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Games media offers nothing of value anymore, they just don't want you to realize it.

Umbasaborne

Banned
I feel like giant bomb popularized the watching of and reacting to e3 press conferences, it was novel 6 or 7 years ago. Unfortanutley it feels as if those reaction videos and watch alongs have all but replaced traditional games event coverage.

The thing that was exciting about in person e3 was listening to industry pundits talk about previews that we could not see or play from our telivisions from home. everything is uniquitious now. Game demos are often made public in the new normal, and all game events are mostly digital.

I feel like every game pundint having ther own “we talk over x press conference” or “we react to game award trailers” is just their way of clinging to relavency for an industry and audience that does not need them anymore. G4, Giant bomb, ign, and game trailers were invaluable to me as a kid and in high school, thats largely how i learned about new games. But with information, trailers, demos, and previews being so ubiquitious and widely availible now, it feels as if the need for these dinosaurs is greatly diminished.

Why do i need to see kinda funny’s fake youtube reaction to trailers, when i can just watch them myself without a group of schilling morons putting on a production for youtube bucks? Jeff Gertsmann was right in his halo infinite review (def worth a read). We do not need traditional games media anymore, and their attempts to adapt to a ubiquitous digital land scape have been embarrassing at best.
 
Whats even more irrelevant are actual gaming websites. How often do people still actually visit ign, gamespot, game informer etc.?

Reviews are just grouped into big numbers these days so not even these little hot take reviews get attention anymore. People just follow their favorite gaming personalities and whatever they do on twitch/podcast/twitter. Nothing else matters
 
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CitizenZ

Banned
Animated GIF
 

brian0057

Banned
The Allistair Pinsoff/Chloe Sagal saga at Destructoid was the red pill for me when it comes to "games journalism".
These outlets have outlived their usefulness.
 
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AV

We ain't outta here in ten minutes, we won't need no rocket to fly through space
Whats even more irrelevant are actual gaming websites. How often do people still actually visit ign, gamespot, game informer etc.?

A lot. People like us who frequent boards like GAF like not to think so because we don't generally engage with the userbases but sites like IGN still get a shitload of visits from people who have a surface level interest in gaming - and there's a lot of those people.
 

Hari Seldon

Member
I'm glad because games media was waaaaay too homegeneous with all of their west coast takes on everything. Absolutely no diversity of thought. But yeah OP you are correct, they are competing against Youtube and Twitch personalities. The problem is that someone who is charismatic enough to be a youtube or twitch personality will leave and do their own thing because why work for a corp when you can make 100% of the profits?
 

Fbh

Member
They still occasionally have previews and if you find a reviewer you like they still have early access to games.
But yeah, their importance has been increasingly going away as publishers have realized they can just go straight to the end customers.

Which is exactly why everyone has been switching to a "personality" based model.



Whats even more irrelevant are actual gaming websites. How often do people still actually visit ign, gamespot, game informer etc.?

Reviews are just grouped into big numbers these days so not even these little hot take reviews get attention anymore. People just follow their favorite gaming personalities and whatever they do on twitch/podcast/twitter. Nothing else matters

It's just anecdotal but a lot of my more casual gaming friends still seem to hold IGN in high regard for some reason.
They'll often be like "hey have you heard about this game? IGN gave it a 9!".
 
Theres are a ton of great writers in games media who breaks down the story aspects of games. You may not like it but they do play a good role when it comes to elaborating on story aspects of the game and traditional game media like ign are essentially scribes who do play an important role with getting information out to people who aren't on forums daily...no form of art likes the journalist that covers them...from the film industry to the fine arts community...so gaming isn't really special in its distaste of those that cover it.
 
I think it's a fun side job for people in their 20s. Hopefully all the people involved transition out of it into something more stable in their early 30s at the latest. If you're still doing it in your 40s and you haven't hit it big on youtube or something, then I worry about your employment prospects.

Always makes me wonder if some of these people clinging to this will be in real trouble in their 50s and on up.
 

BigBooper

Member
Why are the pundits talking over the presentations and trailers valuable when the companies just put out the trailers for the public on YouTube?

You are mostly right, except a large part of what they supposedly offered was entertainment.
 
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jakinov

Member
I feel like giant bomb popularized the watching of and reacting to e3 press conferences, it was novel 6 or 7 years ago. Unfortanutley it feels as if those reaction videos and watch alongs have all but replaced traditional games event coverage.

The thing that was exciting about in person e3 was listening to industry pundits talk about previews that we could not see or play from our telivisions from home. everything is uniquitious now. Game demos are often made public in the new normal, and all game events are mostly digital.

I feel like every game pundint having ther own “we talk over x press conference” or “we react to game award trailers” is just their way of clinging to relavency for an industry and audience that does not need them anymore. G4, Giant bomb, ign, and game trailers were invaluable to me as a kid and in high school, thats largely how i learned about new games. But with information, trailers, demos, and previews being so ubiquitious and widely availible now, it feels as if the need for these dinosaurs is greatly diminished.

Why do i need to see kinda funny’s fake youtube reaction to trailers, when i can just watch them myself without a group of schilling morons putting on a production for youtube bucks? Jeff Gertsmann was right in his halo infinite review (def worth a read). We do not need traditional games media anymore, and their attempts to adapt to a ubiquitous digital land scape have been embarrassing at best.
No YouTube and Twtich poplarized watching adn reacting to E3 press conferences lol.

Game demos are not often made public they are ocassionally made public. Press conferences are made digital and available for everyone one but press-only demos/previews are press-only. I don't know if this is just because you seem to only watch GiantBomb but the other big sites usually just do post-show reactions which have been a thing for over a decade.

The purpose of the gaming media (press) is to also write editorials (opinon pieces) and report things happen. They consolidate it. Sony makes a post on PS blog, or Major Nelson anonuces something or Xbox Wire.. Or an annoucement happens on an offical Sony press release they cover it so you have a single place to get information about games. You could argue you can get a news reader and add all 1000 sources of news i.e. from every publisher and how they annouce shit but that's a PITA. The way that it's structureed is that these people also have contacts in order to actually reach out to Sony, Microsoft, etc. to ask about things and report on them and sources to report on rumors. The other thing is that people value their reviews and they get to review games before it releases.
 

iQuasarLV

Member
Im not familiar with that, what had happened?
A journalist at Destructoid outed a steamer that was scamming people on Indie Go Go for money to have gender reassignment surgery but was lying to the public saying they needed to remove a piece of shrapnel from a car accident that was slowly killing them. The trans community targeted the journalist for outing a trans person and spent the next while stalking and doxing him so that he couldn't find a job after Destructoid fired him.
 
I mean we knew that but since Cyberpunk released and watching the entire industry being unmasked as an uncontrolled hype machine was the last straw for me.
It was actually hilarious watching the media, youtubers, etc going from "laeifisbglz second coming of jesus" to "i mean it's just not good" after release to save face to "Cyberpunk is a disappointment"



Nowadays i honestly just go with my guts which honestly should've been what i do since day one.
 

brian0057

Banned
A journalist at Destructoid outed a steamer that was scamming people on Indie Go Go for money to have gender reassignment surgery but was lying to the public saying they needed to remove a piece of shrapnel from a car accident that was slowly killing them. The trans community targeted the journalist for outing a trans person and spent the next while stalking and doxing him so that he couldn't find a job after Destructoid fired him.
This.
Gaming news sites physically disgust me.
 

KAL2006

Banned
If they had no value they wouldn't exist. The fact that they still exist means they most likely are making money which means they have a audience which they give value to which means the OP is factually incorrect. Can OP atelast make a concise OP with some graphs and statistics how these places are losing revenue.
 

iQuasarLV

Member
I mean we knew that but since Cyberpunk released and watching the entire industry being unmasked as an uncontrolled hype machine was the last straw for me.
It was actually hilarious watching the media, youtubers, etc going from "laeifisbglz second coming of jesus" to "i mean it's just not good" after release to save face to "Cyberpunk is a disappointment"



Nowadays i honestly just go with my guts which honestly should've been what i do since day one.

You know, I liked the game for what it was day 1. Finished two playthroughs. However, with what the media and CDPR did to the public I whould feel that if reviews just called it for what it was and what was happening from the outset; we could have had a more calm approach to what the game really was. CDPR would have lost sales, yes, but would have salvaged their reputation from the gate.
 

GymWolf

Member
A journalist at Destructoid outed a steamer that was scamming people on Indie Go Go for money to have gender reassignment surgery but was lying to the public saying they needed to remove a piece of shrapnel from a car accident that was slowly killing them. The trans community targeted the journalist for outing a trans person and spent the next while stalking and doxing him so that he couldn't find a job after Destructoid fired him.
Where is a life ending meteorite when you need one?
 

German Hops

GAF's Nicest Lunch Thief
If you've taken gaming media seriously for the past ten years... u stoopid.

Here's the best thing we've gotten from gaming media in recent times:



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Alanah-Pearce-Feet-2237681.jpg
 
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