I've never remembered seeing quality video games journalism.

The tyypes that they're describing as that always seemed hacky and liable to push very subjective opinions as facts.

Their scores almost always seemed wonky and part of that is probably because individual scores for something as complex as a game don't really make sense. They rarely make sense for anything.

Instead what you want are scores in multiple areas with no single amalgamated score.

Anyhow, for the longest while video games journalism has been rife with controversy about pulling negative reviews for ad deals etc.

I think unfortunately written media is pretty much dying due to finances, and for video games, due to never being all that good in the first place.

The details I care about, like monetization, grind, and performance, are the details that most games journalists just completely skim over or they'll glaze game companies while they perform awfully here.

My way of buying games is basically watching video reviews of someone playing and mostly ignoring their commentary to figure out those details for myself.

That and benchmarks of course.... and figuring out whether they're owned by the saudi government....

Anyways, yea, video content for games both makes more sense, and more money.

I can totally get this feeling for PC/consumer electronics hardware related articles and reviews, but for video games? Meh. I won't cry.

Um, that's how it always should have been. That's how journalism in general works, going back since pretty much the dawn of newspapers: readers pay for copy, and advertisements subsidize it.

Like the games industry, publications that cover video games have been rocked by a turbulent market since the highs of the COVID-19 pandemic. Media owners like IGN, Fandom, Gamer Network, and Valent have all cut jobs in the past year.

Is it turbulent though? This article goes over video game spending by year, and it has largely plateaued since 2019. There was a pretty big jump in 2020 due to the pandemic, but the market seems to have returned to a normalish trajectory and mobile revenue seems to be plateauing (I guess it's saturated?).

I think what happened is that people are shifting where they get their information from. Instead of relying on game journalists, who seem to be paid by game devs (hence why any big game rarely gets below 7/10), they rely on social media, who theoretically aren't paid by game devs (there's plenty of astroturfing though). The business model where they're not paid by game devs should always have been the case, since when people are deciding what games to buy, they clearly would prefer a less biased source.

IMO, games journalism should have multiple revenue streams, such as:

• fan revenue - either donations or subscriptions should always be primary
• curated game bundles, like Jingle Jam - run a charity event where a large portion is donated (be up-front, and have a slider so donators can decide how much goes where, even 0% to one or the other)
• merch
• game tournaments w/ prizes - would be especially cool to focus on indies
• maybe have paid questions from fans that gets answered in a podcast or a paid video to discuss topics of fans' choosing

They can get very far before needing to run ads. Produce quality journalism and have some additional revenue streams and it'll work out.

I don't consume much gaming journalism because it's largely BS that praises big AAAs and generally ignores indies unless they get viral. I want honest opinions about games, not some balance between sucking up to who pays the bills and mild criticism.

Honestly surprised anyone who could claim to be a journalist was left in that advertising front of an industry

Their game reviews are worth shit all, so their only worth is reporting on the game industry itself. And that's a niche area that not many people are interested in.

This is why I still pay the NYT for access. They may suck. But I am trying to keep some of the good ones employed.

While I am a strong supporter of independent games media (and am ride or die Remap):

“For quality games media, I continue to believe that the best form of stability is dedicated reader bases to remove reliance on funds, and a hybrid of direct reader funding and advertisements. If people want to keep reading quality content from full time professionals, they need to support it or lose it. That’s never been more critical than now.”

This doesn't scale. The outlets doing this can support MAYBE 3 people with the outliers being Kinda Funny who have never found a sponsorship they didn't like and Giant Bomb who are pretty much riding on the massive support wave after they got fired AND have THE biggest legacy name out there and... time will really tell if they can keep supporting the whole crew this time next year. Oh, and MinnMax where Ben has to constantly remind people that he is actually the only full time employee and all the cohorts are contractors with day jobs and that you can also see Janet at Remap or her twitch channel and Charles at Game Informer and Jacob talking about death in a video essay on Nebula and...

But the other aspect, which Remap (specifically Patrick Klepek and Rob Zacny) have pointed out is... when you are part of a big org you have, among other things, lawyers. You can't really do investigative journalism without those. With the power of (I think at the time it was) Kotaku? Jason Schreier is the "press sneak thief" and Bethesda just puts the outlet on a shitlist for review codes until the end of time. Without the power of Kotaku? Jason gets a letter in the mail and needs to find a lawyer who can protect him.

Outlets like 404 Media (and, to a much lesser extent, Aftermath) have more or less structured themselves entirely around this and I don't actually know how they are pulling it off.

But Independent Games Media is, by and large, just that: Games Media. Not Games Journalism. And the reason you want the latter can probably be summed up with the Nintendo pricing of the Switch 2. They very specifically did not mention it as part of their press event or in the copy they sent out. And many outlets (including Remap and MinnMax) pointed out why. It is not going to look good for them but by doing it that way they control the message. Because all the Hype is gonna be for the Direct. So they get all the benefits of all your favorite talking heads Talking Over a Mario Kart trailer but the actual pricing? That is MAYBE an updated news article or a tweet. Which becomes "it is what it is" when they go to buy rather than "Wait... IS a gameboy actually worth 500 bucks?" discourse that we see for brands like XBOX that couldn't market their way out of a paper bag at this point.

And we've seen similar with so many controversies over the years. People who are REALLY tuned in might have heard about The mordhau "Show us your kni**a" thread and rampant racism or the black myth wukon sexism. But the majority of outlets people actually go to for coverage/opinions are VERY aware that their legal department is Uncle Jack and don't want that smoke. So you mostly just get "we aren't going to cover it" rather than "Yo dog, this shit is fucked" that we would in the old days.