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[Umbasaborne]

I was thinking about this as I listen to old giant bomb casts. On those older episodes (im currently in 2010 right now) they always have some exclusive info. A demo that they got to play early, footage that was only shown to the press, ect. It made older episodes genuinley exciting to listen to because i would get to hear impressions about games that i had no access to what so ever, or listen to them talk about what they’ve seen for unreleased games. That information was genuinely valuable

these days however there are very few, if any press only game previews. Public demos and beta’s have become more noramlized, especially in a covid world. E3 and other trade shows are no longer press exclusive. We all can watch the press conferences and anyone can go to e3 so long as they can afford to.

I feel like many games pundits rest heavily on their laurels, and rather than putting out meaningful preview content, they are shoving a camera in their face while they watch the same press conferences on twitch that everyone else has. Some times they screech into the camera for a little extra youtube money too.

The access that the games press has no longer feels valuable. I dont feel like im learning anything new about upcoming games on podcasts or websites anymore, rather im just getting a million and one hot takes about the same information that I just had access to. More and more, games press, pundints, influencers, whatever you like to call them, feel like they are desperatley clinging on to an industry that no longer needs them to pass along information.

 

[Faust]

I remember when they did actual gaming journalism, but now they prefer character assassination, cancelling, and utilizing their platforms as personal soapboxes.

Not too surprised when Devs and Publishers avoid them these days.

 

[buenoblue]

No, gaming 'journalists' have always been shills. Everything is basically a paid advertisement. Trust no one.

 

[Umbasaborne]

No, gaming 'journalists' have always been shills. Everything is basically a paid advertisement. Trust no one.

I feel like they used to be less schilly? But since everyone has tried to strike out on their own pn youtube following kinda funny’s success, they are all sucking the publishers tit now for relavence. Seriously watching these people schill for publishers, then try to tell us that their reviews or opinions are unbiased? Like they need to fuck off with that. If they paid you to host a press conference, then im sorry, you've lost all your accountability.

 

[Coolwhhip]

They used to write articles in magazines, still to sell ads of course. But now they literally get paid by clicks on their articles. It changed the game in a negative way for sure. I guess the only way to make real money in the gaming world is to become a personality so you can get simp money on patreon. But then it's not about the actual game news or reviews any more, it's about you.

 

[Quasicat]

I remember a stretch of EGM where they did actual journalism. The cover where the PS3 was covered in tomatoes and the interview questions had meaning. I remember when they interviewed Peter Moore about the one year anniversary of the 360 and asked about failure rates being high, or when they asked Jack Tretton about his claims that PS3 sold out when there was evidence to the contrary. At one point, EGM sent a journalist to Japan and interviewed Sakaguchi and Uematsu about their leaving Square and starting their own company. These were the articles I wanted to read, but after awhile, it went back to being afraid of being blacklisted and doing the softball stories.

 

[Calverz]

I want e3 presentations to go back to PowerPoint presentations. I want to see bar charts, pie charts and line graphs. I want to hear the ceo talk about “new growth models” and increasing “mind share”.
I don’t want game trailers one after the other.

 

[Fbh]

It's a bit of a cycle.
Publishers realized they can mostly go directly to customers instead of going over a middle man, this in turn has made games "journalists" less relevant as they don't get as much exclusive access to stuff as before, which has made them opt to sell themselves as "personalities".

The fact no one want to pay for games journalism adds to this. If your revenue is click based making a ton of clickbaity stuff instead of extensive and time consuming journalism makes sense.

 

[Arimer]

I watched the easy allies reactions to nintendo announcements and about a few minutes in i was like why am i watching this. Its not informative, Its not entertaining. I could do the same thing with my friends but actually be achieving something social.

 

[sublimit]

There was never real gaming journalism with the exceptions of Gamesindustry.biz,Gamasutra (now Game Developer) and EDGE.

Unless you confuse Youtubers,"insiders",Twitters,bloggers and the usual trash with actual journalism.

 

[Nitty_Grimes]

I’m sure editor of EDGE stood down because of the backlash of him refusing to review Death Stranding. Twitter went wild. Think it went a bit wild here too.

But even now they’ll do a 10 page preview of the next best thing whipping you up into a frenzy then they’ll give it a 5.