A blog post by the inimitable Mr James Mielke really resonated with me earlier today, because it touches on something that regular readers will know I feel particularly strongly about: the lack of coverage for interesting, niche games on mainstream, large-scale, commercial gaming sites.
Mielke’s piece focuses on the growing Japanese doujin (indie) scene and the excellent games that are emerging from it — titles like, as Mielke mentioend, the joyfully retro Kero Blaster, the smashing mech shooter Armored Hunter Gunhound EX and Edelweiss’ spectacular shmup Astebreed, and a list to which I’d also add intriguing, enjoyable titles like Croixleur, Cherry Tree High Comedy Club, Gundemonium, Exceed and numerous others — but it’s a problem with niche games in general. These days, if you’re not a triple-A game with an astronomical marketing budget and a PR team working overtime to ensure at least ten trailers are released every week, you’ll struggle to even get noticed by the big hitters in the industry.
Why is this? Well, there are lots of reasons at play. A huge consideration for many sites these days is determining what’s going to pull in traffic. Since we’re still not in a position where people will pay for quality content on the Web — and frankly, I don’t see that changing any time soon, unfortunately — most sites still make use of an advertising-based revenue model, which is largely reliant on ensuring that eyeballs are directed on pages which, as well as interesting content, feature advertising in noticeable, prominent locations. Some sites are more obtrusive than others when it comes to advertising, but one thing all commercial gaming sites have in common is a reliance on advertising for revenue.
This means that sites have a perceived obligation to serve up content that will “sell” — i.e. stuff that will guarantee eyes on pages and, by extension, ads. This means covering the latest hotness at any point — the Grand Theft Autos, the Mass Effects, the Watch Dogs…es of the world. And covering them as much as possible. Previews. Reviews. Guides. News stories. Everything you can possibly think of until there’s nothing more that can possibly milked out of the latest big triple-A release, at which point you then proceed to do the same thing with the next one.
Depending on the size of your staff at a publication, this then doesn’t leave all that much time for coverage of other stuff — whether it’s a Japanese doujin project put together by a single dude in his bedroom or a sprawling grand strategy extravaganza that may well be one of the most fascinating, ambitious games ever created. There is still time to cover these things to a certain extent, but a whole lot of stuff has to fall by the wayside. I regularly felt enormously guilty when I simply had to ignore a lot of stuff coming into my inbox on a regular basis because I was obliged to cover certain things in favour of others. It made me enormously sad to see hard-working pros like Tom Ohle of Evolve PR continuously bang their heads against a brick wall in an attempt to get the smaller — yet, in many cases, considerably more interesting — projects even considered by your average outlet. There simply isn’t the manpower to do so.
And it’s doing the audience a disservice, too. When there’s nothing to choose between all the big sites’ almost-identical coverage of Watch Dogs, Call of Duty or whatever is big this month, there’s little reason for people to look around for interesting takes. Sites could benefit hugely from specialising in particular areas — or simply making more of an effort to not cover exactly the same things all the time at the behest of the most powerful triple-A PR representatives.
I made a point of covering niche games when I had the opportunity. I reviewed the games that no-one else would look at — and often in more depth than when other sites acknowledged their existence. I celebrated interesting games through my weekly columns. And here I am, staring down redundancy at the end of next month. So that worked, then.
As the overused cliché goes, games journalism is broken. And I wish I knew how to fix it.
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You can’t fix the journalism side of it; you have to fix public perception. Singapore faces the same issue with local indie movies and bands. I’d cover them as much as I can but the readers just don’t care enough… And sadly you have to report what will make people want to read. News is a money making machine.