Tag Archives: Jeff Gerstmann

For those who missed it, GameSpot’s put live on its YouTube channel the recording of its live stream last night between Giant Bomb‘s Jeff Gerstmann and GameSpot VP John Davison. The video talks about Gerstmann’s firing in 2007, the future of Giant Bomb and more after it was bought by GS parent company CBS Interactive yesterday. Get it below, with a full report here.

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Giant Bomb’s acquisition by Gamespot parent company CBS Interactive will not result in its closure or a change in editorial direction, founder Jeff Gerstmann has said.

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GameSpot parent CBS Interactive has bought popular US site Giant Bomb, its been announced.

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Turtles in Time Re-Shelled has landed on Xbox Live.

The game has been recreated in 3D HD graphics with enhanced animations with the original gameplay included.

Game requires the Xbox 360 hard drive for storage, and will run you 800 MS Points.

There is also a demo up if you would like to try it first.

More from the Major here.

Fantasy VII: Advent Children Complete will release in the US on June 2, priced $38.96, Kotaku reports.

Unlike the Japanese release, however, there won’t be a FFXIII demo included. For shame.

Still no confirmation on a European date.

During GDC, David Jaffe, Jeff Gerstmann, and Michael Pachter sat down with GameTrailers TV to talk about gaming in the recession. Watch the discussion after the break.

In it, Jaffe’s weighs in on the used game market, Gerstmann’s talks about OnLive, and Pachter’s looks into his crystal ball for the coming year.

It is definitely worth the watch. Follow the jump.

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Speaking to GamesRadar, Kane & Lynch director Jens Peter Kurup has spoken out about the effect of the now infamous Gamespot review of his game, saying that the team took it hard.

“GameSpot reviewed the game,” he said, “and [the team] didn’t like it one bit.

“I’m not quite sure why, but I remember that review hit the team like a hammer. You can just ‘absorb’ a bad score but there was something in the tone of that review that was tough on people, and on me.”

The 6/10 Gamespot review was written by Jeff Gerstmann, after which the writer was fired from the site, a move that created one of the unholiest internet shitstorms in gaming history.

“It’s a review that I would like to forget, but unfortunately the GameSpot review had its own wicked little life and Eidos, Gamespot and of course the game got entangled in what I guess is best described as a conspiracy theory. And if there’s anything the ‘net loves, it’s a good conspiracy,” Kurup added.

“It was surreal to sit in Copenhagen and watch the game get shredded in forums for reasons and feelings that didn’t all seem entirely based on the game itself.

“I know this might sound like a sissy song of “Boo-hoo! This isn’t fair” and other unproductive thoughts, but you asked me how I felt and I did feel like that for a couple of weeks after the GameSpot review. Pathetic I know, but in glimpses I still feel it, because when I meet somebody who hasn’t played the game, I can be fairly sure that his or her opinion is based on the GameSpot review. It just won’t go away.”

More through the link.

According to this GameDaily piece, Josh Larson – the exec often as being involved with the “removal” of Jeff Gerstmann from Gamespot last year – has left CNET and is now part of in-game ad firm Double Fusion.

More detail through there, should you care.

Just in case there was any doubt left in anyone’s mind that Gamespot ed ex-chief Jeff Gerstmann came to any mutual understanding about his position at Gamespot last year, consider it put to rest. In the words of the man himself, he was sacked.

“I was fired, and kind of went home, decided to sit on the couch and just mope for a while I guess, because, you know, it’s a pretty soul crushing thing to have happen, to lose your job,” he said in this Gamesradar interview. “And then, you know, [I] just kind of got up and checked email and saw that the internet had kind of exploded over that stuff. In the wake of that, yeah, a lot of people reached out, both with well wishes and also with job opportunities and stuff like that.”

Gerstmann refused to detail his departure further however.

“Not legally, no,” he said, when asked if there was anything left to say on the matter.

Gerstmann was sacked from Gamespot after 11 years last November, allegedly over commercial friction between the site and Eidos related to his 6/10 Kane & Lynch review.

Check out the rest of the interview.

Ex-Gamespot staffers Jeff Gerstmann and Ryan Davis have launched giantbomb.com, a blog charting the ongoing development of a more fully-featured site.

“We’ll also use this blog to talk about the site we’re building behind the scenes,” said Gerstmann. “There is an expert team of dudes behind the Bomb, ensuring that there will be a robust, feature-filled website at our disposal, which we’ll use to talk about games.”

No date has been given for the launch of the final publication.

Jeff Gerstmann and Ryan Davis, the two high profile departures from Gamespot after last year’s Lynchgate review horror, have launched a new podcast called Arrow Pointing Down. We’re going to listen to it later. Apparently the audio quality’s terrible, but the kids don’t care. Have a listen.

Gamespot staffer Ryan Davis has said that Jeff Gerstmann’s sacking from the site last November signalled the end of his time at the site, at which he’d worked since 2000.

“Jeff’s firing just destroyed me, and I think it shed a light on the other stuff that I had been kind of rolling along with,” he said.

Davis quit yesterday.

In a Joystiq interview, Davis said he wanted the people left at the site to be seen by readers as the real deal.

“I want people to have some faith in the editors that are still there,” he said. “These are honest people doing honest work that honestly isn’t being mangled by marketers and salespeople. I just don’t think I have it in me to try and repair the damage that’s been done in the process.”

Required reading.

Long-time staffer Ryan Davis is to leave Gamespot, says this, the reason apparently being the November departure of Jeff Gerstmann following a 6/10 review for Kane & Lynch. The news brings the tally of lost staff due to the incident to four, if Gerstmann himself is included.

New editor-in-chief Ricardo Torres confirmed the decision.

Davis wrote in a blog post last December, “It’s been almost 8 years since I started working at GameSpot, and Jeff was there for nearly all of my fondest and most memorable experiences on the job. Simply put, I would not be in the video game business at all were it not for Jeff Gerstmann, and I am loathe to imagine what I might be doing with my life right now without the focus I’ve earned from having this ridiculous job. But now, Jeff’s gone, and I’m not afraid to say that it absolutely breaks my heart. I felt the departure of Rich Gallup from the site earlier this year in my bones, but this goes deeper. Jeff was a rare constant, and this marks the end of an era for both GameSpot and myself, a fact that doesn’t seem to be getting any less upsetting for me.”

Hardcore. Good luck to you, Ryan.

In his first interview since being promoted to editor-in-chief of US site Gamespot, Ricardo Torres has admitted that the high profile departure of long-time editorial boss Jeff Gerstmann could have been handled “differently”.

“We were all pretty taken aback and surprised by how it all went down,” he said, speaking in this interview. “Hindsight’s always 20/20, and I think we’ve made it clear that we would have loved to have done things differently, but dwelling on it isn’t going to help things… Our goal really is to just acknowledge what happened, that we’re bummed about it, but we do still need to take GameSpot forward.”

Gerstmann, as you know unless you’ve been living under a rock for the past couple of months, left Gamespot last November after internal friction over a 6/10 score for Kane & Lynch. Torres admits the entire farce was a shock to the site – one of the “big two” in the US alongside IGN – but things are moving forward.

“From the outside, because we were quiet and because of how things got painted, the assumption is everyone’s really anal right now and very down,” he added. “But people are coming to work, we’re putting out content, people are getting back into the swing of things. Everybody’s human and this was a shock to the system. Everybody’s working through it. Everybody’s moving forward in their way. People are going to get back up to full speed in their time. I’m kind of the caretaker; I’m here to help people any way I can.”

Take a look at the full thing.

Ricardo Torres is to be Gamespot’s new editor-in-chief, the US site has announced, replacing Jeff Gerstmann after a torrid departure last November. Torres was previously editorial director for the site (isn’t that a step backwards?) and has done loads of awesome stuff, like being “instrumental in bringing the GameSpot audience groundbreaking live coverage of the PlayStation 3 and Wii launches on the East and West Coasts”. Seriously, he’s well experienced. Good luck to you, Ricardo.

“I’m excited to have the opportunity to help further GameSpot’s position at the forefront of the industry,” said Torres. “I’m eager to continue the site’s tradition of excellence and I’m confident we can move forward into 2008 and set a new industry standard for how video games are covered.”

EGM editor Dan Hsu (who recently spoke out about untoward treatment towards his magazine from Ubisoft, “Sony’s sport department” and Midway) has reached the common sense conclusion that there was more to the Jeff Gerstmann “sacking” from Gamespot than meets the eye.

“I’d be really surprised if what everyone thinks happened really happened,” he said, speaking in a GameTrailers Bonus Round interview (see below). “Because Eidos complaining happens all the time. That’s pretty normal… If they threaten to pull advertising, then it’s Gamespot’s duty for management to protect its employees and defend its editorial integrity. Jeff Gerstmann’s been there for so long, I find it really hard to believe that even if there’s new management… that it’s like, ‘You’re gone,’ and not think about all the ramifications of how’s it going to affect morale, how’s it going to affect how we look to our readers and our editorial integrity; there’s a lot of consequences from that. So I kind of feel there must be more to the story that we’re not hearing.”

Gerstmann left Gamespot last November, apparently due to friction over a 6/10 score for Eidos’s Kane & Lynch and the publisher’s subsequent threat to pull a large advertising campaign.

“The buzz seems to imply that he got fired for a negative review, but I don’t know,” said Hsu. “Maybe he was sleeping with the boss’s wife, or something… I think very few people know the full story.”