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More than 1,200 games journalists have left the media in the last two years | VGC (www.videogameschronicle.com)
submitted 9 months ago by to c/games@lemmy.world
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“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.”

The games media outlets that have survived, except for Gamespot and IGN, have just about all switched to this model. It seems to be the only way it survives.

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[–] 104 points 9 months ago (6 children)

Journalism at large is dangerously close to dying. People favour free click- and rage-bait headlines on Facebook over quality journalism. The latter can't compete because quality costs money, while cheap quality articles oversaturate the market. AI only exacerbated the issue.

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  • [–] 31 points 9 months ago* (1 child)

    Which is why the free democratic world has to keep subsiding quality journalism that sticks to the facts. Sadly that‘s dying along with private newspapers because governments believe people just don‘t want it and it‘s not worth keeping. They treat it as entertainment and that‘s a huge problem because it‘s a pillar of democracy. Defunding it is dangerous.

    As for games… well, there‘s plenty of ways and different mediums to consume games nowadays so it makes sense magazines are vanishing along with game events despite the medium being bigger than ever. Most of the older game news outlets have overstayed their welcome.

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  • [–] 4 points 9 months ago

    I think they're almost kinda right.

    I think these platforms need to adapt. They need to make short form, entertaining videos like The Washington Post or the break off with Dave Jorgenson called Local News International.

    There is too much news for anyone to actually bother reading the long form articles that theyre used to having awfully agitating formats designed to get the reader to read the whole thing and scroll past ads.

    Short form, entertaining, and factual is the best route. Do a little skit, explain the concept simply, bingo bango.

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  • [–] [S] 17 points 9 months ago (2 children)

    Getting my news from reddit or Lemmy led to the same problems, and neither actually gave me the news, so in the past couple of years, I have definitely budgeted for a news subscription as well.

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  • [–] 6 points 9 months ago

    If I had the money I'd definitely do the same, but for now I do RSS instead of link aggregator communities if I'm being serious about it. Takes some curation, but at the very least it's not being run through a vote algorithm first.

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  • [–] -5 points 9 months ago (2 children)

    Getting news off Lemmy is a shit-for-brains idea. It's 70% bias saturated US politics links. I have no.idea how people keep lapping it up, but I hear that's the culture of Americans being told what to believe and do based on their feeds.

    You can block keywords, though, so if anyone posts any interesting news, you may even get to see it.

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  • [–] [S] 7 points 9 months ago

    The problem was more that people are more likely to submit stories that continue to get you angry about the latest thing. It won't be a deep investigative piece about the corporate interests that led to some strange move and hid some shady dealings; it will be a third or fourth article about the latest thing we all already know Trump did, but it adds like one detail and focuses on it. It's easy to fall back on by default and think you need nothing else because it's free and major events will get shared instantly.

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  • [–] 4 points 9 months ago

    but I hear that's the culture of Americans being told what to believe and do based on their feeds.

    Hate to break it to you, but this is becoming the norm globally as more and more people got addicted to smartphones and social media.

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  • [–] 3 points 9 months ago

    Journalism at large died a while ago, gaming journalism has been an absolute joke for over a decade.

    I have no respect for 99% of modern journalists, they just push 1%er propaganda and post mugshots while jerking themselves off as being self appointed "guardians of democracy."

    There are some who are trying to do some good and they have my utmost respect but they're needles in haystacks.

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  • [–] 3 points 9 months ago* (2 children)

    click- and rage-bait headlines on Facebook over quality journalism

    Gaming journalism has been overrun with that.

    What I, and I think many people, want are trustworthy, knowledgable reviews.

    I can't trust any of the major publications. I trust a small handful of YouTubers who are giving me more of what I want than the entire professional industry.

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  • [–] 3 points 9 months ago (1 child)

    Good riddance to any gar journalists who rate games on a 6/10 to 10/10 scale. I insinuated because sponsors, but fuck that.

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  • [–] 1 point 9 months ago

    The idea of ranking games on a numerical scale is inherently flawed. I suspect many publications still use it as a way to make nice with game publishers. Text that's lukewarm can slap a 9/10 score on and a lot of people just jump over the review to the "objective" score.

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  • [–] 0 points 9 months ago (1 child)

    There are still Youtubers out there motivated by the same engagement goals as gaming journalists. Both need you to click the link. With Youtubers, you can at least identify what games they like, and would know more about those specific type of games.

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  • [–] 2 points 9 months ago

    Not all YouTubers are quality. This is obvious. What I am saying is that I've found a mere handful who are quality and for my tastes they have replaced the entire legacy professional gaming journalistic media. Other people I'm sure can find similar YouTubers who cater to their tastes and opinions.

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  • [–] 3 points 9 months ago

    You even see it here. People will post "quality journalism" and then it gets attacked because its nuanced and doesnt extrapolate into extreme claims.

    People are so used to the rage-bait and bad journalism that its hard for actual reporting to break through. As well as it takes 1000x more effort to gather the evidence and story for quality reporting. Its bad, we need to start supporting journalists through gov subsidies and donations.

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  • [–] 0 points 9 months ago

    I'll only address journalism as it relates to video games/reviews, but my opinion is that there are better ways to communicate information about a game than reading about it.

    For me the big one is simply seeing it played. I've read beautiful reviews of games that when it comes time to play do not click for me. Watching someone else play it gives me way more context and appreciation. My go to for this is simply youtube. I skip the middle man entirely. I get a wide range of videos from different players in an easy to access format. Others I know use twitch to similar effect. As the options for providing this information grow, older media lose footing. I'm not surprised at all. I'm not sure we should lament it, truthfully.

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