Gamespot Editor Fired Over Kane & Lynch Review?

[Sharingan]

Kotaku.com heard an unsettling rumor today from an anonymous tipster that longtime game reviewer Jeff Gerstmann from Gamespot has been let go. That wouldn't necessarily be newsworthy, but the conditions under which he was allegedly dismissed were. According to the source, Gerstmann was fired "on the spot" due to advertiser pressure for his review of Eidos' Kane & Lynch: Dead Men. A visit to Gamespot shows that the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 game has taken over the site very prominently, with backgrounds and multiple banner ads all pitching Kane & Lynch. Allegedly, publisher Eidos "took issue with the review and threatened to pull its ad campaign."

Jeff's review was certainly less than glowing. He assigned the game a 6.0, otherwise known as "Fair" on the Gamespot scale. The game is currently enjoying a Metacritic score in the 65 to 69 range, which the site describes as "mixed or average reviews." According to our tipster, it wasn't necessarily the score that was reason for Gerstmann's rumored axing, but the "tone" of the review.

Gerstmann has been no stranger to controversial reviews, as his scores of 10 for Tony Hawk's Pro Skater and 8.8 for The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess had sensitive internet users up in arms. It's now possible that many bitter fanboys may have had their wishes for his firing granted.


Interesting. So much for reviewers being objective, eh? Can sites like Gamespot still be trusted when review scores are being (or supposed to be) determined by how much money is being shoved their way by publishers?

Microsoft: "Here's $1.000.000. Giev 10 for Halo 3, plix."
Gamespot: "Would you like that 10 with chocolate chip cookies or strawberry jam on top?"

[Submeg]

Geez, pretty ridiculous. Makes it more obvious that the game sucks dont cha think? ;) But then again, who gives 10 for THPS? :blink:

[Harrison]

Every review for the game I've read has given it a 6 and I've now played the game and completely agree, especially with the review in Edge magazine.

The game is quite weak in gameplay, being just a run and shoot game and when compared to current releases such as COD4 and Crysis it falls way short of the mark.

[Sharingan]

More on the matter below.

In short, objectivity in game journalism is dead. I never doubted that there have been cases of bribery here and there, but to find out that publishers/advertisers actually have that much influence? It's all about the money, not about providing the consumer with objective, reliable information.



We're very clear in our review policies that all reviews are vetted by the entire team before they go live - everything that goes up is the product of an entire team's output. Our freelancers are especially guilty of making snide comments, but those are always yanked before the review goes live, because everyone in the office reads these reviews and makes sure they're up to our standards before they get put up. If there was a problem with his reviews, then it would've been a problem with the entire team.

Firing him without telling anyone implies that anyone else on this team can be fired at the drop of a hat as well, because none of us are writing any differently or meaner or less professionally than we were two years ago before the management changed. I'm sure management wants to spin this as the G-Man being unprofessional to take away from the egg on their face that results after a ten-year employee gets locked out of his office and told to leave the premises and then no one communicates anything to us about it until the next day.

This management team has shown what they're willing to do. Jeff had ten years in and was ****ing locked out of his office and told to leave the building.

What you might not be aware of is that GS is well known for appealing mostly to hardcore gamers. The mucky-mucks have been doing a lot of "brand research" over the last year or so and indicating that they want to reach out to more casual gamers. Our last executive editor, Greg Kasavin, left to go to EA, and he was replaced by a suit, Josh Larson, who had no editorial experience and was only involved on the business side of things. Over the last year there has been an increasing amount of pressure to allow the advertising teams to have more of a say in the editorial process; we've started having to give our sales team heads-ups when a game is getting a low score, for instance, so that they can let the advertisers know that before a review goes up. Other publishers have started giving us notes involving when our reviews can go up; if a game's getting a 9 or above, it can go up early; if not, it'll have to wait until after the game is on the shelves.

I was in the meeting where Josh Larson was trying to explain this firing and the guy had absolutely no response to any of the criticisms we were sending his way. He kept dodging the question, saying that there were "multiple instances of tone" in the reviews that he hadn't been happy about, but that wasn't Jeff's problem since we all vet every review. He also implied that "AAA" titles deserved more attention when they were being reviewed, which sounded to all of us that he was implying that they should get higher scores, especially since those titles are usually more highly advertised on our site.

I know that it's all about the money, and hey, I like money. I like advertising because it pays my salary. Unfortunately after Kasavin left the church-and-state separation between the sales teams and the editorial team has cracked, and with Jeff's firing I think it's clear that the management now has no interest at all in integrity and are instead looking for an editorial team that will be nicer to the advertisers.

When companies make games as downright contemptible as Kane and Lynch, they deserve to be called on it. I guess you'll have to go to Onion or a smaller site for objective reviews now, because everyone at GS now thinks that if they give a low score to a high-profile game, they'll be ****canned. Everyone's ****ing scared and we're all hoping to get Josh Larson removed from his position because no one trusts him anymore. If that doesn't happen then look for every game to be Game of the Year material at GameSpot.

[Harrison]

It's actually down to marketing. Companies pay a lot to be able to sponsor a site as they have with this game, and if that same site then has a less than favourable review it's not going to go down well with the company paying the site a lot of money to advertise the game.

[Submeg]

Yea well if the site advertises a game to be good, and it turns out sh1t...then in the end they will lose money because people wont believe their site..lose lose situ

[Ghost]

Ah, the old story.

Something similar happened to a favorite computer magazine of mine I used to read seven years ago; Hoog Spel, an independent Dutch gaming magazine.

When they weren't as favourable to games that the publishers and importers really wanted to sell well they stopped receiving adds and game copies to reviews.

But instead of giving into the demands they decided to stop instead, not really feeling there was such a demand anymore for an independent gaming magazine when magazines such as Power Unlimited are there.

[J T]

It's a poor show, for sure, and a sad indication of how much control the money and ad-men have over the reviewers (and media in general). Luckily there are a million web sites with reviews and opinions, so we can find ones we trust. And there are even more warez sites for us to try for ourselves :whistle:

I have to say I go a lot on word-of-mouth when choosing games. But then, because I buy relatively few games I don't take that many risks on more obscure games.

[Harrison]

I've also always tended to go with word of mouth, as well as never just taking a single magazine's review of a game as the only reliable source.

Every true review is written based on the reviewer's personal like and dislikes, as well as the experience they have based on the games they have personally played before. Therefore one opinion in a review might not reflect others.

But when they start to write reviews to order from the marketing department of the publisher of the game you are then paying to buy a magazine of adverts, and not one of personal objective reviews, and in my view that is misrepresentation and surely against the law!

[AlexJ]

One thing I was quite suprised to see recently was that Edge gave Halo 3 a 10/10 review. That's a pretty rare occurance, and having played the game I can't really see why. It's a solid game but it's not really revolutionary or too different from what's gone before it.

[Harrison]

That is true. I was slightly surprised to see it score a 10/10 too. Edge tend to be over critical normally with their reviews, but I can't imagine they would succumb to the same pressure from publishers as some others have.

[Ghost]

Hello all,

A 10/10 would indicate that this game would be setting new trends on its field, and to be honest Halo, especially Halo 3 doesn't really do that at all.
All it did was perhaps make FPS games more appealing to console gamers.

And for the rest, its pretty well known that a lot developers these days 'buy' the scores for their games, they of course want to sell as much as possible in the end
I find the quality a lot of games rather questionable, especially those of the extreme games.

[Teho]

Not just these days. It's been happening all along. With all the Rise of the Robots talk here lately, I'd say that's clear evidence that this has been going on for ages.

Here's another, this was posted by one of the angry-gamer guys on their forum:


Back in my game reviewing days, I worked on (and ran)a PC game reviewing site (Hotgames.com, but dont bother looking for it any more since its been sold and changed into a stupid gambling site) that was owned by Melbourne House, makers of such fine games as…er…KKND, International Cricket and Dethkarz.

Most of the time I shat out average scores to average games and everything was fine. However whenever Melbourne House released a game like…er, KKND, International Cricket and Dethkarz, I had to give it 5 out of 5. I learned to damn with (very) faint praise. My wonderful reviews would then be used on the box and other marketing materials.

One time I tried to tell it “how it was” and say that KKND 2 was average at best, and the review was changed before it went online to be glowing and 5 / 5. I got mad about it for about ten minutes, then realised that I should have known this was going to happen. At least with that place, I knew ahead of time where my bread was buttered!

So this is nothing new, but at least back then my boss was honest about it.

And now Melbourne House, the website and my credibility as a game reviewer are long gone :p

[AlexJ]

Hello all,

A 10/10 would indicate that this game would be setting new trends on its field, and to be honest Halo, especially Halo 3 doesn't really do that at all.
All it did was perhaps make FPS games more appealing to console gamers.

A 10/10 in a Edge really should mean something special though, perhaps more than any other magazine or publication. Prior to Halo 3 the list of games attaining this score read:

Super Mario 64, Nintendo 64 (E35)
Gran Turismo, Sony PlayStation (E55)
The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time, Nintendo 64 (E66)
Halo: Combat Evolved, Microsoft Xbox (E105)
Half-Life 2, Windows PC (E143)

That's 5 games in 12 years. Then suddenly

Halo 3, Microsoft Xbox 360, (E181)
The Orange Box, Windows PC, Xbox 360, Playstation 3 (E182)
Super Mario Galaxy, Wii (E183)

3 games in 3 issues? Mario Galaxy I can understand, for having played it I feel it is as revolutionary as Mario64 was on it's release. Orange Box contains Half-Life 2 which previously received a 10/10 so I guess it gets the score on the basis it can't be marked as worse than HL2 on it's own. But Halo3 is simply an above-average FPS. It makes nowhere near the impression that the original Halo did, and especially is nowhere near as ground-breaking as either the original Half-Life or Goldeneye on the N64 were, neither of which obtained 10/10.

[Sharingan]

Apparently, Microsoft sent out Halo 3 gift packs worth at least $800 to review sites and magazines prior to the game's release, and who knows what else was done behind the scenes?

Microsoft doesn't lack the funds, and I'm sure we all know about some of their 'shadier' practises. I wouldn't be surprised at all.

[Harrison]

It always surprised me that Edge never gave the original Half-Life a 10/10 rating back in the day, but I agree with all the other 10/10 scores they have given over the years, with the exception of Halo 3.

As has already been said, the original Halo was revolutionary at the time and brought a lot to the genre, but Halo 3 is just an updated newer take on the same game and not something revolutionary and deserving of a perfect score. Did they get influenced by M$ or are we just missing something? I would actually be surprised if the review in edge have been directly influenced as they are one of the few magazines who stick by their honest opinions, but who knows. Enough money or shiny things can influence anyone!