As a recently graduated student of journalism who has actually considered going into gaming journalism (this blog was kind of a test ground for that, although since I can freely state my opinion here I kind go overboard with it) this naturally got me interested.
So why is gaming journalism over? Well just like good old fashion journalism, gaming journalism has seen a steady decline in quality and available jobs over the last few years. Traditional journalism has seen a decline due mostly to the internet. Success is now measured in clicks, something that can lead to a drop in quality or standards in order to attract someone to click on a link. Those in the industry call that sensationalism, and no it isn't a good thing.
Lets look at the tragic life of the newspaper in the last 10 years. Newspapers, now mostly viewed as the old school of journalism, used to have a pretty simple and effective pay model. First you have your subscribers, who pay a monthly amount to get your paper every time it's printed, which were an easy measurement of how many people read the paper. Second, newspapers would have advertisements, lots of advertisements and that would add a huge amount of money in which the newspaper company could use to pay it's reporters, editors, printers, etc.
Back in the day advertisers would look at how many subscriptions a paper had to see how badly they needed/wanted an ad in this newspaper and would pay more or less depending on that number. With the advent of the internet many people stopped reading their newspapers and turned to online journalism, this is where mistakes were made.
When many newspapers jumped online they put stories up for free, mostly just copying over stories from the actual newspaper. Soon readers dropped their subscriptions since they could obtain all of the news stories they wanted online. This is why print journalism is on life support. Lack of subscribers leads to lack of advertisers and it's a viscous cycle.
The same is true for magazines. How many magazines have you seen disappear in the last few years? One of the earliest forms of gaming journalism came from magazines. It was the perfect format for it, and it was just what gamers were looking for. You could pick up a magazine in October to see all the releases for Christmas and use that as a judge for what games you wanted. Game journalists were experts, playing all sorts of games they could sort the good from the bad and make sure you didn't waste your $60.
But then along came the internet. Yes people still looked to gaming journalists to read about what games they were looking forward to, hear new announcements and such, but why trust the word of someone you don't know when you could download a demo of a game you might want to buy and see for yourself?
It also doesn't help that gaming as a market has changed. Reddit user staytaytay posted something from another thread on the subject hat says it much better than I can. It reads:
Games are becoming a service business instead of a packaged good. DLC, Microtransactions, etc. When a business relationship is ongoing (rather than a single transaction) the power dynamics change. People at the endpoints gain power, and the middle men lose power (unless they add value along the way or have a unique offering).
So what you have right now is that gamers are gaining power (endpoint), and game developers are gaining power (endpoint). Publishers are losing power and so is the gaming media.
The media's function used to be to insulate you against the possibility of spending $60 on a shit game. Not needed anymore, when most of the money is spent on ongoing service and purchases, or the game is free to download. The time cost of reading a review is about equivalent to the time cost of downloading a game now.
The other thing you see is that devs & publishers care less about the media now because they used to focus on attraction activity. The basic formula is attract->retain->monetize. But.. in games it was different. Once you buy the $60 game, that's all the money they're ever getting from you, so they spent all their time and effort on attract. The media was critical in this process. Now that games are a service, the math is easy to prove that retain is more important. (attract is linear payoff, retain is exponential payoff). So publishers and devs are focusing efforts on retain instead. Remember, the media's function was to assist in the attraction efforts. But once you've played a game you don't need the media to tell you whether you want to continue playing - you already know.
All this adds up to an industry - games media - which used to be really useful and in demand, and is now kind of a dinosaur. They're clawing at relevance.Just like normal journalism, gaming journalism is needed to its niche. Gamers want to know what new games are coming out, what the plans are for them, etc. But that doesn't mean it isn't suffering. I honestly believe that, like normal journalism, gaming journalism has a broken model at the moment. Change can be good and it is needed to advance as a society, but it isn't painless.
The actual post on reddit linked to an article titled "Gaming Journalists Declare That “Gamers Are Over,” But They Are the Ones Becoming Obsolete." The main focus is on a new GamerGate movement that quite honestly makes my brain hurt and my soul sink. I don't care to talk about it because it seems like a lot of people getting upset and organized over video games. Aren't they supposed to be entertainment? I've spent some time trying to get a feel for the argument from both sides, the gaming journalists and the readers, but honestly I'd rather go read more about what's happening overseas.
Here's what I do think. I think both sides of this are probably wrong. To alienate your consumers and life source is extremely dumb, however there are plenty of gaming journalism sites that aren't doing this and readers still want to hop on the bandwagon instead of taking the time to find them. You don't bite the hand that feeds you unless the other is pointing a gun at someone. That's all.
While I have sat here and compared Journalism and Gaming Journalism quite a bit, I think there's one thing I should mention. Unlike traditional Journalism, Gaming Journalists usually haven't studied actual Journalism. Newspapers would tend to hire new reporters that have actually studied how to become a reporter and stick them at the bottom, working on smaller stories so they can build up and up and up.
Gaming journalism is a different animal and honestly you can tell a big difference in the style of writing between traditional news reporters and gaming journalists, and that difference is experience and time. Most game journalists on websites are still young, still building the way they write and the readers are picking up on that. They are similar but not the same, trust me I know that.
So what lies in our future? I honestly don't know. If I did I'd be taking this time to prepare myself and hop on the train as it passes. I enjoy gaming journalism and I wouldn't want to see it go away, but things need to change. Until they do you know you can always find a post about some game I'm really passionate about appearing on this blog.
Thanks for reading, and if you have any comments, think I'm dead wrong or just want to call me an idiot or worse (don't bother, I've played Call of Duty with the worst potty-mouthed 12 year olds alive) please go ahead and leave a comment.
Until next time.
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