“For quality games media, I continue to believe that the best form of stability is dedicated reader bases to remove reliance on funds, and a hybrid of direct reader funding and advertisements. If people want to keep reading quality content from full time professionals, they need to support it or lose it. That’s never been more critical than now.”
The games media outlets that have survived, except for Gamespot and IGN, have just about all switched to this model. It seems to be the only way it survives.
Do you feel that way about the site reporting the linked article?
And I know the likes of IGN have been a mess for far longer than 2012.
Yes, although I am not the first dood, but posting as someone who did read the linked article it is a barely veiled attempt to support the “writer’s” media and looks more like a lazy filler article to meet a quota. I use quotes around writer as the article in question is 2/3s quotes more in the style of an interview with “Veteran games journalist Alex Donaldson” and a few comments from “Press Engine co-founder Gareth Williams” (nothing wrong with that per say). The other 1/3 is “data supplied to VGC by Press Engine…” (again nothing wrong with this on its own). The issue is when we take the article in its whole this seems more like someone talked to a colleague or two then put a header on it using in house data from a “… popular PR tool used by developers and publishers to distribute codes and press releases to a global database of journalists and content creators.” and adding a few other comments from the very founder of the program used in house to round it out making a very thin and kinda lazy article. This reminds me very much of the stuff written I saw many many years ago when I worked at a newspaper watching that media circle the drain.
Also on the point of:
This is not AI slop but good old fashioned 4:30 on a Friday human slop covered in ads, for example I got 2 pop ups with ad block reading it. This is what it looks like without ad blocker:
But then again, you get what you pay for and I guess the irony here is that the article (that could be used as a captain obvious joke) pointing out the collapse of games media is in itself an example of a degrading quality of writing leading to the demise of said media. The real joke is that the article does not even touch on the degrading quality of the writing and experience (other then a “…lack of diversification in content…”) but instead putting the blame on every thing else (thanks google, AI, COVID and advertising spending I guess?).