Gamespot Writer Fired Over Critical Review

Post by **Curlypaul** » Mon Dec 03, 2007 8:46 am

This really stinks. I've never really trusted gamespot for reviews since I saw some of those 'There are technical innacuracies in this review' messages at the bottom, which seems to admit that they have been review beta versions. I agree that fan reviews are the way forward for an honest opinion.

Post by **Mozgus** » Mon Dec 03, 2007 9:42 am

Critic reviews are always too damn high, though. Take a look at this, set the limit to 50 games, and compare the user vote scores to the critic scores, and you'll see that nearly all of them are voted lower than reviewed. The only exception is Rock Band, but give it time and it will drop as well. The only other game that had equal or better vote score to critic score was Orange Box for the PC. That game really did deserve a 96%.

http://www.gamerankings.com/itemranking ... atings.asp

Overall, I think you start to see here how critics are always, and have always, been pressured into giving higher scores than they honestly would, whether by publisher or public.

Post by **Yackom** » Mon Dec 03, 2007 10:37 am

Mozgus wrote:Critic reviews are always too damn high, though. Take a look at this, set the limit to 50 games, and compare the user vote scores to the critic scores, and you'll see that nearly all of them are voted lower than reviewed. The only exception is Rock Band, but give it time and it will drop as well. The only other game that had equal or better vote score to critic score was Orange Box for the PC. That game really did deserve a 96%.

http://www.gamerankings.com/itemranking ... atings.asp

Overall, I think you start to see here how critics are always, and have always, been pressured into giving higher scores than they honestly would, whether by publisher or public.

Which is why I only use meta critic for the score of a game.

Post by **mason** » Mon Dec 03, 2007 11:22 am

It's too bad he was fired; I enjoyed his reviews more because he was one of the few reviewers that just didn't conform to what the masses want to hear. Most other sites gave Kane and Lynch scores averaging in the 70-80% range, but he spoke up and said basically "this game is average at best, it's the same boring stereotype of a criminal game that's been re-hashed again and again, only this time you actually get to rob banks...oh wait that's been done in a game as well. It gets a 60% from me.". I believe that this may be foreshadowing into the start of numerous reviewers finally coming out of their shell and saying "You know what? Even though everyone thinks this is a great game, it's not all that it's cracked up to be, and I'm not going to buy into this!"

-all the reviewers said the same thing, it was an average game that got hyped. He only scored it 10 percent less than everyone else, no 9-11 crusader there. But it is true all the media companies for games at least, release the same review. I can go to gamespy,ign, game informer and who knows where else and read the same exact review for any game I want. The pros and cons are always differnet, but everything they like about the game and don't like is the same as all the other reviews. Isn't it strange, that all these different people have the exact same opinon?

Post by **kinn** » Mon Dec 03, 2007 11:28 am

I've also been following this story since it broke.

Over at Neogaf they have decided to filter out all Eidos published games in their forums until the new year.

While it seems certain that he got fired for the review, I would still like to get some confirmation on what went down. I mean 10+ years and fired over one review?

Its always best to take reviews with a pinch of salt.

Post by **Mozgus** » Thu Dec 06, 2007 1:57 pm

Post by **racketboy** » Thu Dec 06, 2007 2:06 pm

that's awesome

Post by **executioner** » Fri Dec 07, 2007 10:14 pm

Curlypaul wrote:This really stinks. I've never really trusted gamespot for reviews since I saw some of those 'There are technical innacuracies in this review' messages at the bottom, which seems to admit that they have been review beta versions. I agree that fan reviews are the way forward for an honest opinion.

yeah I stopped reading or watching gamespot reviews like a year ago.

Post by **RadarScope1** » Sat Dec 08, 2007 1:15 pm

It's weird because Gamespot always seems to be one of the few sites that consistently scores games a point or two lower than everyone else. They've always seemed more critical in general.

Post by **Niode** » Sat Dec 08, 2007 3:07 pm

I don't think Jeff should have been made an example of by any stretch. However the issue of artificially inflated scores due to pressure from the publisher using advertising revenue has been an issue since video game journalism's inception. It's been a common problem with official magazines. Reviews have always been inflated to reflect the amount of funding they receive from ads regarding a certain game. It's one of the reasons independent magazines have generally more trust worthy reviews compared to official mags. I think the fact that CNET control all of GS advertising ventures should force you to take heed. A company that has had very little influence on the video game medium has enough power to influence a video game review site to give certain games higher scores based on the amount of advertising said game is receiving on the website rather than real merit is very worrying indeed.

I think the best bet for a good idea of how good a game is to use Metacritic. They average scores from as many mediums/locations as possible therefore the score is an accurate representation of the median scores of the reviews. I would rather trust that than 1 person's oppinion on a game. After all his experience/taste may differ to yours.