GameSpot Confessions

To Our Loyal Readers:

I'm the new intern here at GameSpot. Not long ago, I was just a regular reader of the site, like most of you who are reading this right now. It was a time of innocence and blissful ignorance--a time when I wasn't privy to the harsh realities of the gaming journalism business.

My, how quickly opinions can change. After being here scarcely a month, I've come to discover the harsh reality of GameSpot's nature. As much as I hate to be the bearer of bad news, it's important that the loyal readers know this.

GameSpot is Teh Bias.

This is, unfortunately, the sad truth of it. Some of the most outspoken critics of the site were right, and the rest of us were too naive and unintelligent to realize the stark truth. Indeed, one would think that editors could put aside their petty favoritism when writing reviews, but they cannot. The editors around here regularly get into "disagreements" over which gaming system is the best. I must wear earplugs whenever I intend to do any work around here, as the caustic verbal insults between editors fly back and forth in this office. Sometimes, things get even more serious. Consider that part of my job as an intern includes cleaning the blood off the carpet before it can stain.

Two editors discuss which console is best.

These unfair biases, possessed by the editors, translate directly into scores. The numerical score is, of course, the most important part of any review, and so the score is determined first--always based on the editors' system preferences. After the score is chosen, an editor produces a fake laundry list of supposed problems a nigh-perfect game has and uses this list as filler for the actual review. According to GameSpot mythology, at one point, the editors actually spent time playing the games they were reviewing. After awhile, however, they realized that no one was actually reading reviews, but were, instead, far more concerned with the numerical score, which is why the editors don't bother spending any time playing games.

The alternate version of the myth is that the editors realized just how much they sucked at games and gave up playing. This is the version I believe more, as every so often, someone will try to play a game around here. It is another part of my job to replace editors' controllers when they break them out of frustration. This happens frequently. The notion that the GameSpot editors suck at games was a theory posited by the same intellectuals who surmised that GameSpot is, indeed, biased. Once again, they couldn't have been more correct. The most confusing part is that it's impossible to tell what kind of bias the editors possess. It's like the biases are always changing. One day they'll overrate a particular system's game, and the next day they'll underrate one. It's very confusing, really. But the bias must exist, somewhere...

To be quite honest, I'm not really sure where the bias comes from either. Does it really make any sense to have an emotional attachment to a box that consists of plastic and silicon and is worth a mere couple hundred dollars? Is it really sane to feel a bond with a company, based thousands of miles away, that cares more than anything about a bottom line? Think about it. The editors here have access to every console out there right now, as well as a plethora of good games that are available for them. And yet, they ignore a good percentage of the great games just because of what system they're on. What kind of idiocy is that?

I'm sure this news comes as a horrible shock to some of you, while to others it probably comes as sweet validation. Fortunately for our readers, I've come to save the day with a host of improvements that will hopefully cancel out the effects of the bias that is so prevalent here. Even though GameSpot just recently added a bevy of site enhancements, I'm sure that it will adopt these additional features if enough users sign a poorly written online petition about it.

Since GameSpot already has a built-in tracking system, an upgrade to this would be to allow our users to choose which console is their favorite. Every time they log into the site, these insecure users would receive a pop-up window saying, "Way to go, champ! Your console is the best one!" Next, they would be able to select, from a list, games that they are definitely going to buy. When a game they have selected is released, the score that is displayed would be the highest one available on the Web. If no decent score was available, well, then it'd get at least a 9 by default. We at GameSpot certainly don't want to make users feel bad about their choices. I mean, it's not like anyone at a review site should, you know, criticize anything. Lastly, users would have the option to see a reduced score for games on platforms they don't own. Anything to reinforce their decisions will make users feel a lot better, I'm sure. Ignorance, as they say, is bliss.

In the meanwhile, I hope everyone out there can learn from the example set here, and remember that blind loyalty to a gaming system or company is pointless. Furthermore, I hope you can remember that GameSpot is here to provide information to those of you who want to know whether or not to buy a game. If you are going to get a game anyway, regardless of our score, then, really, what's the point of obsessing? You really don't need our validation.