2246: Games Journalists, Please Think of Something More Imaginative Than These Articles

While browsing Twitter yesterday, I happened to notice a piece from my former place of employment USgamer pondering that age-old question "which Zelda game is best?" — presumably to tie in with the recent release of Twilight Princess HD on Wii U. (EDIT: I've just noticed that to add further clickbait to injury, it was split into three completely separate articles, one covering 25-18, another covering 17-11, and a final one covering the top 10.)

Now, "which Zelda game is best?" is a reasonable question to ask — I've asked it myself, back when I was getting back into the series a month or two ago — but it is a question that has been answered many hundreds of times already, both by gaming websites ("professionals") and the general public, too and, to be frank, we haven't had a genuinely new Zelda game for quite a while. Moreover, it's not a question that there is a definitive answer to; the entirely subjective stuff of playground arguments and, indeed, Internet arguments.

I found myself getting a bit annoyed at the sight of this article, though, because it just felt like such a lazy, obviously clickbaity attempt to cash in on the recent Zelda release, and just a lazy idea for an article in general. As I say, it's an article that has been written many times before by numerous different websites, and one that really didn't need to be written again. It is far from the only example of this sort of ever-present non-discussion coming up in games journalism as a side-effect of clickbait culture, though, and it's frustrating to see; when there are thousands and thousands of great, interesting, remarkable, unusual, weird games out there that these writers could be covering and they instead post the same article that they themselves have probably written before for a different site, they are doing a bad job writing about games.

With that in mind, here is a list of game articles I would like to never, ever see ever again on any website, not because they're necessarily bad ideas for articles, but because they've been done many, many, many times before. Use your imagination. Write something new.

• Which Zelda Game is Best?
• Those Zelda CD-i Games Sure Were Shit
• Which Mario Game is Best?
• Which Metroid Game is Best?
• Which Nintendo First-Party Franchise is Best?
• Gosh, Dark Souls is Hard
• Dark Souls isn't Hard, You Just Have to Learn How to Play
• [obscure indie game] is the Dark Souls of [unrelated genre]
• Goodness Gracious, Battletoads was Hard
• That One Level in Battletoads was Really Hard, Even Compared to the Rest of the Game
• Which Final Fantasy Game is Best?
• Where Did Final Fantasy Lose its Way?
• Player Makes Thing in Minecraft
• The Ten Best Xbox One/Xbox 360/PlayStation 3/PlayStation 4/Wii U/3DS/Vita Games
• PlayStation 2 Classics That Deserve a Re-Release (actually, you can have this one if you pick something that isn't immediately obvious to everyone who ever owned a PS2)
• The HD Remasters We Really Want (see above)
• Ubisoft is Releasing an Open-World Game
• Activision is Releasing a Call of Duty Game
• Mobile Games Make Lots of Money
• There Aren't Enough Women in Games (bonus points if you cry "sexism" on a game that actually has excellent female characters)
• There Are Still People Playing World of Warcraft
• I'm Scared of Boobs
• Gamers are Horrible People
• Anita Sarkeesian Says Something
• Vita Games Don't Sell Many Copies
• Vita is Dead
• PlayStation 4 Has No Games
• Xbox One Has No Games
• Wii U Has No Games
• Wii U is Dead
• Nintendo is Dead
• Hah, That Super Mario Bros. Movie was Rubbish, Wasn't It?
• [Franchise] [vaguely related verb] onto [platform], e.g. Ridge Racer Screams onto PlayStation. (You can have this if you deliberately make the verb a completely inappropriate non-sequitur. Ridge Racer Masticates onto PlayStation)
• Here's a Weird Thing from Japan, Judge It
• Can Games Be Art?
• Sonic the Hedgehog Used to Be Good
• What's Next for [annualised series]?
• Michael Pachter Says Something Blindingly Obvious
• [popular annualised franchise] Sells [large number] of Copies
• A Movie that People Who Like Games Might Like Came Out Recently, It Has Nothing to Do with Games but We Think You Want to Hear About It Anyway
• Look, Star Wars

Ugh. It's depressing writing this list and realising how many times I've seen most of these on several different sites. We all know exactly why it happens, of course; these are the sorts of articles that either provoke an emotional response (and, consequently, clicks through to the comment section) or that are likely to be ranked highly on Google for unimaginative people searching for information.

In an ideal world, writing about games should be about the love of games, and the authors' passion for the things they're writing about should come through in their writing. Sometimes it does, but it happens a lot less frequently than it used to, and that's really sad.

At least I try and do my bit to show my passion for the things I love. I suggest you do too; if the press aren't going to provide, it's up to the public to provide the more valuable insights.