Games Journalism is like fewer than 40 people now. Magazines are basically gone and websites are not far behind. None of this is a surprise, but it's incredibly sad. We had something awesome for a while there. Younger generations have no idea what they missed out on. aftermath.site/ziff-davis-i... - ThreadSky

dannyodwyer.bsky.social • 75 days ago

Games Journalism is like fewer than 40 people now. Magazines are basically gone and websites are not far behind. None of this is a surprise, but it's incredibly sad. We had something awesome for a while there. Younger generations have no idea what they missed out on.

https://aftermath.site/ziff-davis-ign-gamesindustrybiz-humble-buyouts

Comments

bangbangclick.bsky.social•75 days ago

Yup it’s sad. There are still a few more than that but the drift to primarily free content has gutted everything.

spikespeigel.bsky.social•75 days ago

I blame influencers personally.

thedizeezd.tv•75 days ago

It definitely is sad--I miss the necessity of the market existing via news bites getting to the audience on monthly subscriptions. It's an era that died because of the need for instant gratification and desire for information.

phantomsloth.bsky.social•75 days ago

I wonder what a new version of journalism we could see in the near future? YouTube could be seen as such I'm sure, but without "journalistic integrity" is it true to form?

strateture.bsky.social•74 days ago

I'd like to say we'll see more independent publications. Might sound odd with all the publications shutting down. But readers have an easier time connecting with a personality more so than a brand. But I don't see many earn enough from it on an as is basis. There has to be something more to it.

zekexyzie.bsky.social•74 days ago

Gaming journalism will be reduced to PR messages. Completely this time.

randynerd42.bsky.social•75 days ago

As teen I had a dozen magazine subscriptions from Wizard to PSM to Rolling Stone. I’ll enjoy the memories and keep this new form of journalism. YouTube and Metacritic and podcasts and social media give me more information on more games than those magazines ever did.

robertbattletoad.bsky.social•74 days ago

There are still some good indie journalists out there doing the thing that they love. But mainstream? Nah, too much under a corporate thumb, I'm afraid. Not to mention more focused on drama than the games themselves.

houghten.bsky.social•75 days ago

Did we, though?

duanemoody.qwiffer.com•74 days ago

Those of us who remember all the simultaneous "Gamers are over" pieces within 72 hours wish them the best in their next career and politely remind them we said no pickles

ianmalcolm.bsky.social•75 days ago

I just wasn't made for these times, apparently.

Hard to convey to my own kids the insane level of excitement of walking into your local newsagents and seeing the latest issue of one of your fave mags...

A few of those I waited for eagerly over the years:

euthlogo.com•75 days ago

growing up in the 00s i liked reading game magazines more than actually playing games.

raddadredemption.bsky.social•75 days ago

Everyone with a phone or computer and editing software is a "journalist" now. At least that's what people think. I'll miss websites and how thing felt late 90s early 2000s. Everything is quick access social media, post its, etc. Its crazy how fast things changed really.

contraception.bsky.social•71 days ago

We stopped having something awesome
for a long time now. Games journalism has become hot garbage and it’s no surprise they’re finally taking out the trash. Modern game journalists are hilariously out of touch with actual players.

pierdeer.de•74 days ago

Granted, this is Germany, but I remember when around 2001/02, a bunch of game mag publishers went bellyup, talking about a "day before the next issue was supposed to go to print" situation. Feel like that was a sign of times to come for the editorial industry. Just burning a ton of money

buzzclik.bsky.social•75 days ago

I think we can all agree that this was the pinnacle

hollyphantpants.bsky.social•75 days ago

The only way to find out about new games is social media now.

lukunka.bsky.social•74 days ago

All news standards dropped, imo.

bobdeschutter.be•74 days ago

I miss the days when everyone was reading Edge Magazine.

phingdraws.bsky.social•75 days ago

This sucks. i wish we could go back to the days of Nintendo power, and Official Playstation magazine. those demos kept me alive.

toptiersloth.bsky.social•75 days ago

I remember when I was a young teen and my dream job was to be in games journalism. I wanted to review games and go around the world interviewing folks. I remember spending hours watching the shows, doing mock reviews, reading articles

I guess I dodged a bit of a bullet but I'm sad it had to decline

siena0666.bsky.social•74 days ago

If they want to survive, first, they need to
reevaluate their priorities. It's clear like crystal how biased they become. If you are a gamer journo, you are here to make games articles, free of agenda and to provide valuabe and constructive critics, not to pander over ideologies.

ferago42.bsky.social•75 days ago

Hard to empathize when the majority of articles are "X person said Y on twitter" or "X leaker reportedly said Y". Not to mention clickbait articles that promote hate, like "this game (that has nothing to do with Starfield) has a feature Starfield sorely missed!!!!!"

kimzao.bsky.social•74 days ago

a small price to pay for having anime ass 👋

gazamcnulty.bsky.social•75 days ago

Some of my favourite summer memories in Ireland during the 00s, were spent reading PSW and Official PlayStation magazine. There was something so intriguing about them to me, even about games I wasn't particularly interested in playing. Before the internet and information overload took over

evolvetom.bsky.social•75 days ago

I like to think there's lots of room for a healthy media environment/ecosystem, but ugh, that biz model is such a challenge when people are so used to getting everything for free.

fanciestofcats.bsky.social•75 days ago

And they choose to watch YouTubers sit in their bedrooms and comment and complain about the work but don’t go to IGN to see the actual article or review

evolvetom.bsky.social•75 days ago

Yep, it's frustrating that this is basically the world we've created just, in some ways, by accepting the way social media works as... the way this all needs to be. We've accepted the convenience without thinking of the bigger picture.

fanciestofcats.bsky.social•75 days ago

Dude bros gonna hurt when they can’t post a video whining about IGN’s Penguin review to get 250,000 people to waste their time watching his hot take

krayonprince.bsky.social•75 days ago

Mark Kern might have to actually work on the game he claims he's developing, imagine that.

fanciestofcats.bsky.social•75 days ago

No clue who that is. Probably a good thing

elahti.bsky.social•74 days ago

(PC Gamer has 35 full time editors, and we’re hiring.)

wilgieseler.com•75 days ago

from a purely consumer perspective i think the quality of work in the space is better and more diverse than ever. since OG giant bomb folded, almost everything is on youtube though, and it’s so much more original and in depth. “magazine” style games stuff like ign was always so sterile

wiqidbritt.bsky.social•71 days ago

At the risk of sounding overly nostalgic, I do miss being excited at having 6-10 hours of audio/video podcasts to watch every week that had new and interesting information in them. Watching streamers play the same games over and over doesn't really fill that same role.

wallevandauthor789.bsky.social•74 days ago

Yep. I know a couple Game Informer guys. I miss the old days.

fifthelephant.bsky.social•75 days ago

Games journalism has evolved to video content on YouTube. Print is, sadly, dead.

badshepherdgaming.bsky.social•75 days ago

Damn

Games and gaming news just... losing steam. At least the big outfits? You're right, there's a reckoning

lavvyheid.bsky.social•75 days ago

I'm old enough to remember "Your Sinclair" back then a new issue was exciting. its where you got your new. the internet killed that. that probably back when it had its music industry moment. folk when from buying physical media to getting it off the internet for nothing. the arse began to collapse.

lavvyheid.bsky.social•75 days ago

various attempts to monetise it failed (subs, ads etc) but with the rise of social media only one person had to buy a subscription and the news was all over the internet. most of all gaming accounts these days are just bots regurgitating the same story. what money the media companies were willing

lavvyheid.bsky.social•75 days ago

throw at it went on management to turn it around rather than talent. the talent mostly wondered off and now you've got the likes of your old home at gamespot being reduced to basically 3 pals laughing at their own in-jokes and a billion articles telling me to "snag" a keyboard or something

lavvyheid.bsky.social•75 days ago

(sorry if thats mean about GS, but from an outside looking in perspective thats what it looks like these days) IGN isnt much better. they just post clickbait spoilers on their homepage and a billion articles telling me to "snag" a keyboard or something....

yesterzine.bsky.social•75 days ago

IGN bought, and near instantly ruined the premier uk based one recently too (Eurogamer). Their YouTube is now almost entirely the rump of the old video team reading out a website review to barely synced footage.

lavvyheid.bsky.social•75 days ago

seems now that mainstream game journalism may be one of those things that has to completely die in order to be reborn.

get all the corporations out of it and get it back to passionate people writing about things they love people can read without videos that would weed out epileptics in a dark room

lavvyheid.bsky.social•75 days ago

(that turned into a rant. sorry!)

innerpartisan.bsky.social•75 days ago

It's so wild to me that an industry so large is basically on the brink of collapse, simply because of greed. I think the trump tax on consoles in the US, coming next year, could be the nudge that brings it all down. But maybe that's just wishful thinking, and its just a slow decay.

phillipgcox.bsky.social•75 days ago

One of my favorite groups of people on the planet is YouTube dudes who complain about things like IGN but when they talk about video games, all they do is pull news articles written by journalists from IGN.

shadowhaxor.bsky.social•75 days ago

Thank you. People miss that point. Hey, my favorite YT person is the best... but they still get their info from websites. So what happens when the websites eventually go? The content creators who just browse sites and can't source their own content won't be far behind.

raddadredemption.bsky.social•75 days ago

Well I forsee it going the way it does now a lot of times. They will make something out of nothing. They've been really good about that lately.

sharintaint.bsky.social•74 days ago

YouTube makes money. Some of the more reputable YouTubers can easily replace lower tier journalism. They can't replicate Games Industry or Schreier but neither could most gaming outlets. They've become rags and industry mouthpieces at this point, not hard to replace.

shadowhaxor.bsky.social•74 days ago

What is an example of lower tier journalism? And I also beg to differ. Despite YT making money, half the stuff you see is stuff that originated from a website reporting on something. So again, if the sites go, so does most of the YouTubers. Especially the low tier ones that do nothing but rage.

sharintaint.bsky.social•74 days ago

Low tier as in Gamerants, Kotaku, Polygon etc. They're mostly opinion & press releases already. Low tier YouTubers will just move to covering releases & social media drama. It's a huge industry, someone related to gaming is bound to say something offensive or that can be spun into rage bait content.

yesterzine.bsky.social•75 days ago

Sounds like I should expect a lot more competition, they’ll all be doing 40 minute videos on an issue of Acorn User.

ferago42.bsky.social•75 days ago

But at the same time, IGN and other sites get their news from twitter, in the form of "X leader twitted Y" or "leaker X reportedly said that Y". Feels like true journalism is reduced to Schreier, Park, Tassi, Dring, and maybe one or two others I might be missing.

ferago42.bsky.social•75 days ago

Not to mention the clickbait articles all around. Like, all the hate Starfield got because it got clicks was astonishing. Articles like "X game implements feature Starfield sorely missed" were very common. Hard to empathize with these sites tbh.

phillipgcox.bsky.social•75 days ago

While I don't think IGN is as bad as most people make them out to be, I will concede that there Starfield stuff felt like it was there to give PS fans something to laugh at.

phillipgcox.bsky.social•75 days ago

IGN actually has some very good journalists but no one reads their stuff.

mintaka2d.bsky.social•75 days ago

Gaming journalism was always a fine line of how much can you trust people who are talking about video games while they get flown to exclusive previews and given exclusive swag in the most conflict of interest industry ever.

The rest of it just falls in a general decline of journalism as a whole tbh

mintaka2d.bsky.social•75 days ago

And I can bore and point to the same corporate greed as everybody else, but investigative journalism takes time and could also ruin relationships, which stops the exclusive previews/swag so all you are left is an almost defacto extension of the marketing firm and nobody really likes that.

abeewords.bsky.social•74 days ago

About ten years ago the swag and fancy treatment switched to influencers. Access itself is the more complex issue, but not for the fun exclusivity, because websites now have to build big games into their traffic expectations.

scoularis.bsky.social•75 days ago

Well said, and it deeply saddens me. I had actually planned on pursuing a career in games journalism many years ago but had to pivot to a different industry because even at that time the writing was already on the wall.

The slow death march of games media has been awful to witness. It was special.

dhammergames.bsky.social•75 days ago

Golden age Kotaku *chefs kiss*

kappakerby.bsky.social•75 days ago

What is a "soft" layoff?

It sounds like PR speak for "Don't hate us. At least we didn't gut the whole company." So soft, so fluffy.

gaminggumper.bsky.social•75 days ago

I was scrolling through my YT subs and IGN is just full reproducing the cutscene for The Great Circle in one long video. How is that legal?

matthewsievert.bsky.social•75 days ago

What you are saying is you are writing off “Kinda Funny”, “MinnMax” “Remap Radio” as already dead and doomed?

That sounds optimistic.

They seem to be doing a good job so far.

brettg102.bsky.social•75 days ago

Most all of those sites exist mostly on the back of existing games journalism. Every news segment, clipped from other traditional media folks & repackaged. They are not doing their own reporting for the most part - and would tell you that they could not afford to do so.

matthewsievert.bsky.social•75 days ago

Also, these folks are live right now, making original video games content at this very moment.

https://www.youtube.com/live/wUe0wlv2G_c?si=xPcvhy9YCeWCYOT2

thuckchuckman.bsky.social•74 days ago

Original video game content ≠ Game Journalism

matthewsievert.bsky.social•74 days ago

Patrick Klepek, Jeff Grubb, Jeff Gerstmann, Greg Miller, Ben Hanson, are journalists.

They have all done original reporting on the industry.

They don’t simply go to other websites and copy and paste.

thuckchuckman.bsky.social•74 days ago

They are journalists. Journalists who had to move away from journalism because they could not live on what it paid.

matthewsievert.bsky.social•75 days ago

If you just wanna be right and watch the world burn, let me know and we can stop talking there.

I see a vibrant community that is trying their best after large entities had failed them.

I also see a large audience supporting these folks’s endeavors.

matthewsievert.bsky.social•75 days ago

Gregg Miller, Ben Hanson, Patrick Klepek, Jeff Grubb, Jeff Gerstmann, and others all do their own work. Their content speaks to that.

They aren’t all “rip and read”.

You just wanna argue about the state of video games media?

Or are you here to prove that you are right, and the industry is dead?

brettg102.bsky.social•75 days ago

Not trying to troll my dude. All of those folks do indeed do original reporting - I listen to all of them, Grubb & Hanson weekly - others less often...but every single one of them would tell you how much they rely on using traditional reporting for content.

dannyodwyer.bsky.social•75 days ago

I mean, I'd put myself in the same category, so no that's obviously not what I'm saying.

mcnastyprime.bsky.social•74 days ago

At some point it will only be https://www.kakuchopurei.com left! (They seem to be going strong)

fanciestofcats.bsky.social•75 days ago

Without people doing reporting and reviews what will YouTube pages like that sleepy Andrew WK do when they rely on judging and commenting on things others did the work for?

dannyodwyer.bsky.social•75 days ago

I’m also not gonna sit here and say that games journalism didn’t decline - I think largely standards did drop. But it’s because there was hardly any seniority / mentorship. Nobody could work for the wages past their 20s. Sadly aside from those in management positions. It pushed out talented people.

andrearene.bsky.social•71 days ago

A huge part of the decline is publishers doing work that used to go to media with their own staff. Places like Ubisoft, Xbox, PlayStation, and others, have their own internal teams typically made of former games media folks, doing the exact coverage we all used to do — but with exclusive access.

videogamecanon.bsky.social•71 days ago

This is so true. I can’t imagine very many people know how much good game journalism is being published by the Epic Games Store.

dystopianow.bsky.social•73 days ago

everything declined. that describes our world. Manufactured consent and managed decline.

cselogy.bsky.social•71 days ago

Yep. Look at what happened to most of the people that made 1up what it was and then see how many are still in the media now that that happened 15 years ago. Look at how many people at GameSpot ever reached their 10th year.

Centering many outlets in SF as rent spiraled out of control didn't help.

megannicolett.bsky.social•74 days ago

forever yelling that the core problem is a lack of resources, which means lower quality for everyone

dannyodwyer.bsky.social•75 days ago

Patreons for known personalities can only get us so far. YouTube is harder than ever to break into & streaming is having it's own reckoning. My hope is there's a revolution around the corner, but we could be going the way of the music industry. Consolidated, killed, salted earth.

petexn.bsky.social•75 days ago

i really feel like gaming journalism died for entirely no real concrete reason other than just the worst people ended up owning it all

phillipgcox.bsky.social•75 days ago

I think a lot of it is that like dudes on the Internet decided that all games journalists were like bought and paid for for no reason. Like there was nothing to back up these claims, but everyone thinks games journalist start constantly taking brides to reviews.

dannyodwyer.bsky.social•75 days ago

I think it's too easy to point the finger at corporate ownership. The uncomfortable reality is that many very popular sites were either funded by private millionaires or were working at a loss inside of larger media orgs. Not saying some sites aren't owned by shitheads, but it's too broad an excuse.

internetgooner.bsky.social•70 days ago

Ah yes because it could not possibly be the video game journalists fault for the decline in video game journalism. It is those shitty rich guys who owns the media outlet's fault, they where the ones who shit on their readers for the past 15 years calling the incels, racists, homophobes ect.

petexn.bsky.social•75 days ago

my main qualm, sitting on the outside, is how i pretty much watched everyone constantly shift to unsuccessful models or rely on systems that were changing without adapting while still demanding profits; the work didn't ever seem to falter but everyone still got run into the dirt anyway

rtherringbone.bsky.social•75 days ago

This is an example of the changes to how media is consumed. In the 90s, a physical magazine was a necessity - there was no other way to get info and a monthly cadence meant that new editions were packed with content.

rtherringbone.bsky.social•75 days ago

Now there's news on demand, too many sources. It's saturated with people fighting for clicks and it seems easy to have a YouTube or Twitch account, so there's a lot of dross to wade through. It's sad.

elpork.bsky.social•75 days ago

How much blame do you levy to the games industry itself? They funneled money to non journalists for content pretty readily, poached talent, and now we have a... less than agreeable seedbed as it were.

dannyodwyer.bsky.social•75 days ago

none. business isn't charity. games sites had plenty of other things in their favor. the games industry didn't poach talent, games coverage just paid poorly and had low career ceilings for most creatives.

elpork.bsky.social•75 days ago

Very solid points.

joerybicki.com•75 days ago

Well why should they pay well when we just play games for a living?

spicepies.bsky.social•75 days ago

It's all sad, I miss the old gamespot days, and early giant bomb. The scene now is folks making alot of noice to brake in, and that has made a new standard

stabbitystyle.bsky.social•75 days ago

Worker owned seems like it should be the way forward, though they also pretty much depend on established personalities to get started and depend directly on reader subscriptions. Ideally over time they'll get established and can start hiring on new people.

dannyodwyer.bsky.social•75 days ago

it's a handy avenue for those of us with an existing following, but I don't think its particularly scalable. Kinda Funny is the only org I know that hires young, inexperienced producers.

stabbitystyle.bsky.social•75 days ago

Yeah, it's rough for sure. It does feel like if you want to scale up past a certain point, you pretty much have to make a deal with a rich asshole or a corporation and at that point you no longer have any control. Even a union is only a bandaid on the power imbalance. The big picture feels so grim.

qnoid.com•74 days ago

How much do you think it is a result of democratising "journalism". Quotes since most content creators reporting on news etc have nostalgic studied journalism or have a relevant background. Having said that, I get a sense we are slowly coming full circle.

qnoid.com•74 days ago

Recently @theverge.com added a subscription. @reckless.bsky.social has been talking for ages on the importance of attracting & winning over your readers outside of social media & search engines. I wonder whether using AI to generate & report on news/content will drive people back to trusted sources.

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