“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.
I’ve never remembered seeing quality video games journalism.
The tyypes that they’re describing as that always seemed hacky and liable to push very subjective opinions as facts.
Their scores almost always seemed wonky and part of that is probably because individual scores for something as complex as a game don’t really make sense. They rarely make sense for anything.
Instead what you want are scores in multiple areas with no single amalgamated score.
Anyhow, for the longest while video games journalism has been rife with controversy about pulling negative reviews for ad deals etc.
I think unfortunately written media is pretty much dying due to finances, and for video games, due to never being all that good in the first place.
The details I care about, like monetization, grind, and performance, are the details that most games journalists just completely skim over or they’ll glaze game companies while they perform awfully here.
My way of buying games is basically watching video reviews of someone playing and mostly ignoring their commentary to figure out those details for myself.
That and benchmarks of course… and figuring out whether they’re owned by the saudi government…
Anyways, yea, video content for games both makes more sense, and more money.
I can totally get this feeling for PC/consumer electronics hardware related articles and reviews, but for video games? Meh. I won’t cry.
Well, it’s definitely not what I want.
Understandable. I just feel like amalgamated scores tend not to truly reflect the subjective opinions of the reviewer as sometimes games are more or less than the sum of their parts, and then it doesn’t represent anything close to objectivity because it ignores that different people value different things more or less than others, therefore making this score not all that useful for them.
I can completely understand just wanting a quick score at a glance from a favourite review or outlet though.
I listen to podcasts featuring people who used to score games in that separated way for Gamespot, and it frequently led to scores that were out of sync with what the content of the review actually said. Plus, who’s to say if the visuals of Clair Obscur are better or worse than Hades II when they’ve got very different goals and art styles? And does it matter how high the visuals score for Bye, Sweet Carole is if they’re leaving a subpar review for the puzzles? That’s what the content of the review is for.
How grindy a game is or how it’s monetized often makes its way into a review. Publishers can get slimy around it though and turn the knobs to be more nefarious after the review period, which people can call them out for, but much like how lies spread faster than the truth, updates spread slower than initial reviews. What I’d personally like to see make its way into reviews are how much ownership the game actually grants. So many multiplayer modes are not designed to last, and no one, often times not even the people updating the features list on the Steam store page, care to mention if a game supports offline multiplayer like LAN. Some games blur the line, like Hitman, on just how offline their game and its content can be. That’s what I’m missing from review outlets.
But all of this has only been about reviews, and games media also breaks news. Real change has been happening by way of reporting on unionization and crunch. Harassers are being taken to court or otherwise removed from their position of power in their companies. Sometimes we can actually get real confirmation that absolutely nothing is happening with Bloodborne and no one should get their hopes up for anything anytime soon. All of that is valuable, too.