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News Rumour: Gamespot Editor fired over review

Discussion in 'Article Discussion' started by CardJoe, 30 Nov 2007.

  1. CardJoe

    CardJoe Freelance Journalist

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  2. quack

    quack Minimodder

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    Pathetic. Another company that can't take criticism.
     
  3. Jamie

    Jamie ex-Bit-Tech code junkie

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  4. Tokukachi

    Tokukachi Minimodder

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    It's a shame, this kind of thing happensa a lot in the games industry these days and as a by product its why you see all review scales only going from 7 to 10.

    One day we might have reviews we can trust again.

    P.S: an average game should get 5 not 8 :) (I'm afraid your guilty of this too Bit)
     
  5. Tim S

    Tim S OG

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    our average is somewhere between 6 and 7 - six is defined as below average, seven is just above average, but I see your point.
     
  6. cjoyce1980

    cjoyce1980 What's a Dremel?

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    maybe it just wasn't his type of game, or just maybe the game was bad.... and after wasting my money i can actual say that the game is poor when compared to hitman
     
  7. AlexB

    AlexB Web Nerd

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    Agree with Neat69's P.S mark.
     
  8. Naberius

    Naberius What's a Dremel?

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    I would say he was quite kind, especially compared to the 1600+ users who have given it an average score of 4.1!

    You can't just fire the guy for not being too keen on one game.
     
  9. mikeuk2004

    mikeuk2004 What you Looking at Fool!

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    Ok, they want action because of the low score and threaten to take their business elsewhere ie advertising.

    So if the magazine gives in and sack the reviewer in order to keep the money coming in. Isn’t that fixing the review scores. I mean I wouldn’t bother reading reviews done by them as they will have inflated scores because they are getting paid and to keep their advertisers happy.

    This will do GameSpot more harm because you cant trust their reviews anymore.
     
  10. fev

    fev Industry Fallout

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    the game is crap and zelda. All Zelda's.. that's right pure crap.
     
  11. jezmck

    jezmck Minimodder

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    So what's the average IQ now? 120?
     
  12. LeMaltor

    LeMaltor >^_^

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    The game is crap, 6/10 is a fair score.
     
  13. Tokukachi

    Tokukachi Minimodder

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    So average for you guys is 6.5? I understand why you do this though, as everyone else does and you need to keep things comparable, but it means to many games get high scores and makes it tough to chose between them.

    At the end of the day, the whole reason of reading a review is so you can decide if you want to buy that game, or get game A or B, how do I do that if they both have 9.0 scores they don't always deserve?
     
  14. Bungle

    Bungle Rainbow Warrior

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    Well making games is big money now, can't say I'm surprised this sort of thing happens. As to what weight his reviews carried and hence what "damage" it has done to the title we can only speculate. Surely a slapped wrist would have sufficed. Firing the guy, especially after such long service seems disproportionate to the "crime". I suspect there are other internal issues which have contributed to this. Have to wait and see I guess.
     
  15. perplekks45

    perplekks45 LIKE AN ANIMAL!

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    Rent 'em, try 'em...

    Anyhow I too think bad games deserve bad reviews. And setting 6-7 to be average doesn't feel right to me. I'd say if it sucks tell the people it does.
    Just out of curiosity what was the worst score you ever gave a game here at BT?
     
  16. lukasj3di

    lukasj3di What's a Dremel?

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    This is bad!
     
  17. Zurechial

    Zurechial Elitist

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    I can see your point, but do you really decide whether to buy a game or not merely on a score out of 10? :confused:

    Honestly, I don't pay much heed to scores out of 10, percentages, etc.
    I'd rather actually read the review and get the detailed opinions of the reviewer about various aspects of the game so I can decide for myself - and I'd imagine you're much the same, as are most people.

    As far as I'm concerned, scores out of 10 and the like are just a formality that reviewers have to go through to adhere to the norm, but it's the opinions presented within the review that count.
     
  18. Tim S

    Tim S OG

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    We don't have a truly "average" score, as we only score from 1 to 10 (with no halves). We do this because it keeps things simple and secondly it's rare that a game (or product for that matter) is truly average... I think the tipping point is that 7 is something we think is worth considering, while 6 is something that we don't.

    You're right, it's not that we don't want to start at five and work upwards... we're kind forced into that in some ways by other sites. We started out with seven as an average, but decided that was too high, so now we classify seven as above average.

    I hear you, but the reason we kept it simple is because how do you tell the difference, as a writer, between an 8.7 and an 8.8? Personally, I think scoring out of any more than 10 is overcomplicating things and it'd be even worse if we started going down that route with the hardware reviews too, because it's often incredibly hard to score a product even out of 10 - we spend a lot of time coming up with our scores and most of them are usually discsussed, or at least put out there by the writer and then they have to be able to defend why it deserves that score if one of us doesn't agree. :)
     
  19. lukasj3di

    lukasj3di What's a Dremel?

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    This is not something new. There's another example: this year, Vadim Computers lost the Dream PC2007 award (SCAN won it). The two guys who built the machine from Vadim Computers were fired a few days after that.
     
  20. indigo_prime

    indigo_prime What's a Dremel?

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    I would hope that someone will pick up this guy and give him a job. Someone with 10 years experience of the industry and who gives an honest review should be seen as an asset, not as a risk.

    Unfortunately advertising revenue is a big part of keeping sites rolling. This guy had the balls to tell it 'how it is' from his perspective in the review. The ones without the spine are the people who have bowed to external pressure and sacked him.

    If the average user is only rating it as a 4, then perhaps they should be grateful that he gave them a 6. I fail to see in other comments how a 6 can be described as below average and 7 as above average. On a 1 to 10 scale, 5 is and always has been the average!! Anything less than 5 is below average. Basic maths guys!!

    The best reviews I see are ones where they rate cost, playability (SP and MP), graphics, performance etc individually and then give the final score as the average of them all. BF2 SP for me is about a 3, but MP is about an 8 which would give an average of 5.5 over those two things....see where Im going?
     
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