ugachaka :: Jacob was here

It all started with a Kotaku post under “Rumor” that Jeff Gerstmann, longtime editor and game reviewer at Gamespot, had been fired because of pressure from Eidos, publisher of Kane & Lynch: Dead Men, after Gerstmann gave the game a 6.0/10. Eidos has a huge ad campaign running on Gamespot that had to be redirected from pointing to the review to pointing at the official Kane & Lynch site after word of the review score got out.

A Penny Arcade cartoon later, the Internet was full of gossip and no comments as everyone sought to get to the bottom of it all. The text review of the game was edited, and the video review disappeared under fishy circumstances.

Since then, there has been some moving and shaking, but nothing has been really determined. Gamers seem to be coming to a boil all over the Internet about this latest controversy because if indeed Gerstmann was fired mainly for not catering to the advertiser, it threatens game journalism’s integrity.

The most disturbing piece of the whole mystery comes from an anonymous commentator on Valleywag known as only “gamespot.” Kotaku summed up his several comments. Together, they paint the picture that Gamespot is becoming more and more advertiser-friendly and business-controlled with less editorial control. That’s not exactly what gamers want from their game review houses, so it is really getting people riled up now.

This whole situation is disgusting with each new bit of info popping out through the cracks. Enjoy your brand-building CNET family, you just pissed off your core readerbase. Have fun living that down. When you start wondering why your hits are plummeting into the crapper, just look back to this.

-Nikilii, commenter at Kotaku.com

My personal take on this whole situation is that there must be some hidden facts that we just don’t know yet about this situation. Even though the timing seems right if Gamespot was going to make a drastic move like this and get all the gamers upset–considering the big game push for the holidays is on a down swing–I don’t think that Gamespot would have overlooked the timing in relation to the Kane & Lynch fiasco. They would have had to realize that they should wait just a few weeks simply to offset any suspicious correlations.

Most journalistic institutions also understand the need to keep the business end of things away from the editorial side, and I wouldn’t jump to blame Gamespot of trying to combine the two until there was more hard evidence.

Rumor is that more will be heard officially on Tuesday.

Until then, gamers can only wait, argue and speculate over whether they should be suspicious of one of the major gaming hubs of the Web.

Gamer 2.0 put together a nice little vacation guide for Guild Wars on where you can go to step back from the crazy world of battling guilds.  I mean, who can do that straight for 9-hour shifts without taking a break to stop and smell the roses?  or at least gaze at the Bone Palace?

Take a break, man.  Step back and just appreciate the beauty…

Don’t get too close to that Bone Palace though.  The whole “souls still scream in pain” doesn’t sound like relaxing rain drop sound effects.  Do visit the Mouth of Torment though.  It doesn’t bite.

I don’t think I have ever scrolled down to the bottom of a videogame review to see how many out of ten it was awarded and based my decision on what game to by on that number. In fact, I think the only reason numbers are present in reviews these days is so fanboys can know which comment boards to flame.

Back in the day, I used to use scores as a basis for comparison–How good is the new Zelda in comparison to last gen’s version? How good is GoldenEye in comparison to Perfect Dark? How good is Halo 3 in comparison to Solitaire? You know, that sort of stuff.

The HDR Knowledge column on GameSetWatch about game ratings and reviews. The column tries to find the meaning behind review numbers in the world today.

While that may be nothing more than conspiracy, there is incongruency in the text of the review itself. Is a game that is not for everyone a bad game? Not every person enjoys action games like Halo, yet the series (deservedly in some regards) receives superb reviews. Why then does a game like Dodonpachi or Ibara receive disappointing reviews for the same reason? Does a small audience for a game mean the game itself is bad? This cannot be the case, as some “diamonds in the rough” such as Treasure’s Sin and Punishment, and Sega’s Panzer Dragoon Saga received fantastic reviews in their time, largely attributing their lack of success to either lack of exposure, or poor marketing.

Some good games do still go under the radar even after receiving very high reviews of scoring. Psychonauts comes to mind.

Scores are not terrible, but they are inherently flawed. Something is seriously wrong with attributing a numerical score to a subjective activity as reviewing, especially when, past graphical and aural prowess, the gaming rating criteria are in many ways, unexplainable. Not many can explain why Halo, a game series with uninteresting and often terrible single player level design is still so incredibly fun, nor can anyone explain why Super Robot Wars, a series that has largely remained unchanged for 15 years, is still so addicting in each installment.

I am a supporter of a world without numbers on reviews. Many top gaming outlets have tried at one time to do away with them, and I applaud the ones that have succeeded. Even if one reviewer absolutely hates a game, their comments and description may sound appealing to a reader who is a fan of the genre. One man’s trash is another man’s treasure.

If you haven’t read any of the exchanges between Stephen Totilo of MTV and N’Gai Croal of Newsweek, you should. These guys lay down some of the smartest commentary on boss battles and game mechanics that I have ever read. Check out the latest from N’Gai on boss battles and the fundamentals that make them great.

I may be in the minority in the way that I consume media.

When I am reading a book, magazine or even checking out things in email, I tend to keep a pen and pad or at least some sticky notes handy to write down quotes or questions that I want to look up later, songs that I might want to check out or links to Web sites I might want to visit when I get a chance.

It goes back to the way I consume online media. In my RSS feeds in Google Reader, I can star articles that I need to check back on and share everything after I have processed it so that I can find it later. It makes the whole process much more digital, but I do the same thing just on paper when I read a magazine or book.

As a side note, I wrote down a note to write this post while I was reading the latest issue of Maxim. There wasn’t too much to note out of it considering it was such a slow month for gaming that they reviewed Ultimate Duck Hunting for the Wii with 3 stars. Not that it doesn’t deserve 3 stars, but I can’t really see that game being at the top of the charts as the only Wii game reviewed for August.

I never realized the connection between my online habits changing my offline habits, but how do you consume media? Has online media changed it?

The Society of Professional Journalists have started up a blog about the “technical side” of journalism, Technolo-J–clever. I look forward to seeing some quality posts about multimedia journalism and the future impact of multimedia journalism techniques.

Game journalism has its fair share of controversy and conspiracy of industry bias. No matter what rating reviewers give a game, there is going to be someone who bled for that game and think your wrong. It is just the nature of the entertainment industry. Everything you review is a product that someone else gave an arm and a leg to produce.

The Escapist article posted yesterday by Russ Pitts looking into the real world and past of game reviews and game journalism in general. Many great industry folks are quoted there, but the most alarming stories come from the confessions of anonymous sources that confess to having to change reviews in order to please editors and publishers.

Frankly, giving a number to a review has become a pointless gesture. I don’t even pay attention to numbers anymore except to compare one reviewers rating of one game to a rating of another. With multiple staff members reviewing at most media outlets, it is hard to find which games really stand out some of the time since good reviews may just be biased. Joystiq’s Justin McElroy pointed out that you might not want to think about it.

But you should. Maybe the numbers don’t matter–just like on tax forms. Quit looking at them.

A story over at Slashdot pointed out that tech blogs are eating up all the ad revenue of larger tech print publications. Even worse, in most cases, popular blogs are beating print media on scoops about the latest and greatest in tech.

I won’t sit around and preach about the death of print media because too many people have done that and looked foolish. I think print media will always be around, but you had to know the techies and first adopters would be the first to migrate straight to all digital content all the time. I didn’t tell you so, but someone probably should have.

Many of you may have already seen the first video, but someone just recently shared the remix with me. Give me the gold!

Priceless.

I love how ridiculous people can get…and then the crowd mentality that forms around it. Now, thanks to YouTube, we can all laugh at them.

A collection of recent posts and articles points to the potential of blogging as a career choice. More and more employers, according to the latest “Fresh Starts” column in The New York Times by Barbara Whitaker, are looking for employees to have a knowledge of the blogosphere and blogs inner workings but not necessarily paying them to blog.

Blog salaries can be as low as $100 to $500 a month, but some lucrative positions exist that are discussed in the article.

Having a knowledge of new media can certainly turn a company around though. After Dell came to realize the impact of new media with Jeff Jarvis and “Dell Hell”, they have turned over a new leaf in the Web 2.0 world and become one of the innovators. Matthew Creamer’s article in Advertising Age today talks about the success Dell has had with using customer input on IdeaStorm to drive their products and next steps.

So there is hope for me to become employed as a blogger or at least working with blogs at some point. Steve Rubel just posted on his blog “Micro Persuasion” Saturday about the changing world of the Internet.

Much of the discussion during the day revolved around what kinds of skills PR and journalism students (today and tomorrow) require in this new environment.

Funny. That is exactly what I am, a PR and journalism student. I also already have a pretty good blogging skill building my own and publishing it somewhat regularly while trying to promote it by whatever free means available.

I think blogging is definitely a necessary skill that all students coming out of college should have–especially in the PR and journalism sector. My ideal job would be working somehow in this media because it is something I am passionate about, but I do know for certain that having the skills to write and blog well will come in handy down the road of employment.