Absolutely. Games Jurnos are bitter no fun people who though they all could be big media journalists or novelist but failed to actually make it big and are stuck trying to make video games into the big social issue they can use as a soapbox to stand on. No wonder YT destroyed them because suddely the audience had access to people's media on games who actually love playing games.
The worst part is that gaming journalism is still important, because they indeed inform the meta critic score, that in turn can affect the dev teams and if a sequel gets greenlit or not. Currently the whole industry is having a consolidation, it will be pretty much just IGN and stuff IGN owns. This wiil lead to even less transparency and more corruption.
I can go on a long rant about post-modernism and cynicism started to infect games journalism in the early 2000s and that led to later problems (can you believe GamerGate will be a
decade ago this month?), it's more to the issue is that there's more than enough to write and talk about and they...don't.
Obviously, getting the scoop on E3 or whatever is a lot less useful than what it was 20+ years ago, and since these events are all digital anyway there's no booths and what the experience was actually like. One thing that I wish was covered is just the sheer amount of games coming in. Steam gets 40-50 new games every single day. Most of them are going to be complete shit. It would be nice to have someone that covers them and then follows the progress of the more promising titles. Have some good writing skill and that's something people will pay for.
I also think some "strategy" style coverage would've done well but the problem with that nowadays is that either you have something so easy that it doesn't need explaining (the "yellow paint" in modern games) or have something that requires a wiki because the updates constantly break the meta (most modern games).
What I think would actually sell is something similar to Retro Gamer, which is an import magazine from the UK and newsstand versions are hideously expensive (a subscription is still going to be like $10+ an issue). Still, even that's grown up...it started back in 2004 when "retro" was still pre-1985 stuff but more modern issues have stuff on the original PlayStation and have more games that are familiar with Americans, rather than obscure UK-only consoles like BBC Micro and ZX Spectrum. Reading about games from that era like
Chuckie Egg,
Jet Set Willy, or the Dizzy series might be an interesting experience—I read about those in
High Score! The Illustrated History of Electronic Games when I was 13, but it pretty much holds no cultural relevance for Americans or American video game culture. Between oldfags who miss the golden age of vidya and zoomers who are getting into emulation, I think it would definitely be an audience.
But alas...whether a new video game magazine that fixes the current problem or one that focuses on older ones is too late for GameInformer. I wonder if they considered selling it instead of just shutting it down.
