I second that proposal: Age matching in XBox Live
Mark Wilson from Kotaku gets it right; XBox Live should definitely put age matching into XBox Live. It doesn’t have to be perfect, but it would really improve the quality from my perspective.
Mark Wilson from Kotaku gets it right; XBox Live should definitely put age matching into XBox Live. It doesn’t have to be perfect, but it would really improve the quality from my perspective.
N’Gai Croal is always a must-read for me, but this article, which gives context to the Gerstmann firing, is one of his best.
It will be interesting to see how the industry evolves as we move forward. Review scores, in my view, can make me interested in a game, but it never has been a replacement for reading the reviews of people I trust. As podcasts have become more prevalent, I find my own buying decisions influenced more and more through online personalities I trust as opposed to publications and websites, and I wonder if we’ll see more super-reviewers that pop up in the future that have their own brand as opposed to the company they work for.
I’m old enough to remember when Siskel and Ebert started their movie review show on PBS and the impact it had on how I decided what movies to watch. Before then, I’d look at the advertisements in the local paper and see what reviewers quoted in the ad copy, but as I became more acquainted with their show and they became more personal to me, I started using the “two thumbs up” as a gold seal of approval for a show. It didn’t matter that Ebert worked for a Chicago paper; I could care less about his day job.
If anything, I think the Gerstmann firing became a bigger deal by the fact that there were so many video reviews he had done, as well as regular podcasts in which he took part. The rich media of audio and video made him more of a recognizable personality and so got the axe, a lot of gamers reacted very personally to it.
It will be interesting to see how things shake out. At the end of the day, there is no mistaking a bad game as a good one and games cost a lot of money to the average person, so no matter how much the system is gamed, people will find a new system to replace the old one if it doesn’t work out.
Gamespot.com used to be one of favorite sites to get gaming information, but over the last few days, they’ve seemed to self-destruct. 10 years ago, no one would have noticed the inner workings of a trade publication having internal problems, but with the advent of the Internet, a company shake up can greatly affect a company. Given the uproar on gaming forums all over the Internet, I think Gamespot has lost a lot of credibility in the last few days, regardless of the truth.
The first something seemed amiss was on Tuesday evening when I listened to Gamespot’s HotSpot Podcast which is always on my weekly rotation of podcasts. What seemed odd was the missing voice of Jeff Gerstmann who is a regular voice on the show, and with no one mentioning his absense, it seemed like something was up. A few days later, the Internet was buzzing with rumors of Jeff being fired and walked out of the office over his review of Kane and Lynch, a mediocre first person shooter that got a 6.0 from Gerstmann (NOTE: I have not played the game). His video review was removed from the site (see the youtube version here). Since then, hell has broken.
It’s hard to determine rumor from fact but there are a few things about which I feel strongly.
It will be interesting to see how it all works out over the coming months. If I were a competing site, I’d be hiring Gerstmann in a heartbeat.