Hey everyone,

Been reading through the threads, and have shared some of your thoughts with the product and engineering team to see what we can do to improve some of the community elements of the site. As you can imagine we have an incredibly busy queue of stuff to improve around GameSpot so while i can't promise when we'll get to some of this stuff, i can assure you we hear your frustrations.

Regarding some of the general comments on the thread i'm sorry that some of you guys feel like the site has lost some of what made you come here originally. Being a 20 year old online brand is the equivalent of being 1000 in real years and you have to accept that the way games media is consumed, shared and discussed has completely changed. Things we have cut from the site have been cut when they've not been performing, and things we've added are generally there because they're performing. For several years the site had been very flat regarding traffic - but we have just come off the most successful January in our history, with traffic doubling from this time last year, and seen a 2015 where we've grown by 100% year over year - As a long time reader and fan of GameSpot, long before i was running the site, it's great to be back in a position where we're growing and growing fast.

Quality is something we take very seriously so if you do see mistakes regarding copy, please PM me the links and i'll make sure the team jumps on it. I'm also welcome to other suggestions on things you want to see going forward.

Thanks

When i was attending shows regularly - pre-kids - i did start wearing some ear protection as ringing would last longer and longer. No i only go to a few shows a year so don't both.

I am indeed - been listening to all forms of metal/thrash/death/doom/stoner metal since aged 13 (i just turned 40). I've also played in various bands over the years, and attending alot of metal concerts over the years (the most recent being Judas Priest/Mastodon and AC/DC in the last month) can definitely have a negative effect on your hearing. It's all a moderation thing - loud music is meant to be heard loud, obviously - and if you're attending concerts several times a month you should probably think about getting some ear protection - there are some amazing ear plugs out there that slightly reduce the impact of the sound on your ear drums, but without sacrificing volume or clarity.

Hi all,

To give a bit of insight into the how's and whys of why we're experimenting with a broader range of content i should clarify a few things. Firstly, the amount of entertainment content is around 5% of our total team output right now....or 1 in 20 articles. I'm not sure where you're getting a 2:1 ratio but it's simply not true. We remain committed to our strong core of games coverage but in order to continue to grow we wanted to expand that with a selection of content from the broader entertainment world that we think our audience would be interested in.

The results overwhelmingly say the audience is interested - articles on relevant movies/tv are actually outperforming many of our game articles, especially when it comes to visits from our social channels - a key source of growth. I get that you guys aren't neccessarily interested in it, but there are plenty who are....

So what if you're not interested in this stuff? Well the first thing to suggest is "don't read it", but failing that we're actually looking at bringing in more tools to help ensure you only see content you're interested in - this means personalisation which helps tailor the content feed to stuff you're interested in, and a separate site section for the GameSpot Entertainment content we're producing. stand by for this stuff over the coming weeks,

Thanks

Ben (VP, Content)

Thanks to those of you posting support. I realise that for some our statement will be too much, for others not enough - that's the inherent peril of the internet, damned if you do and damned if you don't. I am serious about us leading by example however, and that means listening to your feedback regarding direction and providing the kind of content and community this passionate audience deserves.

That doesn't mean political grandstanding or lecturing - it does mean a varied landscape of opinion, perspective and personality. And yes respectful dialogue that doesn't result in the kind of bullying and harrasssment we've seen across this industry.

This thread is for you all to discuss our recent message to the community while we have some issues with the commenting system on the story:

http://www.gamespot.com/articles/an-important-message-to-our-users-regarding-online/1100-6423008/

Keep it civil please folks, thanks

Hi all, it was a test page that the engineering team accidentally pushed live. We actually only received our copies about 2 hours ago, and the servers don't go live until Monday. If you're around make sure you join us from 5am PT on Monday where we'll be streaming the game all day long. Can't wait myself.

There's a bunch of major improvements coming down the pipe very soon indeed. Search and navigation being two key areas you should see a dramatic improvement.

Thanks for the question askelly35. One of the key reasons was that 15 years of the old platform had meant it was very hard to build or add new features, we had a patchwork of code that meant every time we wanted to add something new the feature had to be essentially built from scratch - we now have a flexible platform that we can roll features out for much more easily - and across our portfolio of sites if we wish. It's also enabling us to launch new sites if and when we see an opportunity - OnGamers for example was something we saw an opportunity for, and being on our new platform meant we could roll out a new site incredibly quickly.

Of course on top of that was all the bugs and problems that come with maintaining a 15 year old platform - the internet has changed alot since then :)