Unless you have a severe case of tunnel-vision, you might have noticed this place looks nothing like it did when you last visited. As a four-year reader of GameSpot, I always look forward to these re-designs with a degree of optimism. They are always met with criticism and doubts at the beginning, but within a few months, we all forget the redesign happened and enjoy the new GameSpot as if it was the only one that existed. This, however, is the first time in my tenure that both the main site and the forums underwent such a dramatic change, and I think it will be a change for the better.

As you all know, more than a year ago GameSpot dropped Lithium as its forum technology provider in favor of the "flexiforums", an in-house design which was based upon the newly acquired GameFAQs community. When these forums were adopted, nearly everyone claimed it to be the "end" of the community, the "end" of things as we liked it. The whole uproar lasted maybe a month, and then we all went on using the forums as if the change had never happened.

From GameSpot's perspective, that change was really needed. Lithium was too limited of customization options, and because it was all controlled seperately, outside of GameSpot, there was no real way to integrate the main site and the forums together. The new forums allowed them to introduce journals, collection and wish lists, a better rating and reader review system, unions, and all that cool stuff that we could never even hope to see on Lthium. Yes, it took time to perfect, but in the end, our community, and GameSpot, was better and more feature-rich for it.

So, here we are, once again on the brink of another dramatic GameSpot change. And, once again, many people are skeptical. Once more, everyone asks me why I don't jump aboard the "this sucks" bandwagon. Don't get me wrong: as readers and customers of GameSpot, you have a perfect right to have doubts. But, some people are taking it to a different degree, some even saying that they will be leaving GameSpot's community. Though this is unfortunate, its not entirely GameSpot's fault. GameSpot has to change to improve, and I don't think they are changing to drive people away -- they are changing with your interests in mind. And no, GameSpot is not going to settle for slow, bug-ridden forums. They will be fixed. But, some people don't want to wait, and would rather GameSpot not "fix what's not broken".

If nobody ever fixed what wasn't "broken", we'd all still be travelling by horseback.

Look at all the new benefits we got from the last change -- I imagine that this new system will be even more flexible for GameSpot, and allow them to bring on even more new features for the community. Imagine if GameSpot had been talked out of their last major forum change: we'd still be on basic, ugly old Lithium. Incomfort is to be expected right now; its human nature to resist change, but its no reason to assume GameSpot is better off not changing. They just need to perfect the base right now, and fix all the bugs. Just hang tight. I don't think GameSpot will let you down.