending a fair amount of time doing stuff other than producing the content."

Update: Davis discusses his departure with Joystiq.

Joystiq has confirmed with new Gamespot editor-in-chief Ricardo Torres that longtime staffer Ryan Davis has given notice that he intends to leave the site. While we haven't been able to get in touch with Davis directly, a source close to Davis inside Gamespot told us, on condition of anonymity, that the controversial firing of editorial director Jeff Gerstmann was the catalyst behind the decision. The planned departure follows similar decisions by freelancer Frank Provo and staffer Alex Navarro in the wake of the scandal.

In a Dec. 1 blog post, Davis spoke of his close relationship with Gerstmann since before he started writing for Gamespot in 2000. "Jeff Gerstmann has been a significant figure in both my personal and professional life for a long, long time," he wrote. "By my recollection, we were fairly fast friends, though I was also kind of pushy about it." The pair played together as part of alternative rap group Suburban All-Stars.

We know that a lot of you harbor resentment towards GameSpot in the wake of the whole Gerstmann-gate affair, and we can't blame you. We've all got hefty, Gerstmann-shaped holes in our hearts, and our faith in the once great review database is now shaken. However, Ricardo Torres, GameSpot's recently appointed Editor in Chief, is determined to regain your trust in the site, regardless of how many stern 7.5s he'll have to hand out in order to do so.

In a recent interview with GameDaily,Torres claims that GameSpot staffers are coming back to work (those who haven't resigned), and that "people are getting back into the swing of things." He also hopes that their strengthened dedication to putting out untainted content will win back their original readers. What do you think, gang? Is it possible to forgive and forget? Or has that ship sailed, been boarded by pirates, then viciously torpedoed by U-Boats?