Which is unfortunate, because their podcast is packed with the sort of playful, thoughtful “state of the industry” opining that is missing from the daily posts. I’d love to see that content make its way onto the site, as it would animate the increasingly dull Joystiq that you very accurately describe.
The formula may suck, but boy does it work.
Alan_Au
1583
And of course, you have to remember that for the most part, the residents of Qt3 are not representative of “the gaming public.”
Alan_Au
1584
Spoit
1585
That’s actually not a bad article, especially coming from vgchartz. Though some of the metrics are kind of specious. Like the one about citing multiple sources, when most of the articles on all 3 sites are just the aggregation of press releases?
Anyone else find it strange to knock blog sites on how subjective their reporting is? Aren’t they supposed to be subjective?
The VGChartz article is terrible, even if I agree with its general drift that Kotaku and Dtoid and Jstiq aren’t always great.
The measurements make no sense, there is no methodology explained anywhere and I have no clue why a game announcement would need a secondary source. What is meant by a grammatical error? I thought we wanted more editorializing instead of cut and paste PR stuff, not less.
The entire thing is laughable.
Also:
Journalism is a proud field with many powerful figures in its past. Ernie Pyle, Alice Dunnigan, the Bernstein and Woodward duo; these are names synonymous with the field of journalism. If game journalists want to share their title with some of these storied writers, they need to stop acting like contracted PR agents and start acting like journalists.
I’d be happy to be lumped in with Jeff Green and Kieron Gillen and Jim Rossignol, thanks.
Troy
steve
1588
I’m pretty sure none of those journalists made their reputations for their coverage of entertainment.
According to VGChartz, game reporting = war reporting = politics reporting.
That article gave me the creeps. Taking small samples and then analyzing them pseudoscientifically using opaque subjective measures is bad enough. But I started feeling uneasy at obvious joke headlines being animatedly written hearing the pleas from the woman chained up in the basement long before we got to the “absolutely terrible” practice of covering things other than games.
That article gave me the creeps.
While I don’t think there’s much analytic rigor behind the VGChartz article, the pseudo-science certainly squares quite nicely with my own empirical data which had me abandoning Kotaku years ago. At some point, Kotaku became just as much about the antics of hipster gaming enthusiasts who cover gaming as it was about actual games, and unless you actually care which C-list celebrity one of the editors had the pleasure to meet, there’s not much there that isn’t done better elsewhere. In Kotaku’s defense, they do come right and bill themselves as a forum about gaming culture, not just games, but if that’s the case, they really shouldn’t be considered a peer of Joystiq.
Unfortunately, I think there’s a growing trend among bloggers, gaming or otherwise, to want to become part of the story and exploit their marginal celebrity. Kotaku is an exemplar of this phenomenon, and Joystiq is blessedly an exception.
Alan_Au
1592
I agree that the article is not particularly rigorous, and some of the data is downright shoddy. Still, I think it starts to get at some of the issues around dilution of coverage and sensationalism.
Hey, what could possibly be bad about the leading (in terms of visits) game “news” site partnering with North America’s number one video game retailer - to include sharing traffic? It’s all good, right?
Didn’t Eurogamer already do that sort of thing (not sharing traffic though) with Zavvi (one of the most popular UK online retailer) and GetGames (their own DD store)?
pilonv1
1595
Well according to VGChartz guessing = accurate so why not?
Adree
1596
Well Microsoft already has IGN content on the 360 so this is just another step towards McGriddleization of the world. Man we don’t know how good we had it in that day compared to the abortion that IGN looks like now.
Yes, he mentioned fact checking quotes. But I was intrigued by how or why a journalist would need to verify or check the context of a speech they’d just attended.
Anyway, dead horse.
The sharing traffic part is the big deal to me. That indicates a level of “partnership” that really borders on insanity. You definitely won’t want to do anything to piss off the guys you’re sharing traffic with when you try to attract marketing funds.
JoshV
1599
Oof, that Ign + gamestop thing just smells bad. How can that not be a conflict of interest? Games journalism already has some sketchy ties, that’s just so…so blatantly wrong.
Out of curiosity, how is it any different than Game Informer being part of Gamestop? I’m not trying to dismiss y’all’s concerns, but the Gamestop connection to “games journalism” isn’t new.
(BTW, I’m not trying to slight GI by putting quotes around “games journalism”. I’d apply the same quotes to myself if anyone tried to put that label on me.)
-Tom
