1905: Gr8 B8 M8

At the time of writing, the biggest hotness in gaming — at least so far as the press is concerned — is From Software’s latest game Bloodborne.

Bloodborne is a big release for Sony’s PlayStation 4 platform and the latest unofficial installment in the notorious “Souls” series that previously brought us Demon’s Souls, Dark Souls and Dark Souls II. (And, if you’re a From software purist, the King’s Field series, too.)

The Souls series is one that I have tried on a couple of occasions to get into, but never really managed to click with. I played a bit of Demon’s Souls when it came out after I heard a friend enthusing about it — I was particularly enamoured with its creative online features — but set it aside quickly after I became frustrated at having to repeat the same 30 minutes of gameplay over and over and over again just for, in some cases, taking a wrong turning and running into an enemy that is, I later learned, intended to act as a signal that You Should Not Be Going This Way. I tried it again recently and got a little further, but didn’t really feel much in the way of incentive to go back — it’s very light on explicit narrative (although very strong on implied narrative), and I’m someone who pretty much needs an explicit narrative push as an incentive to continue playing something — so I’m probably going to call it a day where I am. I decided to give the series another go when Dark Souls first appeared on PS3 and Xbox 360, but found myself similarly frustrated and not really enjoying myself, and consequently I haven’t touched Dark Souls II and have no intention of ever playing Bloodborne.

All this is a little besides the point I want to talk about today, but I just thought I’d slot it in anyway for context. The short version is that while I respect the Souls series for what it’s doing, I don’t really personally enjoy it. And that’s fine; I don’t expect everyone to enjoy every game out there, but at least to give things a chance before writing them off. And, for me, the Souls series has had its chance, but I certainly don’t begrudge anyone who does enjoy it their enjoyment.

Instead, what I did want to talk about today relates tangentially to the Souls series — and specifically Bloodborne — right now, but is a fairly widespread issue at any given point. And that’s the fact that, given the majority of the Internet’s continued reliance on ad-based revenue models, if something is the latest hotness, then that thing needs to have the absolute shit covered out of it to ensure people keep coming back day after day to, in theory anyway, devour every little piece of Bloodborne (or whatever the latest greatness is at the time you’re reading this if it’s far in the future) information that there is out there… even if said information isn’t particularly interesting or adds anything meaningful to broader gaming discussion.

The reason I bring this up is today I saw a headline on one site that simply read something along the lines of “You can complete Bloodborne even if you’ve never beaten a Souls game”. Now, that may be true — I can’t comment with any authority on whether Bloodborne is more or less accessible than the Souls games — but frankly, I’m not sure I really care, and thus I don’t really know who this article is for. The people who like Souls games are probably on board with Bloodborne already, while the people who don’t like Souls games — like me — have had three games (plus DLC) to try and learn to love them; in other words, if they’re not already on that train, they’re probably not taking that trip.

Again, though, the amorphous audience that article is for is besides the point: it’s a symptom of the aforementioned issue where whatever is “big” at any given moment has to have hundreds of articles written about it at every opportunity, even if said articles don’t really add anything to broader gaming discussion. And the sole reason is to try and attract people to the page and consequently earn some ad revenue. It is, in theory, providing people with the content they “want” to read, but in fact it’s more focused on the potential revenue that can be brought in by the eyes on the page.

Clickbait, in other words, though perhaps not in quite such a hyperbolic manner as sites like Buzzfeed and its ilk employ.

For a business, it is, of course, important to try and make money through appropriate means. But in doing this, the online press — and the games press in particular — does a disservice to its audience, because unfortunately when you’re writing informative articles or criticism, you can’t simply ignore your audience and focus on the bottom line, because otherwise you’ll end up without an audience. And it may be the case that the audiences for a lot of sites really are lapping up anything Bloodborne-related with aplomb, however vapid it might be. But I know I’d much rather see two things than the situation we have at the moment, where every major site’s front page is practically interchangeable with one another: I’d like to see different sites covering different games at different times, and I’d like to see much broader coverage of the medium as a whole, perhaps with more sites specialising in particular genres, subject matter, types of game or even theoretical/ideological viewpoints.

In order for that to happen, though, we need a fundamental rethink of how we consume content on the Web, and a fundamental rethink of how content creators can make money from that content. Because as wonderful as it is for people to do things “for the love”, it would be even more wonderful for people to be able to make a living out of doing the things that they enjoy — and that they’re good at. At the moment, people who are writing for sites are mostly slaves to the SEO stats, with occasional exceptions, and that’s a real shame.

We are starting to see steps in the right direction, at least. Services such as Patreon, IndieGogo and Kickstarter provide alternative means for people and companies to get some money coming in. Several sites have experimented with subscription models, with varying rates of success. And the audience’s growing dissatisfaction with the big names in the business over the course of the last couple of years has encouraged smaller sites to take some bold steps to distinguish themselves and make themselves unique: specialising and declaring that they’re going to focus on a particular type of content; listening to what the audience says it wants (and, importantly, doesn’t want!) and providing that rather than relying on provocative clickbait or predictable coverage of The Latest Big Releases; exploring alternative revenue streams other than just ads; and giving voices to people — and viewpoints — outside the sometimes rather incestuous-seeming echo chamber that is the inner circle of professional games journalism.

We’re certainly a far cry from the golden age of newsstand games magazines, where individual publications had very distinctive voices, styles and ways of covering games. I don’t know if we’ll ever be able to go back to something along those lines, but I’d much prefer it to what we have today.