Is GameSpot dying?

I was looking up various websites on quantcast.com to check out web traffic (I don't know, for some reason that interests me), and I decided to look up Gamespot.com to see how they were doing. I was shocked at how their traffic has seemingly plummeted in the last year:

This graph shows the people per month that visit Gamespot, but only in the United States. Quantcast does not have the global information for GameSpot (which is a bummer) but I would imagine the U.S. numbers are indicative of the global numbers as well. Looking at this data gathered over the last year (which is all that is available on quantcast), you can see that in December of 2011 Gamespot had 3,246,641 people per month, while on October 30th of 2012 they had 1,434,345 people per month. They shed almost 2 million people per month in less than a year; that makes me wonder how much longer Gamespot is going to be around.

If you look for Giant Bomb information, this site seems to be doing a lot better. Here are two charts showing people per month for Giant Bomb, the first showing U.S. data and the other showing Global data.

U.S. Data:

Global Data:

Giant Bomb is at an all-time high for traffic. In the U.S., they've improved from 983,611 people per month in December 2011 to 1,034,280 people per month in November 2012. Globally, they've improved from 2,154,080 people per month in December 2011 to 2,512,281 people per month in November 2012. Their U.S. traffic is still smaller than Gamespot, so I have to imagine the global numbers reflect that as well. However, Giant Bomb seems to be growing, while Gamespot seems to be in a tailspin. Do you think this trend for Gamespot had something to do with CBSi's acquisition of Giant Bomb? Do you think Gamespot will be able to turn this all around?

Obviously I do love and support GiantBomb but it would be awfully depressing to see Gamespot go down the shitter, there have been too many lay-off's and redundancies in the video games industry over the last few years. Especially when it comes to publications and websites that provide coverage for the fans.

The amount of people interested in games not named Call of Duty hasn't really increased in the past several years, thus traffic growing in one location indicates traffic decreasing in another, impossible to know if that's due to Giant Bomb or more due to having such a ridiculous number of smaller sites and youtube channels to choose from.

Kasavin, Gouskos, Gallup, and Park were great. It started to die when they were all beginning to leave. Once the shit hit the fan and everyone that mattered was gone, it was officially dead for me which of course caused me to start coming to Giant Bomb once the site was up. I just wished I was a supporter earlier on.

I honestly don't know how they still get the traffic they do.

@TyCobb: It's still a name, and it's still going to be a top search result when people do search results. It might be hard for us to imagine because we've made our decisions on where we get our information, but for the casual fan who buys a couple of games a year, or the relative looking to buy for a birthday, Gamespot and IGN are going to be what they find if they want broad information or opinions

Man, those numbers are kind of insane. Did something happen that isn't immediately obvious that would've trashed their numbers like that? Can anyone that regularly visits GameSpot fill us in on what, if anything, happened?

Dying? Nah.

Has it seen a drop in viewership? Certainly.

It's to be expected, of course. Back in it's hayday, Gamespot was essentially one of two major video game news sites on the web. Either you went to IGN for news or Gamespot. Those numbers are obviously going to be inflated due to this. Now even in the last year you've seen a major push from smaller outlets to up their game, and there's a lot more options for people to get news from.

Doubt it

The internet Gods have heard our pleas. Remember this day brethren, for tomorrow we dine in HELL!... oh wait.

Don't really care about GS but way to go GB.

gamespot was dead to me 5 years ao

Gamespot doesn't really have nothing unique to set it apart. They're kind of all over the place, do a bit of everything without much focus on anything to differentiate themselves. I think major sites will suffer from all those smaller, more personality driven sites like GB.

Doubt it though to adequately get any vague conclusions, you might have to check other gaming journalism sites (ie. ign, gametrailers, gamespy, ect.) to see if they are also following the trend of lower visits and compare it to previous years (seasonal drop when less games come out or other things).

I cant remember the last time I visited gamespot but it would be a shame if they went down the shitter.

Some crazy stats, though not too surprising. I just hope if GS does kick the bucket that all their staff doesn't get sent over here.

Unfortunately, they still have a bad reputation with alot of people over the whole firing Jeff thing, even though the people involved in that are gone.

I thought Giant Bomb was part of a way smaller market than it is. Weird to think a site with millions of viewers could still be putting up videos of Drew in captain garb. Kinda love that.

Gamespot tries to be everything to everyone and in turn waters down their site, high overhead and non-specificity has bit them in the ass, Giantbomb on the other hand has MUCH lower overhead (they have been able to leverage a lot of Gamespot's resources due to the CBSi deal) and caters to a smaller more fanatic demographic.

I would be interested to know what happened on Jul 28, 2011 that caused it to be the highest traffic day in GB history, and a significant spike from surrounding days. 

@ajamafalous said:

Man, those numbers are kind of insane. Did something happen that isn't immediately obvious that would've trashed their numbers like that? Can anyone that regularly visits GameSpot fill us in on what, if anything, happened?

A few things happened, actually.

The once-merged game-specific forums were given back to GameFAQs, cutting off a significant portion of traffic visiting the gamespot.com domain. That traffic (search traffic for hints and such) would seem to have gone over to GameFAQs. This sort of stuff had to happen because search engines hate it when you duplicate content in multiple places... this makes Google think your site is a scam and your SEO ranking starts to drop. So... probably a big traffic hit, but it was the right thing to do (and it probably helped GameFAQs' traffic).

They also redesigned to go from one gamespace per game per platform to a merged "unispace." This more closely mirrors our approach to game pages, but it also nukes a ton of the existing URLs and pages along the way. Necessary with the way games and the audience have changed (and that whole "duplicated content" thing figures in here, too), but another (hopefully) short-term traffic hit. We used to have to enter one review into the system three times just to make sure that story appeared on the PS2, Xbox, and GameCube versions of a game page. Reeediculous when I look back on it now.

Also I think something happened back in late 2007 that changed peoples' attitudes about the GameSpot brand... not really sure if that had any actual impact, though the proliferation of Twitter, RSS readers, Facebook, and other things that decentralized the "old Internet" seemed to really take hold around that time, too. People don't need/want to come to your big ol' dot com domain to consume your content anymore. So it's a matter of figuring out ways to adapt to how the Internet works today. You need to vary your approach instead of just trucking on with the same concepts that the site was founded on back in 1996. That involves having different sites and different brands with different focuses.

Which is sort of where we come in, I suppose.

@NyxFe said:

I would be interested to know what happened on Jul 28, 2011 that caused it to be the highest traffic day in GB history, and a significant spike from surrounding days.

I think this may have been some sort of big, popular link from Reddit or something. Don't remember.

@TyCobb: Reminds me of 1UP/EGM. At some point so much talent had left the building the only thing left was nostalgia.

 stats are kinda stupid without a publishing calendar. 

Huh... I was starting to have doubts about GameSpot all the way back when Greg Kasavin left it, then when Jeff left I only went on it off and on, but far less than I had previously done. I pretty much didn't contribute there after Jeff and some of the others left. I think it was the beginning of last year that I started going back more, by now I contribute to their site differently. I used to make blogs, write reviews, but now all I do is rate games (though I kind of toned that down as well, even though I rate games in my mind), read their articles and reply to them, and even sometimes post on interesting blogs I see.

The reason I left was because while I didn't hate anyone there, I didn't really find respect for them because I just didn't know anyone that was left there. Thankfully I did, and I really like that site again. I respect Kevin VanOrd's views just as I do Jeff Gerstmann's. I'm happy, and I was very surprised, that Giantbomb went into CBS, now located in the same building, and literally next to the GameSpot offices. It's very cool. To be frank though, I've been more open about the sites I've been going to lately anyways. So I like what the guys do over at Game trailers, Game Informer, and while I visit IGN's, and do respect their opinions, I don't really know how I feel about the way they run their site.

I like to hear what Jeff's views are just as much as Kevin's, Shane Satterfield's, Greg Miller's, and some people on Game Informer that I still haven't remembered the name of, ha ha. What I'm saying is though, I like to hear just about everyone's opinions on each of those sites. As for the question though, no, I don't think GameSpot is dying. I hope they aren't, it's a good game site for the most part.

@NyxFe said:

I would be interested to know what happened on Jul 28, 2011 that caused it to be the highest traffic day in GB history, and a significant spike from surrounding days.

A quick search yielded 2 possibilities. They played Quake III: Arena on TNT. I hear that's fabulous.

The second possibility, and given the rage at the time is my personal guess, Jeff posted a 2/5 review for Catherine, which I'm sure had many a person seething with absolute rage, thus drawing their attention towards the site like they were Eye of Sauron and Giant Bomb had just put on the one true ring

IGN.com doesn't have Quantcast data but the estimate shows a 12% decline, compared to Gamespot's 9% drop. So, general market fragmentation I guess.

Stocks are up!

@Jeff said:

Also I think something happened back in late 2007 that changed peoples' attitudes about the GameSpot brand... not really sure if that had any actual impact, though the proliferation of Twitter, RSS readers, Facebook, and other things that decentralized the "old Internet" seemed to really take hold around that time, too.

Fucking LOOOOL.

Myself, I've never really been a huge Gamespot fan, but even I can see that there has been a decline in quality. I'm not going to name any names, but there are small (but prominent) handful of people over at Gamespot who are just incredibly obnoxious. I still read old Gamespot reviews (from around the early 2000's) from time to time, though.

Considering how repulsive and cold their staff and community is, I have to say I'm not surprised at all. I guess they finally achieved what they were aiming for throughout the last years.
 
Recently even IGN surpassed GS, which is indeed some bad news for the GS crew.

I wonder how game traffic in general is. At this point, some 24 years since the 360 was released, you don't really need to closely follow the hype trail of a game to know exactly how that game is going to turn out. This is totally anecdotal and worthless, but I devoured every piece of information and preview I could get about Assassin's Creed before that came out, whereas I haven't bothered to look at anything AC3 related since the announcement. That's how I feel about where gaming is in general right now.

Apart from Kickstarter (which I'm fascinated by simply because of its potential to go spectacularly right or spectacularly wrong), there isn't really a hell of a lot going on in gaming at the moment that I feel inclined to read about. We'll see if the Wii U will shake things up, but console gaming (which is what these sites thrive on) really feels stuck in a rut to me. Giant Bomb is more resilient than most because it's primarily a personality driven entertainment site. People come for the staff and the 'soap opera' of the place - the coverage itself is secondary. I don't think GB lives and dies by the short term fluctuations of the industry.

Survival of the fittest!

In all honesty though, there aren't any personalities (Yeah, that actually matters to me) over at Gamespot that I enjoy. I really liked the old all-star crew (Gerstmann, Davis, Shoemaker, Rorie, Kasavin, Navarro, Gouskos, Gallup, Ekberg, etc) and it was a very large part of why I visited. I never got that same connection with any of their current staffers. If people want gaming news and reviews, they can get that anywhere. Interesting personalities and actual entertainment, now those are harder to find but Giant Bomb has it in steady supply.

I am mostly surprised about the amazing numbers GB is pulling, that is way higher than I expected.

I just looked up ign, they are down 2 million in the last 12 months too, very odd.

@laserbolts said:

I cant remember the last time I visited gamespot but it would be a shame if they went down the shitter.

Exactly. Because then they would all come here... like me.

@Kierkegaard said:

I thought Giant Bomb was part of a way smaller market than it is. Weird to think a site with millions of viewers could still be putting up videos of Drew in captain garb. Kinda love that.

Well said good Sir.

@ShockD said:

Considering how repulsive and cold their staff and community is, I have to say I'm not surprised at all. I guess they finally achieved what they were aiming for throughout the last years. Recently even IGN surpassed GS, which is indeed some bad news for the GS crew.

@ShockD: i thought that ign was supposed to be one of most popular of the sites?

Oh man, that is a really significant drop but I doubt they will die anytime soon.

I wonder if Polygon had any effect on this. Also, Giant Bomb is pulling great numbers, which is heartening.

I never cared for gamespots style. Rather ironically I thought the GB guys were extremely annoying and obnoxious to the point that I stopped going there after watching a couple videos with them in it. Not sure why the thing they did here clicked with me and I disliked them so much back then.

Is this why they asked me to fill out a servey for what to do with their website a couple days ago? Asking me if I would reccommend them to other people.

I answered just higher than neutral saying that they have improved a lot in the past year. Their news is a lot more concrete/trustworthy now that they pick and choose what to say*. I also find that their staff personalities have warmed slightly (Especially on their Gamespot Gameplay Podcast - btw the fact that I can't get it through the website an dhave to bookmark and RSS feed and then search the titles on the gamespot website is fucking stupid: someone should change that!). Still I find their refusal to hear other opinions on reviews and have a discussion about it is ultimately the thing that stops me recommending the site to anyone (the travesty that was the Skyward Sword review last year with blatantly false information about the controls still hasn't been officially mentioned by them again - although the writer of it has seemed to be improving in his mind-set for reviews when he appears on the Gamespot Gameplay Podcast).

Anyway, I hope they do take a lot of their survey information to use (and hopefully do more interesting content like the GGpodcast rather than relying on news) because I do actually think a couple of the personalities of people there make a really great dynamic when they speak more personally rather than being official all the time. No matter what, I'm not bitter and wish them all the best (they at least seem willing to try to make themselves better - whether that is due to them, Giantbomb's influence or just them getting less revenue).

*which I have to say, must have lowered the number of page views on their site per month purely because there are less pages up per month - although in my opinion the news that has gone up has been better since they restricted it (I wonder if that has something to do with the Giantbomb crew; less more significant/trustworthy news).

@NyxFe said:

I would be interested to know what happened on Jul 28, 2011 that caused it to be the highest traffic day in GB history, and a significant spike from surrounding days.

Here is all the content that Giant bomb released on Jul 28, 2011:

Reviews: Catherine, 2/5 stars

News: Nintendo Stock Drops 20% and One Man Loses $300 Million [UPDATED]

Dragon Age II Pulled From Steam, EA Points Finger at Valve

Perhaps Unsurprisingly, Nintendo's First Quarter Financials Are Less-Than-Stellar

Nintendo Slashes 3DS Price to $169.99, Early Adopters Get Free Games

Videos: Thursday Night Throwdown: 07/28/11 Quake III: Arena

The Second Part Of The Metro: Last Light E3 Demo

The Low-Grav Tribulations of John Rochard

Ratchet & Clank: All 4 One Will Have Ridiculous Weapons

Driver: San Francisco Multiplayer Trailer

Quick Look: Tom Clancy's Ghost Recon: Shadow Wars

I was bored.

@cutyoface said:

Oh man, that is a really significant drop but I doubt they will die anytime soon.

Yeah, at least they're still a tiny bit relevant. What's more baffling is the continued existence of walking corpses like gamespy.com or 1up.com.

@Jeff said:

@NyxFe said:

I would be interested to know what happened on Jul 28, 2011 that caused it to be the highest traffic day in GB history, and a significant spike from surrounding days.

I think this may have been some sort of big, popular link from Reddit or something. Don't remember.

Aw man, what the hell was it??

I've been here forever and I don't know what you're talking about and it's going to bug me all day :(

Come on man, throw me a bone!

@Xeirus: It was something from the forums, not one of our stories. But yeah, I don't remember what it actually was. I wanted to say the Black Ops emblems thread, but I'm not sure if the timing works out on that. That seems like it would have blown up huge way before July.

@Jeff said:

@Xeirus: It was something from the forums, not one of our stories. But yeah, I don't remember what it actually was. I wanted to say the Black Ops emblems thread, but I'm not sure if the timing works out on that. That seems like it would have blown up huge way before July.

You tease, I thought I was forgetting some massive event.

Fool me once Mr Gerstman... never again.

@Xeirus said:

@Jeff said:

I think this may have been some sort of big, popular link from Reddit or something. Don't remember.

Aw man, what the hell was it??

I've been here forever and I don't know what you're talking about and it's going to bug me all day :(

Come on man, throw me a bone!

Could it have been what most agree to be Giant Bomb's most controversial review with Catherine?

@FluxWaveZ said:

@Xeirus said:

@Jeff said:

I think this may have been some sort of big, popular link from Reddit or something. Don't remember.

Aw man, what the hell was it??

I've been here forever and I don't know what you're talking about and it's going to bug me all day :(

Come on man, throw me a bone!

Could it have been what most agree to be Giant Bomb's most controversial review with Catherine?

Catherine was never important enough globally to account for such a boost. It could have just been a perfect storm of events all happen to take place at the same time.

@NyxFe said:

I would be interested to know what happened on Jul 28, 2011 that caused it to be the highest traffic day in GB history, and a significant spike from surrounding days.

Videos: Thursday Night Throwdown: 07/28/11 Quake III: Arena

@ShockD said:

Considering how repulsive and cold their staff and community is, I have to say I'm not surprised at all. I guess they finally achieved what they were aiming for throughout the last years.

basically this, reviews and videos are like watching a fucking robot. could get more heartfelt and entertaining stuff off a weird anti-social kids game channel on youtube.