Games Journalism General

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Xarpho's Return said:
Nowadays, these sorts of jobs are filled with people who wanted more prestigious journalism jobs and make it clear that they hate video games, they hate you, and they hate themselves. The questions remain, though. When did this dream die?
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I think you can chart the real, sincere dream of being a video game writer along the career path of "Sushi-X." Remember Sushi-X, anybody? It wasn't a real game reviewer, of course, but "he" was an encapsulation of a whole era's philosophy on what was cool about video games: fighting games, snark, and vaguely Japanese things like ninjas and raw fish. He was created in 1990, and mostly phased out by 1999, and that's pretty much all that needs to be said about that. There was a second, ironic-yet-still-great phase of game reviewership with the founding of Giant Bomb around 2008, but that mostly died with Ryan Davis in 2013 (which was also kind of a death by overly bloatedness, poetically enough).
 
Xarpho's Return said:
When did this dream die?
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That's a very good question, and a thought one to answer. My personal experience is that it was already fatally wounded during the last days when printed magazines were still relevant. Blatant corruption on display was the norm because reviewers didn't even realize they were being duped and being held by the balls. It certainly was a death-by-a-thousand-cuts kind of situation.
I don't know who the actual killer was, or when the victim died, but I'd say the official funeral was held the day the Kane & Lynch (2007) Gamespot controversy happened (heavily related to the post above); by that point, gaming journalism had been holding on to a pretense of life, weekends-at-bernie's style, for a long time.
 
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strumpets exeunt said:
I think you can chart the real, sincere dream of being a video game writer along the career path of "Sushi-X." Remember Sushi-X, anybody? It wasn't a real game reviewer, of course, but "he" was an encapsulation of a whole era's philosophy on what was cool about video games: fighting games, snark, and vaguely Japanese things like ninjas and raw fish. He was created in 1990, and mostly phased out by 1999, and that's pretty much all that needs to be said about that. There was a second, ironic-yet-still-great phase of game reviewership with the founding of Giant Bomb around 2008, but that mostly died with Ryan Davis in 2013 (which was also kind of a death by overly bloatedness, poetically enough).
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Nintendo Power was still "fun" in the early 2000s until around 2005 when it under a redesign that was more of the "G4 hipster" look and feel that it kept most of until it ceased publishing. (G4 is also guilty for "girls who are into video games" that ultimately led to Gamergate).

Forgotten Beast said:
That's a very good question, and a thought one to answer. My personal experience is that it was already fatally wounded during the last days when printed magazines were still relevant. Blatant corruption on display was the norm because reviewers didn't even realize they were being duped and being held by the balls. It certainly was a death-by-a-thousand-cuts kind of situation.
I don't know who the actual killer was, or when the victim died, but I'd say the official funeral was held the day the Kane & Lynch (2007) Gamespot controversy happened (heavily related to the post above); by that point, gaming journalism had been holding to a pretense of life in a weekends-at-bernie's style for a long time.
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Related to above, there used to be a writer at Nintendo Power, Alan Averill who used a plush of a Dragon Quest slime in every picture. I liked his writing and takes at the time (I was around 12), and wondered if he was a real person and not just a de facto mascot Nintendo Power came up with. Turns out he is a real person (I can see why he never published a picture...) and the fact that he's been involved with Nintendo's localization projects since the late 2000s is rather disheartening given the whole Treehouse butcherings.
 
Xarpho's Return said:
Sure, there was absolutely the pay-for-play going on, where major publishers generally got sucked off...a lot of early Nintendo Power was extremely soft on what games were terrible, and usually the objectively terrible games weren't talked about.
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I remember there was a lot of ratings inflation, but the articles were still useful. Like you'd have a 9/10 rating but the actual review dumped all over the game.

And they were actually written by people who played games.
 
AnOminous said:
And they were actually written by people who played games.
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Some of it is being rushed after being given late preview copies and I have a modicum of sympathy for that, but they really are not like players. One of the apolitical divides between critics and players in the last decade is game length and critics largely ignoring price. Critics get antsy when games go past 30 hours and players feel cheated when full price games are under ~20.

The real issue is youtube gameplay reels, even if the narrator sucks, are 10x more useful to the consumer than some flowery essay from a J-school grad.
See also: journos trying to snuff out youtube gamers well before any GG/rightoid drama.
 
I think the print magazine I miss the most is Electronic Gaming Monthly. A lot of the big contributors to it have either disappeared entirely or turned into insufferable CURRENT THING shitheels like seanbaby, but late 90s/early 00s EGM always struck a pretty good balance with their reviews and were willing to spend time on niche franchises. They also didn't have complete contempt for Japanese games.

Hell, I remember them running a feature about emulators all the way back in 2001 where they gave extremely fair coverage to the scene.
 
GamerGate grifter and failed racist Verge clickbait journalist Ash Parrish joins Aftermath with the rest of the ex-Kotaku rejects after she was let go.
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A reminder of Ash Parrish's racism over the years.
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Frosted Snowflakes said:
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Guys, it is proper journalism to report what I want people to think instead of the actual facts and numbers? That would be propaganda, right? RIGHT?
Frosted Snowflakes said:
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Trans man, yet still looks like a woman and uses "they/them" instead of "he/him".

And then they get assblasted when people don't use their preferred pronouns or take them seriously.
 
Frosted Snowflakes said:
Typical Kotaku / Ethan Gach response to Savvy.
(Archived Kotaku Article)
(Archives)
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LOL, this is fucking hilarious. AAA gaming losing an attention war? No one thought that people were spending money on OF or watching tiktok instead of gaming. There's millions of people gaming on a daily basis, they're just either playing older shit or other new games that aren't AAA slop that sites such as Kotaku like to promote.

She's also right in that Kotaku is the same website that one week will be whining about the poor game devs forced to work 50 hours a week instead of 30, and have to be in the office 4 days a week instead of never, but then we're supposed to support the same companies that put the employees in those "conditions" to begin with?

"AAA gaming" is losing the attention war to other games.
 
Fcret said:
I think the print magazine I miss the most is Electronic Gaming Monthly. A lot of the big contributors to it have either disappeared entirely or turned into insufferable CURRENT THING shitheels like seanbaby, but late 90s/early 00s EGM always struck a pretty good balance with their reviews and were willing to spend time on niche franchises. They also didn't have complete contempt for Japanese games.

Hell, I remember them running a feature about emulators all the way back in 2001 where they gave extremely fair coverage to the scene.
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They even had EGM2 for a while which focused on stuff like JRPGs. As for being "the best", there were only maybe three magazines that weren't connected to an existing console line, with the big three being GamePro, EGM, and Game Informer. Game Informer was always tied to GameStop and that's not good when trying to explain games that aren't sold there, and GamePro was never good. I remember the high school library had a GamePro subscription, it felt outdated in all the wrong ways (c. 2006) and felt childish even for older teenagers.

I've long thought about that these sorts of things should've been continued, but the problem is that they're too heavily tied to games journalism. There would NEVER be a point where they talked about some up-and-coming Steam releases and which ones look the most promising. There would NEVER be a point where they discussed the decomp scene and how you could play Super Mario 64 better than ever before. There would NEVER be lots of strategies, maps, and helpful information when it came to specific games.

We'd end 2014 with sweeping for Gamergate's foes, probably adding at least one Patricia Hernandez-tier harpy to the ranks...then it's off to sperging about Donald Trump starting in early 2016...glazing The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild...bringing up the worst possible e-celebs (bonus points if they're "diverse"/LGBT)...it would be a miserable experience year after year and the "golden days" of EGM would be an increasingly distant memory.
 
Frosted Snowflakes said:
Typical Nathan Grayson of Aftermath, shitting on people he hates like Dr. Disrespect and Asmongold.
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I don't care for Dr Disrespect but even after relevance he's a huge streamer and a multi millionaire compared to Nathan "1 of 5 guys who ruined his life over a 3" Grayson who has never made it as anything more then a punchline.

It's wild to try and call someone out as chasing headlines when you're using his name to try and prop up your actual headlines.
 
The opening paragraph of Polygon's review (a) of Resident Evil Requiem:
Last year marked the 80th anniversary of the atomic bombings on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. It doesn’t sound right. Something so barbaric feels like it should have happened centuries ago, and yet, it’s still recent enough that tens of thousands of survivors still live among us today. Known as “Hibakusha,” these individuals still carry with them the physical and mental scars of an unfathomable tragedy. They are both reminders of the evil mankind is capable of and living proof that, against all odds, good people can still hope to push on in the face of it.
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Game journalists:
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Chickenpolar said:
The opening paragraph of Polygon's review (a) of Resident Evil Requiem:

Game journalists:
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JFC, these people are insufferable.

“How can I make my review about a goofy game about killing zombies sound highbrow? I KNOW! I”ll try to connect it to a real life event where two major cities in Japan got NUKED TO FUCKING KINGDOM COME! I AM SO SMRT!”

These faggots need to be lined up against the wall and shot.
 
PatrickButtmanJr. said:
JFC, these people are insufferable.

“How can I make my review about a goofy game about killing zombies sound highbrow? I KNOW! I”ll try to connect it to a real life event where two major cities in Japan got NUKED TO FUCKING KINGDOM COME! I AM SO SMRT!”

These faggots need to be lined up against the wall and shot.
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They aren't gamers. They desperately wanted to be political journos, but they're completely talentless. Hence the fall into "gaming journalism".

That's why these faggots shoehorn irrelevant garbage like this into their "reviews".

You can't hate them enough, and they need to be flushed asap.
 
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