SOMEONE’S BASEMENT - Candy bar guru and internet famous game journalist, Jeff Gerstmann, revealed an ambitious career-revitalizing plan this morning. Sadly, nobody seems to give a damn what he thinks, or if he does have a podcast that’s topping the iTunes charts. While several journalists attended the event, none of them took notes, and not a soul could remember what the hell Gerstmann had said. (more…)

By now, just about anyone who’s anyone knows about the recent controversy involving Gamespot. Long time GS staff member, senior editor and reviewer, Jeff Gerstmann, has apparently been fired after giving Kane & Lynch a mediocre review. The ongoing conflict between Eidos, Gamespot and GS’s parent company Cnet continues to rage on.

What about poor little Jeff Gerstmann?

He’s going to Disney World!

Nobody could have predicted the absolutely off-the-charts reaction from the Gamespot user community. Hundreds of paid subscriptions have been canceled, untold numbers of forum posts and threads supporting Jeff and condemning GS have appeared, a boycott campaign is in the works and blogs across the world wide web are shouting a resounding “WE LOVE YOU JEFF!”

So, what does the future hold for Mr. Gerstmann? (more…)

Oh the madness! Our original plans for Episode 18 were slightly tweaked by the GamespotGate scandal, and rather than cut anything out, we’re delivering a slightly larger portion of the Sarcastic Gamer Podcast. It’s our first show in more than a month with the whole crew present.

In this episode:

• Our initial reaction to the Gamespot debacle
• Foo Mo Jive playing Halo 3 on “Easy”
• Supa’s Mass Effect Review (Gamespot Style)
• Battle to the Pain! Lono vs. Alex
• Mutiny
• Sony’s stance on console exclusives
• Dave as Sony’s PR director!
• Call of Duty 4 multiplayer bugs
• Gamercast Network Rock Band giveaway
• Is Dave hording prizes?
• Thank you’s
• Dave, take us out
• Martini Time

If you liked this episode, please consider giving us the honor of your subscription in iTunes or RSS. If you insist, you can always just download the mp3. If you are currently using a computer with iTunes on it, would you mind heading over there and leaving us some feedback? Much obliged. Oh, by the way… You still haven’t taken our QUICK podcast survey. C’mon! It takes like 4 minutes.

A Sarcastic Gamer satirical look at the GameSpotGate controversy.

Gamers from around the world stormed the offices of Cnet’s Gamespot today, setting fires and destroying everything in sight. The small contigent of police on hand to maintain order were simply overrun by the sheer number of angry nerds.

“At first it was like one guy with a sign,” said Gerald Fulton, one of the officers dispatched to try and defuse the situation. “But within an hour there were thousands of them. They were chanting Gerstmann, Gerstmann, Gerstmann. Then in an instant, they began to stampede.”

Within minutes, smoke began to rise from the Gamespot offices, and the sound of breaking glass filled the streets. Looters were seen leaving the scene with hundreds of copies of Kane & Lynch: Dead Men.

“We would have tried to stop them, but it’s not like they were taking anything valuable,” said Fulton. “We were most concerned about the fire spreading from the Gamespot offices to the adjacent landfill. There are rare birds that inhabit that area, and it would have been a real shame if any of their habitat were to be damaged.”

Do you like to hear the same talking points and rumors repeated over and over again? Great! Simply visit any gaming-related website all this week (not owned by CNET), and you can read nonstop bullsh*t about Gamespot’s little mix-up. Who would have thought that journalistic integrity was such a big deal?

For the past 48 hours, no real news has managed to leak through the Jeff Gerstmann Iron Curtain. Sony is ditching SIXAXIS for Wiimotes, Super Mario Galaxy dropped to 54 on Metacritic, and EA started a new genocide in Darfur, but who cares! Let’s all just cash in and make money from the situation. If Gamespot can do it, so can we.

Jeromy ‘Doc’ Adams from Sarcastic Gamer has had no problem accomplishing that goal. Traffic has been easy to come by.

“It was a very difficult decision to put up six articles about Gerstmann in 48 hours,” said Adams, “but at this rate, we’ll have advertisers to sell out to in no time.”

If you do happen to like gaming news that is actually gaming news, there is one place still not talking about this mess: Gamespot. It’s the only place to go if you want your updates current, thrilling, and perhaps a little tainted.

The video game soap opera, “Gamespotgate 07,” is still going full swing. You can’t post a review for Kane & Lynch on Gamespot anymore (it’s locked now)…since tons of disgruntled Jeff fans have been posting a rating of 1 out of 10; dropping the user rating down to a sweet 2.6 out of 10. The posters also included some great quotes to back up their low score reviews.  My personal favorites were: “worse than big rigs!!!” and “If a blue whale and a sloth had a child, Kane & Lynch would be it.”

Ouch. Worse than big rigs? Those are some harsh words.

Read more after the jump!

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Did Pepsi cave to the groundswell of public discontent towards Gamespot and pull its Mountain Dew support? Sure looks that way. Yesterday, the site was all dressed in Mountain Dew, as we reported that most game ads had disappeared from the site, replaced with a lot of Dew, Dell, and Sony.

This apocalypse for CNET’s video game property, started with the firing of one of their editors, Jeff Gerstmann on Friday. According to the lopsided story (Eidos and Gamespot haven’t bothered to clarify with anything other than ‘No Comment’ and statements of corporate policy) Gerstmann gave Kane and Lynch (Eidos) a less-than-stellar review, and Eidos pulled hundreds of thousands of dollars in ad revenue from Gamespot. If you believe the people with the torches, Gamespot then turned around and fired Gerstmann. That’s the short version.

Very early this morning, the Pepsi/Mountain Dew ads came down. Coincidence? Maybe. But it seems rather unlikely that Pepsi bought a one day ad on Gamespot for Mountain Dew. It’s not like they’re on a tight budget. At one point yesterday, literally every ad space came up Dew. Now it’s Alienware (Dell). Lots and lots of Alienware. (more…)

A sarcastic editorial

Well this brand new site called Gamespot certainly caused a stir this week. I don’t know if you heard, but…. they gave an average review to Kane and Lynch! OMG!!!! Inconceivable!?!?!?!?

I’ve played the game and it certainly is not average. In fact, it sucks. The characters sound alike, the story is hackneyed and the controls play like an epileptic frisbee game. For a AAA title, from the makers of Tomb Raider and the Hitmen games, I expected more. Much more.

Anyway, after playing the game, I would have given the game a 3.5 at best, but the “renegades” at Gamespot allegedly got a ton of dough from Eidos, effectively bumping the score up to a 6.0. An above average review? How did this happen?

Find out, after the jump!

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Yesterday, video game ads began to disappear from the Gamespot front page faster than free beer at a Lynrd Skynrd concert. First, the obvious one, Kane and Lynch, followed shortly thereafter by Assasins Creed and several others. But not all advertisers seem to mind swimming the boiling waters in which the once-respected gaming site now resides. Just 24 hours after a massive backlash descended on Gamespot following the dismissal of Jeff Gerstmann, allegedly for his low review of Gamespot advertiser Eidos’ Kane & Lynch: Dead Men, several companies seem to be gobbling up the open inventory.

Sony’s PS3 ads now share space with Dell on the front page, while Pepsi saw fit to splatter the background of the site with Moutain Dew. Despite boycotts and canceled subscriptions, it seems at least some companies recognize a hot topic when they see one. Unfortunately for those companies, many gamers are taking mental notes. (more…)

This is NOT a fiction Friday Article

For those just joining this geek-ridden soap opera:

• Eidos was spending some really heavy money to promote Kane and Lynch: Dead Men with Gamespot and apparently pulled it as a result of the “bad” review by Gamespot Editor, Jeff Gerstmann.
• Gamespot fired Jeff.
• The world stopped spinning
• A tidal wave of backlash descends on Gamespot and Eidos (Kane and Lynch now rated a 2.0 on user rankings.)
• Gamespot subscribers began cancelling their subscriptions.
• More than 350 pages of comments pour onto the Gamespot forums, mostly condemning the website for its actions.

And now, a cry that could end up hurting Gamespot even more than any of the above. A boycott is being organized, a very, VERY creative boycott. (more…)

This is NOT a Fiction Friday article

Suggested reading:

Kotaku -Gamespot Editor Fired Over Kane & Lynch Review?

Joystiq -Rumor: Gamespot’s editorial director fired over Kane & Lynch review

SG -Rumor: Game$pot Fire$ a Reviewer for Ca$h

The outrage over the dismissal of Gamespot’s former Editorial Director Jeff Gerstmann now seems to be impacting Gamespot from the other end of the business plan. Not the advertising channels, but you know, the part of the plan where people come and actually pay for memberships…. and read stuff.

According to a forum thread on their site, more than 400 of Gamespot’s paid subscribers have already cancelled their subscriptions in direct protest of the move, with many more vowing to do so if Gamespot and parent company CNET do not answer up to the fairly heavy charges of putting advertising dollars ahead of editorial integrity.

Our community has reacted quite charismatically to the reports. Here are a few of my personal favorites.

AriesDog: Loonnngggg time reader of Gamespot.com but Jeff Gerstmann’s firing makes me wary of Gamespot’s reviews if the advertiser pays enough. Sorry, going to EGM and 1up.com exclusively for reviews after this.

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