Games Journalism General

[Duncan Hills Coffee]

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.

Spoiler: Good times

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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.

GameSpot's decline really highlights the shift in gaming journalism over the last 20 odd years. You can see the same thing happen to IGN as well. Back in the day, the journalists were more like hobbyists getting to discuss the latest happenings in the medium. Hell, even magazines would have dedicated writers for specific genres because those writers liked those genres. Nowadays they throw any random putz at a new game, even if said writer is barely qualified to discuss it, and you get this contrast between the writer who barely knows what he is talking about and the people who actually play games and know more about their hobby.

This isn't even going into the fact that most outlets became veritable corporate whores, and Jeff Gerstmann's firing seems to be the catalyst for this. This resulted in shit like IGN being loaded with Mass Effect 3 ads and giving it an extremely high score while never acknowledging the ending.

EDIT: A word

 

[The Penultimate Warrior]

GameSpot's decline really highlights the shift in gaming journalism over the last 20 odd years. You can see the same thing happen to IGN as well. Back in the day, the journalists were more like hobbyists getting to discuss the latest happenings in the medium. Hell, even magazines would have dedicated writers for specific genres because those writers liked those genres. Nowadays they throw any random putz at a new game, even if said writer is barely qualified to discuss it, and you get this contrast between the writer who barely knows what he is talking about and the people who actually play games and know more about their hobby.

This isn't even going into the fact that most outlets became veritable corporate whores, and Jeff Gerstmann's firing seems to be the catalyst for this. This resulted in shit like IGN being loaded with Mass Effect 3 ads and giving it an extremely high score while never acknowledging the ending.

EDIT: A word

I still have loads of magazines from the 90's and early 00's - whilst there were plenty of crap ones that existed as barely disguised shills, or obviously played a game for 30 minutes then gave it 80%, there were some great ones as well. But what connected them all is they just talked about the game, not trying to insert their own political or social beliefs into everything.

 

[Megaroad]

Unofficial PSM was great, with awesome cover art. Always wondered, especially in todays drama filled climate, where that crew went.

Be interesting to see if any caught a case of TDS or Male Feminism, considering it ran "swim suit" specials of various video game ladies every now and then.

 

[George Cuckzunian]

The main reason Leigh disappeared, is because after leaving the industry, she married some soyboy. Probably from a cashed up family.

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Soon after her husbands Twitter pretty much died in the ass. Now she gets invited to gaming stuff around the world and is probably still banging randos like she used to.

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And the ring goes missing.
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Oh man, I'm out of the loop with her. I thought she spiraled into despair and depression....

Wait, you sure she got married? I mean, I'm not saying it isn't true but I would of thought there'd be a bit more or would of bragged a bit about it.

Also I thought she was pretty much out of the vidya gaming scene all together. She tried he hand at consulting but after how publicly unsatisfied the developers of Sunset were with her services it tanked that career path. I also remember seeing something where someone took a GPS location she posted and it showed her living with her dad. I also remember she was posting a ton of basic bitch "OMG enjoying hiking this trail" crap, and she had the tweet she deleted where she lamented that she used to be one of the most important people in gaming now she had to ask someone what a nintendo switch was.

I'm sure she still occationally travels to visit her old Dev buddies. She was really deeply connected and did a lot of favors for people.

 

[Smaug's Smokey Hole]

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?).

There was Consolevania before then. Before youtube. Before streaming/capture gear, they started by filming a TV with a tape camera. The show might not seem as funny now but pre-youtube(and they started releasing it as torrents) it was fantastic.

 

[Duncan Hills Coffee]

Be interesting to see if any caught a case of TDS or Male Feminism, considering it ran "swim suit" specials of various video game ladies every now and then.

This reminds me, IGN used to run Babe of the Day, which was borderline porn. I say borderline since you never actually saw any naked bits, but it was real close. Some of the babes were actual porn stars though like Tera Patrick.

They seem to have removed the pages entirely so I guess IGN doesn't want anyone to remember they used to show smut.

 

[BrokenWokenBespoken]

I still have loads of magazines from the 90's and early 00's - whilst there were plenty of crap ones that existed as barely disguised shills, or obviously played a game for 30 minutes then gave it 80%, there were some great ones as well. But what connected them all is they just talked about the game, not trying to insert their own political or social beliefs into everything.

That was going to happen once guys like Yahtzee became popular with their no hold barred commentary on games. He shattered that completely when he proves to be a Simon Cowell of American Idol infamy.

As Brandon Orselli learned painfully from his interview with Nagoshi and VG247 bashed him for being a fanboy

 

[Judge Dredd]

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.

Upper Echelon Gamers did a video about Anthem (I forgot which one it was) where he says the only reason those sites are still around are as primary sources for developer interviews. Even that is limited these days since game journalists are more interested in talking about politics and social justice than asking about the game.

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.

I agree. Even their "Endurance Run" of Persona 4 arguably helped influence Let's Plays. I don't think it was first, but it was one of the first ones that got big. I think that's due in part to YouTube being limited to 10 or 15 minute videos at the time, and bandwidth was limited.

But I can tell you why the site died. Patrick Klepeck joined the crew and started converting the crew to social justice, some of the old crew moved, CBSi (the owners of GameSpot) bought the site, Ryan Davis died, and somewhere along the way Jeff and Brad became bored, cynical old fucks who constantly complain. It's best you keep your memories intact then go looking at what they've become.

There are 3 bits of quality content during the decline. The Quick Look of Contradiction: Spot the Liar, Jeff's Destiny Rant during Game of the Year, and Jeff planning to make a feature called "The Raid" where he would sell a rare game he owned worth over $10,000 and use that money to fly to Japan and spend it all on used games because he didn't want to pay ebay import mark ups to get a new Turbo Grafx Duo.

There was Consolevania before then. Before youtube. Before streaming/capture gear, they started by filming a TV with a tape camera. The show might not seem as funny now but pre-youtube(and they started releasing it as torrents) it was fantastic.

There was even an easter egg in Oblivion: Shivering Isles referencing their review of Oblivion. For whatever reason the archives I've found of that show are incomplete. I've heard they got back together and are making a new show on Patreon, but I never looked into it.

This reminds me, IGN used to run Babe of the Day, which was borderline porn. I say borderline since you never actually saw any naked bits, but it was real close. Some of the babes were actual porn stars though like Tera Patrick.

They seem to have removed the pages entirely so I guess IGN doesn't want anyone to remember they used to show smut.

I wonder what will happen to the archives when those sites go down? I think some old Game Trailers stuff is either gone or hard to find. At least fans manage to archive Haloid before the collapse. There was an old Gamespot show called Time Trotters that apparently still exists on their servers but years of updates have made them inaccessible. I know 3 episodes were posted to YouTube.

I want to agree that they are ashamed of their old content, especially when it's problematic or similar to the YouTube content they decry, but I think most of it is that these major companies simply don't give a shit. I doubt it takes that much effort to upload a few gigs of video files to archive.org or something.

 

[Smaug's Smokey Hole]

There was even an easter egg in Oblivion: Shivering Isles referencing their review of Oblivion. For whatever reason the archives I've found of that show are incomplete. I've heard they got back together and are making a new show on Patreon, but I never looked into it.

I think everything is up on Youtube on their channel. https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCb5dkmeyjJ9kHbDoWGUATVg/playlists
They put up their Patreon content on Youtube after a certain amount of time but I haven't really watched it.

I wonder what will happen to the archives when those sites go down? I think some old Game Trailers stuff is either gone or hard to find. At least fans manage to archive Haloid before the collapse. There was an old Gamespot show called Time Trotters that apparently still exists on their servers but years of updates have made them inaccessible. I know 3 episodes were posted to YouTube.

I want to agree that they are ashamed of their old content, especially when it's problematic or similar to the YouTube content they decry, but I think most of it is that these major companies simply don't give a shit. I doubt it takes that much effort to upload a few gigs of video files to archive.org or something.

It's a shame that sites like that lose old things when reshuffling/redesigning, like old trailers and screenshots of things that never made it into the game itself or things from games that got cancelled. Unseen64 picks up a lot of things, but not everything and it's not complete.
Like the leaked Invisible War screens, there's at least one screenshot missing and it's the one I was looking for.

Deus Ex 2 Invisible War [PC/XBOX - Beta] - Unseen64

Deus Ex 2: Invisible War is a FPS developed by Ion Storm and published by Eidos Interactive, released for Windows and Xbox in December 2003. Some of the old beta screenshots show various differences in the characters and levels or places that do not seem to be in the final…

www.unseen64.net

It's the same with Amen and probably a lot of other things I don't remember right now.

And their search engine is absolute shit.

 

[Marissa Moira]

Unofficial PSM was great, with awesome cover art. Always wondered, especially in todays drama filled climate, where that crew went.

Most of them were originally from Gameplayers/Ultra Gameplayers, I think Bill tours with some sort of weird band still. He would shill for his site polish-pope.com but I think it went defunct awhile back.

 

[Stasi]

I agree. Even their "Endurance Run" of Persona 4 arguably helped influence Let's Plays. I don't think it was first, but it was one of the first ones that got big. I think that's due in part to YouTube being limited to 10 or 15 minute videos at the time, and bandwidth was limited.

But I can tell you why the site died. Patrick Klepeck joined the crew and started converting the crew to social justice, some of the old crew moved, CBSi (the owners of GameSpot) bought the site, Ryan Davis died, and somewhere along the way Jeff and Brad became bored, cynical old fucks who constantly complain. It's best you keep your memories intact then go looking at what they've become.

Ah I remember the Endurance Runs, those were great. Pretty sure I watched the complete Persona and Deadly Premonition runs. That is an ungodly amount of video now that I think about it.

I actually mostly kept away from the forums and comments sections but even with that I remember seeing a lot of people shitting on Klepeck. Was not sure why at the time, I just found him to be really dull but otherwise inoffensive. Reading some of the stuff here and other places about him I can see why he got a lot of flak.

Yeh, I have no real desire to go back and start using the site. Whatever video game content I still consume comes from a handful of people on youtube and even then its mostly retro stuff.

 

[AnOminous]

Was not sure why at the time, I just found him to be really dull but otherwise inoffensive.

He was a shit-tier normie before he decided to become a sanctimonious SJW piece of shit.

This man is totally better than you, though, you white, male, sexist piece of shit.

 

[ProfDongs]

There was a point during his stay at GB that the entire front page was basically filled with Videos and Articles by him. You couldn't fucking escape it. It resulted in a joke image of literally everything on the page being Patrick content because of how little everyone else was doing or just him dumping shit every day.

 

[Judge Dredd]

I actually mostly kept away from the forums and comments sections but even with that I remember seeing a lot of people shitting on Klepeck. Was not sure why at the time, I just found him to be really dull but otherwise inoffensive. Reading some of the stuff here and other places about him I can see why he got a lot of flak.

For me it was more that he was living proof of Red Letter Media's concept of Nonmedy. Comedy so bad that you're smiling less after hearing the joke than you were before it. He was trying too hard to be an edge lord and failing completely.

I assume @ProfDongs is right though, because GB was never a news site. They reported on the major stories and gave their opinions on the weeks news on the podcast, but that was it. But when Patrick joined it was for the purposes of breaking news stories. I ignored that part of the site, but I'm guessing it was the same clickbait trash that Patrick did after he left. As far I know he only broke one big story during his time at GB, the Activision v Infinity Ward/Respawn lawsuit. A story he admitted was handed to him by the source because it was in their interest to do so.

 

[Oh Shit I'm Sorry]

I actually mostly kept away from the forums and comments sections but even with that I remember seeing a lot of people shitting on Klepeck. Was not sure why at the time, I just found him to be really dull but otherwise inoffensive. Reading some of the stuff here and other places about him I can see why he got a lot of flak.

Lot of people on the 1up boards way back when disliked him too. The forums were pretty lenient in their moderation (at least when I was there) so you could call people mean names and all that up until Topkek became a mod and started banning people who used "faggot". Someone who spent more time there and/or has a better memory than me could probably expand on this more.

I've never consumed much GB stuff but I do remember a podcast a friend rec'd I think "biggest disappointment of the year, 2012" (because shitting on Mass Effect 3 never gets old) and at one point Topkek was talking about Virtue's Last Reward (which stood out since I'd just played it) and in between talking about how much he enjoyed it he stopped to whine about the female character's outfits which I remember finding really dumb. That and the one Yakuza gif are my only real exposures to TopKek outside of some of the dumbfuck tweets and articles he's made.

 

[BrokenWokenBespoken]

Midlife crisis does that to anyone. Guys like him dont want to get called out on their immaturity so by being all autocratic and socjus leaning they are convinced they are smarter than before.

And anyone who havent settled down and have a spouse or kids will end up being perceived as perpetual manchildren and will suffer to no end for this.

 

[Smaug's Smokey Hole]

I've never consumed much GB stuff but I do remember a podcast a friend rec'd I think "biggest disappointment of the year, 2012" (because shitting on Mass Effect 3 never gets old) and at one point Topkek was talking about Virtue's Last Reward (which stood out since I'd just played it) and in between talking about how much he enjoyed it he stopped to whine about the female character's outfits which I remember finding really dumb. That and the one Yakuza gif are my only real exposures to TopKek outside of some of the dumbfuck tweets and articles he's made.

The thing I remember about Klepek, something that really stood out, was that he was always talking about all these games, especially horror games, and when someone with more familiarity of them(meaning: they played the game) talks about specific parts, mechanics or gameplay he seemed like a deer caught in the headlights. It's like he just read the wiki on the lore or something.

I just don't believe he's played, or at least played through, all those games he's waxing lyrically about. I think he's read what other people say and is mimicking that opinion. I don't even think he's played Silent Hill 1 or 2*, at least while at Giant Bomb or before it, but they're very iconic horror games and he seems to have latched on to the iconography. It's beyond pathetic to pretend to have played a game in order to pose as an intellectual.

*it was one or both of the first two Silent Hill games where he appeared to know nothing about the actual game, progression or the mechanics when it came up in a discussion.

 

[ProfDongs]

The thing I remember about Klepek, something that really stood out, was that he was always talking about all these games, especially horror games, and when someone with more familiarity of them(meaning: they played the game) talks about specific parts, mechanics or gameplay he seemed like a deer caught in the headlights. It's like he just read the wiki on the lore or something.

I just don't believe he's played, or at least played through, all those games he's waxing lyrically about. I think he's read what other people say and is mimicking that opinion. I don't even think he's played Silent Hill 1 or 2*, at least while at Giant Bomb or before it, but they're very iconic horror games and he seems to have latched on to the iconography. It's beyond pathetic to pretend to have played a game in order to pose as an intellectual.

*it was one or both of the first two Silent Hill games where he appeared to know nothing about the actual game, progression or the mechanics when it came up in a discussion.

Oh god that was another thing with him on GB, whenever a newer game for a more niche series came out that none of the other staff would touch he would talk about being all into them. The one that always stood out to me was when Monster Hunter 4, and I think one of the Etrian Odyssey games came out he basically tried to become The "Monster Hunter(insert other niche franchise)" Guy when it would be the first time hes really dipped into the game. The guy is a snake who wants to be a chameleon.

 

[Smaug's Smokey Hole]

The guy is a snake who wants to be a chameleon.

More like a walleyed chicken talking about being a chameleon.

 

[Judge Dredd]

he basically tried to become The "Monster Hunter(insert other niche franchise)" Guy when it would be the first time hes really dipped into the game.

He did that with Fire Emblem too. It was when the series added casual mode to ease in new players, he said a hardcore permadeath run was the only way to play the game. He then spent his run restarting whenever one of units died. It's funny in hindsight because he jumped on the "all games need an easy mode" bandwagon when that was doing the rounds a few months ago.