What follows are the guidelines we internally use to prepare GameSpot editors for their review assignments. GameSpot editors are expected to know, understand, and abide by the following principles. In turn, we invite you to consider them for yourself to better understand how we approach producing our content.
We Cater to the Discriminating Game Player Our reviews are written with the prospective customer in mind--someone who's naturally interested in playing a new game and has a limited amount of time and money to spend. Our editors approach each review strictly from that perspective. In turn, our reviews are not intended to validate or support the beliefs of hardcore fans, nor are they intended to provide feedback to developers or publishers about how a given game could have been improved. Our reviews are only designed to tell you, the game player, to what extent a game is worth your while.
We Consider Games On Their Own Merits First and foremost, our reviews are an assessment of one particular game at a time. We approach each review assignment without assuming anything about the quality of the game, irrespective of prerelease preview coverage, the history of any previous games in the series, any perceptions about the developer's or publisher's track records, and so forth. That is, every game we review gets a fair shake, and is treated with the same level of care and attention with which we approach every review assignment.
We Take Time and Originality Into Account We judge more critically as time goes by, because our expectations as game players are constantly increasing. When we review a game, we consider it at the exact point in time at which the evaluation is taking place (generally, the week of a game's release) and compare it to what we believe to be the current standards of quality at that time. In general, GameSpot does not favor highly derivative games, which mostly recycle elements from other, previous games. Instead, we appreciate original concepts and ideas that are executed well. This also means that each time an excellent game is released, it becomes incrementally more difficult for another game to be as good in the grand scheme of things.
We Do Not Inflate Our Scores As the quality of gaming experiences naturally improves over time, we do not simply rate new games higher, even if they're technically better. Instead, we adjust our expectations and continually recalibrate our numeric rating scale accordingly. What this means in practice is that a high score awarded today by GameSpot is worth more than if we awarded the same score yesterday. In other words, a game that earns a high score today is probably superior in overall quality to a game that earned the same score on our scale several years ago.
We Rate Games According to the Current Standards of Their Platforms and Genres Every gaming platform is different, especially in terms of its technical features. However, we believe high-quality gaming experiences are possible on all the gaming platforms that we cover. So we review games against the standards of their respective platforms by implicitly comparing them to other games on that same platform and, to a lesser extent, to other games in that genre. As a result, our ratings of games on different platforms are not intended to be directly compared to one another. However, relative comparisons do apply, so a game that scores poorly is a poor game by any standards, while a game that scores extremely high is an outstanding game by any standards.
We Acknowledge That New Games Do Not Exist In a Vacuum Each game we review exists in a competitive environment. That is, a game always has direct or indirect competition from other, possibly very similar games, which causes the game in question to be held to a higher standard. In other words, while technical merits are generally particular to a specific gaming platform, we believe that certain collective, universal standards also exist. GameSpot editors are expected to be familiar with current games on all platforms, in order to maintain an acute sense of global standards for gaming at all times.
We Consider Multiplatform Games Comparatively But Also for Each Platform Games come out for multiple platforms all the time. When GameSpot reviews a game that's on multiple platforms, you'll often see references to other versions of the same game on a different platform. We do this to give context to our reviews for the sake of game players with access to or interest in multiple game systems. GameSpot reserves the right to reuse review text for multiplatform games, especially if the game has the same exact features on different platforms.
We Own Up To Our Errors We have the highest standards when it comes to the accuracy and validity of our reviews, and will never knowingly make factual assertions that are not completely correct. However, in the event that the facts stated in one of our reviews are refuted, we swiftly investigate the claims. Consequently, we reserve the right to amend our reviews after they are published. Any time we substantively modify the facts of a review, we will acknowledge the changes in an editor's note at the end of the review.
The People Who Write GameSpot's Reviews Are All Different We do our best to make each of our reviews live up to our standards and fit well in the context of all our other reviews. However, we take pride in the diversity and collective expertise of our editorial staff. Each individual who writes for GameSpot offers a different perspective and writing style, and we encourage each editor to bring his or her own experiences to bear with each new assignment. We only assign reviews to individuals that are naturally interested in the given style of game. For example, we will never assign someone to review a sports game if he or she isn't personally interested in and knowledgeable about the real-world sport the game is simulating. But it's not just about personal preferences, either. GameSpot's reviews all go through a rigorous screening process by our reviews team, so you can rest assured that we collectively stand behind and support the statements made in each new review we publish.
The Bottom Line We believe games are meant to be enjoyed, and our reviews seek to express what it is about a given game that is or isn't particularly enjoyable, entertaining, fun, amusing, interesting, memorable--any and all of these things, and more. Our philosophy is that if we succeed at reviewing each game on its own merits, against the standards of the point in time at which it was evaluated, then overall consistency of our ratings should naturally result. Ultimately, we believe that each of our reviews should be useful and engaging to you as a prospective player.
