Gerstmann-gate: 3 Months Later

Prologue: I was a huge fan of Gamespot. All the other sites like IGN, GameInformer, and 1UP were nice, but Gamespot's reviews and articles were written in a manner that I found to be more interesting and memorable than the others. I also had massive respect for their strict editorial policies. If a member of the editorial team did a preview story about a game, they were barred from writing the main review for that game in order to avoid a biased score

The Climax: However, then this bombshell dropped and my views about game journalism were flipped asunder. long-time employee, Jeff Gerstmann was fired for giving a game a bad review score when that game's publisher had hundreds of thousands of dollars of ad money invested in the site. Officially he was fired because management didn't like his "tone." The editorial integrity of the entire industry was called into question for a dark period of time in early December. Other editors around the industry wrote in support of Jeff, but the damage had already been done to Gamespot, to the industry as a whole, and to Jeff. Over the next few months, long-time editors would slowly file out of the company to embark on their own endeavors.

Fast forward 2 months: Jeff Gerstmann and long-time friend and co-worker at Gamespot, Ryan Davis decided on a spur of the moment to start a podcast. The topics discussed in the podcast range from EA and Take-Two's recent fight to Manzanita Sol. A week later they brought former Gamespottenite/current Rock Band A-NI-MAL, Alex Navarro, in to the podcast fold. The following week it was #2 in America and #1 in the UK on the "Video Game Podcast" charts. After the third week, Giant Bomb, Jeff's brand new gaming website was announced and had it's soft launch. It will be fully operational by summer of this year. He said that the site will be very opinionated, almost as a jab at Gamespot, I feel.

My View:My opinion on this whole situation is that this is the start of a new way to go about game journalism. In his most recent podcast Jeff said, "I think we offer something that not many other gaming podcasts have, and that's intense discourse about beverages." In all seriousness though, the content they promise to have on the site excites me. the APD podcast is going to be changed to the Giant Bomb podcast; where they will basically do the same thing, but under the Giant Bomb banner. Also, having opinionated and unbiased reviews without having the suits try and adopt an editorial policy that favors those companies that pay more for advertising. Also the fact that all of the members of this site have been in the industry for a long time and have tons of experience in the fireld. I believe that a brave new world of game journalism is about to unfold before our very eyes over the next few months, and I can hardly wait to go out on an expedition within it.