Gamespot fires Gerstmann

ErnstH said:
Yeah, it's such a bad game that for some reason even now it's the most played game on Xbox Live. I guess Gears of War and Call of Duty 4 must be truly horrible in comparison... :rolleyes:
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No it just that MS marketing ability is so good, they brainwash into not only thinking that Halo's is a great game to purchase but also they brainwash you into actually liking the game so much you spend hours upon hours playing it for months at a time.

Thank the gaming gods that MS's mastery of this superpowered hypnotic marketing skill is limited to one franchise.;)

Or else we all would love Brute Force 3 and Monster Truck Madness 6 1/2 with each selling 100s of million dollars of software on day one.
 
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NavNucST3 said:
Game reviewers, in my belief, only influence the "hard core" everyone else buys based on friends, pretty box art and/or their kids...reviews be damned.
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I don't think so.

I mean, I guess you'd have to define 'hardcore', but print publications are a HUGE business, and I don't think the people buying print game magazines could be defined as hardcore. Most of their content is recycled from the internet, where hardcore gamers already get their news.

Also, word of mouth is directly affected by reviews. It's part of the discussion that goes on amongst friends, they talk about the game, whether it's cool, and what scores it's gotten, they all go hand in hand.
 
vazel said:
Actually sad to say they do.
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The fallacy in that logic should be fairly apparent.

Its like saying sportwriters' view of a basketball player's skill level affects his salary.

Micheal Jordan got 30 million dollar a year contract because he won 6 championship with stellar play on the basketball court.

He didn't get 30 million because sportswriters were gushing over his abilities as a basketball player.

Game reviews closely coorelate with sales because reviews also coorelate nicely with game quality.
 
Reviews inform people of the games quality though, and there is a MASSIVE difference between a sport and a game in the way you're trying to present it.

People knew Michael Jordan was good because he played great his entire career, and BY THE TIME he was making all his money there was no question about his skill. A game however can be hit and miss for even seasoned developers and people don't know of its quality and therefore are not willing to pay the money till they know. Reviews therefore give them this insight, it could be related to a highlight package for a college star about to be drafted into the NBA, etc.
 
Have to throw this in as well:

Why the hell are people so stupid to say "Eidos made Gamespot fire him"? There's no way in hell THAT happened. What is like the case is that Eidos pulled the funding and then Gamespot fired him over this issue to set an example.
 
Skrying said:
Have to throw this in as well:

Why the hell are people so stupid to say "Eidos made Gamespot fire him"? There's no way in hell THAT happened. What is like the case is that Eidos pulled the funding and then Gamespot fired him over this issue to set an example.
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and u r ok with that example?
 
According to this, the Top 5 magazines sell 4million copies a month, which are then read by ~20 million adults. These numbers don't include teenagers, and would be even higher if they did.

That's a alot of "harcdcore" gamers!

I think the 1:4 ratio of sold:read is good evidence for the casual nature of magazine buyers, most people are sharing it with at least 2 or 3 of their friends.
 
Skrying said:
Reviews inform people of the games quality though, and there is a MASSIVE difference between a sport and a game in the way you're trying to present it.

People knew Michael Jordan was good because he played great his entire career, and BY THE TIME he was making all his money there was no question about his skill. A game however can be hit and miss for even seasoned developers and people don't know of its quality and therefore are not willing to pay the money till they know. Reviews therefore give them this insight, it could be related to a highlight package for a college star about to be drafted into the NBA, etc.
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People knew that Michael Jordan was good by his first season. They knew this by watching him play and not going just off the comments of sports writers.

A game's potential is built on hype, marketing and actual quality and not reviews. Every game that has sold well this generation was a known entity and well hyped well before release. Also, preorders coorelate nicely with sales.

Reviews highlight great games and act as an added incentive to purchase, but you can't significantly manufacture high volume of sales by just having a bunch of review sites give a game a bunch 9s and 9.5s especially one that obviously doesn't deserve those scores.

Publishers influence on games scores has been apparent for some time but there are natural counterbalances to such influences that have led to very obvious percularities (spelling off but I being lazy right now) of the general gaming review system.

If you asked me to judge anything in life besides a game on a 10 point scale and I gave you a 5, you would probably take score as meaning "average". However, a 5 out 10 score from any gaming review site typically means "garbage" to the average gamer. Gaming site that are overly generous with highscores are the ones that are taken less seriously be gamers. There is a reason that metacritic and gamerankings have gain such prevalence in the gaming world. Plus, reviewers don't have short term memories and if they were influenced to give a certain game a fluffed up score then they are more likely to score better games higher. In essense both gamers and actual review writers have lessen the effect of a publishers influence on scores.

Publishers haven't broke the scoring system, it just thier influence plus counterbalances instituted by review writers and gamers have indiretly forced gaming websites to make a 4 point scale look like a 10 point scale, where games typically score between 7 and 10, and 6.9 and below represent no man's land.
 
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PARANOiA said:
Discuss.
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As has been pointed out in several places (eg PA). If a 6 on a scale to 10 gets you fired, then what is a 1-5 on that scale?

Silly review system... Games should be reviewed on a 1-5 points basis where 1=dont buy, 2=budget game, 3=good game, 4=great game, 5=excellent game.

And to avoid the "7-9" scale why not set up the policy so that GOTY candidates can only be games that have gotten 5, atleast for the overall GOTY title
 
On the topic i really feel bad for the guy watched and read alot of his reviews, didn't always agree with him on many things but also agreed on others, i guess we should not be very surprised this happens everywhere, can't let gamespot get away with it though.

Can still watch his review on this link http://youtube.com/watch?v=5FuJ81sDR2o
 
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dobwal said:
A game's potential is built on hype, marketing and actual quality.
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And where do you find the most detailed info of if its quality? Where do you go for the best idea of what to expect in a game? Reviews. Years ago i could perhaps agree with your comment above, but not now. So many publishers spend millions to CREATE high profile titles out of thin air. After marketing them and hyping them, the games themselves still have a very real chance of turning out to be total garbage or mediorcre at best. Its not that hard to think of recent examples of this. If anything what you're listing as indications of a good game have a very real chance to contradict eachother. If we all believed the hype fed to us and marketing promotions, why then most people would problably feel about their game library the same way they do when they buy a music CD. 12 tracks, 2 really good songs. And of course you'd own practically every game.
 
Halo 3 was different than the other Halos. Great game but some people who have very picky tastes in fps might not like it.

It makes sense that Eidos pulled their ad campaign from gamespot and that's why gamespot fired them (not that Eidos told gamespot to). If you go to gamespot, you see no banners on the left and right which makes sense because they planned for K&L to be there for this week/month/whatever.

really sad, I guess the only reviews worth reading/watching are gametrailers or other video reviews because you can see the game for yourself. gametrailers did give shadow the hedgehog an 8 since sega did a huge ad campaign around the game's release though.
 
.Melchiah. said:
I find it hard to believe any of the bigger magazines or websites would be free to give negative reviews for their sponsors' products. If there's a big ad for ie. EA's game, I'd be surprised if their games got below average scores.
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I dont. I get PC Gamer and it cracks me up when they pan a game and yet put a full page add of the same game right next to the review.
 
On the subject of review scores, this is indirectly related. Here's a dev speaking about funding being impacted by review scores -
...The publishers have been turning to game rankings - even a bit too much recently. You may have heard that some publishers want to connect the game rank with possible royalties in the business contract. The decision to make a sequel is both based on sales and the game rankings. I bet the reviewers don't even realize the power they hold - it's like giving a child a real gun. Get a few of those kids together and you can accidentally kill a studio or a franchise.
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If review scores can affect funding, those personal opinions of reviewers suddenly become more than something you can just ignore if you think they're wakko. If a game you love scores lowly, publishers could pull the plug, just because reviewers don't share your tastes. That's even more reason for gaming to stagnate into a shooter fest, or whatever reviewers tend to slap an extra couple of points on as it matches their tastes. The best move by developers seems to be to bribe...ahem, I mean fund advertising for their titles.
 
Shifty Geezer said:
On the subject of review scores, this is indirectly related. Here's a dev speaking about funding being impacted by review scores -

If review scores can affect funding, those personal opinions of reviewers suddenly become more than something you can just ignore if you think they're wakko. If a game you love scores lowly, publishers could pull the plug, just because reviewers don't share your tastes. That's even more reason for gaming to stagnate into a shooter fest, or whatever reviewers tend to slap an extra couple of points on as it matches their tastes. The best move by developers seems to be to bribe...ahem, I mean fund advertising for their titles.
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While it is not completely false, it's also not a justification for then just bribing reviewers, is it? If a publisher releases crap game after crap game, first his franchise will go down in standing (and sales) and then the publisher itself. But the same holds for review sites.
 
No. It just shows the whole system is whack. Kind of inevitable though, that you won't find a situation where people and money are involved and everyone will happily choose to play fairly for the good of the consumer...
 
Industry rumors about Kane and Lynch are that it's been screwed up mostly by the publisher. Seems like someone high up made a couple of bad decisions and now he doesn't want to face the consequences, damaging the entire industry in the end...
 
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