Games Journalism General

  • Want to keep track of this thread?
    Accounts can bookmark posts, watch threads for updates, and jump back to where you stopped reading.
    Create account
I just want to express an opinion I've developed lately and this seems like the thread to do it on. If I recall right, I've expressed before that I almost never read any game journalism stuff before and after "Gamergate". I always relied on my own tastes and opinions from people I knew who actually played games.

I started reading One Angry Gamer occasionally a few months back. I'd check every other day to see what articles were posted, read them, and would bookmark some related to something I was actually interested in. But recently I stopped even bothering to read the articles and comments to them thoroughly.

I like some of the stuff OAG does, but I feel like half the time with the articles and majority of the time with the comments it's just more outrage culture. The kind of audience OAG has that regularly comment really feel like "the other extreme" to me, openly considering any butch/dyke female a personification of feminism(such as the new Siren in Borderlands 3 or the player character Walker of Rage 2)and some will specifically shit all over a game JUST for that.

For OAG himself, I have a major gripe that makes it hard to actually use his site as anything more than some minor factual resources to bookmark for things I don't want to forget later: he always focuses on the sexual aspects.

Now, I don't mind that normally. I love ass and tiddies like any red blooded American(or human being, for that matter). But on OAG it's just taken to the extreme. Many of his articles focus on censorship, which for Sony I get, but also Steam. Every time a visual novel, an RPGMaker game, etc, is banned on Steam, there's an OAG article. He keeps a list of such things banned from Steam iirc, which IS a good resource admittedly so I know what's banned/to go hunt down in the rare event Steam bans a quality porn game. But many of his articles are focused on every individual instance of censorship.

And when they're not focused on that, they're often focused on pro-sexual stuff, some of which I like yeah, but ultimately it feels like the topic of sexuality, pro or negative, dominates his blog. The most particularly annoying thing I find is OAG himself even comments that he's rarely interested in games of the current time in responses he makes to his audience's comments. Now I get that too, if you run a blog and pump out articles all the time, you're not going to be 100% invested in every game, subject, or service you write up a short article about. But the complete disinterest he expresses is a bit jarring(best way I can think of atm to phrase how I feel about it).
 
I just want to express an opinion I've developed lately and this seems like the thread to do it on. If I recall right, I've expressed before that I almost never read any game journalism stuff before and after "Gamergate". I always relied on my own tastes and opinions from people I knew who actually played games.

I started reading One Angry Gamer occasionally a few months back. I'd check every other day to see what articles were posted, read them, and would bookmark some related to something I was actually interested in. But recently I stopped even bothering to read the articles and comments to them thoroughly.

I like some of the stuff OAG does, but I feel like half the time with the articles and majority of the time with the comments it's just more outrage culture. The kind of audience OAG has that regularly comment really feel like "the other extreme" to me, openly considering any butch/dyke female a personification of feminism(such as the new Siren in Borderlands 3 or the player character Walker of Rage 2)and some will specifically shit all over a game JUST for that.

For OAG himself, I have a major gripe that makes it hard to actually use his site as anything more than some minor factual resources to bookmark for things I don't want to forget later: he always focuses on the sexual aspects.

Now, I don't mind that normally. I love ass and tiddies like any red blooded American(or human being, for that matter). But on OAG it's just taken to the extreme. Many of his articles focus on censorship, which for Sony I get, but also Steam. Every time a visual novel, an RPGMaker game, etc, is banned on Steam, there's an OAG article. He keeps a list of such things banned from Steam iirc, which IS a good resource admittedly so I know what's banned/to go hunt down in the rare event Steam bans a quality porn game. But many of his articles are focused on every individual instance of censorship.

And when they're not focused on that, they're often focused on pro-sexual stuff, some of which I like yeah, but ultimately it feels like the topic of sexuality, pro or negative, dominates his blog. The most particularly annoying thing I find is OAG himself even comments that he's rarely interested in games of the current time in responses he makes to his audience's comments. Now I get that too, if you run a blog and pump out articles all the time, you're not going to be 100% invested in every game, subject, or service you write up a short article about. But the complete disinterest he expresses is a bit jarring(best way I can think of atm to phrase how I feel about it).
More or less, I and a few KIA members have even admitted that he’s pretty decent at hunting down stories mainstream journos don’t have the balls to report on.

However, the man himself is a spergy idiot who’ll shriek about “bonerculture”, “socialism”, or “white genocide” whenever a game does something that doesn’t 100% conform to his ideology, regardless of how minor or taken out of context that thing is.

Also, he has a habit of going full-Donga on Twitter by getting into hour plus arguments about petty bullshit and “winning” them by dragging them out so long his opponent leaves out of frustration
31B79C6D-33F8-4C66-B701-73B77CEF6828.jpeg0BD9FE22-11A8-4374-A87F-EFBCCD4DB8D1.jpegD2776994-8D35-4C22-87BA-69D7C4D9EE77.jpegAC5C50C9-3B49-4159-8CDF-2BE9401DE707.jpeg
 
Last edited by a moderator:
The most pressing issue is that journalism is still considered to be a representative voice of the people - it isn't, but stay with me here - and the suits pay attention to it because it's quick and easy. Developers / producers / etc. don't often mingle with the common person and the vocal minority pushing an SJW mindset is pushed to the surface by aforementioned journalists, which creates a false interpretation that it's popular opinion.

And that's also because the gamejournos don't want to associate with the common people when they can associate with industry insiders and people from their own clique. They're rockstars! Why bother with the plebs and their uncultured opinions about the product they're buying?

The thing that is sinking a lot of these sites can be summed up as "you MUST read what I write".
 
The games press have been busy over E3, putting out boilerplate articles, but now the big announcements are over, it's back to virtue signalling clickbait.

PCGamer posted this tweet and article about Cyberpunk 2077

Seems simple enough. Character customization won't be limited by gender. But the original headline was a little more clickbait.
PCGamer Cyberpunk.png

Being able to put long hair and make up on a man = transgender and non-binary?

The article also says that this was a change done is response to ResetEra's faux outrage about an ad that appears in the game, but nothing quoted in the article backs up that claim.
 
Last edited:
Came here to post that - surprised it wasn't one of Andy's articles.

Ever since they baited gamergaters, and consequently had one of their writers exposed giving Ubisoft positive coverage while fucking an Ubisoft PR rep, they've been reduced to the worst virtue signalling horse shit possible.
If you have an archive of the original article (the text is the same, just the headline is different) then post it because I can't find it.

Still on the topic of Cyberpunk.
aIhoRGA.png
 
If you have an archive of the original article (the text is the same, just the headline is different) then post it because I can't find it.

Still on the topic of Cyberpunk.
View attachment 800455
Well you heard the man use other sites
I just want to express an opinion I've developed lately and this seems like the thread to do it on. If I recall right, I've expressed before that I almost never read any game journalism stuff before and after "Gamergate". I always relied on my own tastes and opinions from people I knew who actually played games.

I started reading One Angry Gamer occasionally a few months back. I'd check every other day to see what articles were posted, read them, and would bookmark some related to something I was actually interested in. But recently I stopped even bothering to read the articles and comments to them thoroughly.

I like some of the stuff OAG does, but I feel like half the time with the articles and majority of the time with the comments it's just more outrage culture. The kind of audience OAG has that regularly comment really feel like "the other extreme" to me, openly considering any butch/dyke female a personification of feminism(such as the new Siren in Borderlands 3 or the player character Walker of Rage 2)and some will specifically shit all over a game JUST for that.

For OAG himself, I have a major gripe that makes it hard to actually use his site as anything more than some minor factual resources to bookmark for things I don't want to forget later: he always focuses on the sexual aspects.

Now, I don't mind that normally. I love ass and tiddies like any red blooded American(or human being, for that matter). But on OAG it's just taken to the extreme. Many of his articles focus on censorship, which for Sony I get, but also Steam. Every time a visual novel, an RPGMaker game, etc, is banned on Steam, there's an OAG article. He keeps a list of such things banned from Steam iirc, which IS a good resource admittedly so I know what's banned/to go hunt down in the rare event Steam bans a quality porn game. But many of his articles are focused on every individual instance of censorship.

And when they're not focused on that, they're often focused on pro-sexual stuff, some of which I like yeah, but ultimately it feels like the topic of sexuality, pro or negative, dominates his blog. The most particularly annoying thing I find is OAG himself even comments that he's rarely interested in games of the current time in responses he makes to his audience's comments. Now I get that too, if you run a blog and pump out articles all the time, you're not going to be 100% invested in every game, subject, or service you write up a short article about. But the complete disinterest he expresses is a bit jarring(best way I can think of atm to phrase how I feel about it).
OAG is pretty hit and miss. On the one hand he’s pretty good at reporting on censorship and social justice bullshit. On the other hand for every good article you have to sift through a bunch of stories that take things waaaayyyyy out of proportion.
 
Man, this is so telling. You want actual details about video games? Fuck off, we are here to advance an agenda! It's mindblowing to me how these gaming blogger sites aren't all dead by now.
 
Man, this is so telling. You want actual details about video games? Fuck off, we are here to advance an agenda! It's mindblowing to me how these gaming blogger sites aren't all dead by now.

They are owned by Future Plc. Polygon and its ilk can write shitty politicized articles about lgbt andnnot run the company to the ground because they are diversified into multiple businesses from food to guns media

But to the execs up top it makes them look smart and able to hold a conversation without being socially awkward and that disqualifies most actual fans immediately.

Go to famitsu for politics free journalism and please drop your free thinking ways at the door
 
Man, this is so telling. You want actual details about video games? Fuck off, we are here to advance an agenda! It's mindblowing to me how these gaming blogger sites aren't all dead by now.

Their website might be super popular and tons of people might read those articles, we don't have the numbers of views their articles get. We have the number of views their videos get on Youtube though. Youtube is pretty big.
(click for big)
1560727573312.png

Look at that original content, they hire people to produce videos that gets 5,000 views during the video heaviest and click-batiest time of year for video games. Anything with views is not their content like the "Breathe of the Wild Sequel Teaser Trailer" cut from the Nintendo stream. At least they didn't watermark that one, unlike the other Zelda trailer from a 10 min demo they put up. Maybe they shouldn't be acting so uppity with their thousands of youtube views.

I'll dig deep into their real moneymaker, see how that one is doing.

Their latest compilation of clips from around the web only has 88k views, that's surprisingly low.
hl1.JPG


Ok, not a moneymaker this one but they sent people and cameras out to do this video and spend time cutting/editing it and it should be something their audience likes.
hl2.JPG


stronk0.JPG

Soyboy meats meatgirl, it doesn't seem mean spirited, just a bit cringey. They're highlighting three women.

1. Carol Shaw, fine, that's deserved.
What do they highlight about her:
stronk1.JPG
stronk2.JPG
stronk3.JPG

god dammit
stronk4.JPG

2. Roberta Williams, sure, she's important and a lovely lady.

3. is of course...
stronk7womk.JPG


Back to the Kotaku cash cow: making compilations of other peoples fottage and monetizing something that costs nothing to produce, I just went back a month before I got bored, but it is the consistently most viewed content on their channel.
hl3.JPG
hl4.JPG
hl5.JPG
hl6.JPG


Why even pay Timmy Rogers and Ghita? He's got nothing to do with the viewed video, his videos don't/can't make any money, they even cost money to make!
 
Last edited:

Critical Distance jumping on the bandwagon of bashing Cyberpunk 2077.
 
Nobody cares. Literally no one cares and opening female options to males is nothing new.
 
Might be old news, but a journalists for Niche Gamer said during an interview that he likes games. Mainstream game journalists freak out and try to mock, smear, and blacklist the site, and succeed only at making themselves look bad.

The original tweets
The response from Niche Gamer
More salt and the obligatory Gamergate mention.

Edit: Some highlights
The offending question
D9aGbnLXYAAw2tx.jpg


NG is a reactionary rag that fetishizes a nonexistent, racist idea of another country's culture, and it isn't worth the bytes used to house it on a server. That's what I'm "on about," friend.

Some fanfiction
NG: "It's great when you just leave the game the way it is, right? As long as it fits our closed-minded cultural expectations of what a Japanese game looks and sounds like, count us in!" Nagoshi, chuckling, waving security over to end this mess: "Yes, yes, thank you"

Muh mentions!
If you're going to be in my mentions, at least try to be less predictable and dull. Ta ta!

Twitter Niche Gamer.png

Twitter Niche Gamer 2.png
 
Last edited:
I would be interested to see the numbers on these sites and how well they actually do. I'm not really sure who even goes to these places for game information anymore. No one I know has a positive opinion on any of these outlets and them selling positive coverage to publishers is an open secret.

Hope no one minds if a pointlessly reminisce for a bit. I used to go on gamespot all the time back in the day and it was a quality site. News and reviews aside in the early 2000s they were heavily pushing more multimedia content and features and it was some top quality stuff. They had live game tournaments, podcasts and video shows and some cool editorials. I remember the videos and articles on the history of the NES and PS 1 being really good. Most of the staff (Jeff Gerstmann, Rich Gallup, Greag Kasavin, Ryan Davis, Carrie Gouskos etc.) were entertaining to watch too and had a good dynamic.

At one point they also tries to launch their own video service where members could upload videos to the site, I think to compete with youtube at the time. It was a mixed bag, for every good (well produced and/or funny) video you had 10 of some awkward autist incoherently mumbling in front of his 0.3 megapixel webcam. IIRC it didn't last very long but was good fun while it lasted.

812176

It all went to shit when they fired Gerstmann for giving Kane and Lynch a bad review and I stopped going on the site after that. I remember watching one of the live shows when it happened and I legit though someone died at first because half of the staff were in tears on air. Was a surreal experience.

Followed Gerstmann after that to see what he was doing and I would tune into his podcast. This was before giant bomb was officially formed and it was the arrow pointing down podcast. It was mostly him talking shit between obsessively playing Burnout Paradise for like 15 hours a day. With Ryan Davis and the other this would eventually turn into giant bomb.

Giant Bomb was awesome in the early days, especially the podcast and the video content. I might be talking out of my ass but maybe they helped to shape how gaming content was being done on the internet at the time (didn't Total Biscuit say he got the idea for his WTF series from GB?). Gradually lost interest though and not really been on the site in a good 6 or 7 years. Not sure if it was a drop in the quality of the content or just life stuff. Interesting seeing the metrics a couple of pages back for GB. Looks like I'm not the only one that lost interest in the site.

TL;DR I got some feels over a website I used to visit almost 20 years ago.
 
Back
Top Bottom