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GameSpot Column
The Monthly Spot
by Chet and Erik, GED
Editors, Old Man Murray

Why We Sold Out
March 31th, 1999

We've run a small, nasty game site for almost two years. We're like a much, much more embittered Gilbert and Sullivan without the singing, or a somewhat less embittered Leopold and Loeb without the non-simulated killing. When developers rant about the depraved bottom feeders of the gaming press, they're talking about us. At this point we could say something like, "But you know, for all our differences, one thing ties us all together: our love of games." But you know, since Blood 2, we're not even sure if we like games anymore. Thanks, Monolith. Yet we can say that we've learned some things from our mean spirited web mastering. That Dreamworks Interactive may need a more rigorous employee psychological screening process, for instance, and GNC muscle-building powder drinks and candy bars, when not combined with an exercise program, are a good way to get extremely fat in a big hurry. The biggest lesson we've learned, though, is that, contrary to our original expectations, there's absolutely no money, free consensual sex, or respect involved in this particular activity.

At least that's what we thought.

"The editor explained that GameSpot just wanted the name calling to stop, that they'd pay us in cash and often, and that we wouldn't even have to produce the column."

Old Man Murray has a proud tradition of calling the pro-game sites, and GameSpot in particular, whores. In case you've never visited our site, we're not subtle about it. A typical example would be our recent headline: GameSpot - They're Whores. So when an editor from GameSpot sent us mail asking us to produce a column for them, we were suspicious. The editor explained that GameSpot just wanted the name calling to stop, that they'd pay us in cash and often, and that we wouldn't even have to produce the column - they'd get the prolific William Shatner to ghost write it for us, just like he does for Elliott Chin. That sounded great, since we're poor and live on a farm. The little money we have is tied up in lottery tickets and our many lawsuits against the government. We told them as much, but added that, debased as we were, we didn't want any involvement with Shatner and would be producing the column ourselves. They reluctantly agreed and within minutes we were electronically ticketed on a flight to San Francisco and our fabulous new lives.

There was an official ceremony where Erik signed his name over 70 times on some legal documents provided by the not very friendly Gamespot lawyers. Then they presented us with the key to neighboring Oakland and escorted us to our first industry party. We don't remember everything in lucid detail; images mostly, and the smell of human filth and expensive joysticks... depravity... a model doing lines off the naked belly of a Sid Meier lookalike they hire for these parties... someone playing Trespasser... someone else telling us how even young girls aren't afraid of tattoo needles anymore..., and Chet getting real excited and frantically searching through the hotel closets... Chet came to in the morning with some kind of iron-on transfer of the GameSpot logo actually ironed onto his bicep. Once the blistering and bleeding went away, it looked pretty sharp.