For the videogame media industry, this week was a disaster. GameSpot’s Alex Navarro likened the
situation to being a metropolis in SimCity intentionally
destroyed by a variety of disasters. While Navarro draws no specific
parallel, he’s probably referring to the firing of former GameSpot editor Jeff Gerstmann over supposed
incongruence between editorial and sales.
The only official word from parent company CNET
representatives have been denials
that advertiser pressures had any role in the termination of Gerstmann, and
that “GameSpot takes its editorial integrity very seriously...”
Eidos, the games publisher who produced the Kane & Lynch game at the controversial
core of this entire matter, is saying even less. Michelle Curran, Eidos’
director of public relations, said, “Yeah,
we're not commenting on that right now.”
For multiple reasons, the official truth will never be on
record – but thanks to the anonymity offered by the web, a supposed insider
posted comments on the Silicon Valley blog Valleywag his or her account of the
recent events. Furthermore, I have good reason to believe that the words of the
anonymous writer are true.
Select excerpts from comments made by “GAMESPOT” are clipped
below, though it’s highly recommended for those interested to read the text in
full. Read the full comment
history here.
The main problem here
is that no one in the entire editorial team was aware that this was about to
occur, least of all Gerstmann. We're very clear in our review policies that all
reviews are vetted by the entire team before they go live - everything that
goes up is the product of an entire team's output.
If there was a
problem with his reviews, then it would've been a problem with the entire team.
Firing him without telling anyone implies that anyone else on this team can be
fired at the drop of a hat as well...
Also, despite the
fact that this occured [sic] two weeks ago, there was no way they were going to
fire him then; the last big games didn't come out until just before
Thanksgiving, and there was no doubt that management knew that the rest of the
reviewers would refuse to write any reviews after his termination, which is
indeed what is happening. ... They waited to fire him until they knew that any
strike or walkout by the rest of the staff wouldn't have much of an effect.
Our last executive
editor, Greg Kasavin, left to go to EA, and he was replaced by a suit, Josh
Larson, who had no editorial experience and was only involved on the business
side of things. Over the last year there has been an increasing amount of
pressure to allow the advertising teams to have more of a say in the editorial
process; we've started having to give our sales team heads-ups when a game is
getting a low score, for instance, so that they can let the advertisers know
that before a review goes up. Other publishers have started giving us notes
involving when our reviews can go up; if a game's getting a 9 or above, it can
go up early; if not, it'll have to wait until after the game is on the shelves.
Unfortunately after
Kasavin left the church-and-state separation between the sales teams and the
editorial team has cracked, and with Jeff's firing I think it's clear that the
management now has no interest at all in integrity and are instead looking for
an editorial team that will be nicer to the advertisers [sic].
There’s no question that videogame journalism is still very
much in its infancy, but really, reporting on the videogame industry is no
different from reporting on movies, theatre or music. I won’t buy for a second
that videogame journalism is any less valid than other entertainment mediums –
all are equally vulnerable to advertiser pressures.
This wasn’t a step back for videogame journalists, but it should
be a critical point for the industry as a whole. The real failure here wasn’t
by the hands of the journalists, but rather the sales team’s blatant and gross disrespect
for the entire editorial staff at GameSpot,
resulting in the obliteration of the publication’s credibility.