Jeff Gerstmann fired from Gamespot for Kane and Lynch review

http://blog.wired.com/games/2007/11/sources-gamespo.html

Its a rumor for now, but it still kinda sucks that Free Speech is only allowed...if you have the funds to back it up!



Jeff Gerstmann, also known as the "Asshole who gave TP an 8.8" got fired because he gave a game a bad review score thats being heavily advertised on the site.

Penny Arcade also has an amusing article on the whole thing:

 

That's why you should never listen to what sites like that write. I t really is a shame that someone telling the true gets treated like that

Yakumo

 

wow, what a rebel. fighting the corporate machine like that.

All of these sites are corporately owned, and we even know they've taken payments for good reviews in the past with garbage like Driver 3. It's honestly shocking that a worker bee would risk his job for whatever journalistic integrity is left in video game reviewing.

 

That sucks...

This is why I stick to the opinions of friends who have similar tastes in games.

 

or you just wait a week to see if the general, "oh shit this game sucks" wave sweeps around the internet for a certain game.

 

A shame. I was actually considering getting the game, until now. There are good games and there are bad games and it is all a matter of personal opinion. I do not recall ever buying or not buying a game due to reviews and I have no intention of ever doing so in the future. I will not be buying this game, however, if this incident is true.

Oh, and I agree with him on the 8.8 score. TP is a good game, but the people who think it deserves 10/10 simply because it has Zelda in the name are nuts. Too many people, publishers included, seem to think that a score different than what they would give is wrong. A score is just one person's opinion and you can either agree or disagree, but get over it.

 

Having been a reviewer for the music industry for several years, you tend to find that larger companies simply refuse to send particular reviewers material by any bands that you've slated or given a bad review over!

They send the material to tried and tested lap dogs who pander to their money ways, such as A&R guys taking you out for drinks, buttering you up with free gig tickets, merchandise or prizes for your magazine / radio station / family & friends! In my time I met droves of enthusiastic, genuine reviewers and music lovers, but I also met handfuls of morons who purely thought it was about "being" with the bands and getting stuff for free.

I think good reviewers in those instances should declare their interest, such as "I have known this particular group for many year..." or whatever. Same with film reviews, book reviews, games reviews etc.

I've only ever written 2 reviews where I literally "shat" on the band from a great height. Both totally deserved it. One was French band "Air" when they released a totally garbage album (who's name I can no longer even recall). Imho they went from being an innovative group to introspective and seemed to dump their following in morbid banality, and I said so! "Music for a funeral" I think I entitled it and it didn't go down well. It's a crap album, however you look at it!

Virgin France went from sending me stuff on a monthly basis to me having to ring them and hussle the material from them.

Why would anyone think it was any different with other reviewing situations? Everyone has a bias! The PR people need good reviews. They know that their own jobs lie in the line of success or failure. Investing huge sums of money in an album or games release means they NEED people to offer good reviews.

The fact that the website was plastered with "Free" stuff relating to the game is another indicator. When something needs a lot of help, you offer it! Make it impossible for it not to look like the magazine / site isn't endorsing the game. Hype it up and people see the name everywhere and assume (because that's the art of advertising is it not) that a product with a lot of exposure must be good or at least popular.

How many times have any of us bought a game fully of expectations because it would appear that a particular game was a "must have" in order to discover it was utter garbage? Hopefully not too often, but it does for the very reasons suggested in this thread. Don't believe everything in black & white!

I've always tried to be honest & fair with anything I have written, but some material should never leave the creators imagination.

Good on the reviewer for sticking to his guns - all this will inevitably do is undermine the organisations involved, so they only have themselves to blame!

Invariably this kind of attitude and reaction will make the gaming community rather suspicious of any further releases. That can only damage the manufacturers reputation.

 

Reviews are interesting. There are some I agree with 100% about several of the issues, and some I am like "what the..." when they give rather mediocre games good scores (Halo 2 and 3 being big ones). What is even more interesting is when the reviews are divided, like Assassins Creed. It has gotten anywhere from some of the highest scores you can offer to lower end scores saying the game has big issues.

Personally, I try to listen to a variety of sources to determine what I should buy. Kane and Lynch looked very interesting when I first saw it, but it seems to have fell flat on its face, same with Assassin's Creed. On the other hand, Call of Duty 4 has peaked my interest due to what other people and not the reviewers are saying about it.

 

That sucks. He should steal the company's laptop for that. Fuck Cnet.

 

Back in the day it was handled way cooler. Anyone remember the cheat code on certain Team17 games which showed their opinion about Amiga Power? Too bad those times are long gone.

Ontopic: This does not surprise me, we all knew the industry works like this.

 

Same....I have a lot of friends who go by these scores on stuff like GameSpot too.

 

I'm waiting to hear back from a friend who knows Gerstmann to see if it's real.

So far it still seems like he got fired but the C&L part is pure speculation (if it was over C&L they woud have just gone over his head and changed the score. If he was fired, it was over something else or a growing list of things).

 

I hope it wasn't "Talkie Walkie".. :rambo:

j/k ;-)

 

Actually, no. Tell me.

Also I simply love the new Assassins creed commercial with the track by Air.
http://youtube.com/watch?v=b-mHVs5gJng

EDIT: For some reason I got it confused, the track is by Massive Attack. Still great, though.

 

As a game reviewer, I'm not quite sure how to react to this. I'm waiting to hear the official reasons for termination. Some places are reporting it was a culmination of things, and not just the K&L review. Some places say it was just the K&L review.

If it really was the review itself that got him fired, then this really gives the videogame media industry a bad rep. It tells the general public the reviews aren't trustworthy because they're all bought off.

Now, I'm not a major reviewer, but I've never had pressure from a PR contact to give a good review or my review copies and access would be revoked. I've had several poor reviews printed and the PR didn't care. This could be because I'm not writing for something like Edge, Wired, EGM, etc.

If I were to face pressure, as I have in the past for other things non-gaming related, I wouldn't bow down to it. Of course, I wouldn't give the finger, but I'd be as diplomatic as I could be and go with my opinion on said matter.

I have played Kane & Lynch, and I feel the score and review he gave were fair and truthful. I encountered several issues that shouldn't have appeared in the game.

The game is not all bad, as the multiplayer adds some new and fun elements to an otherwise ho-hum game.

 

Is all about the ads guys, simple as that...

To understand how big of an impact that is, you've to understand the context where Cnet is: they are an old school 'net company, one of the first, and one of the few that could escape the bubble burst years ago.

They work like a newspaper, that means 99.99% of the content is made by a hired staff, people that gets a paycheck, not just respect. But like any news-oriented site their income is nowhere near a real newspaper, so any profits are top priority for them.

So suddenly come game execs calls in and offers to pay hundreds of thousands, if not millions, to have one of Cnet's site (GS) full of ads for their game:



When you're the president of a company working on a tight budget stuff like this is vital to keep things afloat, so when some reviewer whose expertise is more anecdotal than real gives the game a poor score is red alert for everyone.

I'll say movie and cars reviewers are some of the most unbiased ones ("unbiased" being in context to the rest) while games and music tend towards a bias most of the time.

 

What's the old adage, "Don't shit where you sleep?"

This is no different to when a major movie studio flies out reviewers to Colorado film festivals and puts them up in five star hotels. Of course you're gonna give Mel Gibson's/Micheal Bays/Riddley Scott's/whatever powerful Hollywood director's next hunk of bullshit movie a good review regardless of how much you think it's a pile of steaming horse manure, they just got finished spending five thousand dollars on your ass.

That fact that he got fired for it might be a bit out of line. If he were smart, he'd start his own blog/website and call it "The honest reviewer" or something, play this off to his own advantage.

 

This sums it up:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Team17#Amiga_Power_Dispute

So awesome :dance:

 

I hated Gertsman back in the Dreamcast/early Xbox days. It was always apparent in his reviews that he hadn't really played the game, and thus he often came off as kind of a moron.

Though what reviews I'm referring to I couldn't tell you.

On the other hand, it is crappy that CNEt is pulling a stunt like this, especially when the game got similar reviews everywhere else.

 

I knew that smuck was a mediocre writter anyway...