1633: Newshound At Rest

Having stepped back from the games press — not entirely through choice, as previously noted — I’ve had the opportunity to reflect on the way I read games sites in 2014.

And the simple answer is that I, well, don’t.

I had a feeling that this was the case. Being involved in the endless hype cycle for games that really don’t need any more hyping up was starting to make me cynical even back in the GamePro days — hence my conscious decision to focus on unconventional, interesting and quirky stories rather than endless retreads of press releases from Activision, EA and Ubisoft. It was a decision that paid off in the short term — people started coming to GamePro to get away from the identikit coverage from other sites, and my stories contributed to a significant growth in traffic… right before the site folded, leaving us all out of a job. Bah.

On USgamer, aside from the news coverage — which I found increasingly hard to care about, particularly as we started having to refocus our efforts on covering the things that would definitely pull in traffic (i.e. the “big name” games of the moment: the aforementioned games that don’t really need any more coverage and hype) rather than the interesting, unusual and underexplored areas of the business — I was fortunate enough to have a certain degree of leeway to write the sort of things that I’d want to read from a games site. Thus the JPgamer and BOARDgamer columns were born, providing specialist coverage on niche subjects — while neither of these would be likely to bring in readers by the millions, they were both the sort of things that would keep people coming back week after week, and judging by both the regular commenters and the disappointment expressed by readers when my departure was announced, they were successful in maintaining a solid, specialist audience.

Looking around at the other big sites, though, I’m seeing very little that makes me want to hang my hat on that community and call it my own. I’m seeing lots of very similar stories about how amazing No Man’s Sky is supposedly going to be, or how awesome Destiny is supposedly going to be, or “everything we know” about Mass Effect 4/Dragon Age: Inquisition/Halo 5/whatever for the umpteenth time. I’m seeing very little stuff to read with any real meat on the bones, in other words — and with Polygon, the site that was supposed to reinvent games journalism, laying off the majority of its features team, it seems that interesting, long-form critiques and other, non-review, non-preview, non-news pieces are rapidly going out of the window.

And when sites do attempt to try something a bit different, it’s inevitably on the increasingly tedious subject of sexism. This isn’t to deny that there’s plenty to talk about and criticise here, but the majority of articles on this subject are so blitheringly ill-informed with their GCSE Sociology-level critiquing of a subsection of the business as a whole — frequently completely ignoring parts that don’t fit their ham-fisted, half-baked theories — that they’re just painful to read, particularly when the author becomes so enormously defensive that they start insulting their readership rather than acknowledging the actually quite valid criticisms that come up in the comments section.

Or video. Fuck video. But that’s a rant for another day.

Instead of professional games coverage, then, I instead tend to look to my friends. I discuss what I’m playing on Twitter, on Google Hangouts and on the new Squadron of Shame forums. Impassioned reports — positive or negative — from people I know and trust is infinitely more interesting than a carefully PR-orchestrated preview of a game that will inevitably be at least a little bit disappointing when it finally releases. I’d rather hear about something that’s out now — that people have actually played, that I can track down a copy of and play should I like the sound of it — than something that, in many cases, is a year or more away. I’d rather hear about amazing discoveries that were released five or six years ago and sank without trace than something I can’t install and play right now. And I’d rather share my stories and join the conversation than be preached to.

Essentially, then, I think I’ve come to the conclusion that I don’t really give a shit about the modern games press in its current form. And I’m quite possibly not alone.

Which might explain why I’m in the situation I’m in now. Hmm.