Gamespot or Shamespot?

Gamespot was built so that people could browse through reviews of their favourite games, comment, post blogs like this one and so on. Ever since 1996 it has amassed over a few million users and the community continues to grow even to this day. However a slew of niggling issues haunt Gamespot. A lot of things are glitchy (such as the comment section, the video player and even the entire site if you're lucky...), people complain about reviews, claiming that they're biased and on some occasions the members of staff think it's appropriate to post news about things that aren't even remotely game related.

What's your opinion on the matter though? Do you think Gamespot try their best? Or are they lazy, incompetent and unfair? Your comments are much appreciated.

It's definitely not the place I grew to like 7 years ago when I first joined. The turning point for me was the massive site update, which I still think did more bad than good.

Well I'm not really against the reviewing system, I'm just not a fan on how they make certain games the centre of attention. I get that EA, Activison and Bethesda are paying to have all these glorified mediocre games 'advertised' but have some dignity. The coverage BattleFront, Destiny and Fallout 4 have gotten this year is ridiculous, and undeserving.

I'm also not the biggest fan of how they post a lot of American movie and television articles. But that's a whole other subject.

To be honest if it wasn't for the GD Forums I'd just stick with GFAQs. Goes to show the community really is the heart of this website.

Are they lazy, incompetent, and unfair? No, it's a business model that has proven to work for the industry. For them, it's great.

Is it unfair for you? Yeah, they can't crucify games because of the backlash they will receive from these huge companies that no longer need reviewers. You think a company worth billions and on the NYSE can't create a few small companies to give great reviews for their games?

The reality is, this is probably the best you will get. Companies that are making several billions in a fiscal year can afford to market their games despite horrible reviews of their games. Yet, they can easily withdraw their early access for reviewers if they want to. Not to mention, it will probably hurt consumers more

The truth is, even on gamespot, if you pay attention to both critic reviews and user review, you can get an idea where the game is. I found that eurogamer despite giving nice scores tends to give subtle hints to certain aspects that are bad in a game. Look at their review for dragon age inquisition. It reeks of we can't say it's bad but here are bad some about the game. Roughly 1/3 of the review dead with how bad the game is without saying it directly. I found that GS does this as wel but to a smaller degree

I think having a System Wars forum is the most shameful and the conduct they allow within that forum. It should also be shameful for those acting the way they do, but 90% of the people that post in there are narcissistic and wouldn't even know what shame is.

@Telekill: You may have a point there.

@Telekill: I can agree with that sentiment. I never go on System Wars for that very reason. The way people behave on there is beyond words.

I think they try their best (the visible staff at least; I don't know about all the higher ups). Then again, I don't really care. I came here shortly before the big format switch, so I had little invested in this website. I like the staff, I enjoy reading the reviews and the forums are generally ok. I've hardly had any technical problems. Sometimes a comment won't post or something, but that's about it. I certainly can't relate to all the people complaining about the video player. I never had any problems with that thing. Maybe it's because I don't use adblock or something.

As for people complaining about biased reviews, that's been going on forever. A significant part of the people saying that don't seem to read beyond the pros and cons list. And even if reviews are biased, that doesn't mean they can't be informative. And besides, there are so many ways to verify someone's claims or to find reviews that are more to your liking. I actually think the latter is the more likely reason why people complain about biased reviews. These days there's always some article, video or fellow internet commenter that strongly agrees with your views, granting you the opportunity to deem suspicious anything that doesn't align with your views. Not that I don't think GS and many gaming websites are too dependent on the industry itself for revenue (potentially colouring their coverage), but well, since I don't pay for anything and since I've got so many options, I don't really think I'm in a position to be overly critical.

As for posting news that has little to do with gaming: it doesn't happen often and it can be easily ignored. GS tries to cater to a mainstream crowd that might be interested in more than just videogames. It's funny how comment sections about the more politically correct topics are always filled with people saying that there is no issue or that this has nothing to do with gaming, but those articles continue to generate a lot of traffic. And in the end, I think GS (the company, not necessarily the visible staff) is much more focused on traffic than on anything else. And I can't really blame them. There's so much on offer and it's all free. The competition is pretty fierce and the audiences seem rather picky (and they can afford to be).

This. If you put a little effort in, you can usually get valuable information from reviews even if the score or the general verdict doesn't seem right. That verdict isn't the most important thing, it's about the observations that lead to the verdict. Those are important for the consumer to make an informed decision. As long as a review is decently descriptive, it can be valuable. And you can always compare reviews.

Site update was a huge disaster, I am also not happy with the reviews. I used to trust these reviews with all my heart. Now, I am wondering if they are paid to write good reviews or if their reviewers are really living in a different reality

@tanerb: You're not the only one who thinks that they get paid.

Agreed. System Wars attracts a crowd that is not fruitful but clicks and time spent on the site is their primary concern, so it makes no difference whether we like it or not. :(

Troll thread made as a blog post so not really interested in biting on that hook.

@Jacanuk: What are you talking about? It's a genuine question.

@Ezioprez9709: gamespot was awesome pre-redesign. unions were great, levelling was fun and everything just worked. mods were a bit trigger happy with their moderating though but that aside it was one of my favourite sites.

@Telekill: system wars was actually pretty decent several years ago. as it is now, there's still a handful of posters who offer interesting insight and can articulate it in a readable way that's not drenched in condescending fanboyisms, the rest are mainly just cretins who post one liners like lolofduty or failstation 4 and whose entire opinion on everything gaming related can be summed up as if i don't personally find it entertaining or it's not for my system then it's garbage and you're an idiot if you think otherwise

I don't know. I think they do a pretty good job here myself. I find the staff and reviewers here to be quite likeable and I enjoy watching the shows and videos that they do. I also relate quite well to their reviews. I generally don't have too many problems with the site and forums although I don't use Adblock or things like that.

@Ezioprez9709: We have a feedback forum for threads like this. Please utilize it.

I dont think they are really bad... The one thing I do not like about gamespot really is that the average game is around a 7 when really I think an average game should be closer to a 5 on scale. The lower end of the scale never really feels used unless it is an awful game. The non-game related articles I dont really mind, cause I just wont read them, but there are some that they probably could skim out (like they posted a finding Dory trailer, like wtf, try to keep it somewhat interesting to general gamers). They do need to get rid of the bugs that have been here for a while (video player and comments) and get rid of that awful infinite scroll... Other than that I do like the forums and the community gs has, also their videos and reviews are very good

You guys see it that way because surprising news: people can disagree with their preferences on consoles and debate it out. System Wars also has dedicated hype threads which you don't get as often in other forums.

Just attributing the people who go there to maniacs is superficial and kind of ignorant in all honesty.

I always thought that was the point of the system wars section tbh, if you want you can always go to system specific or games discussion which I find are usually pretty tame. Although I never found system wars to be going overboard myself

Gamespot is gone, this is just garbage.Terribly designed site that replaced journalists with cheap contractors to write horrible reviews and clickbaity crap to maximize profits.

I don't even know why I kept this thing bookmarked up until this point.

@Talavaj: Thankyou for your comment. I agree.

Most of us agree that the Oct 2013 "update" left a sour taste.

Regarding System Wars, I don't like it but the wonderful thing about choice is that I have it. I don't like it so I don't go in there.

The community died years ago. Many left after Gertmann-gate, and the few great members that hung around ditched Gamespot with the crappy site overhaul. This place is a ghost town now

@halvedlife: & that's why I come here less and less, As mentioned; I've always been more of a GFAQs person myself anyway than GS.

It's more focused on discussing games and features we're hopeful for. Not that it doesn't get random and troII topics, It does. It's just more focused on gaming as well.

I agree anyway. This place is basically dead, to an extent. GS still has a somewhat high user count, but most just want to argue. Its become relevant not many here really want to chat about games.

It's become a place to own one device and slander anyone who owns anything different. That's why System-Wars is popular. Luckily you still get some gamers to have a good chat about games, its just rare.

What bugs me are the basically faceless editors who -instead of introducing themselves to the community and building some level of repoire with their user base - expect us to follow their meaningless Twitter feeds. Yeah, I'm really interested in their two sentence blurbs about random shit which may not even be game related. It's like "who are you dude?" Outside of Danny O'Dwyer and Chris Watters, we don't know who most of these new people are or what their job title is, or even if they're an actual GS employee or freelancer (which most are now). If they don't care about us, why should we give a shit.

Guys, the rule on System Wars is to not take it very seriously. I hardly make any threads over there but I do enjoy contributing to users threads, so I kinda enjoy going over there. The problem is, System Wars is the only, only forum that's always active, other forums like Games Discussion [that forum is my favorite place btw when when making threads] and so on are just not popular and it's sad that SW is mainly just for the fact that it's a fanboys home forum. I don't have a lot of problems with Gamespot other then game journalist are just poorly reporting gaming news, Eddie for example, I'm cool with Eddie Makuch, it would be nice if he does a lot of research into his news rather then half crap done and he's horrible for that.

Back when I was lurking on GS around 2011 before I sign up, yes October 2013 revamp was a huge turn off to long time users and I witness lots and lots of good people left because of it and I wish I had sign up back then so I can get to know how Gamespot was a cool place. Hack even in OT [off-topic] that place was the best place until OT became a ghost town as it is now. I personally don't expect GS to return to it's former glory, but hey, GS is still okay for the most parts, might as well live my life to the fullest here while it's still fresh.

@davillain-: I've been doing what I can since it happened but am but 1 man. I got the last read post button back, and a few other things but there is still work to be done