The journalists worth listening to don’t work for big websites.
When we’re talking game journalism, most of them aren’t even journalists, just 3rd party PR for publishers. Only thing they do is just forward marketing blurbs they receive, rather than journalism.
They dug their own grave.
Honestly not surprised, catering to GamersTM honestly feels like a fool’s errand; there seems to be an ever growing divide between what the vocal minority demands to see, and what the silent majority of the market ends up consuming.
Catering to the former is like dancing on a knife’s edge, its only a matter of time before you fail to live up to their expectations - and that’s even if there’s enough of them to even be able to support a journalist’s career to begin with!
Catering to the mainstream segment will usually cause you to fall on the former’s bad-side anyway, as they unleash a torrent of vitriol and hate at the journalists for not focusing on whatever manufactured outrage is de jour at the moment (previously woke, now DEI).
Double whammy of mistrust in media - I think worse with video games as that’s been viewed like it’s tied to the hip as a marketing arm since 90s gaming magazines.
Other whammy I think is PC gaming. Tradiitonal video game journalist rarely get the scoop on the popular game of the week in a timely manner. The popular game of the week is almost always some random game on Steam. FFVII Rebirth is the most impressive game since at least Cyberpunk 2077 and it didn’t go viral with gamers but traditional video game publications spent months writing a lot of articles about that game
Traditional video game isn’t proper to cover gaming which is now core to what is viral. Hyping up AAA games is mild attention compared to the latest Palworld. It even goes back to ~2010 when traditional games media had and continues to have no answer to esports. Starcraft 2 then LoL/Heroes of Newerth/DOTA2 then CSGO then DayZ then PUBG then Fortnite then etc. Traditional games media has very little cultural relevance these days. Not just these days, really the past decade
Can’t they just follow the trends and write short interesting pieces of the game-du-jour? Cant the content we see coming from streamers, tiktokers and youtubers be matched by professional media publishers?
FFVII Rebirth? hahaha good one
It’s just video is slowly replacing writing. Old people were used to reading, young people are used to watching short videos and skipping. For video games I find it easier to find “walktrough no commentary” to figure out how long the game is and scroll briefly to see the gameplay than to read subjective view of author. I simply watch gameplay and decide if game is for me or not.
God I hate this. I much prefer writing to videos.
Obviously we’re on writing website.
I’m not even that old and I still prefer reading because you can take screenshots of directions, flip to the correct spot, easily reference stuff, and copy/paste text. You can’t do any of that with video. I will never understand why people prefer video for this stuff.
You can also control +F text
Yes, exactly.
When search engines started putting lists of videos in response to every query, I fumed. Trying to find a solution to the game issue you’re having? Here, scan through this 10 minute video and hope you come across the part that discusses your specific issue! Oh, it didn’t actually talk about the thing you need? Lol well at least you watched some ads.
I think next time I have a game issue, I’ll be asking about it here on Lemmy. Yeah, the audience isn’t as big as on Reddit, but we’ll never know the depth of the knowledge fellow Lemmings have to offer if we never ask.
Yes I completely agree. The best source for game issues I’ve found is technical discord servers and asking people there. However this is not ideal either because:
-
Discord is entshitifying and will probably be dogshit in a few years (they recently announced they wanted to go IPO and we all know what that means.)
-
Discord is not searchable on search engines
-
Search within discord is dogshit
-
You have to ask people and wait for an answer which is not guaranteed.
I probably wouldn’t bank on Lemmy for tech advice. I see the same misinformation posted here as on Reddit for tech.
-
You mean walktroughs ? I don’t watch walktroughs to know how to beat the game. I beat the game myself. I watch walktroughs to listen to music and feel the atmosphere. You can’t feel the game without audio inside the game.
No i didn’t mean walkthroughs.
I miss TotalBiscut :c
OP is a marketing bot fwiw.
Marketing for what exactly?
In any post-apocalyptic world, the skinny guy on a leash used to be a games journalist, movie reviewer, or online influencer.
Paywall
I’m not encountering a paywall either through embedded Safari or Firefox (iOS); worst case seems like 12ft.io should work?
Video Game Jounalism missed the step to professional, independent work. Either by work ethic or by an industry playing the consumer and being outside of legislatives eye.
Like how can a honest, self-paying journalist compete in marketing and access to sources, when companies can blacklist them and at the same time allow exclusive time and content access to willful pawns? - and google and consumers support it.
I’d say a reasonable amount of this is due to how many of them shove their own ideologies into their reporting, with not even a slight attempt to remain objective or neutral.
Exactly.
“Games journalists”: blame gamers for everything
Gamers: stop consuming their content
“Games journalists”: shocked pikachu face
They wanted a ‘post gamer world’ and now their sites are living it.
