"Starfield review controversy traces game journalism's orbital decay"

[kane_magus]

Vidya gaem jurnlizm.

(EDIT)

For years now, the best-trafficked pages at game journalism sites haven't been reviews. They've been stories with headlines like "Pokémon Go Type chart, Type effectiveness and weakness explained" and "Mystic Messenger email guide - all correct answers for every guest in Casual, Deep and Another Story".

Yeah, I've mentioned myself how it seems like I've been seeing more and more of those asinine "Here Are The Exact Fourteen Steps Required To Properly Jobble The Jooble In Current Flavor Of The Month Video Game" type articles. It's annoying.

And as much as they continue to drive traffic long after their initial publication, having a robust set of guides in the early days of a launch is hugely beneficial not just in taking advantage of the largest wave of people looking for guides on a game, but in convincing them it would be easier to just go straight to your site in the future instead of trying out the alternatives offered by Google, which seem to be getting noticeably less helpful as the years go by.

The problem here is that search engines, social media, and the advertising industry they rely on have been the black holes of the Internet for decades, exerting an incredible gravitational force on everything around them to the point where many outlets seem to focus more on serving ads than serving readers. The ratio of advertising space to editorial space on gaming sites is the most obvious example of this shift, but that inexorable pull has warped the remaining editorial space as well.

And that, of course, is why they do that shit now, rather than spending time on articles that are actually interesting.

Advertising/marketing, and especially the fact that content creators become beholden to their advertisers/marketers and have to kowtow to their fickle whims, was one of the the worst things to ever happen to the Internet.

And from one of the image captions in that article (for an image showing "influencers" at NASA space camp):

Traditional game journalists lost favor with audiences for obvious conflicts of interests like accepting lavish experiential trips from publishers promoting their games. As a result, audeinces increasingly trust influencers, who are famously incorruptible and would never go along with stunts like being sent to NASA space camp because something something Starfield.

As much disdain as I have for "traditional" video game journalism (which has sucked ass for decades and will continue to suck increasing amounts of ever more encrusted ass for decades more [assuming it doesn't simply cease to exist altogether, which is a very distinct, strong possibility]) these days, I loathe the very concept of "influencers" even more, just on general principle, for a variety of reasons.

(/EDIT)

(EDIT 2) Oh, and of course, a good chunk of the criticisms found in that article could be applied more generally to just "jurnlizm" without the "vidya gaem" modifier on there, too. (/EDIT 2)