The two reviewers I liked most st Gamespot have left, and it seems that the actions taken by Gamespot and parent CNET reaffirm everything I've ever thought about marketing professionals. I understand they have a business to run, and their actions here aren't even in the ballpark of evils like teenage fashion marketing. Still, it's the coercion, perceived or otherwise, of the remaining Gamespot staff that makes the situation untenable, even in light of the spin doctored treatment fed to Wired Magazine.

As someone who is fabulously wealthy, I'm willing to pay a lot of money to not have advertisements interrupting my daily meal of web-served content. I feel that my time is valuable, and I don't like wasting time picking out content between advertisements that I will never, ever click on (save by accident). I felt that the move to offer paid subscription services was a great gift. I'd hoped, probably naively, that this revenue source would enable web companies to avoid this kind of baldfaced conflict of interest between candid coverage and raging advertisers. If you don't like a review, go ahead and pull your money. The media loves stories like that. By not folding to 3rd party pressure, one solidifies a relationship with the key influencers that buy your premium services.

I've used my posts on this site to offer a lighter take on game reviews, though I found that with almost zero effort, one can create social commentary. I admire that there are moderation efforts in a world where the average teenager thinks the acronym "LOL" is proper punctuation for any given sentence. I've been punished for my crimes against humanity, and I tend to agree. In a world where advertisers can dictate their own review scores, humor must be a threatening and unpredictable thing. This is a time when 17-year-olds with a 2nd-grade literacy equivalence can feel affirmation despite their inability to form a coherent or original thought. Anything that breaks that spell would ruin years of status quo demographic conditioning.

A big part of gaming is to challenge the player. The message from this incident is counterintuitive:the goal of editorial content on Gamespot is not to inform or challenge the reader, but to ensure short-term profitability. Or possibly that CNET executives make emotionally charged decisions. This whole thing reeks of drama. It makes sense that people in positions of power can be slaves to their whims;what high-level marketing executive doesn't have a golden parachute?

In a perfect world, Gamespot would come clean about this. The silence is terribly incriminating.

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