You linked an article from 2016 that was written in 2015 from a site that doesn’t write game reviews, which is what you need the free games for from the publishers. They also don’t pay very well from what I’ve heard, but hearsay is what it is.
I’m not sure what point you’re trying to make?
I don’t think of games mags from the '90’s and '00’s as a golden era because of articles like what you’re putting forward. That era was golden because the games were covered by people who were a lot more professional about it that had real editors helping to put together great magazines every month, not unlike Retro Gamer looks today.
I am pretty sure game developers would be considered “readers”, as many game developers play video games and read news about them. They also buy games, and like me, hearing troubling information about a developer makes me think twice about a purchase.
This would be the same as having an investigative article about the sweatshops of bangladesh and asking, how does this benefit the readers of the Washington Post? Does this just benefit those sweatshop workers?
You’re confusing enthusiast press with actual news press. The two are totally different entities. We’ve had this discussion on Qt3 many times in the past and people much higher up than me within enthusiast press have always noted the distinction. Your readers are coming to enthusiast press for previews of upcoming games and evaluations of new games primarily, way above all other concerns.
Yes, the Internet has blurred the line between enthusiast and straight news. I think that’s actually a problem! It’s part of the Political mess we have today tbh! You could probably refer to Fox News as enthusiast press for far-right Republicans! That’s a different discussion though.
For the readers of video game sites, the main focus is when is game X coming and what does it look like and why do I want to play it. All those other more inside baseball articles simply aren’t that interesting to the majority of readers, but they do offer some variety to the publication. Online it’s just easier to publish that stuff for free whereas we had to go track that shit down and it cost real money to do it years ago and the return wasn’t worth the investment.
Finally, game developers are readers, but the vast majority of readers are not game developers, by orders of magnitude. Gamasutra’s readership is likely a tiny fraction of Gamespot’s for example. They might be more invested readers, but they are certainly far less in number.
And finally, today this stuff is all FREE! Before the Internet, it just plain wasn’t. It’s much easier to create and distribute whatever you want when it’s all free.
I think the entirety of NeoGAF and ResetERA would beg to differ. There is a huge audience for this kind of coverage. And I would have to imagine that Kotaku, Polygon, and the other sites doing some investigative pieces probably keep doing so because they are getting the pageviews.
I don’t know what you are trying to argue. If the readers were not reading this articles, why would they be posting them?
Because they’re not paying anyone anything significant for putting them together. They’re essentially free, same as the people reading them get them for free.
NeoGAF/ResetERA, as big as they are, are a tiny subset of gamers. Tiny. Infinitesimal in the grand scheme of things. Most gamers don’t know what those places are. People who play games that don’t identify as gamers don’t know they exist.
I’m arguing that you’re overvaluing all this stuff and that in the era of magazines, they covered what paid the bills. It’s the same stuff that pays them today. Big coverage of big games.
Kotaku’s crunch post that I linked got 232k views and 595 comments. (That’s listed right there on the piece.) You can compare that with other Kotaku posts to determine how much interest that is, but I’ll spare you the trouble: it’s a lot.
Kotaku’s editorial staff unionized a couple years ago. They are now in the Writer’s Guild. They have a minimum guaranteed salary, annual raises, and benefits. You can find their original contract on the web (it may have been updated since that version was published). (And just for clarity, Kotaku paid people quite well before this unionization as well.)
I would make an educated guess that Jason Schreier’s salary is far above the minimum, as he’s been there for years and years. The minimum is what they would pay a kid off the street with no power to negotiate. It’s honestly probably a hypothetical minimum in this job market. The real minimum is likely higher.
It is entirely possible that you were paid more than Jason Schreier, I have no way of knowing.
But I don’t know how the conversation got here. My point is simply this:
At its best, video game writing is now more wide-ranging, more fearless, more independent, more informational, more important, more interesting, and yes, more professional and journalistic, than at any previous time in history.
That is where my goalposts are. Please try not to move them. :)
There really isn’t. I want that to be true too, because I both like doing that sort of writing and enjoy reading well written articles. I also love the business of gaming - sales articles, explaining distribution channels and the amount they take, potential take over of Ubisoft by Vivendi, the EA spouse, the lawsuit between Bethesda and Facebook over Occulus, the lawsuits the Tolkien Estate was in (I got so invested in that one that I was an expert witness in the litigation), the Avellone/Obsidian saga, the Toys for Bob Stardock stuff, some of the gamergate allegations, the failed Xbox One launch strategy and replacement of studio heads, the acquisitions of studios (EA appointing John Riccitiello CEO and then buying the gaming assets of Elevation Partners, which he was one of the partners of, at a vastly overvalued price is something that should have gotten a lot more coverage in both the gaming and business press), Star Citizen and other crowdfunding etc. etc.
But both gaming media are rarely qualified to write astutely about this stuff and, more importantly, NOBODY reads those articles other than a small niche of hardcore gamers. If you’ve actually seen the traffic statistics, nothing gets more traffic than extensive previous of AAA games. It’s the main thing the broader gaming market is interested in. Hell, youtube and twitch have essentially completely decimated the modern gaming media because that’s more of what the broader gaming market wants.
And by the way, I’m not sure that’s actually a change from the past (other than new methods of delivery are available). Gaming mags like CGW did circulation numbers that were pretty small when judged by today’s available eyeballs - a similar magazine might not do much worse in terms of circulation - but it would never get the advertising revenue that magazines did then.
I strongly agree with all of that, even as a golden/silver-age of gaming journalist writer. If you look at the average article or review from an 80s or even 90s magazine, you’ll find a handful of very talented writers and a lot of very amateurish, poor writing. We have overly fond impressions of those days because we remember guys like Jeff Green, Johnny Wilson and Andy Mahood (or other genre experts) and not the fact that we remember them because they were the exception, not the norm.
The average writing quality is much higher today. The investigative reporting is better to much better. The synergistic relationship between gaming publishers and gaming media is less troublesome or better today, not worse, as existing publications aren’t so dependent upon a small number of advertisers. There has also been a massive democratization of “media” so a small site like RPS with some talented guys can just emerge and do well. There are also many more, and larger, media companies to establish places like Polygon and Kotaku with large budgets from the outset.
The gaming media has always been more independent than often alleged (there has always been a separation between editorial and advertising/sales) and the incidents where those lines were crossed are legendary in their infamy - but it’s clearly more independent now, because it doesn’t almost exclusively depend upon advertising from the companies it covers. It’s also more professional and journalistic - writers are less likely to have some education and training - not just hobbyists who wanted to write.
The average writer today is more skilled, even if they are also more likely to annoy you with an agenda that you dislike. There is far more soap-boxing and agenda-driven coverage, but you’re not limited to handful of voices any more either, and you’re able to participate - reading or offering perspectives that you find informative or interesting or just worthy of being heard, whether it be in comments, forums, twitter (which I increasingly enjoy), or youtube/twitch, a blog, whatever. You’re not stuck waiting for a genre expert’s opinion on a game only to find out that s/he wrote the strategy guide for it and has a financial incentive to spur sales.
The gaming industry itself is so much broader, so much deeper, than it was at any point previously, that there’s both a lot more to cover and many more option for the manner of coverage.
I will have to defer to your expertise on this one, as I cannot see those stats. I just assume that enough people read them for them to keep getting produced. Why else would these outlets risk preview/review access by posting articles like that?
I’m not sure what I’m supposed to be focusing on. That Ben Kuchera wrote a headline with the word “manbabies”? That Ben Kuchera is apparently the only writer at Polygon? The potential issue of three articles trying to hammer Sony on the Fortnite problem, while also having a Fortnite Switch ad on the same page?
