Like many others, Gamespot attracted me by its well layed out homepage, its large community, and its great forums. I joined Gamespot around 2004 (For some reason my profile says 2007, not sure why) and instantly I felt like a member of the community. My first post on the forums, I wasn't bashed but welcomed. I had a place to keep track of all my games, a place to ask gaming related and non-related questions, I could make new friends, and even write a blog or two.
Another thing I loved, or thought I loved was the leveling system. When chatting on the forums, I always seemed to respect those who had a higher level than myself. Not to say I didn't respect the lower levels but I felt these Gamespot "veterans" seemed to know a lot more about the video game world than the "Rookies".
Everything was great at Gamespot at first. I loved firing up my computer after school and checking all the new reviews they had posted and I based many of my purchases on what gamespot had to say about them. I trusted this site whole heartedly and felt they could do no wrong.
Then, all of a sudden I began getting message after message from gamespot giving me warnings about things I do and say on the forums. "No posting here, thiers a sticky for that." "You can't give your opinion here." "You can't say HELL on the forums!" Well guess what kids, I just freaking did! It's almost as if the site had suddenly become plagued with 13 year old children or something and all they wanted to do was report people to gain points towards their Gamespot level. Did school just get let out? Are the Halo servers down? Whatever, I'll just follow the rules, no big deal that the mods are on power trips. Things will calm down in a couple days.
Well days turned into weeks, and months, and now years. I have been getting modded for pretty much every move I make on this site. Give it a rest mods. I'm not going to be cliche and say "Get a life" cause I'm not 13 anymore and I spend a lot of my time on this sit when I'm on my computer. But seriously, you have to have better things to do than sit on your computer, wait for someone to msg you saying snipeshot11 just said HELL on the forums, you best warn him before things get out of hand! I apologize of ragging on the 13 year olds but your the most annoying kids I have ever met. I remember one kid was on the forums saying how mature he was and how he wasn't like any of the other 13 year olds. Then he went on to tell a 30 year old that he needed to get a life and shouldn't be playing video games. I rest my case.
Anyways enough about that. I learnt to live with the mods, (Until today when I was warned twice and decided to go on this little rant) and everything was fine. Nothing else about the site changed much, new users came and went but the usual crowd was still around. Then this whole Jeff Gerstmann manogerie happened. For those of you who don't know (What rock have you been hiding under), Jeff was a long time employee of Gamespot and posted great reviews that I could always rely on. Around this time, Gamespot had plastered the site with god awful advertising of an even more god awful game called Kane and Lynch. Jeff was assigned to reviewing it and went on to give it a 6.0. A very deserving score in my opinion but aparently Gamespot didn't agree and Jeff was later fired. Does anyone else find this odd? Well yes of course, their was absolute kaos on this site and rightfully so.
At that moment, I stopped trusting Gamespot completely. By firing Jeff, Gamespot had practically admitted that they had been somehow paid to both advertise Kane and Lynch and give it a decent score. This absolutely ruined this site. Jeff now has his own site, www.giantbomb.com, an excellent site and potentially my new home.
Thier are many more things that I could find wrong with this site but I'm too lazy to type the rest out, by the writing so far you can likely tell I'm not much of a blogger. I do however enjoy reading blogs and I have found I am not the only one who feels this way. I have read countless blogs here about people leaving Gamespot. The reason I wrote this was obviously not to get your sympathy because why would anyone give me sympathy, but to try and get the word out. I realize that Gamespot isn't simply going to vanish and most likely never will but I have just had enough of this site and am seriously comtemplating my departure.
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