This one's been sitting on my mind for a long time, but since the Penny Arcade guys started to touch upon the idea, it's about time I got it all out and laid it to rest:
Gaming writing, games "journalism," whatever you want to call it, is dead.
There's 3 things any gamer needs to know about gaming "journalism" and why it's doomed.
1. Gaming publications have always been controlled by publishing PR.
Gaming publications, dating back to the early 90s print mags, have existed to generate hype for games. The exchange was thus: media (print or web) needed advertisers and content, and publishers could provide both. Take a moment to consider the power dynamic that naturally emerges from an arrangement like that. Short version: publishers win.
If you prefer quantitative proof, consider Metacritic. They annually rank publishers by their aggregate Metacritic scores on all their releases. For 2014, on a 0-100 scale, the lowest average for a publisher is a 62. This is not an industry that delivers bad news.
Writers who try to deliver bad news (ie that goes against publishers' interests) get pulled in to toe the party line, or fired. Occasionally this becomes public - a site will pull a negative review, publish a more positive one, fire the offending writer, commenters will air their rage, and life goes on.
2. Games company PR got squeezed out by social media.
Now it's all direct-to-consumer. Publishers no longer have to go through the media, with their inconvenient print lead times or potential to distort the message.
This is great for gamers and publishers alike. Gamers can get their news and cultural fulfillment as they decide. Follow Hideo Kojima to get lots of teasers for his new work - plus see the glory of being Hideo Kojima as he travels the world and noshes on late night ramen. If you're a fan, it's way better than a once-in-five-years magazine profile and preview of the next Metal Gear Solid.
And you can do that for every single one of your gaming loves! You can surround yourself in a customized feed of gaming greatness. The only ads you have to put up with are the ones on Facebook or Twitter.
If you told us in 1995 we'd get digital news directly from every designer and publisher as it broke we'd have dropped our jaws in amazement at the potential to board a Hype Train that's perpetually in motion.
3. All other gaming content is being squeezed out by Reddit.
There's certainly something to be said for the other content that game out of the good game sites - the community stuff. I'll always be nostalgic for the turn-of-the-century PlanetQuake or the original stuff that came out of SomethingAwful and Shacknews forums.
Nowadays, all of that stuff is originating at Reddit, and "gaming journalism" sites get it. Pretty much the entire world of content websites (not just gaming) is now repackaging high-ranking Reddit (or Hacker News) posts, adding a clickbait headline, and auto-posting to social media.
The playbook is pretty limited, but it's infinitely exploitable. The most common form is this one:
- Reddit post: Look what my gf made me! (link to imgur picture of a Portal cake)
- Post ranks highly because a gamer has a gf + a cake + a Valve reference in the real world
- Website posts one of these headlines: "Best Gamer Girlfriend Ever? You Decide" - "Would YOU Eat This Portal Cake Made by a Real Person?" - "The Cake ISN'T a Lie: It's Real, and It's Delicious" - "You Won't Believe What Valve Inspired in the Kitchen"
Another common one is manufactured controversy, which Penny Arcade cheerfully calls out sites for. There's no shortage of feigned outrage on the Internet for PC ports lacking features, or console shooters having the wrong FOV settings, or apparently estimated time consumption in an artificially short session being too short. These things always blow over. Games with these controversies still hit their sales targets.
This mindless content, if it can survive, doesn't require writers with encyclopedic knowledge of the games industry. Anyone can do that. Thus the gaming publications continue to close. Joystiq was demoted to a gaming section of Engadget recently; Polygon will be next.
You may wonder about reviews in this regime. YouTube and Twitch already fill the void. Individual streamers are already showing an unbelievable amount of footage from every game that comes out, and viewers even get to be choosy about the personalities they ride along with.
So, what now?
My honest opinion on the decline of all this stuff: good riddance! Let's go have fun!
I'm super happy that I can tailor my gaming coverage to my very particular tastes. Aside from the prior Hideo Kojima example, I get a few Facebook posts a week from the Deus Ex people at Eidos. It'll undoubtedly be how I get my news when the next game is announced, but in the meantime it keeps the series fresh in my mind and that's welcome to me.
So, press, reading, and writing. In a sense, it's a blessing that games have become mainstream enough to pervade common culture. But I question whether I want to read it daily. I don't read any gaming subreddits. Personally, I want a gaming New Yorker, with intelligent longform stories. Imagine a 10,000-word profile on Miyamoto-san or Warren Spector right after Junction Point or Bobby Kotick[1]. But I strongly doubt that such a publication would be commercially viable.
When intelligent work is viable in terms of audience dollars, the creators appear to lack the discipline to make it happen. The closest we got was A Life Well Wasted, a podcast that ripped the style of This American Life and applied it to gaming stories. 6 episodes were recorded before the super-stoned-sounding host turned the site into a promo blog for his band. There's an equal argument to be made for Area 5's Outerlands, which was Kickstarted successfully, but it's so far behind schedule it's nearing vaporware status.
Yet, despite all the drama, it's a great time to be a gamer. Every platform, from PC to PS4 to Wii U to 3DS, is going strong and showing potential for time to come. Prices are low. VR is around the corner. Moral of the story: read less, play more, discuss with your friends.
[1] Kotick actually has been profiled by the NYT and it's a great read: http://www.nytimes.com/2012/12/16/business/bobby-kotick-of-activision-drawing-praise-and-wrath.html?pagewanted=all