Video Game Sandwich

The removal of Gamespot.com editor Jeff Gerstmann has released a rip tide of ethical and professional questions, and like fallout from some sort of virtual A-bomb the effects have settled for miles. Whether or not it’s openly admitted and acknowledged gaming publications and websites now face an era of transition. An ethereal connection between writer and reader has been severed, and a period of modern McCarthyism has begun as every journalist in gaming is now subject to a moral witch hunt. The feelings surrounding these circumstances have spawned their own incarnation of nihilism as readers find themselves betrayed by their faux-Gods; their all seeing eyes and guiding lights. This leads the reader to beg the question: with the abandonment of God, with whom does salvation then lie? In the midst of such skepticism and such suspicion who has one left to trust other than one’s self?

For all of the speculation regarding the manner by which journalism will handle Gerstmann Gate, there’s has been a vast oversight of how important it then becomes that the reader inherits power. It’s almost as if the veil of naivety has fallen and pupil becomes master. Those who placed their belief in mass media have taken their understanding of the platform several steps further, and have endowed within themselves the initiative to weigh-in and judge various factors against articles. Critique becomes less a conclusion and more a perspective. Pre-Gerstmann Gate a review by your favourite website or magazine sold you on the game, now it’s barely food for thought. The reader has been enthused with the savvy to dissect a spectrum of journalistic sources and pick those carcasses for the chunks that count. This is the only real way we as readers, as gamers, even as people can grow to use the mass media, rather than letting the mass media grow to use us.

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