gamespot posts

Last week the well known and highly reference review aggregation web site Metacritic began listing career scores for individual video and PC game developers. The new feature generated a lot of buzz from members of the game industry, many of whom felt the ratings would be unfair to the individuals list.

Today the Metacritic web site's game editor Marc Doyle announced that as of today career scores of individual game developers are no longer listed on the site. Announcing the turnaround, Doyle admitted that its credits database "is a work in progress and is not nearly as comprehensive as it needs to be to accurately provide a career score for these individuals." However he added, "We are still very much committed to building a credits database, and welcome your participation in that process."

Batman Arkham City will be getting some pre-order bonuses from various retailers but at the moment those bonuses are just being hinted at on the upcoming super hero action game's web site. We do know that people who put their money down on this game at GameStop will get an exclusive "Joker's Carnival" challenge map when the full game is released.

It also lists Best Buy as offering a pre-order bonus but at the moment the site only says its offering a "combo pack" for Batman Arkham City fans. It looks like both Amazon.com and Wal Mart will also have pre-order bonuses but those have yet to be revealed.

[Via Joystiq]

If you like going to the store to buy your boxed copy of PC games (in other words the old fashioned way) lots of retailers are prepping up to open up on Monday night to sell you a copy of Treyarch's first person shooter Call of Duty Black Ops at the stroke of midnight,

Over 700 Best Buy stores will be open on Monday night for the Call of Duty Black Ops launch. Meanwhile over 4,400 GameStop stores will open up at 9:30 pm on Monday night, which is the most stores ever for a midnight launch event in GameStop's history. Finally over 2,700 Walmart locations will be open at midnight for the launch and the first 50 people who buy the game at the store will get a special bandana. The game's official web site has a midnight store locator web page to make finding a store easier.

GameStop's first annual Indie Game Challenge promised to give $100,000 each to games made by pros and amateurs. Last night at the DICE Summit they did just that, giving the $100.000 professional award to Cogs, the impressive puzzle title made by the three man team at Lazy 8 Studio. Cogs also won two smaller $2,500 prizes for Achievement in Art Direction and Achievement in gameplay.

The $100,000 non-professional indie game award was given to Gear, a 2D puzzle platformer created by a team of students at the Digipen Institute of Technology in Redmond, Washington. In addition Altitude, a 2D side scroller from Nimbly Games, won the $10,000 Gamers Choice Award and $2,500 for Technical Achievement.

GameStop has already announced they will sponsor the second annual Indie Game Challenge which will officially launch on May 1.

Playing a regular single player game may sometimes take just a few hours but an MMO title like the recently released Global Agenda takes much longer to play in order to really get a beat on how it works. At least that's the idea behind the policy of reviewing MMOs at major web sites such as Gamespot. However the review of Hi-Rez Studios' latest game, which was posted on Gamespot earlier this week, was taken down because the reviewer violated that policy.

The review score was 5.5 (out of 10) and the review itself implied that the writer had put in at least 15 hours in Global Agenda. However, fans of the game found out the review writer's online character name and discovered via the game's stats collection system that he had only played Global Agenda for six hours. GameSpot editor Justin Calvert (not the writer of the actual review) apologized both in the game's official message forums and on Gamespot itself and stated, "We're sorry for any inconvenience caused and look forward to bringing you a replacement review of Global Agenda in the not too distant future."

[Via Massively]

It's been a busy last few weeks for big game launches and it continues next week with the release of BioShock 2. Publisher 2K Games is already prepping for the release of the first person shooter sequel with midnight store openings on February 9 in both GameStop and Best Buy locations.

Over 2,000 GameStop locations will be open at that time as well as a select few of Best Buy stores. You can check out which stores will be taking part on this list. At least one GameStop location in San Fransisco will have some of the game's development team from 2K Marin on hand when BioShock 2 first goes on sale.

Looks like GameSpot has the exclusive this time on a new PC closed beta test. It's for Electronic Arts' latest RTS title Command and Conquer 4. The multiplayer beta will let selected folks try out the new 5 versus 5 gameplay modes, the new units, the persistent leveling and more. However the beta is restricted to GameSpot's Total Access members which means that if you want in you will have to pony up at least a $5.95 monthly fee.

The site states that the beta will allow all GameSpot members, paid and free alike, to have access to the open beta test but that won't be coming until early 2010. So if you don't feel like paying a gaming web site a monthly fee you can wait a couple of months before access is granted. C&C 4 is due for release in stores on March 16.

If it's been said once, it's been said a thousand times: the best advertising is word-of-mouth. What's meant by this is that a person is more likely to try a product or service if someone they know has recommended it to them. The reverse is also true: if a friend or family member recommends against something, the referee is similarly likely to avoid it. What makes this phenomenon work is trust. We trust the opinions of those close to us, because we've spent enough time with them to understand in which ways their tastes might overlap ours.

But does this still work with game reviews, when the only way you've come to know the reviewer is through reading their reviews? Can a trust relationship evolve from what is, essentially, one-way communication? Is a commercially-funded review source more or less trustworthy than a writer's personal blog? Can numerical scores relate actual value?

In what might prove to be the most meta post ever, I'm going to talk about gaming journalism and how it's changed in recent years. Now, the mainstream media -- by which I refer to traditional magazines like Time and Life, and news outlets like the Wall Street Journal and the New York Times -- have always worked diligently to maintain a high-quality standard for themselves. As a collective, they follow the rules set down in regulatory tomes such as the Chicago Manual of Style and the AP Stylebook. Of course, every publication has its own house style to which its writers must adhere, but by and large there are many generally accepted guidelines concerning tone, editorial slant, and the like.

As video games grew as a phenomenon, it quickly became evident that the mainstream press wasn't going to give it the coverage its enthusiast audience demanded. Typically adopting an outsider's approach, traditional news outlets left their coverage at "Here's a new trend. It's kind of strange and we don't understand it, but the kids seem to like it." This journalistic void left the field wide open for a new generational voice to inhabit.

Gamespot is exclusively (for now) hosting the latest Command & Conquer: Red Alert 3 trailer. The trailer introduces the new third faction -- the Empire of the Rising Sun, aka Japan. It features C&C's staple bad voice acting, lots of units, general mayhem, and the classic Hell March song that fans of the series will recognize.

It looks like the Empire of the Rising Sun mostly uses Anime-esque Mecha units -- Transformers-like battle robots. Also featured are airplanes that can dive underwater and attack naval vessels from below. We knew Red Alert 3 would have a lot of amphibious units, but it didn't occur to us that it might also feature air/water units. Makes sense, we suppose!

Anyway, check it out if you're a fan. And we figure you are, if you're reading this. C&C is not a franchise that gets pitched to a lot of new recruits. It's mostly about the oldschool, yo.

[Via Joystiq]