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:
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.
Steam reviews and Youtubers overtook game journalist websites/magazines for me.
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.
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.
We don’t need journalists anymore, because CoD and Assassins Creed are the same game every year and Silksong is never coming out.
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
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.
deleted by creator
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.
deleted by creator
YouTube is Google though :)
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.
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)
