For those who have read the latest Penny Arcade comic, another blow in the Video Game Review industry has been made. Due to a bad 6.0 review of Kane and Lynch, Jeff Gerstmann, or more popularly known as the 8.8 Twilight Princess reviewer, was fired from GameSpot. Kane and Lynch ads were all over GameSpot, and pissing off their site sponsors seemed to have been the final straw.

This event was inevitable. Review websites are always in a state of conflict of interests. On the reviewer’s side, they must try as much as possible to be honest with their reviews to earn credibility with readers, which would mean more traffic = site revenue. However, on the sponsor’s side they must try as much as possible to promote their games, and get the game a good review so more people would buy their games.

The problem usually when a review site gives a sponsor’s game a bad review. The sponsor can simple remove all advertising from a review website and this means a loss of revenue. Worse, they can simple deny a review website advanced review copies of their next game. This would mean no more early previews, and it would lose its edge against other similar review websites. This is the reason why we cannot really trust a review website to give a completely honest review. The power is tilted towards the favor of the game sponsors.

What to expect in the future? GameSpot has been losing its credibility in the recent years and this event just confirms the corrupted state of GameSpot itself. GameSpot reviews being removed from Metacritic and GameRankings (although not likely since both are also hosted by CNET) are now a possibility. And yes, chaos is now ensuing in both the GameSpot and Eidos forums.

Here are some very good PROTIPS in regards to Game Reviews:

• Not all reviews are honest
• Reviews are made by people who have different taste / biases from yours.
• Reviews are just recommendations. You - the consumer will always have the final say.
• User reviews are usually more reliable than site reviews.
• A review’s credibility is inversely proportional to the number of game advertisements on the review site.