Let's Sperg Why do Gaming Journalists Still Exist? - And who are they writing for?

[Secret Asshole]

Well Game Journalists really were always kind of paid marketers. Today they have been largely supplanted by Let's players and other YouTube celebrities who can demonstrate a game in real time and offer commentary and comparisons.

Writing about videogames is defunct. The only way to remain relevant and get clicks is to construct a narrative, or push a social/political agenda. Since videogames are so popular now, you can piggyback social/political messages along with your games media.

And what is the social political axis that the Technology centers of the world adhere to? Videogame "Journalists" and "Writers" have nothing else to offer but social/political propaganda disguised behind games critique. Same thing could be said for many online "movie reviewers" these days too.

You are pretty much right. Videogames are an 80 billion dollar industry. That means there's a lot to mine. There really isn't any point to any major gaming sites. Either they are worthless political opinions that I could give a flying fuck about or regurgitated information from Reddit and other online forums. And people who play games absolutely do not care about a writer's political opinion. I know this because when they praise some shitty indie walking simulator, it sells like shit. They have no influence and can't move copies.

For example, like Anita, whose ideal female character was a genderless beige blob. How many units did she push when she praised that game? None. Absolutely no movement in sales. While she isn't a gaming journalist, she functions like one. That's the sum of their influence. And I think game companies have gotten wise to the stupid political shit. I hear rumors all the time that they are locking journos down and heavily controlling them. Which makes sense, because who the fuck wants some idiot who would rather write about politics in the Philippines have unfettered access.

It still amazes me though, because I don't know any gamer or even a casual one that knows or likes games journalists or websites. All of them are like me, they get their info from forums and user reviews. That's why I wrote this thread, because they only seem to serve to get outrage clicks from people in the hobby. People who are even marginally interested in games don't even bother with them.

I'm a bit old, but I believe gaming journalism died when magazine market folded back in the early 2000's. You had Gamespot for information, but that's about all. You wouldn't really get a good personal "review" until let's players became a thing. You could see more than one person play a game and give their impressions on it. Sort of like say Electronic Gaming Monthly back in the day when they had four or five different reviewers each reviewing the same game. Just with added benefit of some additional conversation making it more akin to an article in a magazine.

I'm with you. Like I mentioned before, once the magazine market folded, you were done. Yes, they were shills some of the time, but you had specialized reviewers. There was never anything about shitty politics or crap like that. You had PC Gamer even having a hardware section with reviewers, interviews, stuff like that. There weren't any C- level dissertations from an unranked liberal arts university. Like, I seriously don't give a fuck what the author's opinion on its politics or how inclusive or diverse it is. I could give a shit. Tell me something I couldn't figure out on my own. And that's the problem, they just can't. I can go to any other website and find that out, I don't need a 'journalist' who can barely handle Doom on Easy mode for their opinion on whether or not I should buy a game.

And that's the problem, they don't. They hire these stupid motherfuckers who don't know shit about the hobby. Like, there was this journo on twitter who was pissed he 'lost' his Zelda save and considered it from best game to worst game. Turns out the guy's friend switched modes and he didn't know because he was a stupid piece of shit.

 

[AnOminous]

And that's the problem, they don't. They hire these stupid motherfuckers who don't know shit about the hobby. Like, there was this journo on twitter who was pissed he 'lost' his Zelda save and considered it from best game to worst game. Turns out the guy's friend switched modes and he didn't know because he was a stupid piece of shit.

I imagine them as if you had some kind of consumer reports magazines for cars, but instead of people who knew anything about cars, they'd complain that Volkswagens are problematic because they were invented in Nazi Germany, or that you can't buy Audis because some middle level executive groped a woman. Who gives a shit? Then they claim a car is the worst ever because it stopped moving after 300 miles, and have to be told that you have to put gasoline in cars.

 

[Secret Asshole]

I imagine them as if you had some kind of consumer reports magazines for cars, but instead of people who knew anything about cars, they'd complain that Volkswagens are problematic because they were invented in Nazi Germany, or that you can't buy Audis because some middle level executive groped a woman. Who gives a shit? Then they claim a car is the worst ever because it stopped moving after 300 miles, and have to be told that you have to put gasoline in cars.

That's what they are. They don't want to admit that's the level that they are on. That of golfing mags, or car mags, or guns and ammo or even magazines where they try out the latest fly fishing rods. They want to be something different, something higher. Too bad, because that is what they are. It isn't rocket science. Those mags have experts beyond the consumer, giving the consumer information that they couldn't otherwise obtain.

Game journalists seem to think that its perfectly fine with their knowledge and ability being below the consumer. The thing is, if you are consistently doing this, then your audience has no use for you. And when you act condescending, with your audience knowing more than you do, you actively end up with an audience that fucking hates you.

 

[AnOminous]

Game journalists seem to think that its perfectly fine with their knowledge and ability being below the consumer. The thing is, if you are consistently doing this, then your audience has no use for you. And when you act condescending, with your audience knowing more than you do, you actively end up with an audience that fucking hates you.

I'm pretty sure they only exist at this point because they have an audience that is hate reading them. This is why always use archive.is so you're never actually giving money to this bullshit.

Oh, also it's still considered murder for some reason to kill them. That is also part of it.

 

[r4ndom]

Oh, also it's still considered murder for some reason to kill them. That is also part of it.

next they'll consider yelling "die nigger" at black people hate speech.

 

[c-no]

In regards to video game journalism and how crappy and pretentious it can get, I came across an article over the last Homefront game that was made. It read less of a review and more of some opinion about how the game is crappy because of what you play as and being some excuse for freedom or something. Then again, this is by a game journalist who nails the look of a pretentious hipster.

https://killscreen.com/articles/homefront-revolution-everything-wrong-america/
Some how a game about an American guy fighting North Korean's in an alternate universe is some teabaggers conspiracy wet dream. Really, the whole diatribe could of just used a good trimming to say why the game sucks beyond being the writer's opinions (he more or less rants about how the game is being selective with freedom or some crap like that) such as mentioning bugs but it just reeks of being essay that could rival the length of a @Jaimas post.

 

[AnOminous]

next they'll consider yelling "die nigger" at black people hate speech.

As Ambrose Bierce pointed out, homicide is divided into four categories.

Homicide
n. The slaying of one human being by another. There are four kinds of homicide: felonious, excusable, justifiable, and praiseworthy, but it makes no great difference to the person slain whether he fell by one kind or another — the classification is for advantage of the lawyers.

 

[Trans Fat 41g]

I kinda chuckled at Chris Grant being technologically inept and blaming Nintendo for it.

 

[r4ndom]

As Ambrose Bierce pointed out, homicide is divided into four categories.

Homicide
n. The slaying of one human being by another. There are four kinds of homicide: felonious, excusable, justifiable, and praiseworthy, but it makes no great difference to the person slain whether he fell by one kind or another — the classification is for advantage of the lawyers.

this is too intelligent a response to what i said.

 

[Doug_Hitzel]

next they'll consider yelling "die nigger" at black people hate speech.

That’s not hate speech, that’s just incorrect German.
It’s “der Nigger,” not “die nigger.”

 

[FBI OFFICIAL]

"Games Journalists" and "Gamer Personalities" both have the same job, the difference is that only one of them actually provide good material. This is why all the really exceptional games journalists (as few and far between as they are) end up transitioning into being Personalities. My example for this trope in action is Tim Rogers. Another good example would be the majority of the Easy Allies staff, especially Kyle Bosman. Jim Sterling is also possibly a case of this if you can stand him.

 

[Erwin Blackthorn]

Game journalist seem to be the boobie-streamers of the journalist world. According to the dictionary, a journalist is someone who is a writer or editor of a news medium. Game journalist seem to be highly opinionated reviewers half of the time, although I must admit I don't bother with the lore of game journalism.

Do people like Angry Joe and AlphaOmegaSin count?

I think the most a game journalist SHOULD do is give us the news about upcoming video game related things, and leave the reviewing to the public. Posting articles about how more feminism is needed in video games is video game related, but it most certainly is not news. And don't get me started on "journalist" complaining about a game being too hard and then giving it a bad score because of it.

Seriously, giving a game a bad score because you couldn't beat it is like saying a report on a warzone is a bad story because it's difficult to get the scoop. If a game is hard due to bad game design or faulty controls, that is something to remark upon, but if it's difficult because of responsive AI and tense map design, that is intentional difficulty.

This is the way I see it. Yes, video games are a multi billion dollar industry, rivaling porno it's so big. But no matter how much video games make, the mainstream developers are hurting big, all because of these cuck journalist complaining about things that don't matter. Wanting better graphics, easier games, psudo-diversity, these are all things that waste money and time. These are all things video games don't HAVE to be, but in order to stay alive, mainstream developers have to obey because they're already in too deep.

I don't know what the future holds for games, but I know that I'd rather watch a twitch streamer go through the latest games and talk about things they like/dislike rather than read an article about how wonderful Mass Effect: Andromeda is for having a diverse developer team while ironically ignoring the fact the game was one of the most expensive flops of the year.

 

[Jaimas]

Games Journalism had a point once. Years ago, when it was actually about informing a public. For example, no one ever expected Nintendo Power to do anything but cheerlead Nintendo products. However, it did it well enough and with enough analysis work to be considered somewhat profound at the time. Hell, it had the balls to do awards and go over which games were the best on the NES at the time. They could have just said "lol all our games are awesome, buy our shit" like the current generation of journalists, but they didn't.

They didn't because they gave a shit. This is something that was true of basically every gaming magazine back in the day. This shit had to see print so you'd better fucking bring your A-game. You had bad reviews here or there, or some shithead doing a game he/she was unqualified for, but that was the exception in these days, rather than the rule.

What happened? A few things, first and biggest being the fucking Internet.

It massively lowered the barriers on official sources that previously would go through Magazines and something resembling a press. Soon any fucking moron could and did report on shit, and companies could and did bring their news right to the public. The industry as a whole in turn got much more exclusive since they realized they held many of the cards and a lot of these shitbutts could be counted on to sell their souls for the prospect of being first.

Which brings us to the second thing: The rise of clickbaiting. Previously, Gaming Journalism had to go through magazines, so you actually had to put effort in. This meant that the writing was better, there were less fuck-ups, less rumor-mongering, less horse-shit in general, really. Fuck that now that every Ron, Dick, and Kemco can blog about shit and have a better than break-even chance of giving a reasonable review. That model basically instantly killed multi-critic mags like GamePro.

So with the barricades for entrance essentially gone, a lot of mags whored themselves out shamelessly, and as things got worse and clickbait began becoming more profitable, that became the new hotness. Now you didn't even have to be remotely accurate in reporting on shit, you just had to have a platform, and if you were big enough to be on Metacritic, you could even outright fuck the company financially if you wanted, which did a lot with forcing the smaller companies play ball as well. With that gone, so was giving a fuck.

Putting it differently: Older game journalists were game hobbyists first, and critics second. Every critic had his or her own weirdnesses, tastes, etc, but every one of them was a fucking hobbyist first and foremost, and there's nothing easier to do for a sperg than sperging about their favorite hobby. This is why even in mags designed to be cheerleaders for a platform, the various publications still managed to maintain a veneer of being not-shit.

When Games Journalism had the cork popped, so to speak, on the barriers of entry being removed, what happened was what always happens in these circles when meritocracy takes it square in the ass: zero-talent-assholes with an agenda showed up. In this case, zero talent journalism majors first arrived, believing they were god's gift to the artform, followed by Social Justice Warriors, who do what they usually do. This new generation of critics didn't give a damn about the hobby, they cared about personal aggrandizement and turning their new platform into one more angle to proselytize about Social Justice, respectively. They never cared about games, so they never bothered to git gud or even pretend to give a shit about the hobby.

 

[AnOminous]

But no matter how much video games make, the mainstream developers are hurting big, all because of these cuck journalist complaining about things that don't matter.

Not really. Literally nobody cares what these cucks think. That's why they're so perpetually angry, and why, as people have slowly realized there is no such thing as a "games journalist," they are increasingly simply ignored.

The people who buy games don't care about them. The people who sell games care about selling a lot of them.

This is a day and age where people can pirate practically anything they want without paying for it at all, so if you piss off the kind of people who have that choice, they're choosing to do that. Games with server-dedicated shit that rely on multiplayer are a bit of an exception, since there are now more or less successful ways of controlling access to servers, but still, if you don't have anyone willing to pay for your game, you aren't going to make money.

These cucks mostly pimp walking simulators, dumbass Twine games nobody wants to play, and other crap nobody wants.

 

[Erwin Blackthorn]

Not really. Literally nobody cares what these cucks think. That's why they're so perpetually angry, and why, as people have slowly realized there is no such thing as a "games journalist," they are increasingly simply ignored.

The people who buy games don't care about them. The people who sell games care about selling a lot of them.

This is a day and age where people can pirate practically anything they want without paying for it at all, so if you piss off the kind of people who have that choice, they're choosing to do that. Games with server-dedicated shit that rely on multiplayer are a bit of an exception, since there are now more or less successful ways of controlling access to servers, but still, if you don't have anyone willing to pay for your game, you aren't going to make money.

These cucks mostly pimp walking simulators, dumbass Twine games nobody wants to play, and other crap nobody wants.

I agree that the real fans of games don't care what game journalist talk about when it comes to opinions, but we have to remember that the gaming industry now relies on the newcomers for the majority of their income. Kids falling for micro-transactions, teenagers buying all of the useless dlc so they can show off, people buying a game console on a whim and deciding to get into a game everyone in their job/military unit are playing.

These people are not exactly gamers, yet they are the new source of income the gaming industry can pitch towards. These people are mostly clueless and they need a "reliable" opinion to see what they should get into and what agrees with their demands. That is where the game journalist come in and ruin it for everyone.

Perhaps most games these days have the multiplayer focus BECAUSE of pirating. Perhaps most games these days have DLC and micro transactions because that's how they avoid becoming bankrupt. Whether that's right or wrong, the fact is that the game industry is relying on things it didn't have to previously and it's changing for the worst due to a reaction to something that's slowly killing it.

Also, let's not forget that developers can create any game they want as long as it's technically possible, but they must obey the publisher since the publisher is giving the funding. Imagine having to fear the reaction of a famous journalist and risk missing out on millions of buyers(assuming they buy it), all because you didn't include a black person in your game. Publishers are shit for numerous reasons, with the main one being how they react to possible buyers without realizing what kind of people are buyers.

College liberals knee deep in debt are not a reliable source of income for anyone other than a starbucks, yet publishers think these kinds of people will buy a game for $60+ and also shell out their monthly paycheck that doesn't exist for the DLC. It's all a vicious cycle of false hopes and making their product too expensive to produce, so they try to make it up by appealing to the people who waste their money on basically anything.

So to put it more simply: it's a bad decision caused by a mass of bad decisions and promoted by people who are bad at deciding things.

 

[Ballzymaker94]

I know I'm a little late in saying this, but didn't Darksydephil beat Cuphead when journalists were saying this game was too hard?

 

[Erwin Blackthorn]

I know I'm a little late in saying this, but didn't Darksydephil beat Cuphead when journalists were saying this game was too hard?

He did, making game journalists WORSE at games than a man famous for being bad at games. If that isn't a sad existence for the journalist, I don't know what is.

I do have to say, youtubers who play games for a living tend to be better journalist than the "professionals", including DSP. Love him or hate him, he tries to actually be genuine with his reviews and clearly states its all his opinion, all while displaying the entire game for everyone to see how he came to that conclusion.

I did just remember something. Wasn't there something about journalist wanting to get rid of boss battles in games, or to have a "journalist mode" so they can rush through the games faster and crap out more pointless reviews?

 

[Fulda's Gap]

More importantly, why does anyone care?

 

[Jaimas]

More importantly, why does anyone care?

Because those who fail to learn from history are damned to repeat its mistakes.

 

[Ballzymaker94]

He did, making game journalists WORSE at games than a man famous for being bad at games. If that isn't a sad existence for the journalist, I don't know what is.

I do have to say, youtubers who play games for a living tend to be better journalist than the "professionals", including DSP. Love him or hate him, he tries to actually be genuine with his reviews and clearly states its all his opinion, all while displaying the entire game for everyone to see how he came to that conclusion.

I did just remember something. Wasn't there something about journalist wanting to get rid of boss battles in games, or to have a "journalist mode" so they can rush through the games faster and crap out more pointless reviews?

That's fucking sad when I read that. Boss battles are what make some games actually challenging rather than having the game devs wipe our butts and hold our hands through the whole game. We're not reading their reviews so they can tell us just about the pretty graphics and the atmosphere(which said boss battles add to). We're reading to see how the gameplay and AI handle, and if said game is worth the money.

The fact that even DarksydePhallus can show us more about the gameplay regardless if he thinks it's the games fault and not his kind of shows the further obsolete nature of game journalists. This isn't the days of Nintendo power anymore, and with the internet as big as it is now...you don't need me to tell you any further.