More on Gertsmann's Firing

Hit the jump for the info in detail. I'm updating everything on the original post. I would just like to say that if this was the New York Times or the Washingtom Post firing a guy over a controversial story there would be people picketing the paper and writing angry letters to paper owners.
Secondly, I would love to know why the rest of the folks over at Gamespot haven't left. I know people have bills to pay but if it could happen to a veteran like Gerstmann it could happen to anyone.
-UPDATE- But wait there's more.... Most of your questions will be answered.

"Developments have slowed down a little bit over the weekend, but there is still plenty of chatter around the web about Gamespot's controversial firing of Jeff Gerstmann. Among the juicier bits from around the intertubes:

• In response to a Gamespot forum thread, the new Gamespot Manager of Community Development said he is "eagerly anticipating the official word to be released on Tuesday."
• Gamespot has halted user reviews of Kane & Lynch after a flood of 1.0 ratings lowered the game's user score to a 2.6/10.
  
• Destructoid has registered cashwh0re.com and changed their front page banner in support of Gerstmann.
• GameSpot employee Aaron Thomas explains why more employees aren't speaking up on the matter: "This isn't GameSpot suddenly clamping down on me or any of us here--this is how it is for anyone with a job."
• Gamespot freelancer Frank Provo: "Personally, my respect for CNet is shot, and writing for GameSpot is going to feel like a chore for quite some time going forward."
• GameSpot users are reportedly canceling paid subscriptions left and right, and planning boycotts of Gamespot and its advertisers.
• Rumor has it that Gamespot forum moderator have been told to squelch any discussion of the controversy. This seems unlikely, though, as the main discussion of the topic on the site has reached 11,110 posts as of this writing. UPDATE: Numerous Gamespot moderators have written in saying discussion on their forums isn't being stopped, but redirected to one of these two threads to maintain order.
  

One thing is clear: This story is not going away anytime soon.

[Thanks to all the tipsters who sent items in]"Joystiq....

XBOX 360 Fall Update: 1UP brings us a lovely video

Discovery Channel's Rise of Video Games: It started out as history, what is it now?

" LEVEL TWO

• Premiere: Wednesday, Nov. 28, at 8 p.m. ET/PT
  In the late 1970s and 1980s, instead of controlling "things" like spaceships and tennis rackets, videogame technology let players command recognizable characters with real faces and back stories. Game developers were liberated to create more complex video games with heroic journeys — and Japanese creators like Shigeru Miyamoto rose to prominence with star characters Mario, Donkey Kong and Zelda. But in the 1990s, Generation X emerged and the games of their childhood couldn't satisfy the new teen angst that now permeated pop culture. With Sega's Genesis and Sony's PlayStation, gamers dismissed cutesy cartoon characters in favor of grittier heroes like Sonic the Hedgehog and anti-heroes in games like Grand Theft Auto III. As players grew up, their youthful idealism was replaced with a warier view of the world and a yearning for photorealistic, angry anti-heroes. This episode features interviews with Trip Hawkins (Silicon Valley entrepreneur and co-founder of Electronic Arts), Al Lowe (creator of Leisure Suit Larry), Tim Schafer (creator of Full Throttle) and other notable figures in the gaming industry."Discoverychannel...

OK, the first show was pretty bad. But this show? Who wrote this? The show begins where it left off. But when they reach the Playstation One they go directly to the present. Talking about the newest technology and trying to talk about how Hollywood has taken notice. The main theme of the show seems to be about stories in games. They try to say that Super Mario Brothers has a story? What story is that? Save the princess? I suppose that's a story. For a 2nd grader.

There is much hyperbole about how important games are becoming in the larger medium and I really hate to say that this is really an exaggeration. The mass media industries aren't taking any more notice of video games than just another form to publicize their latest film or try in some pathetic attempt to get more money out of people who play games. It's not about excitement or passion folks, it's about money. This also makes me wonder, if games are so important why isn't this show on CBS, ABC, or NBC rather than Discovery Channel?

I know I've been hard on this show. I am really happy it exists. I just wish it was better. But since it became cool to have shows about video games on cable, isn't that what we all have wanted...

HDCGAMER Podcast Episode 6

We do Newsstand this week and keep it under an hour. That isn't all but you are going to have to listen to find out that much.

Click here to subscribe

Penny Arcade explains what happened to Jeff Gerstmann!

"After publishing a critical review of Eidos’ new shooter, Kane and Lynch: Dead Men, long-time Gamespot reviewer Jeff Gerstmann today finds himself without a job.

According to a fellow Gamespot contributor and close friend of Gerstmann who wished to remain anonymous, the editor was fired Wednesday morning because of his negative review of the game, which he awarded a 6.0. Comparably speaking, Metacritic lists Kane and Lynch as currently having a 68% average from critics. I recently reviewed the game, bestowing it with a score of 3.5 out of 5 stars.

Eidos is heavily advertising Kane and Lynch on Gamespot this week, including interactive Flash banners.

The latest Penny-Arcade comic features a brief overview of this controversy. However, because the comic isn’t scheduled to ‘go live’ until tomorrow, commentary from neither Gabe nor Tycho is yet provided.

Gerstmann had been with Gamespot since 1996 and was largely responsible for its growth. Several past reviews of his have been controversial, including an 8.8 awarded to Twilight Princess and a 10.0 for Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater 3.

It is possible that other factors contributed to Gerstmann dismissal in addition to the review, although this is completely unsubstantiated at the present. While we stand behind the information presented here and our source, no official announcement has been made by Gerstmann or Gamespot. Expect more details to emerge online in the next 24 hours"Primotech...

More on the way as I know it for sure. I don't want to print rumors but I don't honestly think we will know too much for a fact. Normally these kinds of things have a way of being made to silently go away.

UPDATE-Shacknews puts some more out there and it's not good!

"Report: GameSpot's Gerstmann Fired Due to Negative Kane & Lynch Review

by Chris Remo Nov 29, 2007 9:09pm CST

Rumors have been swirling today that Jeff Gerstmann, executive editor at CNET-owned major video game site GameSpot, was fired after giving a generally unimpressed review of Io Interactive's Kane & Lynch: Dead Men. Gerstmann awarded the game a 6.0. (Though Shacknews does not score its reviews, our own Kane & Lynch review was similar in its verdict.)

According to the reports, the layoff came after Kane & Lynch publisher Eidos took issue with the review and threatened to pull its considerable ad contract. GameSpot's front page is currently almost entirely re-skinned with Kane & Lynch imagery.

The rumor began bouncing around various industry circles over the past day, and this evening was reported by Kotaku. Popular webcomic Penny Arcade posted a strip about the alleged incident tonight, outside of its normal publishing schedule.

Shacknews can confidently confirm via its own sources that Gerstmann was indeed fired yesterday from his position at GameSpot. The source declined to comment as to whether the firing was directly related to the reported Eidos situation, but the circumstances are suspicious at the least.

Gerstmann had been an employee at GameSpot for about a decade, and took the place of former executive editor Greg Kasavin when Kasavin left the company to work for Electronic Arts as a producer"Shacknews...

UPDATE-Not much new but it's something
"We just got off the phone with Sarah Cain, a CNET spokesperson who wanted to amend CNET's previous statement to Joystiq on the recent firing of executive editor Jeff Gerstmann. While reiterating that CNET does not discuss personal employee matters with the press, Cain said directly that "we do not terminate employees based on external pressure from advertisers." When asked specifically about whether any such pressure was even attempted on Eidos' part, Cain had no comment. We're still waiting for a response to multiple e-mail requests for comment by Eidos PR.

While we had Cain on the line, we also asked her about the odd disappearance of Gerstmann's video review of the game from the GameSpot site. She responded by pointing out a note at the bottom of the still-running text review for the game, which states that "this review has been updated to include differences between the Xbox 360 and PS3 versions and a clarification on the game's multiplayer mode."

When pressed for clarification, Cain said that this note applied to the video review as well. "At the bottom of the post of the [text] review we made a note that we have updated the review, and we made those decisions based on our own editorial standards," she said. "It was our decision to take down the [video] review." Given this justification, we can't help but wonder why GameSpot couldn't just edit the video review, as they did the text version. Why remove the entire thing if the problem was really just a "clarification?" When asked just that question, Cain reiterated her initial statement."Joystiq...
-UPDATE
"It's been a couple weeks discussing reviews and reviewers around here, but somewhere along the way I neglected to mention that their job is essentially impossible. The 7-9 scale they toil under is largely the result of an uneasy peace between the business and editorial wings of the venue. No matter what score they give it, high or low, they're reviled equally by the online chorus. Apparently, even when they do it right they're doing it wrong.

Jeff Gerstmann is no stranger to controversy. In general terms, Gamespot can be relied upon to give high-profile games scores which are slightly lower than their counterparts elsewhere. It's almost as though there is an algorithm in place there to correct the heady rush associated with cracking open an anticipated new title. Gerstmann's review of Twilight Princess cemented his reputation as a criminal renegade with no law but his own, even though he gave the game an 8.9 - a nine, essentially - out of ten.

I will tell you the Gerstmann Story as we heard it. Management claimed to have spoken to Jeff about his "tone" before, and no doubt it was this tone that created tensions between their editorial content, the direction of the site, and the carefully crafted relationships that allowed Gamespot to act as an engine of revenue creation. After Gerstmann's savage flogging of Kane & Lynch, a game whose marketing investment on Gamespot alone reached into the hundreds of thousands, Eidos (we are told) pulled hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of future advertising from the site.

Management has another story, of course: management always has another story. But it's the firm belief internally that Jeff was sacrificed. And it had to be Jeff, at least, we believe, precisely because of his stature and longevity. It made for a dramatic public execution that left the editorial staff in disarray. Would that it were only about the 6.0 - at least then you'd know how to score something if you wanted to keep your Goddamned job. No, this was worse: the more nebulous "tone" would be the guide. I assume it was designed to terrify them.

For Gabriel, this tale proves out his darkest suspicions. People believe things like this anyway, but they don't know it, and the shift from intuitive to objective knowledge is startling. I think it rarely gets to this point. The apparatus is very tight: there are layers of editorial control that can massage the score, even when the text tells a different tale. A more junior reviewer might have seen their Kane & Lynch review streamlined by this process, divested of its worrisome angles and overall troubling shape. It was Jeff Gerstmann's role high in the site's infrastructure that allowed his raw editorial content to pierce the core of the business.

(CW)TB out."PennyArcade...

1UP gives words to our affliction with their MOST HATED things in Games!

Check it out. This article gives voice to just about every gamers pain. I can't wait to see if they continue with this. I have mentioned many of these things in reviews and it's nice to see that I'm not alone. Thanks 1Up...

Deus Ex 3 Debut Trailer

Some People don't like video games. Like Roger Ebert...

"The movie, directed by Xavier Gens, was inspired by a best-selling video game and serves as an excellent illustration of my conviction that video games will never become an art form -- never, at least, until they morph into something else or more."Roger Ebert...

This is from a recent movie review of Hitman: the movie. So how does this have anything to do with the video game? Except that they bear the same name sake. The main thrust of the game is to stealthily kill people. This wouldn't make the greatest movie, I would imagine. But is it the game's fault that the director of the movie couldn't come up with a more creative solution than what he did. Or even better, is it the game's fault that they made a second class movie about it? No...
Let's see, so is the fact that this movie is taken from a video game a reason to think it's any more shallow than Bad Boys 2 or some other popcorn summer blockbuster.
So Roger Ebert, I know that you know movies. But Roger, you know less about video games than I know about movies. Because man, I've seen A LOT of movies. How many video games have you played? Solitaire doesn't count....
-Point made...

No Multiplayer Achievements for COD4, you'll NEVER believe the reason!

"Multiplayer: Why are there no online Achievements for “Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare” (or “Call of Duty 2″ for that matter)? Wouldn’t you want to encourage people to try to play all the different online multiplayer modes?

Bowling: Our motivation behind multiplayer is to encourage people to play all the different multiplayer modes, which is why we make every single mode in multiplayer fun. Play a fun game type — you’re going to tell a friend, and then he’s going to get his friend to play it. Now that’s how you get people to try out different aspects in your game, just make it appealing and fully enjoyable. For players hungry for unlockables and rewards in multiplayer, we have more personal goals called Challenges, which encourage you to use a variety of weapons and score you more XP and challenge-specific rewards. For example, use the M4 Carbine a lot and unlock more accessories for the M4 Carbine."Multiplayer blog.

OK, so wouldn't having online achievements make people MORE likely to play different multiplayer modes? I guess, I just don't get it... Do you?

Get Trigger Happy for FREE?

Yeah, that's right get Steven Poole's book Trigger Happy for free. Head over to the site and download it. You can drop him a donation if you like it. You can drop me one too, if you like it. Just kidding....

Will Casual Games kill the Hardcore Market?

People on various websites and on message boards have been screaming all most since the Nintendo Wii came out about how it will be the end of gaming as we know it. They have also been worried about the industry as a whole moving toward only casual games and ignoring the smaller hardcore market.

What is hardcore? What is casual? What is everyone talking about?
Easy... Some comparisons have been made like,
"There are no hardcore readers or movie goers? How can there be for gaming?" Well this isn't true. "Hardcore readers," are people who like classics rather than those who read Danielle Steel novels. "Hardcore moviegoers," are people who only go to foreign films and prefer four star flicks rather than Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure.
Does the Hardcore movie market or literature markets hurt the causal ones? They don't even make a dent. The casual markets rule; they make all the money and they drive all the sales. The industry revolves around them.

In gaming, hardcore gaming is basically people who love to play games that are complex and require a certain degree of dedication. This would be something like Final Fantasy XII or perhaps Team Fortress 2. But it could also extend to games like World of Warcraft or Halo. Casual games are basically pick up and play. They don't need instructions and tend to be based on simple principals. Casual games are usually seen as games like Tetris, Pac-Man, Zuma, Wii Sports, Rayman Raving Rabids, or even Pokemon.

There are certainly games like Guitar Hero that span both areas/ Bit this is really a case of involvement in a hardcore game rather than making a hardcore game appear casual. I mean a lot of people have played 3 or 4 hours of Halo or Guitar Hero in a month. But if that same 3 or 4 hours were in a day rather than a month then that would qualify more on the hardcore scale. But this really only involves games that allow the player to play in smaller pieces rather than requiring them to play for longer stretches to get proficient at some part of the game to progress.


So there you go... No need to have a debate over that little matter. If your unsure of the veracity of my claims take a look at the majority of the Nintendo catalog and the majority of the XBOX 360 and compare. You'll see the differences pretty readily.

Now, to the point. Will casual gaming hurt the hardcore gaming market? Only if developers and publishers allow it to. If developers and publishers feel it is necessary to simplify their games to match some mythical casual average. Everyone above and below that average will suffer.

As things stand now, the hardcore market is actually driving the video game market; helped by the casual market. This includes things like the Nintendo Wii and Nintendo DS sales. Also, games like Guitar Hero 3 and Rock Band contribute to the huge return on video game sales. In October, video game sales rocked a 1.1 Billion dollar total and this is an astonishing number. Certainly nothing bad can come from numbers like this.

Possibly in the short run things will remain just about the same and even Nintendo admits that the Wii is far from future proof. In a year or two there will probably be a new version of the Wii that is more powerful and more compatible with what developers and publishers are looking for in hardcore gaming.

Doing this will ultimately make the Nintendo Wii and possibly the DS perfect gaming systems. However, there are some questions as to whether Nintendo itself understands what hardcore means. But we will leave that for the future to decide. In short, it will not be Nintendo who brings down hardcore gaming. Rather it was the flag bearer for trying to make causal gaming more interesting to the average person. In the long run, it will be the gamers who decide what is and what is not acceptable.

Video games are one of the most volatile markets out there. There are SO MANY factors that dictate what makes money and what doesn't. Gamers old or young are a fickle bunch. This year has been a historic year for excellent video games and so far an excellent year for video game sales. What happens next year may be very different. But that, will be decided in time.

Fatal Inertia delayed for PS3? Cool!

"Oh, Fatal Inertia. Once announced as a PlayStation 3 exclusive launch title by Koei, the Unreal Engine 3-powered racer eventually went multi-platform and released on Xbox 360 first, while the company struggled to get the PS3 version up to speed. The recent completion of Unreal Tournament III on PS3 means studios should have an easier time developing on Sony's hardware with Epic Games' engine, but that doesn't help the dozens and dozens of companies who have been attempting to make it work now.

Koei recently issues an updated release schedule to the media, with Fatal Inertia conspicuously absent from the list. When asked, the publisher said there was no formal release date for the futuristic racer, but they expected the PS3 version to arrive sometime in Spring 2008. There's no word on if the PS3 version will include additional content, but given the delays have been technical issues, we wouldn't rule it out.

You can get a taste of the game right now, however, by logging into Xbox Live and downloading the demo."1UP...

OK folks, I'm not being a party poop here. I just want everyone to realize that Fatal Inertia for the XBOX 360 was all most DOA. The game is just really in need of some major tweaking and maybe even some control changes. The longer the developers have with the game, the better. I hope the game comes out next summer completely overhauled and 180 degrees better.

Rise of the Videogame began last night. But it should have been called the Rise of Lazy Documentary Writers!

"

• LEVEL ONE
  Premiere: Wednesday, Nov. 21, at 8 p.m. ET/PT
  In the 1950s, the Cold War quickly evolved between the world superpowers of the United States and the Soviet Union. Mutually assured destruction enforced an uneasy stalemate, yet also drove computer technology to create missile simulations to predict the results of a nuclear war. This same computer technology was used to develop the first computer game in 1958 — Tennis for Two. The Space Race and the Vietnam war coincided with Steve Russell's game Space War! and the emergence of the first true giants in the video game business — Nolan Bushnell and Atari. In post-World War II Japan, electronics and computer technology emerged to rebuild a land and economy devastated by the atomic bomb. Space Invaders and Pac-Man soon followed, and the golden age of video games was born. Among others, individuals featured in this episode include Steve Russell, Nolan Bushnell, Ralph Baer (considered by many to be the inventor of the video game) and Toru Iwatani (Pac-Man designer). Video games emerged as a form of entertainment where the player was in control, as opposed to the more passive diversion of watching television."Discovery channel....

I'm really starting to wonder if the old adage about the video game industry being really small isn't more true than I could have imagined. This show is a great example. Everyone of these shows starts the same way and with the same people.
Here's some examples:
Nolan Bushnell (Check)
Ralph Baer (Check)
Peer Schneider from IGN (Check)
Heather Chaplin from Smartbomb (Check)
Aaron Ruby from Smartbomb (Check)
N'Gai Croal from Newsweek (Check)
Henry Jenkins from MIT (Check)
Tommy Tallarico (Check)

So what am I saying here? Well, it just seems crazy that in an industry where there are hundreds of people creating, writing, and marketing video games that these guys are all ways the ones that the writers or directors of these shows turn to. And who exactly is Stuart Moulder? I know I could just Google him but saying in his byline that he is a video game consultant is a little bit of a cop out isn't it?
Also why are all shows about video games made by the mass media are all ways about either the history of them or the controversy surrounding them?
Now, let me just say a couple of things about the show itself. How in the name of god do you get to equate video game history with global political history? It's like trying to compare the evolution of the potato chip with the history of Ireland. You can do it, but is anyone going to believe it?
Other than this theoretical flight of fancy. The rest of the show is basically a rip off of the old Game Makers shows on G4. These shows have albeit been abandoned because of different buyouts and marketing problems that they rarely air. But if they aired next to this show, the folks at Rise of the Videogame would be accused plagiarism. Oh and by the way, each one of those Game Makers shows which was formerly called Icons was a 1/2 hour This show that covers all most 5 or 6 of those shows in only an hour.
I think as big as this series supposedly is, they could have done without cutting corners and perhaps found some NEW information or gone more in-depth than those old ICONS or Gamemakers shows did. But, I guess that was too much work. Perhaps for Ken Burns next show, he'll call it, "Video Games!"
Oh, following their geopolitical scheme; what political statement does Tetris make about the world in which it was made?
Saying that games are Art and Culture is fine. But don't try and wrap some political or subconscious trappings on to Pac-Man, Pong, or Tetris.
Next up Nintendo and Donkey Kong.... I can't wait...

Holy Release Dates! Unreal Tournament 3 due out in December!

"My guess is that Midway will start shipping the title to North American retailers on Monday, December 10th," said Rein. "It could show up in stores as early as December 11th but more likely toward the middle of that week."Gamespot

This is amazing news! This game really had a snowballs chance and now for it to arrive on the estimated date that was given by retailers is wonderful... Prepare to frag this Christmas, an awesome first person shooter on PS3. Good to see yet another good game for the PS3 coming in 2007. Ratchet and Clank, Uncharted Drakes Fortune, and Call of Duty 4. Not much, but good enough....

Check out this HDCGAMER Podcast for Thanksgiving! Episode 5!

Head over and listen to our Turkey Day podcast. The podcast has a review of Super Mario Galaxy and some news stuff. Look for Newsstand feature next week as I didn't get all the magazines in time for this podcast. This one is short and sweet so enjoy.