Top 10 Gaming Blunders/News Stories of 2007
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Category: News ArchiveHits: 744
When a big-budget game gets a negative review on a site plastered with adverts for said game and the reviewer is subsequently sacked, you can't really be faulted for initially thinking the events are all related. Fortunately the Greeks had a saying for just this moment: post hoc ergo propter hoc. For those of you who don't speak Roman, that means (after moneyhat, therefore because of moneyhat.)
Which is all to say, we don't know for sure how much Jeff Gerstmann's Kane & Lynch review figured into his late November firing. Granted, it did look a mite bit suspicious. The Kane & Lynch promotion that Eidos had purchased on GameSpot decorating the margins of the site with Kane & Lynch graphics ended just after the news broke that Gerstmann was fired. Then CNet, the parent company for GameSpot, hurt its own credibility by issuing uninformative non-denial denials for almost a whole week. In the meantime, websites and forums worked overtime generating rumors, unflattering GIFs, and raw nerd rage.
One possible explanation that has nothing to do with moneyhats: a new administration at GameSpot wanted to clean house a bit and Gerstmann seemed like the kind of guy who could be let go and with all his industry experience land squarely on his feet. If indeed this happened, then the problem isn't so much in the idea itself but in the execution and timing. Imagine if GameSpot had given Gerstmann a fitting send-off in early 2008, complete with a retrospective of his tenure at the site. Given reports of GameSpot Complete subscription cancellations and the site's tarnished reputation, you can bet that future firings will be handled with a lighter touch.
And the list of news stories is at FiringSquad, where they discuss the acqisition of BioWare/Pandemic among other things:
BioWare and Pandemic, both of which were already highly successful, decided to merge their companies to form the massive independent developer BioWare/Pandemic in late 2005 via venture capital firm Elevation Partners. In late October of 2007, the surprising news came on the newswires; massive game publisher Electronic Arts had secured a deal to buy BioWare/Pandemic from Elevation at a price of nearly $800 million. It's the largest amount ever for a publisher to buy an independent game development studio.
Of course, BioWare/Pandemic isn't your ordinary developer. Separately BioWare created acclaimed and best selling games like Baldur's Gate, Neverwinter Nights, Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic, Jade Empire, and the recently released Mass Effect. Pandemic's line-up of games is nearly as good with titles like the original Merceraries, Full Spectrum Warrior, Destroy All Humans, and Star Wars Battlefront. With the EA purchase, it gets the rights to future Mass Effect games along with the long-in-development fantasy RPG Dragon Age and the still mysterious MMO game (allegedly a new Star Wars MMO). It also gets from Pandemic the upcoming Mercenaries 2, the open world WWII game Saboteur and a number of unnamed projects (including reportedly a Batman movie based action game).
Will the price of BioWare/Pandemic be worth it for EA in the long run? Will the creative spirit that BioWare and Pandemic currently have continue after the EA purchase is finalized? Ultimately the result of this huge acquisition by EA will likely be due to how much freedom they give to the game development studios. If the independent feeling that BioWare and Pandemic had before its EA purchase continues, this could be both a great opportunity for everyone involved.
