Gamespot

There was a time when I was an enormous Gamespot fanboy. I was a paid subscriber to the site, participated in weird corporate "offers" that they sent my way, attended online events live via video, the whole nine yards.

Yesterday, I cancelled my subscription to the Hotspot podcast, my last actual recurring tie to the site.

It sounds silly, but it felt weird to me. I had really invested in the site. I'm not speaking of monetarily so much as my time and affection. I was a fan.

Since that time, Carrie Gouskos, Greg Kasavin, Rich Gallup, Jeff Gerstmann, Ryan Davis, Vinnie Caravella, Brad Shoemaker, Alex Navarro and Jason Ocampo have all left the site.

Some of them left because they great opportunites, many left because of the clusterf$%k that was the Gertsmann firing but overtime the site became less of the great personalities and reviewers that I read, listened and tuned in live to see.

I can read console reviews of Jeff, Ryan, Vinnie and Brad at Giant Bomb and I can read Jason Ocampo's PC reviews at IGN. And for reviews those folks don't cover, I find myself scanning metacritic and picking reviews at random that catch my eye.

There was a time when I went straight to Gamespot and nowhere else.

And then the podcast. Somewhere along the way the Hotpost just became completely un-listenable to me. Unlike the reviewer exodus, that was a gradual thing but it just seemed like the podcast became less and less interesting to me.

Of course, I'm a little more on the fringe of gaming these days- which might not help. But mostly, I find the Giant Bombcast much more entertaining. It's *funny*.