Yup, it’s officially “Game of the Year” voting time. Slate’s Gaming Club convenes to discuss just that, with good ol’ Bioshock trotted out on the first page, and Tolito defending his oh-so-controversial pick Desktop Tower Defense on the second.

We talked about the Jeff Gerstmann saga a little bit on the podcast we recorded last night (which I hope to have up by tonight BTW). Nadine considers it business as usual, Toku and I were perhaps less jaded and still somewhat disturbed by it.

(One-line summary: Gerstmann was fired from gamespot after giving Kane & Lynch, a massive advertiser on the site, a negative review.)

But since then I’ve been thinking a bit more about the positive aspects of the whole mess.

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This little thing could be the start to an interesting discussion of games criticism and journalism, making points like: game reviews are more important to their industry than film reviews, it’s hard to write game reviews for non-gamers, and game reviewers are too easy on blockbuster titles. Unfortunately, none of the points are really unpacked. What’s so hard about writing about games for non-gamers? I have some ideas, I’d just like to see this fleshed out.