Is Video Game Journalism Dead?

In 2005 there was a job that needed doing and video game journalists were there to do it. If there had been no copy of Official Nintendo Magazine for 12 year-old Sean O’Malley to read, then he never would have known that Metroid Prime 2 was going to be released at Christmas and he would have never circled the previewed games that he wanted to keep track of. In 2015, 12-year-old and adult gamers alike no longer require this funnel of information to know what games they want to play, what games are available or how good they are. Since the advent of YouTube, twitch streaming, entertainment podcasts, live press conferences and celebrity gamers dominating the critical mindscape of consumers, professional video game journalists are becoming less and less central to the release of information about video games. To combat a decline in relevance, prominence and any other myriad of terms you could use to politely describe something as irrelevant, they have had to adapt with the times to ensure that their voices are still heard above the rabble. Sometimes they succeed, and sometimes it’s clear that they are fighting a losing battle. Not to mention the info-hungry, opinionated, and extremely loud readership of video game news is also extremely cynical and hostile towards the work that the gaming press does, so it just begs the question, what is even the point anymore?

The (Overly) Enthusiast(ic) Press

The enthusiast games press: organisations like IGN, Kotaku and Gamespot solely dedicated to reporting on video games, are ground zero for a lot of the debate around the practice of video game journalism. Some senior games journalists argue the role of games journalism has indeed shifted dramatically and that in order to stay relevant, the enthusiast press needs to rethink its priorities.

The former games editor of IGN UK and the current editor of Kotaku UK, Keza Macdonald, wrote last year on Gamasutra that the increasingly direct relationship between gamers and game companies has “removed what used to be [game journalism’s] function: to tell people about games.” She argued that the press is “no longer needed as a middle-man, and hasn’t been for a long time.”

While the press does still gain early access to information, due to the wealth of info available directly from developers, publishers and retailers, it no longer has that many huge advantages over your run-of-the-mill games player. This segues into the second pillar of games journalism that is fast becoming redundant: Telling people what to buy. When game magazines were the bread and butter of a news-starved teenager, the reviews and previews contained inside were incredibly important to those wishing to form an opinion on what was good and what wasn’t. The enthusiast press still dedicates a lot of its coverage and resources towards reviewing games but as Keza writes, “if there is one thing that there is no shortage of on the internet, it’s opinions, and a professional critic’s opinion is now no more or less accessible or inherently valuable than anyone else’s.”

Keza even goes so far as to say that these two definitions of video game journalism are on their way - if they aren’t already - to being “obsolete”, and news outlets that are still trying to give people advice on what to buy are focusing too much on content that “people don’t need anymore.”

Freelance game journalist Brendan Keogh agreed with Keza’s assessment by saying that the enthusiast press simply cannot keep up with the onslaught of amateur coverage and content that is accessible online.

“If all the big games journalists 10 years ago were starting today they’d be YouTubers, not games journalists… games journalists can’t keep up with YouTubers in terms of telling people what games to buy and just offering commercial reviews, because they simply can’t, what they can offer is actual journalism and actual investigative journalism,” Brendan said.

While “actual investigative journalism” is still a factor in a lot of the coverage coming out of the enthusiast press, for example articles and reports on workplace conditions or representation issues, this is not its drive. Instead, news outlets like IGN see YouTubers as their direct competition and have tried to fight them by creating more and more video content in the form of reviews, lets-plays and entertainment podcasts.

“So instead of trying to find new audiences, they’re still just fighting over that original audience that has always been theirs,” Brendan said.

By chasing their readership and taking the fight directly to their ‘competition’ instead of doing what Brendan and Keza suggests, which would be to take a step back and re-frame its role, the enthusiast press is arguably tightening the noose around its neck. The core audience for the enthusiast press is no longer as Brendan describes, the “young gamer dude with disposable income.” Instead, they are most likely smart and educated about what they want to play and what they want from their games coverage. Unfortunately, if the enthusiast press continues to chase the stereotypical “gamer dude” demographic into amateur-ville and fails to pick up the slack with genuine bona fide reporting, it faces the very real danger of digging itself a hole it can’t come back from.

“Places like IGN need to think, instead of how do we get that audience back by doing these things better than YouTube, we need to think what are broader more diverse demographics that we could be catering to instead,” Brendan said.

Lines in the sand: Journalism vs. Critique

The way forward according to both Keza and Brendan is a commitment by games writers and journalists to make people think about games differently. Brendan said this would generally occur through in-depth critical analysis above that of your run-of-the-mill blogger or YouTuber.

For many games critics and freelance journalists out there, there are only a handful of niche sites and publications that pay for critically minded analysis of video games and video game culture, which is a large part of the problem. Many journalists wishing to get published and to make money from their writing look to Gamespot or IGN as the way in to the games journalism industry. But because these sites are still focused on the demographic cultivated throughout the 80s and 90s of this “young dude” with disposable income, the methods used by these sites to evaluate games are grounded in a dialogue with an audience that is barely listening anymore: Evaluating games based on ‘challenge’ and ‘length’ and ‘replayability’. According to Brendan, this “isn’t very useful for critical vocabulary or critical discussion since most of it comes from the enthusiast press needing to be commercial advice.”

Ironically enough, Brendan sees this kind of critical writing as so far removed from the old school ideology of the enthusiast press, that he believes it needs to be categorically separate.

“In order to say interesting cultural things about video games, we can't be reliant on these mainstream words and their ideas and their audiences,” Brendan said.

However, there are of course still many publications and news outlets that would argue they can provide critical insight as well as satisfy the primary needs of their readership. An example of this is print publication Game Informer, eloquently summarised by Brendan as a “sales brochure.”

Game Informer Australia editor, David Milner, would of course disagree with the magazine being dismissed as merely an advertisement and says there is a lot that can be written about a game beyond “this game is good and this one isn't; you should buy this game and not this one.”

“People want to read about the surrounding culture, the people making the games, they want to know which developers treat their staff well; they want to know about new technology and people pushing games as an art form,” David said.

With regards to this line in the sand between critics and journalists, David said that it is just as blurred for those on the inside as much as it is for people trying to tell the difference looking in.

“Everyone in the industry has a different answer for this one. Some professional writers don't even like the term ‘journalist’, while others insist on it,” David said.

The difference from his point of view lies in a respect and adherence to the journalistic method.

"Triple checking sources and facts, writing about what you believe in, doing stories that don't always make everyone happy. If you're doing those things and you have a voice, then you're a games journalist,” he said.

However, while David would be considered a paid and professional games journalist to anyone who might find themselves stalking his LinkedIn profile, he admitted himself that a lot of what he does, he doesn’t actually consider as journalism.

“When I'm hassling the Attorney General for quotes on the R18+ rating, when I'm ensuring that our facts can all be proven and are accurate, when I'm interviewing developers and executives - that stuff is journalism. It doesn't matter that the topic is games; journalism is an approach and method. But, when I'm sitting around reviewing a game... that's more critique,” David said.

Is there room then for both types of writing in the sphere of video game journalism? Or can only one survive? At the centre of both is the ability to write well, which is something that is becoming more and more important as gamers flock to blogging and vlogging about their favourite games. Both David and Brendan agreed that for professional writers and games journalists, it is important to be a writer first and gamer second.

“We're not professional gamers; we're professional writers - so that's what you need to be good at,” David said.

Unfortunately, as both gamers and writers continue to be overshadowed by a swathe of amateur content, there will David admitted, be an inevitable decline in the viability of some of the traditional games press.

“Sadly I think we will continue to lose a few websites and magazines (and jobs), because they are expensive to produce and ad revenue is not what it once was. Eventually an equilibrium point will be reached though, and the sustainable outlets left will survive and prosper,” David said.

It’s a thankless job, but someone has to do it

So it seems that while traditional games press is suffering from a bit of an identity crisis, there is hope from the industry that it will continue to thrive. But whether the term “video game journalism” fades away to be replaced by vloggers with a passion, investigative sleuths with agendas, or critical thinkers with… well, probably just a lot of time on their hands, there is one thing that can absolutely be certain. That the readers, viewers and consumers of video game news will still be among the loudest and most entitled news consumers out there.

The subjective nature of video game coverage i.e. reviews being published as quantifiable and debates raging over whether a game deserved a 9.5 or a 9.7, means that the reader is entitled to their opinion just as much as the writer. Herein lies the underlying problem. The games journalist is in a position extremely similar to their reader; they play games and they talk about games. But they are elevated by their proximity to a game and to a story, the time they spend with a developer and the questions they’ve asked and known to ask, and their understanding of how to write and eloquently summarise what makes a game good from bad. They are no less wrong or right, they are simply the messengers and many of them work extremely hard to be as unbiased and journalistically sound as possible.

“Nearly everyone I know who has a career in this industry works super hard, long hours, and holds themselves to strict standards and ethics. The idea that we just sit around playing games couldn't be further from the truth,” David said.

“There's often scorn placed on the profession. Some of it is justified: I don't like it when games journos laud their position over their readers with arrogance and condescension. Just because you get to play games early and do cool stuff doesn't give you justification to be egotistical. It doesn't make you special; it makes you lucky. You should never elevate yourself about your audience - and if you do that, then backlash is fair enough and should be expected.”

So!? Is it dead or what?

Video games as a form of entertainment, video games as art, video games as however you wish to define them: they’ve really only just started to get going and have only been around for a few decades. The method of reporting and writing about video games is, one could argue as well, also in its infancy. A lot of time has been spent here asking the questions where has it come from? Where is it going? What should it be? And these are all questions that by even asking them, show us that no, video game journalism is most certainly not dead. In fact, it’s only just begun.