Archive: https://archive.is/2025.04.10-001341/https://aftermath.site/video-games-journalism-2025
We’ve (sadly) covered a lot of games media stories thatinvolve writers being laid off, sites being shuffled around and sometimes even whole companies shutting down. For Inside Baseball week, I figured it might be a good time to check in with some of the few people left still making a living in video games journalism.
I spoke with a number of writers and voices who are a) drawing a full-time salary writing or talking about video games, and b) are working at what I’d call a “major” site, the big ones with historical brands that are still in a position to be paying people decent wages. These folks are the lucky few survivors, those in jobs that a decade ago were relatively common but which today–thanks to the aforementioned layoffs and closures, not to mention other contractions like a growing reliance on freelance and guides– are increasingly scarce.
I asked a number of questions about their past, present and, perhaps most pressing, their immediate future, with their answers to each below. To protect their identities and jobs their names have been changed, and outlets omitted where requested. By way of introduction, I spoke with:
My issue with games journalism isn’t even with games journalism. Games just suck now. Specifically the big budget ones that don’t need any more press than they already pay for. There used to be a time when videogames were on track to be the next art form. I’m not saying they can’t be, or even that they aren’t already, it’s just that the artistically barren and often morally bankrupt juggernaut games are sucking up all the funding and the exposure. Games journalism has been reduced to “take a look at this game that isn’t complete trough slop” and the audience of gamers isn’t particularly receptive to that message. I wish there was more room for analysis and/or discussion, but it’s getting less sustainable every day.
I can’t remember the last time there was a well funded and appropriately successful game that had
artistic intentany sort of intentionality (before BG3)Apart from Eurogamer I basically get all of my information from random people on Lemmy and Mastodon who link to interesting stuff. I don’t frequent any games sites anymore.
Edit: and podcasts but not specifically games related ones.
Steam reviews and Youtubers overtook game journalist websites/magazines for me.
It did for everybody and it’s not really a good thing.
Yeah we need more people like second wind to go independent it just sucks there is less money going around for investigation journalism to happen.
No sympathy, industry has never been something to be particularly worthy in a long time, if it ever was.
If it creates a vacuum for others to have a go, then I am all for it. I have no loyalty to the status quo.
Robert knows what’s up.
If you want to see where this goes check where mobile gaming journalism is currently. After Touch Arcade went tits up last year there’s basically nothing that isn’t 90% sponsored content or a SEO farm.
I never paid much attention to “game journalism” because every time I did I saw “sponsored content and SEO farm”. So I really doubt we ever have a journalism, not just advertisement selling.
When it was still possible to support yourself from journalism you could see concessions being made and certain news being definitely sponsored but it was never as bad as it is now. If you subscribe over RSS you can see how much crap is being created - every new game release means my feeds are flooded with dozens of „Best places to farm underpants in Zenless Zone Zero” or „How to beat minor boss in episode 27”. Google broke the internet.
We had walkthroughs for that. But now everything must be a 20 minute video. So not Google overall but concretely YouTube is to blame.
YouTube is Google though :)
This is incredibly ironic because if you follow the history of this stuff somewhat rigorously there is a very good case to be made that the “pivot to video” beginning of the end starts when Jeff Gerstmann gets told by sales people at Gamespot to mellow out a review for advertising purposes and he aggressively refuses (as this was not at all a usual request), gets fired and starts Giant Bomb as a video-first outlet.
This is one of those things where an insider could have a very nuanced set of opinions about the relationships between the game marketing industry on one side and the craft and art of game criticism and journalism on the other, but it has somehow seeped down into mainstream opinion as “games journalism was all paid for”, which is definitely wrong.
It was fun in the 80s when we had no internet, video games were a niche, and crazy people could talk about all the new games, but that era is no more.
If that’s what the vacuum allows for then that’s why I am kind of for a collapse. If the industry is no longer profitable, it will go back to passion projects and from there hopefully we can recapture what was where hobbiests who were also good writers could do decent ‘game journilsm’.
Remember the days when a critic could trash a bad game without fear of never getting a review copy? Mostly because the just bought it and played it on release.
I mean what is games journalism? How many full time, major publication, food-packaging-industry journalists are there? Where’s our aluminum can reporters? Who’s covering the waxed cardboard beat? Where’s the lifers on butcher paper?
I mean food packaging is a $500 Billion dollar a year industry, roughly double the size of the video games industry, why are there zero full time journalists focused on them?
I grew up reading a ton of early video game blogs like Joystiq, but games journalism has always been a breath away from celebrity chasing, drama stirring, tabloid filler.
There’s one end of it that analyzes the in depth technical details of engines which is interesting to some, and there’s one end that is reviewing and discussing games as art, but otherwise there’s very little journalism to do full time on any given industry. Journalists should follow the story, not insist on finding one in the industry where they want to look.
This is a weird comparison. I don’t think we’ve ever had journalism focused on PC big box or DVD jewel cases, even though LGR is trying. There is definitely journalism around consumer media.
There is definitely journalism around consumer media.
Yes, see my comment about tabloid filler
There have been magazines and newspapers with dedicated news reporting on TV, movies, cars and sports for longer than I’ve been alive.
I don’t even disagree on the quality of a lot of the material, necessarily, but I’d argue the replacement, which is hyperfocused influencer coverage, is not better, and a good chunk of it is demonstrably worse.
At least old games journalism did actual critique. These days it’s all either unbridled hype or ragebaiting, culture wars stuff.
Also, having grown measuring time by the monthly interval between paper magazine releases “I grew up reading a ton of early videogame blogs like Joystiq” reduced me to ashes.
Also, tabloid journalism predates magazines.
Some of the replacement stuff is bad, but some is good. I personally get more out of my favourite podcasters going in depth on their feelings on a game than I get out of whoever is running reviews at IGN right now.
Like even in movies, pre-youtube, pre-social media, people flocked to individual reviewers they liked, more so than publications. It’s why Roger and Ebert / Siskel got so huge, people agreed with their tastes, trusted them, and sought them out specifically. That’s not that different from today’s world of following your preferred YouTuber or podcaster, but rather than everyone following the few individual who can publish, you end up with a giant web of individuals following and influencing each other’s opinions.
And to be clear, I think games reviewing has merit and value, it’s just that outside of reviewing and technical analysis, there’s not much in the way of stories to cover on a regular basis. So you end up with dedicated games journalists having to write about tripe half the time just to fill word / article counts.
The industry killed themselves off when they lost creditability by over-scoring shite games. When you consistently give even the worst games 6-7/10 people stop taking an interest in what you have to say. And a lot of the other articles are just filler that might as well be generated by AI.
We had 12 years or so of “GTA 6 RELEASE DATE ANNOUNCED” with bs content reading “we currently do not know when it will be announced, but here are our guesses”.
Their clickbait game was a short term win and everyone knew it. Long term they destroyed their names chasing the profits.
The publishers made them. If you don’t have an early review ready the second a game releases, nobody cares about your review. Publishers knew that and would blacklist anyone that gave them bad reviews. No early copies means no day one reviews.
So all that are left are places like IGN that will never give a score lower than 6/10 for the largest dog shit games in existence.
We don’t need journalists anymore, because CoD and Assassins Creed are the same game every year and Silksong is never coming out.
Video Killed the Radio Star
Entertainment replacing entertainment is fine. Journalism being replaced by ads isn’t.
Completely agree.
It will all slowly devolve into ads and bots on the mega-sites and we’ll have enthusiasts writing their thoughts for free out of their love of the game on the places like Lemmy.
