Jeff Gerstmann and I got to work together at GameSpot for 10 years. It seems he didn't get a chance to properly say goodbye here this week. This is simply the opinion of a longtime fan of this site: As the longest-tenured GameSpot editor, Jeff Gerstmann deserved a respectful send-off.

My last day at GameSpot was pretty good. It was on a Tuesday early this year. I had already packed up my stuff, had already told my team I was leaving and where I was going and what I was going to do next, and that I believed in them. What I really wanted to do was put in one last day's work at the site. I shot a video review, submitted and prepared a few pieces of content including a final review of mine, met with my closest colleagues, made my rounds with some of the others I'd always wished I got to talk to more, and tied up what seemed like a last few loose ends. I had a brief exit interview as well. It was an oddly liberating experience. As great as it was to work at GameSpot, I rarely felt a sense of closure at the job, because there was always lots more work to be done and more I could have been doing. The game industry never stops, and there are always more games I could be playing. It occurred to me that most of the closure I'd been feeling over the past decade came from finishing games.

I shouldn't lump myself into the same category as Jeff because we're pretty different people in spite of us having the same feelings about games and similar perspectives on a lot of subjects related to games. But I think guys like him and me see closure as a nice-to-have. We'd rather be moving on to our next assignment. So I said my goodbyes here in January not to provoke and get off on the generous flattery provided by a subset of people who took the time to respond, but to provide what I considered to be a basic, human courtesy to all those people who were familiar with my work over time. Some of those people hated my guts for all I knew--they had a right to know I was leaving same as anyone else. So then, to those of you familiar with Jeff's work: You should rest assured he'd take the opportunity to do what I did, not because we presume to know it's the "right" thing to do, but because we basically trust our instincts. It's not hard--it's rather easy--to imagine him saying goodbye here in his own way. And I have every faith that we'll be hearing from him again soon. I look forward to that moment.

As for the rest of the team that makes GameSpot's content: What you do next is more important than what you've done already. Every day you should be reminding yourselves that, because of the magic of the Internet, someone could just flip a switch that causes everything you've ever done here to just vanish. But the influence of your actions never disappears, and whatever integrity or credibility this site has gathered over the years is due to your hard work. I have no right to telling you what to do. But as a user of this site, I've come to expect a lot, and I know you listen.

Master Chief says it best: "We'll be fine."

And that's all I wanted to say here and I don't have anything more to add.

Today marks one week since I started my new job as an associate producer at Electronic Arts Los Angeles. For my first assignment, I'm getting to help wrap production on the PC version of Command & Conquer 3 Tiberium Wars. I'll also be taking in a lot of new information about the process here, hopefully without getting underfoot during a busy and exciting time. In short, it feels good to be on the team. Going into this, I had an idea of the types of people I wanted to work with and what types of games I wanted to work on, and all of that seems to be here. I'm also lucky to be working alongside and learning the trade from one of my former GameSpot colleagues, Mr. Amer Ajami, whom I owe a lot to for paving the way for me.

I really appreciated the show of support and good faith in response to my previous post; I owe a lot to you, too. After all, thanks to you I think my family finally gets what the hell it is I've been doing with my life. Let me make you a promise: For each game I get to work on, from this first project onward, I will keep you in mind and do everything I can to help ensure you won't be disappointed if you decided to play it.

All the best to my comrades at GameSpot.

I'm usually not one for long goodbyes, but I think I owe you an explanation, since we've known each other all these years. Recently I made the decision to resign from my post as editor-in-chief of GameSpot to pursue my ambition of becoming a game developer--a gamemaker, as the head of the studio I'm joining calls it. My friends, family, and close colleagues have known that making games has always been my goal. But breaking into that business is hard, and I wasn't going to do it until I was ready. At last, when faced with a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to get my foot in the door and contribute to one of my favorite gaming franchises, I still didn't have an easy time making the choice. That's because, in case it hasn't been abundantly clear, I love this job.

Some of the guys here I've been working with for a long time, and we've been through a lot together. I know I'll miss seeing them every day. But my decision is made more comfortable knowing that I leave you in their very capable hands. My longtime comrades like Jeff Gerstmann, Ricardo Torres, Andrew Park, and Ryan Mac Donald have an extraordinary understanding of the history of games as well as how to make great, innovative gaming Web sites. I've been working closely with them on a plan that will take GameSpot into a new era in 2007 and beyond. I feel less sad to part ways with them at this time, knowing that our paths will surely cross again, because we're in this business for the long haul.

I've also been lucky to work with a great, very talented and dedicated editorial team--the best in the world at what it does. I have utmost faith in the people on this team, as well as many others here at GameSpot, whose names you don't know and faces you haven't seen but who've worked every bit as hard as the rest of us, behind the scenes, trying to make the best of every situation and always supporting our coverage efforts.

What's always driven me while working at GameSpot is the knowledge that there are many other people out there who'd practically kill to do what we do. It's people like you, whom I've been writing to all this time. I've been in the fortunate position to hire people like you, and I know all that separates me from you is that I got here first. In turn, I urge you, if you have the ambition to do this type of work for a living, to keep pushing yourself to make it become a reality. There's no reason that a guy like me, who's always intended to wind up doing something else (even if it's something in the same vein), should get to do this instead of you.

I joined GameSpot in 1996 as an intern who'd just stumbled through his first year of college. I've been working here for more than a third of my life and writing about games professionally for closer to half my life. I believe I got here because I was able to manage getting a good education while gaining practical experience by playing and writing about a lot of games. Essentially, this is what I chose to do with my life, and it's taken up most of my time ever since. On some level I feel like I could happily do this till the day I die. But I've wanted to make games since I was eight, and writing about them was always meant to be an intermediate step in a longer-term plan. Then I fell in love with this stuff and the years flew by. Yet the intent to work on games never faded and I expect and hope it never will. I need to give that a shot, see how it goes.

My thanks to you for believing in what we do here at GameSpot. Know that we've always valued your criticism much more than your praise; you've kept us honest, kept us up late, and kept us motivated all along. My thanks also to all my colleagues here, whom I've always considered my brothers in arms, not just coworkers. And special thanks to my predecessors at GameSpot: Vince Broady, who founded this site and whose ideals remain at the heart of it; Joe Fielder, Elliott Chin, and Trent Ward, former heads of GameSpot editorial whose great influence and ultimate decisions to move on paved the way for people like me to step up and try to live up to their reputations; and Ron Dulin, who not only taught me most of what I know, but took a chance on hiring a kid like me in the first place. I'm also very grateful to my wife Jenna, who's always been patient and understanding about my work and my attachment to games, even after the birth of our daughter.

I've been lucky to have this job. As an immigrant to this country, I'm not cynical about the American dream, and have tried to work hard in exchange for a life that's had no hardship in it. The hardest thing I've ever had to do is gather up the guts to ask out this one girl I had a terrible crush on in college. In the moments leading up to my inviting her to a cup of coffee ("I don't drink coffee, and I have a boyfriend"), I was terrified. But I also knew I'd always regret it if I didn't take the chance. Afterwards, I felt that any other difficult decision I'd ever have to make wouldn't be as frightening and nerve-wracking as that one. The thought process about leaving GameSpot is similar for me, though I'm quite a bit more optimistic about the likely outcome. After all, games have always been a big part of my life and had a positive, enlightening influence on me, so I feel there's a lot I need to give back to them. If you feel the same way about games as I do, thanks for keeping the faith and knowing both how important and unimportant gaming really is. Thank you for letting me do this job.

Now then: With all that sentimental stuff out of the way, I leave you with The Real Top 10 Reasons Why I'm Leaving GameSpot:

10. Gamerscore won't catch up to Jeff Gerstmann's by itself.

9. Lost a bet about the Nintendo DS.

8. Editors-in-chief don't score with chicks.

7. Ran out of shelf space for more games.

6. Heard all the cool kids are doing it.

5. Arcades are dead.

4. Caved to pressure from online petition about Tom Clancy's Splinter Cell review score.

3. Thinking about getting back into World of Warcraft.

2. Getting free games felt like cheating.

1. Wants to earn one of those Editors' Choice awards.

Goodbye for now. Until next time.

The following video was appropriated without shame from the blog of GameSpot managing producer Mr. Tim Tracy, of "Cooking with Tim" fame. Later this week, our Best and Worst of 2006 Awards will be going into considerable detail about all that's gone down during the past 12 months. But this video sort of says it all:

How does that old fortune cookie expression go? "May you live in interesting times"?

Come on, Bungie...

I flipped through the new batch of Halo 3 screenshots about three times and, much like the process of heat conduction, my excitement drained away into something like anger and frustration. Here's a shot of a couple of master chiefs jumping. Here's a Warthog. Here's a big, tower-like structure on a meadow near a mountain. It's all in higher resolution and shinier than ever before. It's like they did a brain-scan on everybody and delivered to them exactly, precisely the screenshots they would have most expected.

You know what makes Halo: Combat Evolved one of the greatest games of all time? It doesn't just play great; it surprised and even shocked people. It took some smart, calculated risks with its design and presentation. It might have looked like any other first-person shooter on the surface, but in many ways, it went against the grain.

I'd be an idiot to think Bungie wasn't holding back a ton of interesting information on Halo 3. But I just don't understand the value in releasing a bunch of screenshots such as these. I'm sure Halo's True Believers are swooning with excitement right about now, but how about the rest of us, the people who think Halo 3 is going to have a really tough time living up to the extremely high standards that have been set by games like Gears of War, F.E.A.R., and many others since Halo 2? Has Bungie painted itself into a corner by crafting such an elaborate fiction around Halo that it won't allow the company to take any creative liberties or design risks with the next installment? And yes, I did see the new little ATV buggy in that one screenshot. No, it doesn't count.

Take a page from Spider-Man 2, a movie that defied audiences' expectations, paradoxically by giving them precisely the pay-off that they most wanted but least expected from a big-budget Hollywood sequel. Show us an image of the Master Chief with his helmet half-shattered, exposing a glimpse of his determined, bloodied face behind it as he attempts a desperate last stand against a mysterious and extremely powerful enemy. Show us the Master Chief locked in a brutal hand-to-hand struggle or bulldozing a foe with his armored shoulder. I want to see kinetic action and intensity. The Halo series is rated M, remember?

I don't want to see what looks just like Halo 2 in higher-res with the same old rag-doll physics and a couple of predictable new weapons and vehicles. I don't want to see the Master Chief standing around, as much as I like the idea of having the assault rifle back. I want to be excited for this game. I'd love to see the Halo series become a real dynasty, not just something we look back on and see as the original Xbox's defining games, while the 360 earned its own, superior games.

Bungie is one of those developers that's succeeded through multiple generations of gaming technology, and successfully transitioned between many different platforms. I know those guys have played great games like The Chronicles of Riddick and Gears of War from top to bottom, and I know they must have a lot of great, original ideas of their own, since they always have. So I'll be keeping my fingers crossed that Halo 3 won't just go the safest, most obvious route by taking a squeaky-wheel-gets-the-grease approach.