GameSpot
- 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.
Features
GameSpot has seperate sections for each gaming platform, for example, Nintendo GameCube and Xbox 360. There are other seperate 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 Massimilla 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.
GameSpot has a premium membership service called GameSpot Complete. This means that when a user pays a small price, he or she gets access to a dedicated download service, a different color scheme (only "Ice" at the moment), removal of all advertisements, 10% off all games at EBgames.com, and the option to make a message board of his or her own.
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. Boards such as the Sports Discussion Lounge, and System Wars IIhave formed tight knit communities of veteran posters. These UCB's have their own board moderators, and HTML scripts on the top of their forum page, making them extremely customizable to the needs of the community. The System Wars II board has in turn spawned another website called SystemWars.com after a large number of posters desired to have the creative control to manage their own board separate from Gamespot's jurisdiction. Another site composed largely of current and former Gamespot posters and writers is insidegameronline.com, a site focused more heavily on quality editorial content than community features, as most traditional spin off communities are.
All users have access to creating or joining what is known as a "union". A union consists of a UCB 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.
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 hard drive, network adapter, multitap, etc. "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 9.5 has flopped.
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.