More on Gerstmann and the Industry
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.