“For quality games media, I continue to believe that the best form of stability is dedicated reader bases to remove reliance on funds, and a hybrid of direct reader funding and advertisements. If people want to keep reading quality content from full time professionals, they need to support it or lose it. That’s never been more critical than now.”
The games media outlets that have survived, except for Gamespot and IGN, have just about all switched to this model. It seems to be the only way it survives.
Back in like 2012, a gaming journalist would write an honest review of a game they tried or they would give an update on the industry or they would share interesting tips and info about certain games and franchises. The sites would clean, maybe a couple of ads here and there, but the overall atmosphere is driven by genuine passion.
Today, you don’t get any of that. Instead you get an advertisement masquerading as an article. The reviews aren’t authentic, the updates are basically a part of marketing campaigns, and the info they give is to push readers to buy something. The sites are all completely cluttered with ads, a lot of the articles are just AI slop, and the industry is driven by greed. Why would anybody go there anymore? Might as well just go see a youtube review or get the game and try it out yourself.
You have a much more optimistic memory of gaming review platforms than I do.
I remember getting several different magazines in the 90’s and they were always the same thing. Any “professional” journalist knows that their livelihood is based on selling games. Journalists have to strike a balance between their audience and publishers, which makes negative reviews incredibly rare.
It’s not just videogames. Music, movies, TV shows, books, comics, consumer products. Unkess you’re paying out the nose, reviews almost always have some sort of bias towards trying to sell things. I find the best opinions come from other sources: people I know personally, organic community discussions on the internet (though those are not immune to corporate influence), or when products are only mentioned in contexts where the author clearly will not benefit. For example, a journalist making a list of the top-10 games of all time putting Ocarina of Time on it is probably not incentives to do so… Unless Nintendo is trying to promote a re-release.
Yeah, review have always had a slant and people forget just how bad they where in the past. I would rather watch someone play the game and skip the reviews, however it must be said the old slanted review model has largely died off. We don’t buy magazines with advertorials anymore, and the appetite to pay for such content is at a low point by both consumers and advertisers.
Do you feel that way about the site reporting the linked article?
And I know the likes of IGN have been a mess for far longer than 2012.
Yes, although I am not the first dood, but posting as someone who did read the linked article it is a barely veiled attempt to support the “writer’s” media and looks more like a lazy filler article to meet a quota. I use quotes around writer as the article in question is 2/3s quotes more in the style of an interview with “Veteran games journalist Alex Donaldson” and a few comments from “Press Engine co-founder Gareth Williams” (nothing wrong with that per say). The other 1/3 is “data supplied to VGC by Press Engine…” (again nothing wrong with this on its own). The issue is when we take the article in its whole this seems more like someone talked to a colleague or two then put a header on it using in house data from a “… popular PR tool used by developers and publishers to distribute codes and press releases to a global database of journalists and content creators.” and adding a few other comments from the very founder of the program used in house to round it out making a very thin and kinda lazy article. This reminds me very much of the stuff written I saw many many years ago when I worked at a newspaper watching that media circle the drain.
Also on the point of:
This is not AI slop but good old fashioned 4:30 on a Friday human slop covered in ads, for example I got 2 pop ups with ad block reading it. This is what it looks like without ad blocker:
But then again, you get what you pay for and I guess the irony here is that the article (that could be used as a captain obvious joke) pointing out the collapse of games media is in itself an example of a degrading quality of writing leading to the demise of said media. The real joke is that the article does not even touch on the degrading quality of the writing and experience (other then a “…lack of diversification in content…”) but instead putting the blame on every thing else (thanks google, AI, COVID and advertising spending I guess?).
What would the “good version” of this article look like in your opinion? VGC doesn’t have quotas, btw.
I’ll say that you state that as fact, but it’s a perception that not everyone shares.
I’ve said this in my own top level comment but it’s worth reiterating here to just make the point. Nobody trusts games media anymore and they don’t trust them because they do things like the above screenshot and engage in articles for access, in real journalism stuff like that is supposed to be disclosed. However the only ones that actually ever seem to bother are YouTubers with integrity.
I think the idea that quality is degrading is not a niche opinion by any stretch of the imagination. It’s basically the majority viewpoint of gamers.
Is it? How do you know?
Not everyone shares the perception that we live on a sphere, what is your point?
This reeks of wilful ignorance to the facts of the state of the media currently.
I have old some old magazines that are at least readable with ads that don’t move. This is not a radical take, just like all corporate media the quality has declined in general (not suggesting that there was a lack of bad journalism in the past). Also, they may not have hard quotas there but the writers are paid to make articles and content to fill the site (it is like how best buy did not do commission vs future shop but where both the same company and fired those that did not make sales regardless).
As for how to improve this particular article, I would say a good start is to pick a format, is it a op ed or an interview? Or is it a report on events? I would go the op ed direction myself and rely less on the quotes from other journalists and data from the weird internal marketing source. I would have likely incouraged having a message and then sprinkled in actual employment numbers from major publications throughout the article and not done what this one did that was “this program sends out less free codes” as a data point. The data used is too weak for anything other then an opinion piece but the article is too light on the writer’s input to be one.
There is also a big “citation needed” part that should have set off a editor.
“If amateur, part-time, or freelance writers are included, the number of departures from the games media swells to more than 4,000 people since October 2023.”
“If” indeed! They went from 25% down and then if you include free lancers swelling to more then 4,000 people. That’s just sloppy writing. At least give initial numbers and keep the format consistant.
The incentives are very different when the writers own the company and are largely paid by monthly subscribers.
How would you have cited “declining quality of writing” as an inciting factor? How would you measure it? And why did it just become a problem in the past few years rather than any of the problems that are listed in the article?
The part I am talking about is below the the part you are quoting. It was a critique on the part that goes:
"According to Press Engine’s database of ‘tier 1’ publications that cover games (which is defined as major websites, both specialist and mainstream, with seven-figure-plus audiences), the global pool of game journalists has declined by 25% in just two years. The vast majority of these departures were from specialist games websites like IGN, Polygon, or Gamepot.
If amateur, part-time, or freelance writers are included, the number of departures from the games media swells to more than 4,000 people since October 2023."
I am not sure if you are just a touch upset that everyone does not agree that your writer owned slop factory is of high standards or if you just missed the part where I was trying to point out the weak writing as asked. But if I was to “cite” the declining quality of writing, I could do so by referencing old popular articles compared to current ones, I could show screen shots of the ever mounting assault of ads, or I could do what I am doing here and just assume that my audience is not wilfully ignorant of the current state of the format.
You can not out of one side of your mouth state the industry of writing is dying then say out of the other that the writing has not suffered.
I know you were talking about another part of the article, but you had a similarly uncited reason for the shrinking games media work force. I don’t care if you don’t like VGC, but I really don’t see a time when the writing was better, and I wanted to see what you were expecting.
I am not writing for a publication but sure I guess you expect the same level of journalism as VGC so lets cover it a bit.
Lets use their own words About how they 5 years ago where getting 7 million views a month. That great, and the article although a fluff piece about themselves is not nearly as bad as the one linked before. But hey that could just be different writers after all, but nope both done by the editor in chief Andy Robinson. And don’t get me wrong VGC is one of the better ones, but at 7 million views a month they are not competing with video from places like twitch and you tube. In fact the written coverage on games has become a walled garden of insiders writing tone deaf articles and reviews in general.
Take the reviews for example, VGC’s coverage on Borderlands 4 Does not even address the games broken state but gives it 4/5 stars vs VGC’s coverage 6 years ago on Anthem Where they lambaste the game for it’s faults. Hell we can take this further and look at coverage on the same thing under different media in current times, the VGCs review of Borderlands 4 has no view counter on it but also has no comments, where as a smaller creator on youtube using clickbait has over 6000 comments and more views then they have subscribers (425,000).
I am sorry you don’t see the degradation of written games media, and I understand it was never top shelf stuff, but it is not a controversial take that needs extraordinary evidence. People are clearly not happy with the quality and content (hence the constant downsizing due to dropping revenues) leading places to sell out more to cover the bills thereby leading to a death spiral. Just look at coverage of some of the worst most broken releases to get why audiences are turning away:
Redfall getting a 4/5
Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League getting a 4/5
Redfall getting a 90
Vampire: The Masquerade - Bloodlines 2 getting a 8/10