The Perils of Professional Reviewership

I feel bad for this guy.

One of the things that spurred me to create this site was the de facto standard that all the "big" game review sites are too conflicted with their advertising business model to be able to honestly review a poor game that is also advertising on the site. After all, it is rather hard to articulate a negative review when your mouth is full of reproductive organ. So along comes this poor guy who loses his job at Gamespot (but gains some street cred) when he says Kane and Lynch ain't all that great.

The usuals around the entarr-webb are sounding off on this occurrance, and of course one's first natural reaction might be "how did Gamespot think they'd get away from this with their reputation intact?" Well, my cynical reminder to you is that Gamespot doesn't have a modicum of credibility to begin with, for exactly this sort of reason. They know where their bread is buttered, and it's in the advertising. Their mission is to get money from advertisers. Not to tell you the truth. Any content that is there is only there for the sole purpose of greater revenue generation. Obviously, pissing off one's advertisers by not fellating them with glowing reviews is not a good way to generate revenue. So the firing was business. The poor schmuck made a mistake in thinking he was hired to review games, when his true job was to shepherd unthinking sheeple into Gamespot's site and then on to the advertisements clustering around the "content" like the disreputable-looking men clustered around the moderately attractive if slightly skanky girl in a bukkake video.

What does this mean for the folks who just want honest reviews to inform them about which games are worth their time and possibly money? Well, I may flatter myself a bit to point out that you're looking at a small part of the solution right now. Small-time obscure punditry from fellas whose paychecks are not at stake from whether or not their reviews are the "happy ending massage" for the games they are talking about. They do it because they like games, have opinions, and are afflicted by a personality disorder that makes them rant into the void. Just point your browser over to a link list, such as Blue's News, and watch the reviews go by on a daily basis, and disregard any links that come from Gamespot, IGN/Gamespy, or anything with the word "Planet" in it. Or pretty much anybody on the first page of results when you google for "Video Game Reviews." Is there some sour grapes in that sentence, maybe? Yeah, probably. But it doesn't change the fact that it is true.