Boycott GameSpot’s videos
I’ve always gone to Gamespot.com for when I have seen a game and want to know more about it. Gamespot’s reviews usually don’t differ much from my own opinions, and there is a lot of details in their reviews explaining what they like and didn’t like about a game. Knowing what I like and dislike very well personally, I can often find out whether I’d like a game or not before getting it myself.
(GameSpot.com is simply put a video game review site. They’ve tried to grow with an added community and blog systems and clubs and so on, but in essence they’re still simply a review site, where the staff reviews games and where the members also write reviews themselves.)
That’s all good, and just what a review site should be.
And of course, there is some advertisements here and there. A site needs to get money from somewhere, and I understand that completely, and since I’m not a paying premium member of the site, I probably get a bit more of the advertisement than those that pay.
Sometimes when I find a game, I know nothing about it. And in many cases, Gamespot haven’t yet come around to review it yet, and the only thing I can do is look at images from the game if there are any, or gameplay videos. Videos are a nice way of making a first “nah” or “this looks good” conclusion.
And… a little overkill I must say, when you look at a movie you get a pop-up window. In this window there is a list of other videos for the game you’re watching, and in the top right corner there is an ad. Whatever is in this ad is usually what you’ll see in the video area of the window, for a couple of 20-30 seconds, before the actual video you were supposed to see appears. Yes, advertisement gives the site funding to stay alive, naturally.
So, why do I say “boycott gamespot’s videos” then if it’s all fine and dandy?
It’s because when I click a game, mostly any game, and choose to watch a video, I’m usually greeted with a quite… perverted sort of advertisement.
There, for 20-30 seconds, I see an advertisement showing how great and wonderful it is to work in the American army. You see guns, you see missiles, you see tools of death. Real death. By a country that I simply didn’t like before because of their self-righteous nuke-em-all attitude leadership. Now, I get to see half a minute of propaganda, about how wonderful it would be for me (and I live in Sweden) to work for the US Navy or Airforce or whatever, and kill for them, and stand up for views that I find horrible and distorted.
Although I won’t discuss it in-depth here, I find their views horribly perverted, although in theory it sounds great. Freedom for all (who have enough money, and we’ll kill you if there are signs that you might stand in our way).
It just doesn’t make sense to me. I love to play games. And they find me, a guy living in Sweden who loves games, like a good target audience for war propaganda…?
I’ve seriously lost all respect for Gamespot after this. I still go there for a review or two, but are finding other just-as-good and more up-to-date sites for that as well. I know that it’s not Gamespot that made the propaganda movies, but it’s not like they don’t know and control what advertisements they show on their site.
Boycott Gamespot videos, or Gamespot alltogether, until they’ve removed all war propaganda and posted an official apology.
Until that happens (right after their hell freezes over or whatever) you could always use some other sites instead;
Game Trailers
or just make a quick search, I bet you’ll find several review sites.
regards,
One who once liked Gamespot
Varfor på english??
“Why in English?” (somewhat off-topic)
You mean, why do I write in English?
Well, because I like to reach a broader audience than just little Sweden. And, I can express myself much better in English than I can in Swedish. Regarding this perticular blogpost; GameSpot is an English-speaking site, so…
While I fully agree with you on the subject of thinly disguised war propaganda, it’s quite likely that Gamespot doesn’t control the ads that go on their site. Most sites these days just sign up with an advertisement-serving company that gives them a player to customize or a link that serves random ads that they set to play before all their videos.
On the subject of the ad, it’s probably an attempt to appeal to the almost-out-of-high-school casual gamers. A more overt example is the game “America’s Army” which the army contracted several third-party developers for. It was rated T(13+) despite games with similar content being rated M(17+).
Going back all the way to WWII, a few producers of children’s cartoons made propoganda cartoons for numerous branches of the US Government (Treasury, Navy, Army, Air Forces, etc.), the most notable being Disney (read about that here http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Walt_Disney%27s_World_War_II_propaganda_production).
All in all, the amount of propaganda that the US contracts, produces, or endorses is not really that surprising; Countries with governments inclined to engage in mildly provoked military action usually employ propaganda as a means of justifying their actions without actually giving any real information as to why they are doing so.
As long as the military is controlled by politicians, all military action will be politically motivated.