Gerstmanngate in Reverse: Maxim Fires "Must See" Film Critic

[Russ Pitts]

Gerstmanngate in Reverse: Maxim Fires "Must See" Film Critic

Hammond, until very recently, worked for Maxim, a magazine that appears to have tolerated his tomtoolery gladly, even allowing him to Sounding more familiar [http://regulus2.azstarnet.com/blogs/philmguy/3097]?

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[Jack.B.Nimble]

*Tips Hat.*

 

[tarantulaboy52]

You have to feel sorry for Gerstmann here. He was just doing his job, minding his own business and he gets sacked because an advertiser gets the huff because they made a bad game and he said so. Surely by now publishers should know better. If they make bad games people are going to say bad things about it and pulling their advertising is the last thing that will help boost sales of the guff that they are peddling. Kudos to Mr Gerstmann for speaking his mind. Hammond on the other hand, is an moron who has pissed all over his good and honest colleagues who write real opinions.

Eidos especially should know better given their recent history (can anyone say Angel of Darkness?) and perhaps develop a thicker skin. They should remember that when you make something and release in to the public domain not everyone is going to like it. Pulling the advertising was a childish reaction and it resulted in a man being punished for doing his job properly.

Gamespot also behaved in an awful manner here too. Yes, advertising revenue is paramonut in running a successful website but they should stand by the writers who bring the hits to the site in the first place. All over the journalism industry executives are forgetting what is important; the fact that without good writers producing consistently good content publications and websites will lose their readership and consequently, the money that they seem so preoccupied with. Without the readers there isn't any money.

Any executive who sacks a journalist for writing and honest copy should be taken behind the chemical sheds and brutally violated before being tarred and feathered and run out of town. Or am I being too harsh?

Lament for the integrity of CNet's copy from here-on in.

 

[FreelancerADP]

It sounds like Maxim may end up being worth reading again. And that we can all safely mark off Gamespot as a source of unbiased information (not that most of us hadn't already.)

The warm comfort of what appears to be for the moment verifiable truths serve well to stave off the bitter cold that is the media industry.

 

[Arbre]

Advertisers are the guys behind the failure of the whole Heroic Fantasy genre in the movie industry.
You just got a taste of what they can do in video games.

 

[hickwarrior]

So, you're saying that advertisers will do a whole lot more to the games industry, arbre?

That'd be a nightmare...

 

[jadedcritic]

Meh. Can't say it bothers me. In light of the smaller story, I mean, come on... It's MAXIM. When's the last time you met anyone who EVER gave them any credibility? When's the last time you met someone who said, "you know, I wasn't going to see that movie, but MAXIM had a good review, so it must be good!"

In light of Gerstmann gate. I've never liked that, but I've never cared much what Gamespot says in review anyway. I used to go there from time to time, now I make it a point to not. It's not a complete CNET boycott so much as I just don't bother hitting Gamespot anymore, so I can't say I care what happens. Besides, didn't I read somewhere that some of the CNET shareholders are trying to organize a turnover?

 

[SatansBestBuddy]

Well, at least we know where the source of this great big mess is: the money-hungray monkey that is Steven Colvin, who's one and only concern is to make money, is the real reason that GameSpot is going to become the next big blurb whoring game website.

 

[Mishotaki]

So, from now on, reviewers have to watch out... they give a bad game a bad score, they're fired.. they give a bad movie a good score, they're fired!

From now on, unless they make the exact score that both the advertisers and the community are happy with, they get fired!

This sound like repression, press filtering... At least, in the country that has those things, they don't let them live with the guilt of losing their job for doing what they wanted, they end their suffering with a bullet in the head

 

[tarantulaboy52]

Indeed. Ubisoft aren't the only publishers who cannot take criticism either. With the reported "banning" of EGM from covering games by the Ubisoft, Sony and Midway, we have to wonder where this is going.

I would hope it would stop the publishers putting out shit games but the sad reality is that it will just mean that the advertisers are going to squeeze the press for favourable reviews by threatening their financial stability.

Like I said before, it's time these corporate, money-grubbing monkeys started considering that upselling poorly coded or just downright awful games is not acceptable and they are going to get called on it. They need to grow a pair and start putting out better games instead of going in a "cream puff" if they get bad reviews.

Besides, most serious gamers will just stop reading magazines and websites if they can't trust the content to be honest. That will kill games publications. Then where will they advertise their crap?

 

[Sylocat]

Pete Hammond's entire career has revolved around writing entire reviews consisting entirely of a bunch of sentence fragments strung together in order to make it easy for a movie ad exec to pick one out and put it on the movie poster without having to worry about the context of the review. The purpose being, to get Maxim's name out on movie posters without having to spend more money on advertizing or dealing with the flak from the right-wing puritans over advertizing a quasi-filthy magazine ("Hey, it's not technically advertizing for our second-rate pr0n-wannabe trash, we just put our name after the blurb on the poster, so please, Reverend, tell your parishoners to put down the torches and pitchforks, okay?"). The last time anyone ever gave him any credibility was... um... about fifteen seconds after his hiring.

So now, Colvin, who presumably hired Hammond, leaves Maxim and goes to CNet, where he sees, *gasp*, someone NOT doing the exact same thing at Gamespot, and the following exchange takes place:

*Eidos waves fistfuls of advertizing dollars in front of Colvin's nose*
Eidos: "Jump!"
Colvin: "How high?"
Eidos: "Fire Gerstmann high!"
Colvin: "Gerstmann, why can't you be more like Pete Hammond?"

What else is new?