the decline and fall of games journalism

King of Posters
83

that facefullofeyes video seems interesting and well researched and it’s nice to have a video on aesthetic in video games that actually considers game aesthetic separately from visual aesthetic

I just can’t help but wonder though what happens when you throw everything onto youtube and subject it to The Algorithm

like, there are three videos on that youtube page all (I’m assuming) just as well researched and produced and there have probably been hundreds of hours spent on them all told, but all of the videos are analyses of three games in the same franchise in the same genre made by the same company, and a cursory look at noah caldwell-gervais’ youtube channel reveals the same fixation on AAA titles as the primary objects of analysis

it’s just really weird to contrast with the way music journalism is going, where even though it has a lot of problems around cultural zeitgeists and bandwagoning, I still haven’t heard of probably 85% of the artists that are covered on resident advisor or the quietus or whatever. I read music websites and I’m overwhelmed with how many different people are making music in different ways, all with something different to say. it’s like walking into a library and realizing just how much time and effort has gone into all the words in the space and this poor librarian (I know this isn’t actually how it works but it’s my analogy idc) is trying to tell me everything they find interesting and it’s impossible

(unfortunately no one reads music websites anymore and all tastemaking is being done algorithmically by spotify et. al, tinymixtapes rip, cokemachineglow rip, stylus magazine rip)

meanwhile a glance at what game websites and youtubers and whatever covers reveals the video game literature to be so much shallower than it actually is, imo - you go on itch.io and there are dozens and dozens of new small things to play and even steam or the nintendo store has just like, hundreds of games that I haven’t heard of at all because no one is covering them, instead spending all that time and energy on another take of a game that people have had hundreds of takes on already

(I’m not saying this to write off those videos that @Myspace_Mavis posted those were all great recommendations and the videos are super well done)

what drew me to this whole damn thing (games, criticism, selectbutton, everything) was the idea that I could find this small game and in it was this small world with lives inside it and it could be my favorite place and I didn’t have to think about not having watched game of thrones or not having played fortnite or whatever the fuck Literally Everyone In The World is doing, and so this place with people being like “steambot chronicles bangs” became what I wanted from games and game journalism

like, doesn’t journalism connote coverage? and going to a place and actually seeing what happened? and because a lot of different things are happening in a lot of different places you need lots of different people to cover it? I guess game journalism is that picture of everyone taking a picture of that trash can on fire writ large huh

ok I wrote a lot of words send tweet

17 Likes
84

and as an addendum I guess this just enormous yawning void of labor and class analysis that didn’t exist in a meaningful way (read: in the “”"“mainstream”""") until literally two years ago has made it so that the mountains and mountains of work that are required to create any kind of content in the videogame sphere is not only normalized but baked into the workflow of making The Thing itself, whether that thing be a video game or some kind of criticism of that video game

5 Likes
85

To kinda talk at length about this:

I got started in my game writing career as a launch columnist for the website “Massively” where I analyzed game mechanics. After a little while there, I was invited to help launch Joystiq’s PC gaming/file server vertical, Big Download.

At Big Download I quickly ran into a problem. I was paid freelance, but my editor (who was a barely-literate hack) took every AAA story, leaving me with basically nothing.

So I went to TIGS and IndieGames.com and played jam games and flash games - stuff I enjoyed playing already - and wrote articles about them. I knew the people in charge didn’t give a shit, so it was basically free stories, stuff that only the deepest enthusiasts cared about. While I was there I also ran a relatively popular freeware column (Freeware Friday) covering everything from small indie games to source ports, and developed relationships with a lot of indie developers.

This history is to provide context for what I’m about to say: games journalism, and critical writing, will never be and was never about “finding new and interesting things”. It exists to reinforce your opinions and maybe provide you with something interesting to mull over (rarely). Articles about obscure or interesting games are not profitable under the extremely-lazy bizdev model of existing gaming verticals, so they are relegated to single columns or infrequent posts, if they are mentioned at all.

This divide is maybe insurmountable. I think that, given enough time and resources, a new gaming vertical could spring up to bring us stories and criticism that is thoughtful, nuanced, interested in perspectives outside games, and could even self-sustain. But there’s basically no money in it, which is why all those verticals now are either self-funded or the personal project of an embittered soul who will stop after a few years when it becomes clear nobody gives a shit.

I am that embittered soul. I want to write and edit good longform criticism on games until I am dead, and get paid for it, because I’m both amazing at it and also deserve to make a living. But it’ll never be the case.

9 Likes
86

i occasionally have said that i think games criticism (addressing games as games) needs to be forcibly untethered from games journalism (covering the industry), because pauline kael didn’t spill a lot of ink over fucking box office receipts, and i think i still believe it

5 Likes
87

yeah tbf I’m conflating journalism and criticism a lot all the time

it’s kind of my thing I guess

88

The problem is you can’t untether them. Game journalism is the only place that will pay for real game analysis, even if the pay is shitty. The audience for JUST criticism is not enough for a site to live on and also pay adequately without a significant runway, which is why just about every game critic worth listening to posts irregularly and has a day job.

1 Like
89

oh yeah, the structure that could support what i (and many here) want just is not there

which sucks

90

even though it’s about book publishers this n+1 article is super relevant to what we’re talking about imo

5 Likes
91

Yeah I certainly didn’t mean to seem like I’m prostelyzing for video essays as some sort of perfect path ahead. I think the obligations of monetization are, as is often the case, just as much an unfortunate pigeonhole of what is possible within the space.
A channel like Civvie 11, for example, builds an audience by being mostly very focused on a specific type of first person shooter, which on one hand sort of obligates him to be at least a bit more precise in his language. Specifically because all these games are superficially similar (especially with the distance of time) it shows a depth of knowledge and grasp of what’s ‘really going on’ that he (along with his editor, Katie) is able to point out and emphasize the ways that they can be experienced so differently, especially in a wider context.
At the same time, the fact that these games are so superficially similar is an obvious limitation for such a broad medium, and it significantly restricts what he’s capable of illustrating when he’s so confined to this space.
Even outside of genre, the channel “Matthewmatosis” is similar in that this is someone who is attempting to refine a certain sense of mechanical appeal that he finds satisfying, but just as much is only engaging with that through a very narrow scope of what ‘design’ is.
(And, undeniably, as mentioned, the labor and aesthetics of these are also very confined in still primarily being cis white men with an unsettling amount of free time)

Two abstract examples of games I love & spend a bizarre amount of time thinking about, Black Bird and Roblox,
Black Bird for how aesthetically and mechanically complete it feels, the ways that the design is constantly feeding into itself in this sort of perfect closed space.
Roblox for how much it does the exact opposite, this sort of free-wheeling design space half-sincere half-cynical that’s constantly falling apart at the seams and that within minutes ranges from comically malicious scams to absurdly sincere expressions.

But it’s very difficult for me to imagine how I could find a critical voice on somewhere like Youtube to talk about these things. On one end, searches for Black Bird bring up channels that either are generalized ‘reviews’ (“Nintendo Life!”) or STG-specifics talking about mechanics (i’ve never finished any other STG in my life)
Search for Roblox and u get millions of videos by kidfluencers hyping up reactions or w/e.

The obligations of the platforms (and of making things sustainable under…well we all know) are so so limiting.

4 Likes
92

you’re not being off topic but you might also like this thread

a lot of my issues finding youtube channels is theyre annoying about being shallow and surface level. which was talked about. please stop yelling at making edgy jokes civvie. please just talk about the weird games. or just SPREAD THE JOKES OUT a little more

its just so annoying when the volume of someones voice is YELLING AT YOU FROM ACROSS THE DEADLY PREMONITION TABLE

2 Likes
93

Heterotopias is good and maybe succeeds because of its very narrow focus e.g. even if I haven’t played a game I’m still interested in critical readings of architecture and the free site + magazine which has convinced me to buy every issue so far

2 Likes
94

Heterotopias is good

The indiegames.com site redirects to a different domain and they lost their bylines so I can’t check if @tegiminis was the first outside person to write about my little student game

but I’d like to thank them anyway

2 Likes
95

if you havent seen it http://rebind.io is doing a great job at looking at some interesting independent games

1 Like
96

sometimes i get linked to caldwell-gervais or hbomberguy stuff and i’m like why would anyone want to watch a three hour video of someone talking about [some aaa game]

6 Likes
97

I didn’t write for IGDC, I just used it as a source for finding games (Tim W is a godsend to indie games)

1 Like
98

hbomberguy once personally lectured me on how the star wars prequels are a secretly good marxist parable for almost 2 hours and he is somehow dumber and so much more insufferable than his videos make him out to be

4 Likes
99

caldwell-gervais did a pretty great travelogue/essay about western america and i did listen to all 3 hours of that over the course of a few days

3 Likes
100

counterpoint:

I wake up every morning hoping to be as vapid as possible.

6 Likes
101

I kinda just want a front page just for a perminent home for links to the remaining good sites.

It’d be cool to have a featured post section where authors could add to their posts, quote other posters and like maybe evolve them into article like things-to-read.

2 Likes
102

Blogs were good.

9 Likes