I‘d rather read a well articulated opinion that is embedded into a rich cultural context than some rambling from strangers. I know the former is hard to find (Eurogamer and RPS are good, but suffer from layoffs, too). The latter I only skim through to find things I might find distracting that were omitted by others.
Comment on More than 1,200 games journalists have left the media in the last two years | VGC
chunes@lemmy.world 3 days ago
Anecdotal, but I have never read a game review in my life that was from a journalist. It’s always been in forums, and lately some small youtubers. I want to hear from normal gamers, not people getting a paycheck for it.
dukemirage@lemmy.world 3 days ago
setsneedtofeed@lemmy.world 3 days ago
Back in the late 90s-early 2000s the PCGamer magazine was actually worthwhile. It had reviewers who specialized in different genres and if read enough you could get a feel for their writing style and critical voice. The fact it was a monthly publication meant they weren’t racing to get a review out in the first 24 hours.
Nowadays it all seems like publications race to put reviews out online for relevance, and the reviewers often seem to have a disdain for video games and even if they don’t they aren’t genre experts.
I don’t like fighting games. My review of a fighting game would be trash. Yet major publications just pump out reviews by whoever.
Individual youtubers at least can develop a recognizable critical voice and stick more to genres they know and enjoy.
Little_Urban_Achiever@piefed.social 3 days ago
I’ve actually just renewed my subscription to PC Gamer, I read it on my tablet. A large part of that decision was to just help keep it alive because I feel it’s important.
Future Publishing can get fucked though.
setsneedtofeed@lemmy.world 3 days ago
Genuinely, why?
Little_Urban_Achiever@piefed.social 2 days ago
For all of the reasons everyone’s saying here that the quality has gone. When the only revenue for an organisation is adverts and data it tends to head downhill pretty quickly.
I actively borrow content from the internet but willingly cough up the money for things that i get good use out of. There’s no way you can visit the pc gamer website without an ad blocker, so i pay a little bit quarterly and sit with a magazine instead.
I also have box sets of tv series that I’ve never opened, i just bought them because I enjoyed the pirated version so much.
I’ll listen to music on Spotify or whatever but then go to the artist website and get some merch.
There’s a lot of content that deserves to be paid for and supported.
ampersandrew@lemmy.world 3 days ago
Embargoes exist to prevent that race. Your fighting game problem has been solved by assigning fighting game reviews to the “fighting game guy” on hand, which is why you’ll see the same byline on games in the same genre from major outlets.