Games Journalism General

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It's bizarre to me. It's not impossible to do interesting gaming journalism (I liked Schrier's article on Anthem, but I am a serious sucker for histories of failed projects of almost any sort). You can go to your YouTube recommendations and you will almost certainly find someone who has something interesting to say about games.
So why are professionals so shit at it? It's kind of like how Warner Brothers can make decent animated and live action superhero films, but only if the executives consider the project beneath their attention.
Lego Batman was pretty darn good. It came out at the same time as Batman vs. Superman.
 
BScCollateral said:
It's kind of like how Warner Brothers can make decent animated and live action superhero films, but only if the executives consider the project beneath their attention.
Lego Batman was pretty darn good. It came out at the same time as Batman vs. Superman.
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Lego Batman Movie came out a year after BvS, actually.
 
BScCollateral said:
It's bizarre to me. It's not impossible to do interesting gaming journalism (I liked Schrier's article on Anthem, but I am a serious sucker for histories of failed projects of almost any sort). You can go to your YouTube recommendations and you will almost certainly find someone who has something interesting to say about games.
So why are professionals so shit at it? It's kind of like how Warner Brothers can make decent animated and live action superhero films, but only if the executives consider the project beneath their attention.
Lego Batman was pretty darn good. It came out at the same time as Batman vs. Superman.
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Games Journalist is an extremely limited job - so the people that have it typically don't give a shit.

A youtuber that "blows up" gets to keep all the money associated with "blowing up" - which can be hundreds of thousands of dollars. A Games Journalist that goes viral (even Schrier) still just works for whatever company for a salary - in a department that doesn't really care about them. The current "meta" is to work at a place like that, gain a following, then leave and go independent (aka Kotaku, Giantbomb, etc).
 
Smaug's Smokey Hole 2 said:
That and the $100,000 annually.
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Even Jason Schreier only makes about $80,000 a year at Bloomberg, according to the first Google hit on his name. And that's after "transitioning" into a "real" journalist. Most of these clowns get paid birdseed.
 
AnOminous said:
Even Jason Schreier only makes about $80,000 a year at Bloomberg, according to the first Google hit on his name. And that's after "transitioning" into a "real" journalist. Most of these clowns get paid birdseed.
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Jason "Working PR for the world's richet man" Schrier
 
TVBForever said:
The total difference between a casual gamer and a journalist is quite simple really. While the two play games and love games, only journalists want to shoehorn in identity politics.
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Bold of you to claim journalists love games, never mind actually play them considering both their typical skill level and constant seething in articles. I think your typical casual is disgusted to be compared with the likes of Dean "Can't Air Dash" Takahashi.
 
Snekposter said:
Bold of you to claim journalists love games, never mind actually play them considering both their typical skill level and constant seething in articles. I think your typical casual is disgusted to be compared with the likes of Dean "Can't Air Dash" Takahashi.
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Let me reiterate here, they do play games. They just suck at it. They make DSP look like a competent player by comparison.
 
Tanner Glass said:
Games Journalist is an extremely limited job - so the people that have it typically don't give a shit.
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Independent youtubers needs to earn their money as well. Games journalists gets hired at a place with an established audience. It also includes protection from criticism no matter what shit they write as articles or tweets, no matter if they are employed or not. Unlike the youtubers that needs to work to find, build and retain their audience otherwise they're not earning any money. It's basically the self-made man vs. the made man.
 
Smaug's Smokey Hole 2 said:
Independent youtubers needs to earn their money as well. Games journalists gets hired at a place with an established audience. It also includes protection from criticism no matter what shit they write as articles or tweets, no matter if they are employed or not. Unlike the youtubers that needs to work to find, build and retain their audience otherwise they're not earning any money. It's basically the self-made man vs. the made man.
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This is correct - but as pointed out the current situation doesn't stop people from joining places with established audiences (Giantbomb, Waypoint, Kotaku, etc) for a year or two to build their own audience and then just leaving for YT/Twitch/whatever else, which is why they tend to be revolving doors.
 
Tanner Glass said:
This is correct - but as pointed out the current situation doesn't stop people from joining places with established audiences (Giantbomb, Waypoint, Kotaku, etc) for a year or two to build their own audience and then just leaving for YT/Twitch/whatever else, which is why they tend to be revolving doors.
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They still need to have SOMETHING going for them to pull that off and a place like Giantbomb is already 99% video/audio with very little written material so the transition isn't as drastic as if Negro With a Nosering #4 over at Kotaku decides to stop writing about pokemon balls and go all in on twitch.
 
Gaming journalism is completely different from actual journalism.

When a journo writes/finds a story, it must always be something new that will get people reading the newsletters or magazines.

A "games journalist" has only one reason to exist: prop the latest games. If you speak out against bad practices in game industry nobody will publish you. Remember gamergate? Your coworkers will speak against you and your career is over. Remember, speak about latest games, make top 10s or "theories" or whatever.

Most of them hate their job and audience cause they're miserable journo wannabes or failed esports players, some of them got invited in by their own friends, most of them hate the games they play and the content thay need to make.

Look at this!

Why we’re building immersive AI characters for games and the metaverse​



This is an ad for some shitty virtual pet application. It doesn't have something of substance or anything new.
 
Gender: Xenomorph said:
When a journo writes/finds a story, it must always be something new that will get people reading the newsletters or magazines.

A "games journalist" has only one reason to exist: prop the latest games.
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Not really. That's what they used to be and they were better then. Now it's to vet the games for whether they're woke enough for current year and cancel whoever created them if not.
 
Articles and Nudes said:
Did Schrier actually do much investigation, though. I always got the impression this shit was given to him, and he just put it into an article.
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Part of journalism is building connections so people will give you stories without needing to contact them. He's not good (as someone else pointed out, totally dropped the ball with Blizzard) but he does at least try to go through the motions. Most others in the industry are just disgruntled failed political reporters
 
AnOminous said:
Even Jason Schreier only makes about $80,000 a year at Bloomberg, according to the first Google hit on his name. And that's after "transitioning" into a "real" journalist. Most of these clowns get paid birdseed.
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IIRC he or another games journo once said that back in the mid-10s they made 60-65K at their previous journo job which at the time was typical in the industry. I think entry level games journo (and other equivalents like entry level Buzzfeed/Gawker/etc writer) was like 40-50K in the mid-10s. Which sucks if you live in NYC/SF but is still ludicrously overpaid for what they do. At least the NYC/SF McDonalds workers and other wagies are actually doing something that people want.
 
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