Jeff Gerstman fired from Gamespot
 

http://kotaku.com/gaming/rumor/games...iew-328244.php

http://www.penny-arcade.com/images/2007/20071129.jpg

Rumor is he has been fired because Eidos who bought a ton of ads on the gamespot frontpage weren't too pleased with his review of the game.
If you've ever been at gamespot.com you'll probably know him since he has been a reviewer there for 10 years iirc.

If it's true it certainly destroys any cred gamespot had left.

Re: Jeff Gerstman fired from Gamespot
 

I never really liked this guy's reviews to be honest, but if that's true... wow, that sucks.

Re: Jeff Gerstman fired from Gamespot
 

Wow that sucks.

Re: Jeff Gerstman fired from Gamespot
 

At first I was like "that sucks" then I saw his 8.8 rating for Twilight Princess.

Re: Jeff Gerstman fired from Gamespot
 

[ QUOTE ]
At first I was like "that sucks" then I saw his 8.8 rating for Twilight Princess.

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i didn't play TP, but i was in the room while my gf was going through it. the wolf sections looked lame, there was a fairy audibly sighing every five seconds, the wagon on fire section looked very annoying, the androgynous huge-eyed cutscene graphics were disturbing, etc. i'm sure the game is good overall, but using ocarina as a baseline of 10 it's hard for me to imagine TP breaking 9 in my book if i actually played it.

Re: Jeff Gerstman fired from Gamespot
 

I'm not sure I could really be precise enough for a 100 point scale but 9 sounds right for Twilight Princess.

Re: Jeff Gerstman fired from Gamespot
 

http://www.blogsmithmedia.com/www.jo...05/posting.jpg

Re: Jeff Gerstman fired from Gamespot
 

Re: Jeff Gerstman fired from Gamespot
 

Lol

Re: Jeff Gerstman fired from Gamespot
 

Off the original topic: I'm a huge Nintendo and Zelda fan, but I think 8.8 is too high for TP. Everything outside of the dungeons was not good at all, and was a huge step back from MM and WW. Also, the Palace of Twilight and Hyrule Castle were not up to Zelda standards.

On the original topic: Yeah, that sounds pretty suspicious.

Re: Jeff Gerstman fired from Gamespot
 

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[ QUOTE ]
At first I was like "that sucks" then I saw his 8.8 rating for Twilight Princess.

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i didn't play TP, but i was in the room while my gf was going through it. the wolf sections looked lame, there was a fairy audibly sighing every five seconds, the wagon on fire section looked very annoying, the androgynous huge-eyed cutscene graphics were disturbing, etc. i'm sure the game is good overall, but using ocarina as a baseline of 10 it's hard for me to imagine TP breaking 9 in my book if i actually played it.

[/ QUOTE ]

i agree with all of this except for the wagon on fire section, which i thought was fine. the wolf parts were super lame and borderline unbearable. some of the optional heart piece quests were retarded. i'm sure there were other things i didn't like about the game when i played it but i can't remember anymore. giving TP an 8.8 is fine imo

Re: Jeff Gerstman fired from Gamespot
 

This sucks because I recently started loving their podcasts and now they'll be down a man (don't even know which one he is and probably won't notice he's gone, but whatever).

Re: Jeff Gerstman fired from Gamespot
 

Re: Jeff Gerstman fired from Gamespot
 

Here's the video review he did for kane and lynch:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5FuJ81sDR2o
for some reason it's not linked to on the kane and lynch gamespot site, hmmmmmm.
They also removed the k&l ads on their frontpage.

Re: Jeff Gerstman fired from Gamespot
 

this is gonna hurt

a) gamespot
b) eidos
c) cnet

Re: Jeff Gerstman fired from Gamespot
 

post by a guy who says he was involved in the K&L ads
http://www.forumopolis.com/showpost....p;postcount=52

Re: Jeff Gerstman fired from Gamespot
 

I just learned they were owned by Cnet which kinda spooks me, I put a lot of stock into Cnet reviews on tech stuff and thought them to be pretty unbiased, now I'll always have to wonder.

Re: Jeff Gerstman fired from Gamespot
 

Of course now that they've been fired we will hear people like that one dude claim "there were always problems, he had issues" etc.

Re: Jeff Gerstman fired from Gamespot
 

an insider has said he was fired over the 'tone' in his video review

this would be somewhat backed up by the fact that they've removed many of the links to the video review on their site

Re: Jeff Gerstman fired from Gamespot
 

What a shame. I used to have a lot of confidence in Gamespot reviews. When they give something a 6.0, I believe it must have deserved it. Whoever said this will only serve to hurt Gamespot is correct. Screw them and Cnet if this is how they want to run their show.

Re: Jeff Gerstman fired from Gamespot
 

Reviews are usually a joke, it's hard to find good ones.

Re: Jeff Gerstman fired from Gamespot
 

[ QUOTE ]
Reviews are usually a joke, it's hard to find good ones.

[/ QUOTE ]I don't agree with this. Most of the reviews I have read for games I have most recently played have all been pretty spot on.


The big issue here is that it now throws the legitimacy of any review in question.

FWIW, this has been a problem with music reviews as well. Several record labels have threatened to pull advertising money from magazines or websites if they get bad reviews from them.

I say [censored] that [censored], [censored] POS companies. You think this is communist Russia? Worried about bad reviews? THEN MAKE GOOD STUFF!

Re: Jeff Gerstman fired from Gamespot
 

lame graphic overuse, toss. i have watched most of the game being played for hours on end.

Re: Jeff Gerstman fired from Gamespot
 

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Review scores are usually a joke, it's hard to find good ones.

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FYP

The reviews themselves are usually good, but the scoring system is terrible.

Re: Jeff Gerstman fired from Gamespot
 

1UP.com usually seems to tilt their scores upwards less than most other sites (IIRC they gave NHL 2K8 a 40).

Re: Jeff Gerstman fired from Gamespot
 

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[ QUOTE ]
Review scores are usually a joke, it's hard to find good ones.

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FYP

The reviews themselves are usually good, but the scoring system is terrible.

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The 100 point scale is useless, nobody's going to be able to say "hmm, this is a 7.4, it's better than that game I gave a 7.3 but worse than that one I gave a 7.5)."

I made a spreadsheet of all PS2 reviews from IGN (minus duplicates).

1254 (88%) were rated as 5 or better.

877 (61%) were rated as 7 or better.

752 (52%) were rated as between 7 and 8.9

The average rating was a 7, and the median was a 7.3.

Here are the ranges for IGN's 100 point scale:

1-1.9 Abysmal
2-2.9 Terrible
3-3.9 Bad
4-4.9 Poor
5-5.9 Mediocre
6-6.9 Passable
7.0 Decent
7.5 Good
8.0 Impressive
8.5 Great
9.0 Outstanding
9.5 Incredible
10 Masterful

IGN seems to recognize that their scale is bogus, which is why they made it more granular toward the end.

Here are the totals for the above ranges:

Abysmal: 2
Terrible: 28
Bad: 52
Poor: 104
Mediocre: 140
Passable: 237
Decent: 196
Good: 191
Impressive: 200
Great: 165
Outstanding: 97
Incredible: 28
Masterful: 0

Using this scale you get a decent bell curve, but you still get the weird anomaly of having more "great" games than "mediocre" ones, and more "Impressive" games than anything but "passable," but that's due to 13% of games getting exactly a 7 or an 8.

47% of all games were rated "good" or better. Were there really 700 good ps2 games?

Re: Jeff Gerstman fired from Gamespot
 

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47% of all games were rated "good" or better. Were there really 700 good ps2 games?

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700 sounds like alot. Then again, 7 years is an eternity in the life of a console and the PS2 (up until very recently) was still going strong with a constant flow top-tier releases.

And I'd also be willing to bet that 100 to 150 of those "good" games are iterations/releases of the sports franchises.

EA Sports alone has Madden, NCAA Football, March Madness, NBA Live, MVP Baseball, Tiger Woods, NASCAR, NHL, FIFA, Fight Night, Arena Football; Sega/Visual Concepts has the '2k' series of games (annual NBA & NHL releases plus history of '2k' versions of college basketball, college football, MLB, NFL). Most of these games usually garner "good" or better ratings from IGN.

Re: Jeff Gerstman fired from Gamespot
 

I don't think it unrealistic that most games that are released are at least above average. I mean, why else would it have been released if they didn't think people would buy it? People won't generall just buy [censored]. A video game is not like a CD, where you can sell tons of pop crap because its popular. It actually has to be good for a lot of people to buy it.

Re: Jeff Gerstman fired from Gamespot
 

[ QUOTE ]
I don't think it unrealistic that most games that are released are at least above average. I mean, why else would it have been released if they didn't think people would buy it? People won't generall just buy [censored]. A video game is not like a CD, where you can sell tons of pop crap because its popular. It actually has to be good for a lot of people to buy it.

[/ QUOTE ]

Maybe this is just semantics, but I equate average with the mean. So it'd be impossible, by definition, for the majority of released games to be 'above average'.

Re: Jeff Gerstman fired from Gamespot
 

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I don't think it unrealistic that most games that are released are at least above average.

[/ QUOTE ]

I think some people would argue this is a contradiction in terms.

I think what JoA is arguing is that on a 1-10 scame, a rating of "5" should indicate a median game, ie., a game where roughly half the games available are better and half the games are worse. Instead, IGN seems to use the rating of "7.3" to indicate a median game. I suppose this is okay, except they use a 1-10 scale, so a rational reader might expect the median game to be a 5. IGN even heightens the confusion by labeling 'median' games, ie, games which have a rating around "7.3" as between "decent" and "good", while maintaining a "5" rating is still "mediocre", when "5" really means (using the history of how they've rated their games as a metric) "clearly below average".

Re: Jeff Gerstman fired from Gamespot
 

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
Reviews are usually a joke, it's hard to find good ones.

[/ QUOTE ]I don't agree with this. Most of the reviews I have read for games I have most recently played have all been pretty spot on.


The big issue here is that it now throws the legitimacy of any review in question.

FWIW, this has been a problem with music reviews as well. Several record labels have threatened to pull advertising money from magazines or websites if they get bad reviews from them.

I say [censored] that [censored], [censored] POS companies. You think this is communist Russia? Worried about bad reviews? THEN MAKE GOOD STUFF!

[/ QUOTE ]

Since when haven't reviews been questionable though? This has been an ongoing problem since gaming mags and websites started. It's not new and it will never go away.

Re: Jeff Gerstman fired from Gamespot
 

I've adopted the notion of reading the article and seeing if I would like it based on what they wrote. It's usually pretty objective. The number has really become useless IMO.

Re: Jeff Gerstman fired from Gamespot
 

Another problem that hasn't been mentioned is that it's not only publishers who want inflated reviews. Many times it's also the readers. For example, when the extremely hyped Lair received a 4.9/10 from PSM - readers (who obviously had never played the game) were completely outraged and on their site there were numerous posts of people flaming and stating they were cancelling their membership. Obviously there's no way to know if anybody actually did (or if they were even subscribed in the first place), but it still shows the mentality - and yet another problem reviewers/sites have.

Re: Jeff Gerstman fired from Gamespot
 

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
I don't think it unrealistic that most games that are released are at least above average. I mean, why else would it have been released if they didn't think people would buy it? People won't generall just buy [censored]. A video game is not like a CD, where you can sell tons of pop crap because its popular. It actually has to be good for a lot of people to buy it.

[/ QUOTE ]

Maybe this is just semantics, but I equate average with the mean. So it'd be impossible, by definition, for the majority of released games to be 'above average'.

[/ QUOTE ]

You meant median I guess.

If there are 3 games with scores of 1,7 and 10 then their average is 6 and 2 of the 3 are above average.

Re: Jeff Gerstman fired from Gamespot
 

If you count up every game rated "good" or better that has another game in the series rated "good" or better, you end up with 377 games from 112 series.

If you just look at those as part of a big series (With 2 or more other games rated "good" or better" it's at 295 games from 70ish series.

So there's about 250-300 games "good" or better that were stand alone games or with [censored] sequels. A couple of more games are in series that cross platforms. Some others are debatable (ie, Bully, Arena Football). I'm going to attempt to make a final list of all ps2 games that fit a certain criteria of stand-alone games.

Re: Jeff Gerstman fired from Gamespot
 

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
I don't think it unrealistic that most games that are released are at least above average. I mean, why else would it have been released if they didn't think people would buy it? People won't generall just buy [censored]. A video game is not like a CD, where you can sell tons of pop crap because its popular. It actually has to be good for a lot of people to buy it.

[/ QUOTE ]

Maybe this is just semantics, but I equate average with the mean. So it'd be impossible, by definition, for the majority of released games to be 'above average'.

[/ QUOTE ]

You meant median I guess.

If there are 3 games with scores of 1,7 and 10 then their average is 6 and 2 of the 3 are above average.

[/ QUOTE ]

You know what I mean. 5 games of 1 10 10 10 10 and 80% are >= the median too! Oh noes! [img]/images/graemlins/wink.gif[/img]

Re: Jeff Gerstman fired from Gamespot
 

Well, yeah, but when there are 1400 reviews the mean (7) and median (7.3) are pretty close.

Re: Jeff Gerstman fired from Gamespot
 

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Since when haven't reviews been questionable though? This has been an ongoing problem since gaming mags and websites started. It's not new and it will never go away.

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I agree. Video games reviews are a subjective thing. The reviewer is basically reviewing a piece of art. There's no hard quantifiable data to assist in balancing things out, it is purely the reviewer's opinion.

With cars there is horsepower, lap times, etc. Video cards have specs on their hardware that can help differentiate them, etc.

There will never be a perfect system for reviewing video games, our best hope is an impartial reviewer.

Re: Jeff Gerstman fired from Gamespot
 

Dire, DVaut, you two Gents are correct.

In some ways this is like the rating scale for women.

Clearly 5 is the middle of the ground, completely average, etc... blah blah blah. But most people seem to say 7 is average, 8 is great, 9 is amazing, 10 is perfect. Its like numbers 1-6 are thrown away, or have equal value, which isn't true. So, yeah, those average games should be a 5, but come on, when they say 7, we know what they mean. Its average.

A rating on a scale means what people want it to mean. In this case, 7 out of 10 means average.

Re: Jeff Gerstman fired from Gamespot
 

[ QUOTE ]
There will never be a perfect system for reviewing video games, our best hope is an impartial reviewer.

[/ QUOTE ] This is impossible though. [img]/images/graemlins/grin.gif[/img]