- GameSpot is not to be confused with Gamestop, a retail gaming store.
The GameSpot Portal provides access to both textual and multimedia content GameSpot is a website launched in 1996 by Pete Deemer, Vince Broady and Jon Epstein as videogames.com. GameSpot presents video game (and since recently, hardware) reviews, previews, news, and information and is usually regarded as one of the more prominent gaming websites on the Internet. As of 2004, 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 readers in SpikeTV's Video Game Award Show.
In April of 2004, the website's message board community was merged with the community from GameFAQs (another company owned by CNET) on a game-specific board level.
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 "Editor's Choice". 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 finally 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 reknowned editors for GameSpot, leading up nearly every major game's review.
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 Jordan Bisasky, Jeremy Yerby (commonly referred to as Y2Jer), 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, and the option to make a message board of his or her own.
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