spotanime.mydadisageek.com

It’s always great to see something good happen to someone I genuinely admire, yet it’s equally tough to let someone go. This is the case with Gamespot Editor-in-Chief Greg Kasavin, someone with whom I’ve grown old during what has been the most influential and prolific ten years the gaming industry has ever seen. Greg has covered the events of the past decade with such professionalism and expert objectiveness, it’s been a pleasure to have been on the receiving end of his many reviews and features.

It’s also why it’s hard to see him walk away from the site he helped mature into what it is today. I’m sure it is still in capable hands, with the venerable Jeff Gerstmann et al, but it just doesn’t feel right to think of a Gamespot without Greg’s direction.

But where Greg is Gamespot’s loss, it is someone else’s gain. In this case, it is an unnamed developer. Now Greg can spread his influence in making a game that not only a video game journalist would love, but also one for all of us gamers.

And with that, I say thanks and good luck.

I had made a comment how 1UP.com, the web entity of the Ziff Davis Game Group, seemed like “the inmates are running the prison”. After making 1UP a daily read, especially in the past week, I can now say for certain that my comment is correct.

I initially gave 1UP too much credit (no pun intended). I said its gonzo style of journalism had some merit for being different than its competitors. Apparently they walk the fine line between hard-hitting journalism and sophomoric unprofessionalism equipped with a press badge. Since when were strikethroughs allowed in news print, web or otherwise? Probably since enthusiast sites Kotaku and Joystiq were recognized as legitimate news sources. It’s also about the same time news editors started interjecting their stories with editorial and conversational writing style.

Luke Smith is from that same school of journalism, literally, having spent time at Kotaku prior to becoming News Editor at 1UP. He seems to be an intelligent guy, and must feel the need to prove it by littering his content with words that would normally be edited out of a New York Times article. It’s okay, Luke, I know what “fulcrum” and “modus operandi” mean, but you lost me at your frequent slang (”sup”, “y’all”) and devilish conscience which likes to materialize itself through needless comments, represented by said formatting. What really gets me, though, is his written tantrums against the very industry he represents, such as his “revealing” article on PR embargoes. That rant was nothing more than an immature 25 year-old who thought he was more important than he really was. In any other organization which views itself as respectable and professional, he would have been shown the door as fast as he hit the “submit” button.

James Mielke is another 1UP staffer who thinks his value is based on how important he thinks he is to his employer, not his actual financial worth to the bottom line. Yeah, Mielke, we get that you are a DJ and into techno and club music. And we get that you seem to be able to write your own ticket whenever you get the urge to go to Japan to “cover” game news. But it’s obvious you pick and create boutique projects that probably aren’t even worth the time it took to think them up, let alone spend the money to execute them. Your “Q Entertainment Cover Week” article was all style and no substance, and appeared as if it was just an excuse to let you scratch your personal itches rather than do something that would attract actual readers to the site. At least you have that DJ skill to fall back on once 1UP gets sold to someone who is interested in making a profit, because writing like the following excerpt of yours won’t get you any opportunities:

“My interviews I conducted this past week were fucking awesome. Can’t wait to put the stuff up. Be about 9 days ’til we start rolling this shit out.”

Recently Andrew Pfister’s mock announcement regarding Gears of War was an embarrassment, only because a release date for a high-profile title is news. This is the biggest release since Halo 2 – why is this any different than Halo Tuesday? Apparently because Andrew says so. Even senior member Jeff Green seems to be regressing in the 1UP day care, making this comment after the Games for Windows announcement:

“Microsoft has NO say over our editorial content, and, in fact, it’s part of the legally binding contract that they not interfere…And when they fuck up, we’re gonna be right there, calling them on it.  I promise.”

That last sentence was quoted in the actual news article. It was subsequently, and wisely, removed after it originally appeared, but remains engraved in the 1UP forums. And before anyone defends such comments by saying they were mostly blog posts, I say anything written within the 1UP pages are representative of that organization – including but not exclusive to news, features and blogs. Anyone at any other professional organization would never be allowed to write anything that may have negative impact without repercussion. If I decided to write a comment like the ones above on my company’s intranet site, I would probably be reprimanded if not outright fired. But like I said above, the inmates make the rules.

If the videogame industry consistently longs to be recognized as an acceptable form of entertainment for all ages, it needs equally mature representation by its media. Part of the problem is it doesn’t have the same level of journalists as other industries. There is no 60 Minutes, there is no Peter Jennings. There is 1UP, calling attention to itself like a hyperactive child in the supermarket whose mother just can’t settle it down. Its peers try to look away and ignore it, but can’t – partly out of embarrassment, partly out of sympathy for its parent; but mostly because it desperately tries to disassociate itself from 1UP, to avoid carrying the same negative connotation and cursing the industry it is trying to project as positive.

The 1UP management team should be ashamed they allow their employees to conduct business they way they do. But all is not doom and gloom – it appears as if they might not be granted such a long leash in the foreseeable future. Gamasutra reported the Ziff Davis Game Group was unprofitable in Q2 2006 with a loss of $1.5 million. It also stated, “the company noted that it has retained financial advisors for a possible sale of some or all of its groups – possibly including the Game Group.”

I would pay to see Meilke’s meeting with the “Bobs” as he tries to justify using company expenses to pay for his frequent personal vacations. Luke would have to explain why Ziff Davis has been paying a staff of bloggers the wages of a proffesional journalist. And then someone would have to answer to why the quarterly loss was blamed on “development costs within the online business” when the website is barely navigable on a good day.

Perhaps I would be remiss if I didn’t mention Gamespot as game journalism done right. Previously I had been too hard on Gamespot, because I had mistaken its objective delivery as rather boring. Now I know it is anything but deadpan – it is professionalism.

I’ve been kicking around a response to the uproar that was Chuck Klosterman’s article, “The Lester Bangs of Video Games“. Poor Chuck. He was misunderstood. All he wanted to do was jump on the video game criticism bandwagon. Hell, if Hillary Clinton can put it on her agenda, and with legislators carrying out their witch hunt against Take-Two and the ESRB, he just didn’t want to miss out on some free publicity.

And publicity he got. Kind of like shaking a bee’s nest, because the people who picked up this story were the journalists themselves. That’s kind of like Mike Ditka making a speech at the NBA All-Star game about the lack of fundamentals with today’s basketball professionals.

There are basically two types of game journalists today. There are the Enthusiasts, like Kotaku and Joystiq, which are sprout from blogs and report with an opinionated, fanboy-ish slant. The Enthusiasts took offense to the story because unlike their professional brethren they are the ones trying to break the mold of traditional journalism, providing commentary on the gaming industry in an unorthodox, mostly satirical way.

Then there are the Professionals, like Gamespot and 1UP, which are more objective and unbiased. Of course they had to comment on the story because it was news, and that is what they do. They merely reported on the reaction among the media, and probably cried a little inside at the realization their years of work really haven’t amounted to anything meaningful. I must give credit to 1UP for at least trying to do something different in their approach, but the end result of their attempt at gonzo is the appearance that the inmates are running the prison.

Why, Chuck, if you’ve found such a void in video game journalism, don’t you just fill it yourself? Probably because you can barely spell Xbox, let alone play games on it. No, instead you are merely raking the coals of the latest hot topic to appear to be “with it”. But I don’t want to pick on just you, I want to pick on the media themselves for not being able to retort with a quick, intelligent response. Please, let me have the honor.

The fact is, the video game media does have a Lester Bangs. Many of them, in fact, who are even more emotionally invested in the industry than anyone realizes. See, for those who aren’t sick of hearing the biography of Lester Bangs as told by Cameron Crowe, he was someone who understood music because he was integrated with its creation. There was Bangs, hanging out in the Bowery, drinking and smoking with the kids who would eventually save the world (or something like that). He heard the jams-in-progress, saw the same psychedelics as the musicians themselves. He was one of them.

Greg Kasavin or Dan Hsu are very much veterans of the video game media, but they are not one of them like Bangs was. Certainly it isn’t someone who writes about the feeling they get while playing Jaws Unleashed. They can act profound and say they want video games to make them cry, but they really don’t know what that means.

Cliff Bleszinski does. David Jaffe does. So does Warren Spector. So does Chris Crawford. God forbid, so does John Romero. See, the music industry had Lester Bangs, essentially a groupie, writing tales from the inside. But I don’t think someone like Keith Richards was ever sober enough to talk about the Beatles. Hell, we can barely make sense of musicians when they wax on about their political beliefs. The game industry is different in that it has an ever-expanding group of outspoken innovators and creators who not only critique the work of their peers, but also try to advance their craft by educating and stimulating the gaming populous with their blogs and journals about what it really means to make and play video games. They are one of them, very literally.

So I guess that means Chuck was right. The video game media doesn’t have a Lester Bangs. Nor will it ever, because to be able to critique at that level one would need a deep understanding of what it takes to make games at an emotional level. And if they had that, they wouldn’t be writing for 1UP or Gamespot anymore, they would be the ones actually making the games. But maybe since they didn’t know how to point Chuck in the right direction in the first place, perhaps they would be better suited playing the games rather than writing about them.

• Everyone is talking like Gears of War is going to be as good as it was intended, which ends up being good for gamers, but does anyone else think that Cliff Bleszinski gets a free ride from the gaming press? Sure he hangs with porn stars, highlights his hair and acts like a rock star, but what has this guy done, actually? Remember he tried to bring a new IP once before and failed (Pariah) and all of his career achievements are tied to one franchise (Unreal). He’s more of a figurehead to Epic like Stan Lee is to Marvel, but with a much less-storied past.
• It’s official – Too Human sucks.
• “PC Gaming is Back!” I hear this every year. The truth is, PC gaming never left. It continues to lead in innovation, both in terms of gameplay (MMOs) and technology (graphics, physics). Consoles get all the attention because they are more accessible, but the truth is they owe their success to the PC gaming market. Interesting thought – PC gaming sales are down year after year, but how much of that can be blamed on persistent gaming? The Sims and MMORPGs have become dominant, so perhaps people are saving their hard-earned cash for subscription fees and expansion packs?
• GameLife – who the hell are these guys? And most important, how did they all get press passes to E3 and become “special guests” of Ziff Davis after only three shows?
• I don’t think many people realize Elite Beat Agents is not a localization of Osu! Tatakae! Ouendan, but rather a brand new title by the original developers specifically for the Western market.

Okay, and now for my E3 2006 Awards:

• Press Coverage of the Show: Gamespot. They had live coverage that eclipsed G4, even with G4 working hard but yet still lacking how to work their Maxim/Spike TV slant into their live show. Here’s a hint: that shit doesn’t mix with peanut butter. Try the chocolate next time. The only knock was the lack of a daily podcast, I guess because everyone was so busy supporting E3 Live. I wish they would have had daily wrap-ups like 1UP, and with their User Videos functionality, I would have liked to see more guerilla videos by staff from the show floor. I have a feeling most bosses do not like their employees to run streaming video at the office.
• Podcast of the Show: 1UP. I wanted to give a special nod to the 1UP Yours crew for podcasting nightly during each day of the conference. At least in theory, because they were usually delivered a day late. But still, they are always entertaining and editorial, unlike the very objective (read: afraid to say what you really feel) delivery of Gamespot’s crew. Look at the tenure between the two leading websites – Gamespot has seniority in its staff, versus the very young 1UP. I think that’s the difference, as 1UP is very keen on delivering gaming news in a way that is fresh and, notably, different from the pack.
• Worst E3 Coverage: Tie between Kotaku and Joystiq. What the hell. These guys scoop from eachother’s websites, hardly deliver anything news-worthy and avoid giving any value to gaming journalism almost on purpose. Yet everyone loves them, because hits = attention. I wouldn’t rest on my laurels if I were them, because it only takes one person with good HTML skills and a little bit of dedication to build up a fanbase. 1UP would have taken this award if it weren’t my scathing hatred toward Kotaku and Joystiq, because their site is unmanageable. And when you actually know where to find information, HTML errors are in abundance. I can’t tell you how many times I got the error “failed to load page”.

Overall though, the coverage was pretty unorganized. How many times do I have to say this – do NOT just categorize by platform/title. The amount of news coming out of the show slips through the cracks this way. Here’s a hint – for those blog-based sites, use your tags wisely. And for those who aren’t, tags aren’t that hard to incorporate. I’ll have to show you what I mean next year…

• I’m surprised we didn’t see any announcement from Microsoft regarding a larger hard drive. If the last couple days are any indication, we sorely need it. Especially those poor users who have Final Fantasy IX installed on their hard drives. All two of them.
• Another surprising no-show is the alliance between Microsoft and DirecTV. Maybe Microsoft was holding out to see if Sony was going to say anything about their Live Connect functionality in the PS3. Since they didn’t mention any DVR functionality, perhaps Microsoft held off for a future announcement to counter anything Sony comes out with.
• A quick gaming press update. Gamespot is still the winner of the show, but it seems like the grind is catching up to them. Absent were any staff video blogs from yesterday. 1UP too, as there was no promised 1UP Yours podcast on my virtual doorstep this morning. Yeah, I know the press function was last night, but even in my line of work someone has to stay with the ship.
• An idea for the gaming press next year – mandate each of your staff to make a video blog every day of the conference; write a blog post every day of the conference; and participate in daily panel podcasts. Like I said yesterday, the sites are all set up to be organized by game title, which is good for reference, but like any book the index comes at the back. The table of contents actually tells the reader the central outline and flow. Create that table of contents in the form of highlights or show milestones (i.e, press conferences, chapters organized by booth/publisher/developer/platform). Make the blogs and podcasts an integral part of that outline – they are definitely required “chapters”. Don’t make me come out to L.A. next year and show you how it’s done.
• How the hell did Kotaku and Joystiq get to be so popular? They both report the same news in the same way – like they want to be Penny Arcade but can’t draw, so they just editorialize (yes, that’s a real word) each story. Ha ha, you’re funny. The real joke is that you get press passes to all the major gaming events and waited hand-over-foot by publishers because you get site traffic. The joke is on all of us, apparently.
• Lumines Live is a brilliant marketing move by Microsoft. Not only will they sell tons of copies over Xbox Live, but they can use it as a trojan horse to push advertising in the form of their partnership with Warner Music (and what happened to Epic? That’s a Sony company, by the way…). Want to plug that new Bjork album? Just release a skin as a new level over Xbox Live Marketplace. And remember, for those who played the PSP version, it’s not just about the backgrounds, music and block styles. Each action by the player solicits a sound that adds to the music. Like Rez, the player is essentially creating their own mix from a song template. So really, each skin can be completely personalized to a particular artist. Personally I can’t wait.

• Lumines Live will be the next Geometry Wars.
• Did anyone catch that the Halo 3 demo was done with Xbox 360 hardware? They actually had the demo realtime behind closed doors. Pretty sweet.
• G4 sucks. Officially. Again. Kevin Pereira is an annoying talking head that needs to be fragged, Doom-style. His smiling mug wants to make me puke. And nice of G4 to lay off their personalities who actually care about games and replace them with Olivia Munn, who demonstrated her Brain Age of 88 when she was asked what she thought about her first E3. I swear I saw the wheels spinning on live TV last night. Oh yeah, and the endless babble of Adam Sessler during interviews, Morgan Webb pretending she’s a gamer, and Kevin’s endless decible-crunching spew of cliche made me regret tuning in last night. I haven’t watched G4 in about a year, and thankfully I was reminded of why so I won’t make that mistake again.
• Interesting how there was no mention of integration between the Wii and the DS. Perhaps Nintendo gave up on that experiment? Meanwhile, Sony is showing they will blindly follow what the other game companies are doing by repeating their old mistakes. PS3 integration with the PSP, controllers with motion sensors. A $600 price point – Trip Hawkins is laughing somewhere right now. What’s next, a robot?
• Speaking of the PSP, I’m surprised it was basically a no-show at the Sony press event. I want to hear more about downloadable PSOne titles. Hell, they should have made it available to everyone live at the press event. Even still, I want to hear what titles will be available, and at what price point. Or downloadable content of any kind – and please take off the resolution restriction on downloaded videos!
• Gamespot has the best E3 coverage thus far. IGN seems to be on vacation. And 1UP is smart by coming out with nightly podcasts of wrap-ups, but their site is so poorly designed it’s nearly impossible to find any content besides what’s thrown at you from the front page. I’d like to search the blogs based on staff and/or developer, and I’d like some federated (big word) search so I can scan the news stories. But I can only search “Gamers”. But it’s nice to catch the podcast on my way to work, instead of getting Gamespot’s streaming videocasts blocked by my employer. Gamespot has a nice new feature for subscribers in beta called “The Rail”, which basically streamlines the top stories – news, previews, movies – all in a nicely wrapped slideshow. This is probably the closest someone has come to presenting the avalanche of news stories in a presentable fashion. Most other sites organize based on title, and that makes reading the headlines a chore. Kudos to Gamespot!
• Is it me or does the show feel like it’s already over? Like last year, the announcements coming from the actual show feel like Kentia Hall – you know, the stuff no one cares about. A new Golden Axe? Who cares!
• Microsoft needs to think about updating their Marketplace interface for next year if they decide to provide E3 content to Xbox 360 owners. A little organization, perhaps a new blade just for E3, would be nice. Instead I spent the better part of yesterday afternoon bouncing back and forth from the XBL Arcade download section to the Marketplace section, getting constantly disconnected. And along those lines, let’s add some more servers to the infrastructure to handle the load. I still don’t have UNO. Bastards…

There are three big players in the gaming press: GameSpot, IGN and 1UP. Actually four, with GamesRadar from Future, but since they are in their infancy, I’ll exclude them for now. I’ve had a lot of exposure to each of these, and a lot of thoughts have been floating around for a while now regarding them. For sake of time, I’ll just write a digest here, but I’ll try to expand on the subject in a later post.

I had mentioned that GameSpot was up to something big, after coming out with their media blitz of different formats and deliveries. Podcasts, daily video digests, video reviews. They were ahead of their time. But now it seems like time (and their competitors) has caught up to them and in some cases surpassed them. For one, streaming video is a thing of the past. Especially streaming through the website itself. We are a society on-demand, and with increased bandwidth we would much rather download and watch at our convenience, or better yet transfer to our favorite media player and watch on the go. GameSpot, although they have the production chops, still haven’t caught up to this way of thinking. Two, they depend on their website to drive content. You’ll see what I mean by this later on. Websites are now supplanted by RSS aggregators and digests, as people don’t have the time to live on a site and absorb all of its content. I still think GameSpot has the best crew of actual gamers, and they report with objectivity that the industry needs. But their attempts to catch up with some of the society functions that are offered by the other sites seem to fall a little flat. The blogs are pretty inconsequential, the community groups are an indecipherable maze, the proprietary forums are a chore, and most recently the YouTube-like video posts are going to sink them. After all, YouTube itself is going through a million dollars a month in bandwidth costs – is GameSpot ready for this?

IGN has been around for a while, and I really like the fact that it has different editorial staff for each platform or subject. While I believe branching out to Cars and Babes is spreading them a little thin, and the SpikeTV/Maxim/FHM gimmick is growing a little old, the way each site is a silo under a main umbrella is simple. They were late to get on the user blogs, they were late with video reviews, and their Insider-only reviews almost cost them their readership; but their forums have always been active, if a little too populated with immature fanboys. They also are most consistent with offering high definition game trailers and video downloads, even if most PCs and media devices can’t play them. I think as media hubs, such as Windows Media Center and Vista, become more popular, these will be more prominent. They also started a podcast series which is sketchy at best – availability or any kind of schedule is inconsistent, and they haven’t yet incorporated podcasts into each of their silos – something that might be because each silot has its own editorial staff.

1UP is really emerging as the leader in game journalism, because they are doing a lot of things different. First, their video podcast The 1UP Show is a great mix of sketch and documentary with excellent production. With recent editorial staff turnover, the quality has gone south a little bit and now borders on inside jokes and braggart screen personalities (yeah you, Mielke and Kathleen), and Jane Pinckard has the presence of a classical radio DJ after having been bitten by and transformed into a zombie. What surprised me is the emergence of the 1UP Radio Network, led by Garnett Lee’s own 1UP Yours podcast. 1UP is really smart – they are creating podcasts for each of their publications under the 1UP banner – CGW, EGM, 1UP. The site itself is a mess, and the excellent blogs by staff and industry insiders are almost lost in the process. But what saves 1UP is a luxury most other gaming sites don’t have – printed media. They are using the podcasts and magazines to direct people toward the website, almost like a map, so in a sense they don’t have to have the best laid-out website, they merely have to refer to new or exciting content, and let the reader drop in, read a few blogs and articles, even maybe start their own. 1UP’s reviews aren’t all that spectacular, and they are almost too abbreviated to be dependable, but they are most famous for their interviews. Remember when Shoe had that “scathing” interview with Peter Moore? Actually it was pretty tame, but it’s the first time in the gaming press someone actually interviewed rather than wrote PR. And one last thing worth mentioning – although I know some of GameSpot staff by name, I barely know any from IGN. Compare that with all the name-dropping I’ve done in my writeup about 1UP. Here’s an interesting anecdote: I remember in college I wrote EGM blaming them for biasness in their reviews, and I said if they were going to be biased at least post the name of the author so the reader can go into the article knowing what to expect from them. Their response was that they wanted to direct attention to the article, not the author. My how things have changed. 1UP is as much about the author as it is the content, and I think that’s a smart move that will trickle slowly but surely into the rest of the gaming press. Just think, when someone from the 1UP staff leaves to a competitor, they bring their reputation and personality with them. That’s going to be viral, and will eventually bring integrity to the gaming media.

So those are my quick thoughts. I know I’m missing some things like FilePlanet, Metacritic and Gamevideos, but I’ll save those for a more in-depth article. It will be interesting to see how these sites evolve a year from now, the growth of GamesRadar, and if any new competitors emerge.

Yesterday I posted my comments surrounding the huge potential of distributing niche programming via iTunes.

After I made my comments, I instantly looked toward my PSP. Now here is a device, supported by a giant electronics manufacturer, that can do everything the iPod Video can, with some advantages. First, it has the ability to display higher quality video. It can play PS2-quality games. It has the support of a very successful proprietary video format, UMD. And the amount of storage it can hold can be upgraded. Right now, it looks like the maximum size memory card is 2GB, but as personal budgets can allow, storage can be spread across an infinite number of memory cards and storage devices.

It is as sleek and sexy as the iPod, albeit a little larger, but still portable. It can play MP3s and, obviously, videos from a memory card. Its battery life is just as long when watching video (slightly longer if streaming from the memory card).

But there are two glaring discrepancies which make the PSP inferior to the iPod Video: video conversion and distribution.

Anyone who owns a PSP would know, converting video for playback is a royal pain. There are a couple free applications which convert video, such as 3GP and the user-friendly PSP Video 9, but as these are homegrown applications and not supported by Sony, they still have a few framerate and resolution issues. Video playback is a bit of a secret, since some of the higher resolutions aren’t supported for converted video, and to create the highest quality video using these maximum resolution rates can get pretty complex and confusing. It would be nice if Sony provided a free tool (they have a tool for purchase at $20, which doesn’t even come close to offering the same functionality as the two free products mentioned above) that made video conversion simple and offered all available parameters for maximum quality and performance.

From a distribution standpoint, Sony has attempted to offer video downloads specifically for the PSP – in Japan. The site, P-TV.jp, offers free and subscription-based video downloads of movies, music video, television programming and trailers. Given the complexity of converting a video, this may be a more welcomed approach. The problem is, it’s not offered for PSP owners in the US. And it’s all in Japanese, which doesn’t do most of us stateside any good. Granted, the PSP isn’t a video player; it’s main function is for playing games, but looking at the latest figures for UMD sales, I’d say the majority of PSP owners aren’t just playing games on it. I will guarantee the iPod Video will sell more devices than the PSP for the ability of playing video alone, and it would be wise for Sony to piggyback on this trend. Even as Gamespot has a site dedicated to providing PSP-compatible media, it doesn’t represent all the videos the site produces on a daily basis. Not even close.

Given the above arguments, wouldn’t videocasting niche programming, such as gaming, make sense in the hands of a gamer? Sony’s almost there, and with just a few small improvements they could be in the process of making something with a very big impact.

G4 sucks.

It’s a sad day, the day a true gamer finally puts aside his or her pride and accepts the truth. I do not want The Whip Set, Fastlane or The Man Show on my “TV for Gamers”. Video games are a multi-billion dollar business, so why resort to failed television shows unrelated to video games but targeting the demographic? Is it for advertising? Because last time I watched, the only advertisements are for university gaming programs with a question of legitimacy and foreign actors advertising some obscure anti-virus software that no one has ever used (or even heard of).

And how can a network self-described “for Gamers” can be conspicuously absent of any true gamers itself? The only person I could call a true gamer would be Adam Sessler, who has been hosting X-Play, and Extended Play before that, for years. Kevin Pereira? I wouldn’t call him a gamer as much I would call him a talking head, albeit a loud one. I think the next closest would be Tina Wood, and I don’t think she does it as much for the love of the game as she does for the love of the paycheck.

So as G4 approaches a much dumber, less-serious TechTV (you know, the network it acquired only to destroy), I say farewell. Farewell to Icons, Cinematech, and of course, X-Play, the only real gaming shows left on the network. And good riddance to the rest.

However, there is a beacon of light, a true “TV for Gamers” on the horizon. GameSpot.com recently relaunched a feature called “Today on GameSpot”, a daily video recapping breaking news, reviews, and other gaming information. Although only a few minutes in length, it provides more gaming insight than a week’s worth of programming on G4.

GameSpot Editors Greg Kasavin, Jeff Gerstmann, et all, are gamers first and foremost. Their reviews are regarded as the most unbiased and objective in all of videogame journalism. And they’ve had experience with producing a television show in the past, having done a few Cinematech episodes that were far and away the best episodes ever produced for that series. Simply put? These are gamers who know how to produce programming for other gamers.

This simple daily video could have huge potential. If GameSpot decided to expand their programming, they could present a serious challenge to G4’s stake in the potential gaming audience. As GameSpot is part of the CNET Network, they have some real muscle behind them if they decided to enter a cable or satellite television venture. CNET is no stranger to television programming, having produced a series of shows for USA Networks in the late ’90s.

What could be a bigger Trojan horse, however, is the introduction of Apple’s new Video iPod. Quite frankly, this is going to do for videocasting what the original iPod did for podcasting, or even MP3 distribution for that matter. As GameSpot is already producing their own video bits for daily news, reviews and features, they are poised for global distribution via iTunes. This may be the nail in G4’s coffin – directly distributing video to the hands of the gaming audience, thereby eliminating the need for conventional broadcasting to a niche market, and at a much cheaper cost to boot. Even more destructive could be the availability of amateur programming production, catering to the gaming audience, and distributed via videocasting. Former TechTV host Kevin Rose has started his own videocast called SYSTM, and it’s only a matter of time before shows like this catch fire.

So gamers, hope is not all lost. Today’s the day we should all turn off G4 for good, and support (or even produce) alternatives that represent the “true” gamer.