Ouch. I recognize the first two immediately as frequent low-quality results for searches. They churn out a massive amount of junk to farm clicks from search engines, much of which I suspect is AI...
Valnet is based in Montreal and operates Screen Rant, Game Rant, Comic Book Resources, and other mass aggregators.
Ouch. I recognize the first two immediately as frequent low-quality results for searches. They churn out a massive amount of junk to farm clicks from search engines, much of which I suspect is AI generated at worst and human-generated noise at best.
Screen Rant is what you get when you search for "name of show season n" or such to see if a TV show has a release date announced, and instead you see posts written to show up on those searches but effectively say that there isn't any such news yet. But you can't tell from the summary and have to try and parse their SEO word vomit.
Game Rant is the hell you enter when you're stuck on a video game thing, Google for help, and realize you're alone on the empty shell of the former internet. You want help finding the key item in Baldur's Gate, and they'll helpfully tell you "when you're trying to find where to find the key item in Baldur's Gate, the key item in Baldur's Gate can be found in the place where the key item is, which is in the basement of the red house." (And said house doesn't have a basement.)
CBR is also low-quality clickbait trash. I really liked Polygon, although they seemed to be struggling the last few years, so this is a real bummer to me.
CBR is also low-quality clickbait trash. I really liked Polygon, although they seemed to be struggling the last few years, so this is a real bummer to me.
Yeah, also run by the same guy who runs Pornhub, which has arguably helped destroy the porn industry (according to a podcast I listened to). Who knew one Canadian would be the one to break so much...
Yeah, also run by the same guy who runs Pornhub, which has arguably helped destroy the porn industry (according to a podcast I listened to). Who knew one Canadian would be the one to break so much stuff.
Valnet and Fandom are two companies in particular that make me glad I pay for Kagi. Being able to downrank every one of their awful websites has vastly improved the quality of my search results.
Valnet and Fandom are two companies in particular that make me glad I pay for Kagi. Being able to downrank every one of their awful websites has vastly improved the quality of my search results.
I just saw this as well. Giantbomb was also shutdown today (or at least gutted). A dark day for games journalism. Planning on finding ways to support the journalists I follow this evening.
I just saw this as well. Giantbomb was also shutdown today (or at least gutted).
A dark day for games journalism. Planning on finding ways to support the journalists I follow this evening.
I feel for the people who've lost their jobs and I know there's a lot of passionate people out there, but at the same time I can't remember the last time I bothered to go to a polygon or similar...
I feel for the people who've lost their jobs and I know there's a lot of passionate people out there, but at the same time I can't remember the last time I bothered to go to a polygon or similar style article.
I've always found games journalism to be mostly awful (the rough equivalent of a car magazine having a soccer mom complain about the seating in a porsche while the porsche driver whines about the handling on a minivan + the usual issues of incentives warping results), and thats AFTER you strip out all the usual modern journalism issues. Dragging the story on, loading the page with ads and filler, attention grabbing headlines with half a paragraph of text, etc.
I've been much happier going to various groups for recommendations, or following a couple of youtubers who happen to have similar taste. Mortismal Gaming is probably the main one these days but I just find it easier to look at gameplay rather than read someone's supposed take on why they love or hate something.
They lost me a good 13 years ago or so. I long switched to relying on youtubers who focus on specific domains for if games are good. Genre-focused youtubers, publisher focused youtubers, even...
I can't remember the last time I bothered to go to a polygon or similar style article.
They lost me a good 13 years ago or so. I long switched to relying on youtubers who focus on specific domains for if games are good. Genre-focused youtubers, publisher focused youtubers, even franchise-specific youtubers. You can get much more granular this way and your reviewer is more consistent than any of a dozen possible game site reviewers.
I feel like this new "normal" isn't necessarily better than what we had before. While there are a fair number of content creators who fit your description, there are only so many hours in a day...
You can get much more granular this way and your reviewer is more consistent than any of a dozen possible game site reviewers.
I feel like this new "normal" isn't necessarily better than what we had before.
While there are a fair number of content creators who fit your description, there are only so many hours in a day they can dedicate to playing games for review. Worse, it often feels like their voices are drowned out by people who seemingly make it their full time job to be outrage merchants, polluting the search results of a game with whatever their hobby horse of the week is.
It highly depends on your gaming habits. Once you get a good feel for the kinds of games you like, or aspects of games you like, you look less for some general rubric on "is game mechanics good"...
I feel like this new "normal" isn't necessarily better than what we had before.
It highly depends on your gaming habits. Once you get a good feel for the kinds of games you like, or aspects of games you like, you look less for some general rubric on "is game mechanics good" and focus more on how a game executes within its field. No amount of 10/10's will really convince me to play an FPS because I know I'm not into FPS. But an RPG youtuber praising the narrative of an FPS may convince me otherwise, because they already appeal to an aspect of a game I place more weight on. I see that as a great thing, but a more niche aspect.
there are only so many hours in a day they can dedicate to playing games for review.
Certainly. That's a part of where trust comes into play. Someone who has navigates and aligned with me playing several other platformers can be trusted to review a new platformer, even if they don't get to truly complete all the game's content. Their "quality" per hour when playing can matter more than a general review (which has its audience as well. But may not resonate as much with me).
It also helps that Youtubers tend to not have some rush to put out a score for aggregators; they can get reviews out days or weeks later. Or even take their time and make a grand retrospective months later, for players who didn't decide to buy in at launch.
it often feels like their voices are drowned out by people who seemingly make it their full time job to be outrage merchants, polluting the search results of a game with whatever their hobby horse of the week is.
Yeah, noise is inevitable no matter the medium. That's definitely where communities like this can help filter through and have potentially underrated reviewers shine through. There's no really helpinig that those clickbait tricks unfortunately work out, though. That's an issue I've bee forlorn on for decades, but it's a societal aspect that simply comes down to the fact that fans are always a minority compared to the more casual dabblers in any given hobby.
I'd agree, though think fondly of early Polygon. In particular the content that Brian David Gilbert made and Chris Plante's old reviews. Their official reviews were still pretty good. Over all...
I'd agree, though think fondly of early Polygon. In particular the content that Brian David Gilbert made and Chris Plante's old reviews. Their official reviews were still pretty good.
Over all what's striking to me is to have two institutions gutted suddenly on the same day. It's another point on the trend line of enshitification. As you've pointed out, the best content is youtube creators like Mortismal, SKill Up, Second Wind.
I'll always fondly remember their just beautifully designed review pages for the PS4 and Xbox One, with the animated vector hero images of the consoles and their controllers. The images are also...
I'll always fondly remember their just beautifully designed review pages for the PS4 and Xbox One, with the animated vector hero images of the consoles and their controllers. The images are also interactive!
Youtubers seem to be a good source of reviews and commentary on current events now, there are enough (at least seemingly) unbiased ones out there to get a good idea of if a new game is good or...
Youtubers seem to be a good source of reviews and commentary on current events now, there are enough (at least seemingly) unbiased ones out there to get a good idea of if a new game is good or not. I stopped caring what traditional games journalists thought a long time ago, it seemed way too likely to be fluff or obviously biased stuff.
I really don't want to start another debate about GamerGate, but imo the one area in which they were right, whether it was because they truly saw it or by coincidence, was insisting that gaming...
I really don't want to start another debate about GamerGate, but imo the one area in which they were right, whether it was because they truly saw it or by coincidence, was insisting that gaming journalism is unprofessional and bad.
The development seems to follow this: a huge part of the audience shifted towards independent content creators and long running media tend to shrink and close down rather than the opposite.
Can't say I'm exactly happy about that, but I don't read them either. It always feels like gaming media is stuck in a weird place between "unprofessional enthusiasts" writing about videogames in a way that provides little perspective and broader context but tells a lot about the nature of the game itself, often with technical details, and actual journalism with educated, interesting and level-headed observations combined with a good grasp of the language. Somehow they don't seem to manage to do either of those things.
Because it's not journalism. Plain as. This whole notion of calling entertainment media reporting "journalism" was a Steven Bannon proto-MAGA tactic to start the ball rolling on ruining public...
Because it's not journalism. Plain as. This whole notion of calling entertainment media reporting "journalism" was a Steven Bannon proto-MAGA tactic to start the ball rolling on ruining public trust in media. This was covered in Bob Woodward's first Trump book. They refer to editorials and opinions as "journalism" and then tell people who think "Wait, I don't think this is that bad" that they're being attacked by journalists, and then the dominoes start falling. The whole notion of "lying MSM" is exactly the same thing GamerGate did with "games journalism". The fact that people refer to editorials and reviews as "journalism" still is downright appalling.
Entertainment media reporting cannot and will never be journalism on par with local news, politics, government, crime, or other traditional subjects of journalism. Look at book, film, and music coverage. They are more like "games 'journalism'" than they are like actual journalism. These are industries where the message is tightly controlled by capitalistic structures, designed to keep the bottom line up and not actually provide all information possible. Unlike actual journalistic subjects, one cannot simply go and get all the information with enough legwork. There are so many blockers in place that beginning any actual journalism in entertainment takes years of toeing the line and building relationships behind the scenes first. Jason Schreier did not come out the gate exposing the underbelly of gaming.
GameGate was no more "right" than a broken clock, especially when you remember they reject actual journalism all the time just because they do not like where it comes from. Do not give them credit for their insidious bullshit happening to be kinda right in very broad strokes.
Those indendent content creators you're praising don't actually do anything different than the outlets that that are "unprofessional and bad". They just don't have the baggage of years of shitty memes and misinformation. The biggest difference is that they stay quiet on social issues out of fear of retribution. Any independent content creator that dares to make their politics known is guaranteed to invite all kinds of lies and misinformation sent their way, and will have their ceiling limited due to how many "gamers" still fall for this bullshit every day.
Even earlier, there was a comment saying the whole problem with "games journalism" and its downfall is that they dared to state opinions on political issues. Not that they had bad ones, but that they had any at all. This is a huge red flag and people need to start checking themselves about what is true and what is based on years of bad assumptions.
I have to reject most of this. I don't much care about the origins of the "games journalism" label or the label itself - I agree that by most definitions it is not journalism, but it has been...
I have to reject most of this. I don't much care about the origins of the "games journalism" label or the label itself - I agree that by most definitions it is not journalism, but it has been widely accepted and used by sources that don't exactly have a conservative bias, like Wikipedia. Jason Schreier calls himself "[...] journalist who mostly writes about video games," seems good enough as well.
In any case my problem is with the substance, not with the label.
Look at book, film, and music coverage. They are more like "games 'journalism'" than they are like actual journalism
In my experience authors and media with higher standards exists in those areas, especially film and books. I disagree that those are all exclusively controlled by financial incentives that do not allow authors to be negative and truthful.
Those indendent content creators you're praising don't actually do anything different than the outlets that that are "unprofessional and bad".
This has not been my experience.
Any independent content creator that dares to make their politics known is guaranteed to invite all kinds of lies and misinformation sent their way, and will have their ceiling limited due to how many "gamers" still fall for this bullshit every day.
Sure, this is probably true and it's not a good thing. But looking purely from a selfish point of view of a viewer/reader who wants to get accurate information about videogames, this problem seems to stand in the way of that less than the bias and/or incompetence of gaming media.
The fact that you've attributed a win to GamerGate over their dishonest premises means that we have to start caring. You're speaking as if opinion pieces you disagree with are sabotaging this...
The fact that you've attributed a win to GamerGate over their dishonest premises means that we have to start caring. You're speaking as if opinion pieces you disagree with are sabotaging this ideal of "journalism" (i.e. "accurate" coverage of video games) that never really existed. Entertainment media has always been largely editorials outside of boilerplate press release coverage for the most part. Even if you find other media coverage to be higher quality, that doesn't change the fact that they're still not journalism. And of course they will be higher quality, all those other media have a legitimate academic side of them with an audience that has appreciated and invested in higher levels of thought and consideration. Gaming has never had that, so publication has always been aiming a lot lower.
What attempts there were to elevate it were dismantled by exactly the movement that you say was right. That movement was spawned to stop the elevation of gaming media by hyperfocusing on the growing awareness of applying social science lenses to games, which is a first step to academic coverage of a medium. Art reflects society, and you cannot examine it without getting into social issues and politics. There are of course growing pains but it's exactly those pains that GamerGate took advantage of. That whole Steven Bannon method hinges on convincing people to believe "I like the ideal of journalism, but I don't like this 'journalism'. That means they're harmful to journalism and therefore objectively bad." This is their insidious method, and it should not just be passively accepted.
What this ignores, and preys on the ignorance of, is that this is what editorials always have been: people's opinions. Some are bad, some are good. That's always been the case. Video game media coverage is not somehow worse than anything that has come before when it comes to entertainment coverage. It may have a different tone or content, and even a different reading level, but everything from well-reasoned and nuanced pieces to petty bullshit rants have been done for a long, long time. You can even find ones just like these in textbooks covering 18th century poetry, where you can read some real bullshit opinion pieces about the up and coming Romantic movement.
So what is it about this particular stream of entertainment media that's so much worse than anything that came before that it's now labelled "bad", "unprofessional", fake positive, and untruthful? What exactly was GamerGate correct about when so much of their basis was built on lies and exaggerations?
I brought up Jason Schreier as an exception because he is probably the only person in the entire industry more famous for his journalism than his editorials and to say that he's an outlier, not the gold standard. Yet I would wager that if I gave you one of his editorials, it would be exactly the kind of thing you are calling "bad" or "unprofessional" (i.e. his Dragon's Crown opinion pieces) because he held a strong, unpopular stance about something.
What exact experience do you have to suggest independent content creators are doing something markedly and significantly different from the big outlets? The only major difference is one I already highlighted. What exactly are you referring to regarding how gaming media was apparently inaccurate on their subject of their coverage? What examples of games were so inaccurately portrayed across big outlets but were truthfully covered by independent sources?
I said "imo the one area in which they were right, whether it was because they truly saw it or by coincidence", that is in my opinion enough of a "disclaimer". I disagree with this projection. And...
The fact that you've attributed a win to GamerGate over their dishonest premises means that we have to start caring.
I said "imo the one area in which they were right, whether it was because they truly saw it or by coincidence", that is in my opinion enough of a "disclaimer".
You're speaking as if opinion pieces you disagree with are sabotaging this ideal of "journalism" (i.e. "accurate" coverage of video games) that never really existed.
I disagree with this projection. And I come from a country that, for about 20 years, had "enthusiast magazines" ran by people with little actual journalist skills and sometimes not a lot of language skills or good taste either (in terms of writing style, not taste in videogames), but mostly were pretty decent, if simple and formulaic. They provided mostly reviews that were reasonably trustworthy and not visibly swayed by marketing and for that were widely respected by players and successful until online media kind of broke the market. I used to make pocket money reviewing videogames for a couple years at that time, so I knew some of those peope in person.
This was all quite low-brow and it certainly wasn't proper journalism, but it was reliable and good enough for me. My issue is that most mainstream gaming media in the anglosphere seem to be capable of neither that, nor proper journalism, because regardless of their opinion they usually don't seem to be competent enough, focus on clickbaity trendy topics (an issue with a lot of amateurish online media in general) etc.
The fact that there are no (credible) universities teaching you to be a videogame critic surely plays some part in this, I am aware, but why should a customer care about that? When the quality is not there, I don't really care why.
Honestly what I find strange is that you have such a big issue with me disrespecting the field. I'm not a culture warrior who argues on twitter about the state of videogame journalism, I just don't think it's very good or that it deserves to be held as something particularly valuable that deserves protection. My emotion is closer to "meh" than hate.
What this ignores, and preys on the ignorance of, is that this is what editorials always have been: people's opinions. Some are bad, some are good.
This is a bit of a side topic, but it's related: the journalistic customs and traditions in the anglosphere are different from those in other parts of the world. Since politics in media was mentioned somewhere above, let's talk about that: in my country it's considered improper to openly endorse political parties and candidates by any medium and for example endorsing a president is practically unheard of. This is partially because we don't have a de facto two party system, so our politics is not just "if you're not with us, you have to be against us". But it's also a result of tradition - people expect a much stronger focus on impartiality, even though perfect impartiality does not exist. Media like Fox News or MSNBC do not exist here.
By saying this I want to convey two things: firstly the situation is not just "people write about their opinions, good or bad, that's how it always was", there's nuance in how they do it. Secondly I think that, in this very specific aspect of journalism and media in general, our tradition is better.
What exact experience do you have to suggest independent content creators are doing something markedly and significantly different from the big outlets? The only major difference is one I already highlighted. What exactly are you referring to regarding how gaming media was apparently inaccurate on their subject of their coverage? What examples of games were so inaccurately portrayed across big outlets but were truthfully covered by independent sources?
Answering all this would require me to spend effort seeking out examples of things that I've been avoiding for years due to past experiences. It would take me at least an hour of actively researching something I don't believe is worth caring about. I'll think about it tomorrow (it's very late here), but even writing this wall of text took more time and energy than I originally wanted to spend on it.
That's largely because gaming journalism was ALWAYS marketing first, unlike many other "review" types of journalism. If Car and Driver shills a car that is utter garbage, there will absolutely be...
That's largely because gaming journalism was ALWAYS marketing first, unlike many other "review" types of journalism.
If Car and Driver shills a car that is utter garbage, there will absolutely be pushback, and it could damage their brand. Not to say it doesn't happen, but this is largely in part due to the heavy consequence involved of lots of enthusiasts and normal people being pissed that something they spent at least 5 figures on is garbage.
Thus many "review/journalism" companies try to make sure they're being quite clear on various factors with lots of different numbers and breakdowns with some level of objective testing. That said in this example the same car could get "this is a pile of junk that'll never leave the garage" vs "it's a passion project car for the enthusiast, but you need to be ready to work and spend on it" depending on if it's got a BMW logo, but at least there's SOME clarity on what the hell is going on.
Gaming journalism was always about getting the person who bashed through things on the couch interested, and that was about it. Enthusiasts were ignored or looked down upon for a majority of their existence.
I am fighting game player, and while I understand most people (especially back in the days of say, Soul Calibur 2) don't know much about these systems, its also embarrassing to have someone who claims to be of any journalistic quality spouting off straight up falsehoods about a game, just because they're objective bad at it.
Now it's FINE that they're bad at it. Most people are and thus they want to know if it's fun for them. But when the article is written as if they're not, that's when it's concerning. Further for ACTUAL enthusiasts like me, I know that any gaming journalist article about a fighting game is just going to be wrong from every angle, so in order to actually learn anything I care about (is it balanced, is the system engaging, does it handle known issue in the genre/industry or continue to ignore them) I MUST go outside of their product.
Not disagreeing here in terms of western media, but in my tiny country in the middle of Europe gaming media used to be run by enthusiasts from the beginning until probably around 2010. The quality...
Gaming journalism was always about getting the person who bashed through things on the couch interested, and that was about it. Enthusiasts were ignored or looked down upon for a majority of their existence.
Not disagreeing here in terms of western media, but in my tiny country in the middle of Europe gaming media used to be run by enthusiasts from the beginning until probably around 2010. The quality of their writing varied wildly from actually good to terrible and cringy, but on average was acceptable and it was very clear that they cared about videogames, and videogames only. The mainstream shunned them, the gamers generally liked and respected them and the reviews tended to be useful, with exceptions giving a high rating to a pile of junk being rare enough that you could consider it a personal failure and not a systemic issue due to financial incentives.
This is why I was surprised when I found out that in the US this is not the case and most of the big gaming media seem to be untrustworthy.
I love Polygon and am very saddened to see that it's going to get ravaged. I thought that Vox Media would be better than this and sell it to a company that would respect the brand and its history....
I love Polygon and am very saddened to see that it's going to get ravaged. I thought that Vox Media would be better than this and sell it to a company that would respect the brand and its history.
It's also a good reminder to pay for good journalism. The internet and its cornucopia of free information have trained us to not value journalism. But good journalism—the art of bringing good information to us—is not cheap or easy.
Tbh I don’t actually know what gaming journalist outlets I’d actually consume the content of anymore, let alone pay for. What can they offer these days? We can get news straight from the companies...
Tbh I don’t actually know what gaming journalist outlets I’d actually consume the content of anymore, let alone pay for. What can they offer these days? We can get news straight from the companies these days. Walkthroughs are better done by YouTube creators. Reviews are highly personal and it’s more likely you’d find an independent reviewer that better aligns with your personal tastes. Not to mention you can just watch endless hours of gameplay to make your own decision.
If they can’t actually offer anything worth consuming then their eventual death is just what it is.
I consider People Make Games journalists and they are definitely working on stories that are not going to be coming from any companies. They are spending quite a lot of resources on investigations...
I consider People Make Games journalists and they are definitely working on stories that are not going to be coming from any companies. They are spending quite a lot of resources on investigations and reporting that individual youtube creators are probably not as able to do.
Experienced this just now. I wanted to check how a recent game is being received out of curiosity, and the big sites like Polygon are basically just talking about the general facts of the game....
Reviews are highly personal and it’s more likely you’d find an independent reviewer that better aligns with your personal tastes
Experienced this just now. I wanted to check how a recent game is being received out of curiosity, and the big sites like Polygon are basically just talking about the general facts of the game. The basic overview of the plot, the existence of multiple endings, basic outline of the mechanics, etc. It basically read like a summary of the game you can find anywhere rather than the writer's experience with it. Barely any opinion present. Ended up finding more detailed reviews on blogs and sites dedicated to the genre.
I guess most formal reporting I'd be interested in would be either A) the business side (shutdowns and layoffs, or stories like how Stardew Valley had pirates actually buy legit copies after loving it—which is how I first heard about it), or B) reports of hilarious disasters and actively unfolding trainwrecks.
Though it's a shame we will never again get professional reviews like these two gems.
I’ve actually been reading Rock Paper Shotgun on and off for many years now. The journalists come and go, but the quality seems to stay mostly consistent (at least in my opinion). I think there...
I’ve actually been reading Rock Paper Shotgun on and off for many years now. The journalists come and go, but the quality seems to stay mostly consistent (at least in my opinion). I think there was a shakeup regarding staffing there about a year or two ago but I’ve continued reading and still find it super useful. Besides the reviews, which feel fair, they post a lot of articles that are like “hey here’s this strange new indie game that just released and we’re loving”. I’ve discovered so many games from reading them that I otherwise would have completely missed.
Awful news. Holding out hope that a group of former staff start an independent co-op publication like Defector, Aftermath, etc. sooner or later — I’d gladly subscribe day 1.
Awful news. Holding out hope that a group of former staff start an independent co-op publication like Defector, Aftermath, etc. sooner or later — I’d gladly subscribe day 1.
Ouch. I recognize the first two immediately as frequent low-quality results for searches. They churn out a massive amount of junk to farm clicks from search engines, much of which I suspect is AI generated at worst and human-generated noise at best.
Screen Rant is what you get when you search for "name of show season n" or such to see if a TV show has a release date announced, and instead you see posts written to show up on those searches but effectively say that there isn't any such news yet. But you can't tell from the summary and have to try and parse their SEO word vomit.
Game Rant is the hell you enter when you're stuck on a video game thing, Google for help, and realize you're alone on the empty shell of the former internet. You want help finding the key item in Baldur's Gate, and they'll helpfully tell you "when you're trying to find where to find the key item in Baldur's Gate, the key item in Baldur's Gate can be found in the place where the key item is, which is in the basement of the red house." (And said house doesn't have a basement.)
CBR is also low-quality clickbait trash. I really liked Polygon, although they seemed to be struggling the last few years, so this is a real bummer to me.
Oh...now that you abbreviated it I recognize that one too.
Yeah, also run by the same guy who runs Pornhub, which has arguably helped destroy the porn industry (according to a podcast I listened to). Who knew one Canadian would be the one to break so much stuff.
Valnet and Fandom are two companies in particular that make me glad I pay for Kagi. Being able to downrank every one of their awful websites has vastly improved the quality of my search results.
I just saw this as well. Giantbomb was also shutdown today (or at least gutted).
A dark day for games journalism. Planning on finding ways to support the journalists I follow this evening.
I feel for the people who've lost their jobs and I know there's a lot of passionate people out there, but at the same time I can't remember the last time I bothered to go to a polygon or similar style article.
I've always found games journalism to be mostly awful (the rough equivalent of a car magazine having a soccer mom complain about the seating in a porsche while the porsche driver whines about the handling on a minivan + the usual issues of incentives warping results), and thats AFTER you strip out all the usual modern journalism issues. Dragging the story on, loading the page with ads and filler, attention grabbing headlines with half a paragraph of text, etc.
I've been much happier going to various groups for recommendations, or following a couple of youtubers who happen to have similar taste. Mortismal Gaming is probably the main one these days but I just find it easier to look at gameplay rather than read someone's supposed take on why they love or hate something.
They lost me a good 13 years ago or so. I long switched to relying on youtubers who focus on specific domains for if games are good. Genre-focused youtubers, publisher focused youtubers, even franchise-specific youtubers. You can get much more granular this way and your reviewer is more consistent than any of a dozen possible game site reviewers.
I feel like this new "normal" isn't necessarily better than what we had before.
While there are a fair number of content creators who fit your description, there are only so many hours in a day they can dedicate to playing games for review. Worse, it often feels like their voices are drowned out by people who seemingly make it their full time job to be outrage merchants, polluting the search results of a game with whatever their hobby horse of the week is.
It highly depends on your gaming habits. Once you get a good feel for the kinds of games you like, or aspects of games you like, you look less for some general rubric on "is game mechanics good" and focus more on how a game executes within its field. No amount of 10/10's will really convince me to play an FPS because I know I'm not into FPS. But an RPG youtuber praising the narrative of an FPS may convince me otherwise, because they already appeal to an aspect of a game I place more weight on. I see that as a great thing, but a more niche aspect.
Certainly. That's a part of where trust comes into play. Someone who has navigates and aligned with me playing several other platformers can be trusted to review a new platformer, even if they don't get to truly complete all the game's content. Their "quality" per hour when playing can matter more than a general review (which has its audience as well. But may not resonate as much with me).
It also helps that Youtubers tend to not have some rush to put out a score for aggregators; they can get reviews out days or weeks later. Or even take their time and make a grand retrospective months later, for players who didn't decide to buy in at launch.
Yeah, noise is inevitable no matter the medium. That's definitely where communities like this can help filter through and have potentially underrated reviewers shine through. There's no really helpinig that those clickbait tricks unfortunately work out, though. That's an issue I've bee forlorn on for decades, but it's a societal aspect that simply comes down to the fact that fans are always a minority compared to the more casual dabblers in any given hobby.
I'd agree, though think fondly of early Polygon. In particular the content that Brian David Gilbert made and Chris Plante's old reviews. Their official reviews were still pretty good.
Over all what's striking to me is to have two institutions gutted suddenly on the same day. It's another point on the trend line of enshitification. As you've pointed out, the best content is youtube creators like Mortismal, SKill Up, Second Wind.
I'll always fondly remember their just beautifully designed review pages for the PS4 and Xbox One, with the animated vector hero images of the consoles and their controllers. The images are also interactive!
https://www.polygon.com/a/ps4-review/console
https://www.polygon.com/a/xbox-one-review
Youtubers seem to be a good source of reviews and commentary on current events now, there are enough (at least seemingly) unbiased ones out there to get a good idea of if a new game is good or not. I stopped caring what traditional games journalists thought a long time ago, it seemed way too likely to be fluff or obviously biased stuff.
I really don't want to start another debate about GamerGate, but imo the one area in which they were right, whether it was because they truly saw it or by coincidence, was insisting that gaming journalism is unprofessional and bad.
The development seems to follow this: a huge part of the audience shifted towards independent content creators and long running media tend to shrink and close down rather than the opposite.
Can't say I'm exactly happy about that, but I don't read them either. It always feels like gaming media is stuck in a weird place between "unprofessional enthusiasts" writing about videogames in a way that provides little perspective and broader context but tells a lot about the nature of the game itself, often with technical details, and actual journalism with educated, interesting and level-headed observations combined with a good grasp of the language. Somehow they don't seem to manage to do either of those things.
Because it's not journalism. Plain as. This whole notion of calling entertainment media reporting "journalism" was a Steven Bannon proto-MAGA tactic to start the ball rolling on ruining public trust in media. This was covered in Bob Woodward's first Trump book. They refer to editorials and opinions as "journalism" and then tell people who think "Wait, I don't think this is that bad" that they're being attacked by journalists, and then the dominoes start falling. The whole notion of "lying MSM" is exactly the same thing GamerGate did with "games journalism". The fact that people refer to editorials and reviews as "journalism" still is downright appalling.
Entertainment media reporting cannot and will never be journalism on par with local news, politics, government, crime, or other traditional subjects of journalism. Look at book, film, and music coverage. They are more like "games 'journalism'" than they are like actual journalism. These are industries where the message is tightly controlled by capitalistic structures, designed to keep the bottom line up and not actually provide all information possible. Unlike actual journalistic subjects, one cannot simply go and get all the information with enough legwork. There are so many blockers in place that beginning any actual journalism in entertainment takes years of toeing the line and building relationships behind the scenes first. Jason Schreier did not come out the gate exposing the underbelly of gaming.
GameGate was no more "right" than a broken clock, especially when you remember they reject actual journalism all the time just because they do not like where it comes from. Do not give them credit for their insidious bullshit happening to be kinda right in very broad strokes.
Those indendent content creators you're praising don't actually do anything different than the outlets that that are "unprofessional and bad". They just don't have the baggage of years of shitty memes and misinformation. The biggest difference is that they stay quiet on social issues out of fear of retribution. Any independent content creator that dares to make their politics known is guaranteed to invite all kinds of lies and misinformation sent their way, and will have their ceiling limited due to how many "gamers" still fall for this bullshit every day.
Even earlier, there was a comment saying the whole problem with "games journalism" and its downfall is that they dared to state opinions on political issues. Not that they had bad ones, but that they had any at all. This is a huge red flag and people need to start checking themselves about what is true and what is based on years of bad assumptions.
I have to reject most of this. I don't much care about the origins of the "games journalism" label or the label itself - I agree that by most definitions it is not journalism, but it has been widely accepted and used by sources that don't exactly have a conservative bias, like Wikipedia. Jason Schreier calls himself "[...] journalist who mostly writes about video games," seems good enough as well.
In any case my problem is with the substance, not with the label.
In my experience authors and media with higher standards exists in those areas, especially film and books. I disagree that those are all exclusively controlled by financial incentives that do not allow authors to be negative and truthful.
This has not been my experience.
Sure, this is probably true and it's not a good thing. But looking purely from a selfish point of view of a viewer/reader who wants to get accurate information about videogames, this problem seems to stand in the way of that less than the bias and/or incompetence of gaming media.
The fact that you've attributed a win to GamerGate over their dishonest premises means that we have to start caring. You're speaking as if opinion pieces you disagree with are sabotaging this ideal of "journalism" (i.e. "accurate" coverage of video games) that never really existed. Entertainment media has always been largely editorials outside of boilerplate press release coverage for the most part. Even if you find other media coverage to be higher quality, that doesn't change the fact that they're still not journalism. And of course they will be higher quality, all those other media have a legitimate academic side of them with an audience that has appreciated and invested in higher levels of thought and consideration. Gaming has never had that, so publication has always been aiming a lot lower.
What attempts there were to elevate it were dismantled by exactly the movement that you say was right. That movement was spawned to stop the elevation of gaming media by hyperfocusing on the growing awareness of applying social science lenses to games, which is a first step to academic coverage of a medium. Art reflects society, and you cannot examine it without getting into social issues and politics. There are of course growing pains but it's exactly those pains that GamerGate took advantage of. That whole Steven Bannon method hinges on convincing people to believe "I like the ideal of journalism, but I don't like this 'journalism'. That means they're harmful to journalism and therefore objectively bad." This is their insidious method, and it should not just be passively accepted.
What this ignores, and preys on the ignorance of, is that this is what editorials always have been: people's opinions. Some are bad, some are good. That's always been the case. Video game media coverage is not somehow worse than anything that has come before when it comes to entertainment coverage. It may have a different tone or content, and even a different reading level, but everything from well-reasoned and nuanced pieces to petty bullshit rants have been done for a long, long time. You can even find ones just like these in textbooks covering 18th century poetry, where you can read some real bullshit opinion pieces about the up and coming Romantic movement.
So what is it about this particular stream of entertainment media that's so much worse than anything that came before that it's now labelled "bad", "unprofessional", fake positive, and untruthful? What exactly was GamerGate correct about when so much of their basis was built on lies and exaggerations?
I brought up Jason Schreier as an exception because he is probably the only person in the entire industry more famous for his journalism than his editorials and to say that he's an outlier, not the gold standard. Yet I would wager that if I gave you one of his editorials, it would be exactly the kind of thing you are calling "bad" or "unprofessional" (i.e. his Dragon's Crown opinion pieces) because he held a strong, unpopular stance about something.
What exact experience do you have to suggest independent content creators are doing something markedly and significantly different from the big outlets? The only major difference is one I already highlighted. What exactly are you referring to regarding how gaming media was apparently inaccurate on their subject of their coverage? What examples of games were so inaccurately portrayed across big outlets but were truthfully covered by independent sources?
I said "imo the one area in which they were right, whether it was because they truly saw it or by coincidence", that is in my opinion enough of a "disclaimer".
I disagree with this projection. And I come from a country that, for about 20 years, had "enthusiast magazines" ran by people with little actual journalist skills and sometimes not a lot of language skills or good taste either (in terms of writing style, not taste in videogames), but mostly were pretty decent, if simple and formulaic. They provided mostly reviews that were reasonably trustworthy and not visibly swayed by marketing and for that were widely respected by players and successful until online media kind of broke the market. I used to make pocket money reviewing videogames for a couple years at that time, so I knew some of those peope in person.
This was all quite low-brow and it certainly wasn't proper journalism, but it was reliable and good enough for me. My issue is that most mainstream gaming media in the anglosphere seem to be capable of neither that, nor proper journalism, because regardless of their opinion they usually don't seem to be competent enough, focus on clickbaity trendy topics (an issue with a lot of amateurish online media in general) etc.
The fact that there are no (credible) universities teaching you to be a videogame critic surely plays some part in this, I am aware, but why should a customer care about that? When the quality is not there, I don't really care why.
Honestly what I find strange is that you have such a big issue with me disrespecting the field. I'm not a culture warrior who argues on twitter about the state of videogame journalism, I just don't think it's very good or that it deserves to be held as something particularly valuable that deserves protection. My emotion is closer to "meh" than hate.
This is a bit of a side topic, but it's related: the journalistic customs and traditions in the anglosphere are different from those in other parts of the world. Since politics in media was mentioned somewhere above, let's talk about that: in my country it's considered improper to openly endorse political parties and candidates by any medium and for example endorsing a president is practically unheard of. This is partially because we don't have a de facto two party system, so our politics is not just "if you're not with us, you have to be against us". But it's also a result of tradition - people expect a much stronger focus on impartiality, even though perfect impartiality does not exist. Media like Fox News or MSNBC do not exist here.
By saying this I want to convey two things: firstly the situation is not just "people write about their opinions, good or bad, that's how it always was", there's nuance in how they do it. Secondly I think that, in this very specific aspect of journalism and media in general, our tradition is better.
Answering all this would require me to spend effort seeking out examples of things that I've been avoiding for years due to past experiences. It would take me at least an hour of actively researching something I don't believe is worth caring about. I'll think about it tomorrow (it's very late here), but even writing this wall of text took more time and energy than I originally wanted to spend on it.
That's largely because gaming journalism was ALWAYS marketing first, unlike many other "review" types of journalism.
If Car and Driver shills a car that is utter garbage, there will absolutely be pushback, and it could damage their brand. Not to say it doesn't happen, but this is largely in part due to the heavy consequence involved of lots of enthusiasts and normal people being pissed that something they spent at least 5 figures on is garbage.
Thus many "review/journalism" companies try to make sure they're being quite clear on various factors with lots of different numbers and breakdowns with some level of objective testing. That said in this example the same car could get "this is a pile of junk that'll never leave the garage" vs "it's a passion project car for the enthusiast, but you need to be ready to work and spend on it" depending on if it's got a BMW logo, but at least there's SOME clarity on what the hell is going on.
Gaming journalism was always about getting the person who bashed through things on the couch interested, and that was about it. Enthusiasts were ignored or looked down upon for a majority of their existence.
I am fighting game player, and while I understand most people (especially back in the days of say, Soul Calibur 2) don't know much about these systems, its also embarrassing to have someone who claims to be of any journalistic quality spouting off straight up falsehoods about a game, just because they're objective bad at it.
Now it's FINE that they're bad at it. Most people are and thus they want to know if it's fun for them. But when the article is written as if they're not, that's when it's concerning. Further for ACTUAL enthusiasts like me, I know that any gaming journalist article about a fighting game is just going to be wrong from every angle, so in order to actually learn anything I care about (is it balanced, is the system engaging, does it handle known issue in the genre/industry or continue to ignore them) I MUST go outside of their product.
Not disagreeing here in terms of western media, but in my tiny country in the middle of Europe gaming media used to be run by enthusiasts from the beginning until probably around 2010. The quality of their writing varied wildly from actually good to terrible and cringy, but on average was acceptable and it was very clear that they cared about videogames, and videogames only. The mainstream shunned them, the gamers generally liked and respected them and the reviews tended to be useful, with exceptions giving a high rating to a pile of junk being rare enough that you could consider it a personal failure and not a systemic issue due to financial incentives.
This is why I was surprised when I found out that in the US this is not the case and most of the big gaming media seem to be untrustworthy.
I love Polygon and am very saddened to see that it's going to get ravaged. I thought that Vox Media would be better than this and sell it to a company that would respect the brand and its history.
It's also a good reminder to pay for good journalism. The internet and its cornucopia of free information have trained us to not value journalism. But good journalism—the art of bringing good information to us—is not cheap or easy.
Tbh I don’t actually know what gaming journalist outlets I’d actually consume the content of anymore, let alone pay for. What can they offer these days? We can get news straight from the companies these days. Walkthroughs are better done by YouTube creators. Reviews are highly personal and it’s more likely you’d find an independent reviewer that better aligns with your personal tastes. Not to mention you can just watch endless hours of gameplay to make your own decision.
If they can’t actually offer anything worth consuming then their eventual death is just what it is.
I consider People Make Games journalists and they are definitely working on stories that are not going to be coming from any companies. They are spending quite a lot of resources on investigations and reporting that individual youtube creators are probably not as able to do.
Experienced this just now. I wanted to check how a recent game is being received out of curiosity, and the big sites like Polygon are basically just talking about the general facts of the game. The basic overview of the plot, the existence of multiple endings, basic outline of the mechanics, etc. It basically read like a summary of the game you can find anywhere rather than the writer's experience with it. Barely any opinion present. Ended up finding more detailed reviews on blogs and sites dedicated to the genre.
I guess most formal reporting I'd be interested in would be either A) the business side (shutdowns and layoffs, or stories like how Stardew Valley had pirates actually buy legit copies after loving it—which is how I first heard about it), or B) reports of hilarious disasters and actively unfolding trainwrecks.
Though it's a shame we will never again get professional reviews like these two gems.
I’ve actually been reading Rock Paper Shotgun on and off for many years now. The journalists come and go, but the quality seems to stay mostly consistent (at least in my opinion). I think there was a shakeup regarding staffing there about a year or two ago but I’ve continued reading and still find it super useful. Besides the reviews, which feel fair, they post a lot of articles that are like “hey here’s this strange new indie game that just released and we’re loving”. I’ve discovered so many games from reading them that I otherwise would have completely missed.
I don’t play many games, but if I want a quick review of a game I’ve never heard of, I usually search for the Rock Paper Shotgun review.
Sold to a click-farm company too, yikes
Awful news. Holding out hope that a group of former staff start an independent co-op publication like Defector, Aftermath, etc. sooner or later — I’d gladly subscribe day 1.
This sucks. RIP Polygon.