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Revision as of 10:06, 17 September 2005 by 211.30.215.91 (talk) (→Message Board Community)(diff) ← Previous revision | Latest revision (diff) | Newer revision → (diff)- GameSpot is not to be confused with GameStop, a retail gaming store.
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GameSpot is a website that was launched in 1996 by Pete Deemer, Vince Broady and Jon Epstein. Originally known as videogames.com, GameSpot presents video game and PC software and hardware reviews, previews, downloads, news, and information and is usually regarded as one of the more prominent gaming websites on the Internet. After starting out on its own, GameSpot was later purchased by ZDNet. ZDNet was later purchased by CNET Networks, which currently owns GameSpot.
GameSpot is credited with being one of the most reliable and sometimes brutally honest resources for gaming information in the Internet, leading in reviews, previews, and news coverage. GameSpot also recently won 'Best Gaming Website' as chosen by the viewers in Spike TV's second Video Game Award Show.
In April 2004, the website's message board community was merged with the community from GameFAQs (another CNET property), gaining the use of GameFAQs' FAQs, walkthroughs, and codes. The game-specific message boards were merged into GameFAQs also.
Main site
GameSpot main page has links to latest news, reviews, previews and other sections and features as well as provides the list of currently most popular games.
GameSpot Complete
GameSpot has a premium membership service called GameSpot Complete. When a user pays a small fee (currently $29.95 per year), he or she gets access to high-speed download servers, high-definition videos, a different color scheme (only "Ice" at the moment), removal of all advertisements, 10% off all games at EBgames.com, live event coverage, downloadable game guides, access to exclusive betas, and the option to make a message board of his or her own.
Features
GameSpot has separate sections for each gaming platform, for example, Nintendo GameCube and Xbox 360. There are other separate sections for various features such as reviews, previews, news, cheats, videos and others. GameSpot is well known for its original features, such as GameSpotting, which was replaced in June 2005 by a completely new feature Freeplay. Other popular features include On the Spot, a weekly live video show, hosted by Rich Gallup and Ryan Mac Donald. In January 2001 GameSpot introduced video reviews for games, which have become very popular and are released for all major games and those that deserve special mention.
Reviews and Rating system
Reviews are arguably the most important feature of the website, as people trust GameSpot editors to give an objective judgement. All games reviewed on GameSpot are judged on five different categories: Gameplay, Graphics, Sound, Value, and Reviewer's Tilt. Each category is assigned an integer score from one to ten, and these five integers are combined using a weighted average to arrive at an overall score. Should the game score between a 9.0 and a 9.9, it is designated as "superb." Although many games achieve this status each year, only four in GameSpot's history have ever gotten a perfect ten — The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time for the Nintendo 64, Chrono Cross for the PlayStation console, Soul Calibur for the Sega Dreamcast, and Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 3 for the PlayStation 2. It should be noted, however, that GameSpot's expectations for games they review consistently increase as games become more and more advanced. Thus, a game that may have scored highly in the past, may not hold up as well against more modern games.
Message Board Community
Bethany Massamilla was appointed the manager of the third incarnation of GameSpot's forum community. Up until this point, GameSpot's forums were run by ZDNET, and then Lithium. GameSpot uses the meta-mod semi-automated moderation system for the community which is maintained by an excess of 30 appointed moderators. Currently all game message boards are merged with GameFAQs, and mods of both sites can moderate posts made by users of the other site.
One distinct feature of the GameSpot community is the ability of GameSpot Complete users to create their own board, which may be open to the public, or restricted only to posters on the friends list of the board's creator.
All users have access to creating or joining what is known as a "union". A union consists of a user created board which is attached to an editorial front, as well as a union homepage with news bulletins, members lists, etc. This allows users to express their opinions in an orginized form to like minded individuals.
GameSpot, similar to many popular message boards, has volunteer moderators who help Bethany and the other administrators out with the forums. There are more than forty current GameSpot moderators, of which "DeviousBroccoli" (formally known as "AnonymousBroccoli") is the longest running, beginning his position in 2001.
One distinct fad originating on GameSpot's forums, specifically the "System Wars" board is the use of animal epithets to describe forumers with an allegiance to a certain system. "Sheep" is used to describe Nintendo fans because they allegedly believe anything Nintendo tells them. "Lemmings" is used to describe Microsoft fans because of their alleged lack of intuition outside of what Microsoft tells them. "Cows" is used to describe Sony fans because of their alleged willingness to allow Sony to "milk" them with expensive add ons and peripherals such as the PS2 HDD, network adapter, and multitap. "Hermits" is used to describe PC gamers because it is believed that between playing PC games and posting on the forums, they do nothing but sit at their computer all day. These terms are all widespread amongst all of GameSpot's forums now, and other phrases such as "The Sheep Have Been Owned" have resonated as a result of these animal epithets. In GameSpot's last annual April Fools joke, the editors acknowledged the forum joke by putting a picture of each animal in the banner on the homepage of each respective system. They also changed their site tagline to "Where games go to FLOP" as an acknowledgement of many forumers' claims that any game that receives a score under 9.0 has flopped. Gamespot Forums have also spawned other forums such as www.systemwars.com and The Omega Corp. GameFAQs has a similar board called "Next-Gen Gaming", where "Drones", "Tools", and "Bots" are used to describe Nintendo, Sony, and Microsoft fans, respectively.
GameCenter
GameSpot's newest service, GameCenter, allows players to host their own servers, chat with their friends, and play an assortment of pc games online with players all around the world, including special GameCenter tournaments with cash prizes. Currently, the early bird special price is $50/year, which includes a yearlong subscription to GameSpot Complete.
GameSpot at E3
GameSpot delivers up-to-the-minute coverage of games shown at E3. They have live streams from the show floor, tens of thousands of screenshots, hundreds of movies (now also in HD WMV format), articles, interviews and more. This has won them praise from their fans, but is not unique among gaming websites.