Gamespot may be getting a bit more than they bargained for in the wake of Jeff Gerstmann’s release from the company last November.
Earlier this month, the website lost longtime content contributer Frank Provo as a result of this issue, punctuated by a very honest and to-the-point farewell address written by the eight-year veteran. Now, another staffer will be packing up his office supplies and hitting the road, too.
Alex Navarro, a prolific Gamespot staff writer for nearly five years, has announced that he will be leaving the company on January 24th. In a recent interview, he shed some light on his situation:
"I felt like it was just time for me to go. Certainly [the decision to leave] had a lot to do with the whole Jeff [Gerstmann] situation. … I wouldn’t have left if this situation hadn’t gone down the way it did. … Sometimes you just realize a place isn’t for you anymore, you know?"
He went on to praise the other staffers who remain on board with Gamestop, giving nothing but respect to his former coleagues:
"There are a lot of people over there still trying to work hard and get through this, keep the name and the reputation of the site alive. Obviously that’s not an easy thing right now, but they’re still working their asses off trying to keep the dream alive. … Part of the reason I felt like I had to go now was that I wasn’t necessarily keeping up the same level of passion anymore, and that it wasn’t fair to those guys to stick around there if I wasn’t on board all the way."
Navarro’s feelings surrounding the Gerstmann issue were evident as early as November 30th of last year, when he published a blog post on the site, entitled "Bad Analogy Time." It read:
"Remember SimCity? Remember what a joy it was to build up a fully functioning, living, breathing city, full of life and wonderment? Then, at some point down the road, after you’ve built up your city to the peak of its productiveness, you’d start mashing the disaster button and a wide variety of tornadoes, earthquakes, and fake Godzillas would come tromping through, laying firey waste to every bit of what you’d worked so painstakingly to create?
Yeah. It’s a little bit like that. Except someone hit the disaster button for me."
Students of literature, this is a prime example of the term foreshadowing. As Alex puts it, "I think the sentiment was pretty clear."
As for the future, Alex has not made any commitments yet, but is considering his options in both the journalism and game development fields.
