Here’s a great followup to the Gerstmann affair, that supplies lots of salacious details while fitting the sad tale into a broader context. Two editorial staffers have quit since, for example. And an ad sales guy is in charge of editorial. Also, did you know that basically any element on GameSpot’s front page can be purchased by advertisers?

In my opinion, we should view the controversy from the larger perspective of journalism as a whole, and not treat games sites as some distinct, recent phenomenon with their own set of rules. If you learned that any story on the front page of the Globe and Mail could be purchased by an advertiser without clearly being marked as an ad, why would you read the Globe anymore?

Toku, Nadine and D discuss Mass Effect and the Gerstmann stuff.

Angry Robot Sounds 8 (17MB mp3, 36mins)

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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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Great editorial over at Gamasutra on the topic of the Jeff Gerstmann firing and the supremacy of numerical scores:

But many outlets have failed to stir up any reader interest in the text behind the review, or the overall atmosphere of the mag or website they’re exploring — instead, readers increasingly care exclusively about the score, so they can praise and/or whine about it online. Entire game-media outlets have been, and are defined by, the numerals they publish…instead of, you know, how fun they are to read.

This just can’t be ignored. Of course, Penny Arcade is all over it.