Monday, Jul 25, 2005
One thing that I do not understand is the insistence on being a Gamespot Complete member in order to provide text reviews to games. As you can probably guess I would like to provide my own text reviews for games, but since I am a Gamespot Basic Member then I am relegated to just giving the game a score. I do not understand why the powers that be of this website felt that it was a good idea to make this feature only available to Complete Members, perhaps there are quite a few people that would enjoy this feature and it made sense from a financial standpoint to make this a premium feature.
Basically Gamespot is charging me to express my opinion on a game, and forcing Gamespot Basic users to base their score strictly on the official review, and a number from the community, without an explanation...This would not bother me that much except that the reviews of the editors here at Gamespot vary wildly. I do not want to mention any editor's specifically because I do not want to undermine their position, but there are several times when after reading an official review and then playing the game, felt that in the hands of another editor the score would have been different. Another disappointing trend is the fact that some editors give consistently high or low scores (if you want proof of that then just sort the list of XBOX games on this site by Gamespot score and then look at the name of the reviewer).
Unlike other Gamespot Basic limitations this is the only situation where content is prohibited from Basic Members. All the other Gamespot Complete features are either upgrades on an aspect of the site, or improved performance. While I feel that this is completely fair, but blocking users from very useful content on the site is irritating. Especially since some of the reader reviews are probably superior to the official reviews provided by Gamespot editors. I hope to start a thread in the forum to help try and get a response from someone at Gamespot. Hopefully they will realize that this is a service that should be available to all.
I am not quite sure whether this is a call for multiple reviews from editors to get a more balanced opinion, some shaping up from choice editors in their reviews, or at least access to reader reviews for a second opinion. In any case Basic Members deserve more.
P.S. Complete Members you can have your video reviews back!
Basically Gamespot is charging me to express my opinion on a game, and forcing Gamespot Basic users to base their score strictly on the official review, and a number from the community, without an explanation...This would not bother me that much except that the reviews of the editors here at Gamespot vary wildly. I do not want to mention any editor's specifically because I do not want to undermine their position, but there are several times when after reading an official review and then playing the game, felt that in the hands of another editor the score would have been different. Another disappointing trend is the fact that some editors give consistently high or low scores (if you want proof of that then just sort the list of XBOX games on this site by Gamespot score and then look at the name of the reviewer).
Unlike other Gamespot Basic limitations this is the only situation where content is prohibited from Basic Members. All the other Gamespot Complete features are either upgrades on an aspect of the site, or improved performance. While I feel that this is completely fair, but blocking users from very useful content on the site is irritating. Especially since some of the reader reviews are probably superior to the official reviews provided by Gamespot editors. I hope to start a thread in the forum to help try and get a response from someone at Gamespot. Hopefully they will realize that this is a service that should be available to all.
I am not quite sure whether this is a call for multiple reviews from editors to get a more balanced opinion, some shaping up from choice editors in their reviews, or at least access to reader reviews for a second opinion. In any case Basic Members deserve more.
P.S. Complete Members you can have your video reviews back!
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