Shaun McInnis is leaving GameSpot

GameSpot is getting even thinner. Shaun was one of my favourites over there.

Heres his Tumblr post.

Weird. He just wrote a review for The Evil Within and I don't think I've ever seen a review by him before.

I wish him the best.

I like Shaun. Hope wherever he ends up it goes well for him.

Hmm, wonder what he's gonna do next. Still in the game industry but more behind the scenes, and in Seattle.

Bummer. He was a great editorial voice and I always loved his sense of humor. After what happened with Jeff all those years ago, Shaun was far and away my favorite editor that came into the fore and in the years since has established himself as a hell of a reviewer. Reading about his plans in Seattle, in his words away from the bright lights of the games press and big budget retail games, I'm very intrigued. Good luck Shaun!

Eventually GameSpot will be nothing but a playlist of text-to-speech video reviews and that news show with the British lady. Run by a sentient email server.

EDIT: Oh, he wasn't fired, thank goodness.

One of the good guys.

That's too bad, Shaun and Danny are my favourites from GameSpot.

Wish him the best.

I've always liked Shaun but I have to wonder if CBS had known about this before the layoffs recently, would they have kept Carolyn Petit or Tom McShea for the editorial position instead?

He was half of the reviewers left...and a pretty cool guy in my book. 'Tis a shame...

Damn I really liked him on Gamespot.

Wish him the best in his future endeavors

Wait, are you talking about Jess McDonell's The Gist? She's Australian.

It must be really draining to spend years building up something only to see the majority of it get absolutely gutted. I really feel for those left behind after what happened to Gamespot a few months back. While it's nice to have a job and a paycheck, the situation can't be great morale wise.

Yikes. Gamespot is getting closer and closer to being Danny O'Dwyer

Gamespot is going through some tough times and I think eventually it will go through a "re-organizing" stage. I would not be surprised if they clean house of everyone and start over.

I looked once in a while since I switched over to Gb back in the day, but then they did the site re-design on gamespot which was and still is a disaster. Lost a lot of my old videos on there which sucked at the time and still kinda does.

More and more people just care about video content now, probably why Danny is still standing.

Here comes the Giantbomb re-branding to Gamespot

Agree he was a class act. Never can recall a time when he acted like he was better than the creators. Always presented flaws with respect. A LOT of others could learn from his professionalism.

Wish him the best. Ive always liked him at Gamespot.

I think you mean the other way around..

yeah most likely.

i wouldn't mind, except for the influx of the Gamespot users. *shudders*

Shaun was always in a weird spot for me. Started back in 2007, the year Gamespot completely fell apart.

But he's grown on me in recent years, I wish him all the best in Seattle.

Shaun seems like a nice, decent dude. Wish him the best.

I already infiltrated, we are legion.

That sucks, I wish him well.

If Kevin VanOrd ever leaves, I might just stop visiting GameSpot completely, though.

I am totally fine with this.

My money is on him joining Amazon FireTV games division. Garnett Lee recently moved to Seattle to do just that, and Shaun makes a comment about not being in the press or messing with AAA games.

It must be pretty lonely in the editorial department at Gamespot these days with seemingly just Kevin being left in an in-house reviews capacity. At least our boy O'Dwyer is still there.

I don't want to be that asshole but the gaming media covers the gaming industry, they aren't in the industry. I did love Shaun, "The Shaun Method" was great.

No one forget Murry!

I'll be honest. I read this as "Shaun Michael's leaves Gamespot."

I never knew the days of GS with Ryan and Jeff. I began following GS right after everything changed, so I was bought up on the likes of Tom Mc Shea, Brendan Sinclair , Kevin and Shaun off course. At this point only Kevin and Waters is left from those days.

It's sad to see Shaun go, but it only feel natural at this point. Tom recently talked about a new podcast with Brendan, I really hope that comes to fruition, but lets see.

It's really weird, those days of GS (Or more specifically the Hotspot) was critical to my gaming upbringing. But I feel so alone about it. The only thing the internet has to say about that period of GS, is usually trash, because of the Jeff thing. But I still look fondly back upon the homo erotic Gears of War haiku poems and the NPD reports.

But if nothing else, at least it seems Shaun has a plan and secured a job.

Wonder if it's in indie development, said it wouldn't be mainstream or press and we'd probably never hear from him or something to that effect.

I feel like Kevin's been at GS forever and it's weird for me to think about.

@dystopiax:

>Wonder if it's in indie development, said it wouldn't be mainstream or press and we'd probably never hear from him or something to that effect.

I'm not sure where they are based, but the first though I had was something along the lines of Midnight City or Devolver Digital. That would include the indie scene and a lot of back door dealing and what not. Feel like that might be a good fit for him, and his ability to spot indie talent.

He's certainly no Kevin VanOrd but he's been reviewing a couple of games here and there. He reviewed The Vanishing of Ethan Carter not too long ago also.

I think he meant Lucy (?) who is from the UK office and does the "news" segment at times. Jess McDonell Gist is nothing more than a narrated Top-5 list. I asked Danny about it and he said it was going to get restructured a bit but thus far it's still very bare bones and completely inconsequential. Jess at least used to do the play-scary-games-on-camera bit for a while but after that was retired it seems Mary Kish took over and, among other things, plays scary games on Now Playing.

Overall I gotta agree with Snail here and GameSpot is starting to resemble an empty husk with trailers and top ten lists.

Things are weird. I'm not pulling up the main GB feed like I used to when I've got time to fill. I tried for the first time in awhile tonight on my Roku and there's a problem with the channel. All the video content is starting to feel the same, hopefully it's the lack of new releases. EOTY content really needs to deliver. And by that I mean Vinny. Please just bring some fraction of Vinny back to the video content.

He lost his smile.

Reading his blog leads me to speculate that he maybe working for a game company after leaving the journalism side like Brian Eckbedg.

Bummer. So who's still with GameSpot? Kevin, Danny, and some largely forgettable staff?

Oh wow, that's a bummer. Hopefully he finds a fun and fulfilling place to work.

@steadying: VanOrd reviews almost everything, so I don't think the site could exist in its ostensible current format if he wasn't there.

Never heard of the other guy.

I haven't been interested in Gamespot for a very long time and it's to bad to see him leave just as things is starting to get interesting as they are taking some cues from Giantbomb and getting more loose with their format. I've always found him entertaining. He's leaving for Seattle so I can't stop think something like Microsoft.

lol

That really does leave just Kevin as the entire San Fransisco editorial team then, right? I know they have the UK branch which does some of the reviews, but I would bet at least half of the reviews done going forward will be by freelancers. I wouldn't be surprised if they went to more of a Gametrailers format for reviews where they have one guy read all of the video reviews and bring back the collective first person voice. I think it's a shame things went in this direction, but to be entirely honest I've felt for a while that quick looks were far better at helping me decide whether or not to get a game than any review.

I wish him the best and look forward to the next chapter is the McInnis saga.

Yeah, for the most part it seems the reviews are going to end up in the hands of freelancers. Even though Shaun's leaving this is starting to smell like the 1UPocalypse all over again though they already laid off staff awhile ago.

From where I'm standing the other way around sounds way more likely.

Maybe not in the near future but I can totally see Gamespot continue its downward trend while Giantbomb continues to grow until Gamespot gets absorbed somehow.

It's starting to look increasingly like there will be some sort of GB/GS merger in the near future.