GameSpot
- GameSpot is not to be confused with GameStop, a retail gaming store.
GameSpot is a website launched in 1996 by Pete Deemer, Vince Broady and Jon Epstein. 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. GameSpot was originally backed by Softbank, and was later merged with ZDNet. As of 2005, GameSpot is owned by CNET Networks.
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 company owned by CNET), gaining the use of GameFAQs's FAQs, walkthroughs, and codes. The game-specific message boards were merged into GameFAQs also.
Main site
All games reviewed on GameSpot are judged on five different categories: Gameplay, Graphics, Sound, Value, and "Tilt" — more or less a benchmark of how much that particular reviewer enjoyed the game. Each category is assigned an integer score from one to ten, and these five integers are roughly averaged to arrive at an overall score. Should the game score higher than or equal to a 9.0, it is designated to be "AAA." 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.
Greg Kasavin is one of the more renowned editors on GameSpot, leading up nearly every major game's review.
Message Board Community
Bethany Massimilla was appointed the manager of GameSpot's newly created forum community. GameSpot uses the meta-mod semi-automated moderation system for the community which is maintained by an excess of 30 appointed moderators.
Key figures among the moderation staff include Robbie Gradie IV, Jordan Bisasky, Jeremy Yerby (commonly referred to as Y2Jer or TheRagingGamer), Kevin VanOrd, Casey Wegner, Jonathan Leard, and Patrick Mifflin (commonly referred to as DarkCatalyst).
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 colour 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.
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.