At the end of last week, it was revealed that outlets Polygon and Giant Bomb were seeing some major shakeups. Multiple different staffers were either laid off, outright fired, or left of their own recognizance. It’s a move that’s as regular in games journalism as it is in game development, these days—the culling of workers. And it really sucks for those impacted.
Except, where video games are seeing turmoil for one set of reasons, games journalism is experiencing something else. And that something is, well, frankly sort of lost on some of the people in the industry writing about it. I saw a very impassioned editorial from someone over the weekend imploring fans to consume the media they love from the people that they love to see making it. Seems fair enough, right?
The problem was that this article was written in reaction to the recent cuts at Polygon and Giant Bomb, so it felt like a strange thing to say. I say strange because one of the outlets was just bought by a new company and thus the reductions, while the other saw an uprising of its talent against management, which tends to get people fired. Broadly, I understood the gist of the article, but to me at least, it nonetheless betrayed a sort of obliviousness as to why we’re at the point that we are as an industry. Here’s how I look at things as they stand right now:
Video Killed the Star Journalist
The rise of YouTube, Twitch, TikTok, and other video-centric media platforms have done a real number on games journalism. People have never really been the most ardent readers, but when easy to make and easy to consume video content came along, it rapidly started altering how fans learned about what’s happening in the video game industry on a day-to-day basis.
Print isn’t dead, certainly, but it has shrunk massively. Ad revenue is what keeps most websites afloat; every time you visit a website and click on articles, you’re generating money for that outlet. As eyes turn away from traditional written journalism, however, advertisers opt to take their ad money elsewhere to places where they’ll actually be seen. Thus, the appeal of splashing some cash on banners on a gaming website suddenly goes away because not enough people are going to that site anymore.
That’s the nuts and bolts aspect of why so many gaming sites are fading into the sunset, but what about this notion of supporting the creators fans like? Well…
Fans Are Supporting Who They Like, It’s Just Not Who Games Journalists Think It Should Be
It all boils down to meritocracy. In today’s very competitive market, fans are turning to the channels and personalities that appeal to them. This means that a lot of untraditional sources are breaking through into the new mainstream and leaving longtime outlets to eat their dust. Once upon a time, IGN, GameSpot, Joystiq, Kotaku, and other sites were daily rituals for droves of gamers. As time has passed, many of the remaining outlets have attempted to embrace video and change how they connect with fans… to mixed results.
IGN and GameSpot, arguably the top dogs back in the day and even now, have had better success with their own digital programming. The reason being, I would argue, that both outlets stick pretty rigidly to reporting the news, doing reviews, and providing strategy guides. Meanwhile, competing outlets have been less of a draw. That isn’t because people aren’t showing up out of negligence, or ignorance—it’s because they’re not interested. It’s because the product being offered isn’t up to snuff compared to the other options available.
Personalities like Felix Arvid Ulf Kjellberg (PewDiePie), Zach Hoyt (Asmongold), Richard Tyler Blevins (Ninja), Imane Anys (Pokimane), Gary Buechler (Nerdrotic), and Hasan Doğan Piker (HasanAbi) are all personalities that dominate the streaming space and have cultivated enormous followings centered on either gaming, pop culture, social commentary, or a mixture of things. These are people who largely would never have registered as even a blip on the radars of mainstream outlets back in the day, but now are fixtures online.
Where games journalists seem to be confused is thinking that the audience is simply overlooking or forgetting about the old guard. To which I hate to break the news, but, uh… it’s not an accident that this is happening. Journalists are not being overlooked. The audience has moved on. It’s that straightforward.
It’s Not Me, It’s You
There’s another ingredient in here, especially within the past decade, that has been something of an inflection point for games journalism, and it’s the culture wars. No, I’m not suggesting it’s as simple as “go woke, go broke.” What I’m saying is that entry into the culture wars in and of itself has been as costly for traditional media outlets as the proliferation of 4K webcams.
This isn’t about conservative versus liberal, per se, but something less obvious to some: authenticity. It’s the currency of this new era. When sanctimonious journalists began using websites about gaming, movies, and pop culture to offer hot takes on everything from elections to world conflicts, audiences took notice. And not in a good way.
I think a common mistake for people that work in media, whether it’s to write about video games or some other aspect of entertainment, is assuming the audience has the same Reddit algorithm as they do, or that they voted the same way in the last election as them because, gee, all gamers are alike, it’s only the outlying weirdos on social media who aren’t with the program.
And… that’s about the worst mentality you can have if your job is expected to be played pretty down the middle. Games journalism is about reaching out to as many people as possible. That includes people you don’t agree with, and maybe even people you wouldn’t want to hang out with at a Starbucks for a Refresher and a warmed up brownie. But somewhere along the way, journalists of all stripes, including gaming ones, got swept up in the notion that only a part of their audience mattered. That this sampling of readers were the only ones that needed to be catered to, and that the ones journalists didn’t like would simply go somewhere else and be replaced.
Except, that never happened. The crowd that was shunned was never replaced, because there’s no one to replace them with. In many instances more than half of a site’s audience was basically given a metaphorical middle finger and told to take a hike. So they did. And they discovered streamers who felt a thousand times more relatable and honest than anyone at the legacy media sites ever did.
Authenticity matters. In 2019, a writer’s review of PlayStation 5 rubbed many readers the wrong way when it veered into what felt like a diary entry talking about the US Presidential election and COVID-19. For years, articles that, frankly, never should have been green lit were allowed to proliferate across gaming news sites. Everything from sex toys being synced with Animal Crossing to diatribes about politics were being published for an audience looking for the latest news, reviews, and gab about video games.
What’s more, it was all coming from a crowd that many a reader doesn’t exactly look at as any kind of authority on the topics they were writing about. Nothing screams “worldly” quite like someone whose job is playing video games and writing about it from a coffee shop somewhere. I’m not saying that this describes everyone who ascribes to being a games journalist, mind you—what I’m saying is that the audience, more often than not, has this perception.
It doesn’t mean that we as writers can’t or shouldn’t branch out now and then, where appropriate, to talk about things in the real world when they overlap with gaming. But weekly sermons on basically every topic under the sun to (what journalists thought was) a captive audience? No bueno, dear readers. Is it any wonder that when these same personalities attempt to become the next video stars they don’t succeed? Why would what they were doing in print that pushed readers away suddenly be more resonant in spoken word and video?
Dawn of a New Day
This is why I feel like the article from over the weekend was written: because many game journalists can’t quite figure out that they’re no longer relevant, and largely because of the unpalatable opinions they foisted on people. That having the name of a legacy website that people used to frequent doesn’t bestow even rented respectability any longer. After so many years of decrying fans for having differing opinions, labeling them every name under the sun and telling them to kick rocks, well—they got what they wanted. And the result? The audience found personalities in a media format they prefer who at least give the impression that they respect them.
To be fair, plenty of journalists keep things as neutral as they can. And plenty more have found themselves laid off for corporate greed and nothing else. Yet, there’s still no denying that as a whole, game journalism opened the door for personalities whose interests were more in telling the audience how to think and how inappropriate their opinions are, versus just talking about games. Perhaps most emblematic of this was when G4TV’s comeback came to a screeching halt the day it decided to let fans know in no uncertain terms that all those old viewers of the original G4 were terrible people who could tune out and go somewhere else.
Here’s a trade secret: tell people to go away enough, and they usually will.
Perhaps the biggest takeaway, though, is one that won’t be very popular with some journalists. If you take a look at the landscape of independent journalism online, the thing that sticks out to me is how vehemently audiences seem to be rejecting the voices and types of narratives that produced the content which has led to the demise of so many outlets. I say authenticity is king, and it’s true, but relatability is similarly crucial. It’s time to look in the mirror and realize that the viewpoints that many of these journalists think are universal are, in fact, not, and that they ultimately are the fringe they presumed their audience to be.
And hey, stick by your convictions and espouse your views. Just don’t think that you’ll be getting a paycheck for it.
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