Based on the link it sounds like they want to carry on with what they've always done but get more money. I get the desire but I doubt the content is going to go back to what it was 25 years ago.

The way I see it today, ideological reviews are what is mainstream. It's not about how the game is, it's how inclusive they are to minorities that is what reaches the front page. It's fucking bizarre but it makes sense when the goal is to reach as many people as possible. On both sides of politics it's just rage bait depending on which way the needle swings. Rage bait creates the clicks that brings the mass appeal not just "nerdy gamers."

I'm a nerdy gamer. I just want to know how good of a game stuff is. When you go to actual niche forums you find real information without the bullshit. You aren't going to find that at all on mainstream mass media sites like the Verge, Motherboard/Vice, Kotaku, et al. I think the goal of aftermath is to just create another mainstream outlet. I hope they prove me wrong.

> ideological reviews are what is mainstream. It's not about how the game is, it's how inclusive they are to minorities

This seems like a ridiculous strawman to me. I just spotchecked several reviews on IGN, PCGamer, and GamesRadar (top 3 sites I get when googling "games reviews"), and found nothing of the sort. I'm sure if you go digging you could find that content somewhere on the site, but to claim it's the crux of their review model is just false.

For example, MW3 is a game where there's lots you could criticize, in terms of how media portrayals of the war on terror gloss over the real world impacts on people in other nations... but not one of the mainstream reviews I can see spends time on it.

I'd rather watch some gameplay footage with no commentary. I don't find that a person reviewing a video game contributes anything meaningful to the decision of whether or not I want a game or not unless I know them personally and we have similar taste.

I have a suspicion that the only way such content has any value today in a world with quick and easy access to online video is that they are given copies prior to the release of the game. They get clicks because of peoples impatience to learn more despite being able to see effectively infinite amount of content as soon as a game is officially released.

But the problem here is that game reviewers livelihood is entirely dependent on getting early access and if they don't speak highly of the game then their livelihood can be cut off. They are basically all bribed into giving positive feedback. I think it is actually worse than nothing at all. It is actively harmful to finding out what a game is actually like.

I guess my point is that we should just wait until a game is released. There are infinite copies and there exists more games than anyone could ever play. Reading some heavily biased opinions about a video game a week before it comes out is not meaningful.

> I'd rather watch some gameplay footage with no commentary. I don't find that a person reviewing a video game contributes anything meaningful to the decision of whether or not I want a game or not unless I know them personally and we have similar taste.

Are you really willing to watch 10+ hours of footage, just to figure out the worth of a game? Because that's the actual worth of a review, telling you not just about the game itself, but also how well it continues after the initial tutorial-phase.

I am willing to take that risk. It's not really a big concern to begin with.

I'd consider someones review if they bought the game themselves, they don't generate any revenue from it and we have had similar taste in the past. Even the most brief word of mouth praise of something from a friend is going to be more valuable than any length review from a biased source. It might also be possible to find a collection of random people on Steam to follow just for their reviews. I've never tried this, but I think it would abide by my guidelines of trustworthiness.

I don't think that is very accurate, in my experience the most popular reviews are Personality Driven and it is largely done in the youtube space, the next most popular writen sites are also more neutral when it comes to their reviews (Gamespot, IGN, Gameinformer, Eurogamer). Honestly people just want two things, to hear their favorite content creator talk about the game or have someone say how great it is. But in my opinion the best way to sort out all the noise is to just find a content creator you share tastes with since IGN et al have such a massive cast of reviewers constantly shifting around so it doesn't make sense to rely on that.

You could also use a review aggregator if you just want to see what the overall consensus is: https://opencritic.com/

My other advice which has worked very well as a PC Gamer is to look up Steam reviews, there are a LOT of underappreciated games that were poorly received by critics but players actually enjoyed. It is also review bomb resistant since you actually need to buy the game,will allow you to filter out by time periods, and notify you if there have been a noticeable change in review patterns.

I guess modern gaming journalists are journalists first, gamers second. It used to be the other way around.

I miss the sh*t out of printed specialist journalism. Growing up, we had a couple of printed magazines. You could tell they were incredibly well written, with great reviews, walkthroughs, interviews with people in the local industry, as well as surprisingly in-depth exposes about things like for example, how CG animations are made etc.

Unfortunately, thanks to a leaky water pipe, I can only cherish the memory of said collection.

Their business model was exchanging product (the magazine) for money. Based on that business model, they could pay their employees, a couple of passionate and talented people a living wage. something that I'm not sure modern internet-based outfits accomplish.

Yeah, agreed.

The first name in that list is a guy who gave great reviews of a game by a developer who was sleeping with him.

Of course, due to one (or both? I forget which) of them being married, of course that fact had to be a secret.

In any other publication, the author's sexual liasons with the subject of the piece is considered a clear conflict of interest. Not so in gaming, it appeared.

Wow! I thought you were joking but the first name is the dude at the center of what started “gamergate” and everything that followed it.

Thanks for pointing that out.

This site is just another in a long list of game journalism sites that is worthless.

How are there still people that believe this? I seriously thought the claims about Grayson were so widely discredited that even the people still saying gamergate is about "ethics in journalism" stopped making them because it was so embarrassing. Like its obviously not true, go look at the Kotaku website, he never wrote any reviews about Quinn's games, it takes like 30 seconds to check.

No, they didn't stop, actually. Even here:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38154072

I thought a deranged online mob started Gamergate.

I recall a lot of it was driven by Kotaku, as well as the whole gang of cancel-culture twitter journalists.

It may be wrong, or right, but that is the narrative in my head around this. So it's probably the same in a lot of other disgruntled peoples' minds.

Kotaku had the wrong author write a review of a niche video game that nobody cared about. Gamergate was started by people who thought something totally unimportant like that was reason to send death threads to people.

Could you post a link to this review? I would like to verify this information.

What, there are still people that believe this? That Nathan Grayson never wrote reviews on any game by Zoe Quinn is easily verifiable, like you can just go look at the webpage. The claim has had zero veracity for years, that its false is widely known and documented, theres multiple Wikipedia articles discussing how and why its wrong.

I don't think I've ever read an article on Kotaku, I never read any games news and barely even play them anymore other than occasional Doom Eternal to blow off steam. But I know Grayson and Quinn's names because of how widely and loudly this argument getting disproved was.

I'm honestly kind of amazed to see someone still claiming this. Like I'm back editing more stuff into this because my brain is so confused and still thinking about it.

Review? No. But possibly "positive coverage"-> https://archive.ph/LXLli

The top screenshot comes from DQ, and the post lists it as a "standout".

I hate that I spent the time to check but this was posted a few months before Grayson and Quinn were together. Even if it weren't its really not much of a smoking gun.

As a fledgling coffee nerd, that article is very clearly a coffee nerd being a bit tongue in cheek. The thesis is not "Starfield is bad because the devs made bad coffee machines", instead he's connecting the lifeless NPC's to the strangely designed coffee machines in a way that should make it pretty clear that it's not entirely serious. Totally fair if the humor didn't land, but I thought it was amusing. Those coffee machines do look absurd.

Individually packaged units of coffee grounds in a micro-chipped plastic container for the pot to recognize it as an officially licensed “pod” is our daily life. I think real coffee has become absurd. lol

That’s lazy average Joe’s daily caffeine supplement. Coffee nerds have their own brand of absurdity: coffee distribution tools, pressure profiling, temperature profiling, water treatment mineral packs… never mind all the money people spend on high end burr grinders and plumbed-in rotary pump machines!

I do feel like the last remaining werido in my family with a standard drip machine. But why would I replace it with pod-DRM hell? It makes a perfectly good cup of joe, with the quality mostly impacted by the beans and whether or not they were pre-ground. So far, every cup of coffee I've had from a pod has been noticeably worse. And I'm supposed to pay a premium for these things? I'm not even a coffee snob and I can easily tell something went horribly, horribly wrong somewhere along the line.

As another coffee nerd I'm happy to realize I wasn't the only one who did a double-take when they first noticed the in-game espresso machines.

My only complaint about the article is that the 'perculator' is clearly a Braun KF20. haha

Frontpage littered with activism and first-world whining. Looks like it was the worst parts of Kotaku that left.

Turns out lots of people play video games!

Turns out a lot of people don't care about those people's political hot takes when they just want to read news about video games!

There's lots of places on the internet for those people too. They are also free to find them and share them! Maybe they'll even been upvoted on HackerNews!

Be careful what you wish for. Sites like these aren't lasting long in an era when people are exhausted of being 24/7 assaulted by the political hot takes of random nobodies.

No one is making you read this specific gaming news site.

So don't be surprised when sites like this pull no revenue and end up shutting down because people really, really do not care about some nobody's political hot takes when they want to read about video games.

You seem to care quite a lot...

Are you trying to well-poison "caring" about the scope and quality of entertainment media? What's your aim here? Am I supposed to pretend that total randoms flooding entertainment media with their off-topic pretentious garbage is normal and alright?

Genuine question: what other „entertainment media” are you reading in 2023 that does not contain what you describe as „off-topic pretentious garbage”?

These days, nothing. I avoid entertainment media. But I remember the days when PCGamer used to write about how amazing Carmack was at pumping out engine tech, how Guild Wars was going to revolutionize MMO design, how Supreme Commander would have a freaking unit cannon that could fire units tens of kilometers across a map. It's impossible to find that now without having to wade through low-quality sophomoric political treatises and exposes on activist developers making games nobody is going to play.

What is 'news about video games?' Can't you just read a dev blog for the technical aspects, and ask the game store clerk what to buy?

It also turns out lots of the people making them like unions.

Where’s the whining? I didn’t find it. Please substantiate your claims.

I don't know anything about Kotaku, but I read that same article and thought it was pretty clearly a tongue-in-cheek faux investigative article and laughed at it.

op's is a valid criticism in a post gonzo journalism world. hunter thompson, an otherwise conventionally trained professional, embeds himself in the world of his subjects, and produces a masterpiece of investigative journalism. it's also sexy, and generations of journalists imitate him after. but the division remained up until quite recently, where you have the chicago manual of syle, and then you have (late 90s) vice magazine. tongue-in-cheek faux investigative article works when you're a professional humorist and that's your beat, or when you're a professional game reporter, and you want to produce some levity. in the second case the deficiencies are excused, because what otherwise carries your writing and by extension your reputation, are your serious pieces. in the post gonzo journalism world most writers act as if they have that reputation to cary them, but what they consistently produce are low effort tongue-in-cheek, insider jokes articles. there's simply not enough good will to humor them.

Well, considering Kotaku is well-known for gaming articles filled with political activism and social justice, this is not surprising at all to me.

My recollection was that Kotaku had an entire subsection of the site dedicated to posting pictures of attractive women doing cosplay. I don't remember much political activism -- do you have an example?

They generally have a lot of quality content, but will slip in political commentary. IMO, this review is a decent example: https://kotaku.com/1850858948

The political commentary starts a paragraph after the summary box. Huge article and maybne two paragraphs fit the bill. The anti-capitalism stuff always makes me roll my eyes, but it's a game review, just ignore the parts you don't care about.

The paragraph you describe criticizes some of the characterizations in the game and a lack of options for character customization, both of which seem to be safely within the ballpark for game reviewing. The reviewer clearly has an anticapitalist perspective, but I don't think that's sufficient for "political activism". Reviewers always have some kind of perspective that affects what they emphasize and de-emphasize.

Yeah, I hope I made clear that I don't think it's a big deal. It's exaggerated by the gamergate crowd which might have truly kicked off our current culture war in it's current form.

Careful, it’s gatekeeping to prefer that your game journalists have ever played a game at all other than when researching for an article.

They write like this because it’s how anyone writes on a topic about which they have no experience. If you embed me as a wartime reporter, I’ll talk about the weird food and noise, not what most people reading the article want to read about.

Personally I only read reviews of running shoes from lazy obese people, paraplegics, and amputees.

What do you think people reading wartime coverage want to read about?

Going by Henry Ford's "faster horse" quote, I prefer my media to be aspirational, to assume potentially too much of me and be disappointed, not the other way around.

I don't know. So I will let my 0.0% experience with the topic keep me from writing about it.

You really think that these people who have worked for multiple gaming sites and are now starting their own gaming site really don't play games? It seems like there would be an easier way to make a living than writing about something you don't care about.

I do think that, and a lot of other people do as well. It’s why they aren’t taken seriously and have a hard time being employed unless we’re in wasteful high growth economic states.

And identifying a profitable market segment, inserting yourself as a critical member, and blaming doing a poor job on vague concepts of gatekeeping and bias seems like a good enough way to make a living that they keep trying at it

Check out Rock Paper Shotgun. One of the few sites whose articles I read purely for pleasure.

RPS is a shell of its former self. The amazing writers from the early days all left years ago and it's mostly just an SEO spam site now.

I very much enjoyed RPS in the days of the original four writers, and also when Quinns was contributing, though I haven't kept up so much in the last eight years or so.

Eurogamer seems to cover the games news and reviews in the way I like best right now, and Digital Foundary's writing and videos that lean on the more technical side of games are just excellent. (I believe DF also have an arrangement to do some content for RPS, so it's probably being shared around as it should.)

That site has been dead to me ever since the gamersgate fiasco.

Leading up to that fiasco people were already frustrated with game media for being in bed with game publishers. And no, I don't care if they have a right to sleep together, I care that the journalistic integrity was so missing they couldn't be bothered to have someone else write the piece or be open about it. And then the entire war on gamers as misogynists for wanting game journalists to have some integrity.

I've never even opened their website since.

> one article I clicked on was literally the writer bitching about how the coffee machines were depicted in Starfield. I miss the gaming sites of the 90s and early 00s, you could expect to read passionate articles from gamers.

You and I have very different memories about what "passionate articles from gamers" were about in the 90s and 00s.

The way I remember it is the gaming sites of the 90s and early 00s were all pretty dire.

I’d you all you talk about is games, eventually you’ll have to talk about the fucking coffee machine in the video game.

I get the sentiment of people who are only interested in game reviews and recommendations. But as a gamer myself, if that’s all a site offers then I’m not paying $7 per month for it. I wouldn’t be willing to pay anything for that content to be honest. I can get a better sense of the quality of a game from aggregated steam reviews. I’m not the target audience for this site, but I do recognize that they can’t just write dry game reviews if they want to make a living.

Did you read the Alan Wake II article?

1. Why would you cite a trivial non-political example to support your position that they have a political agenda?

2. What separates someone simply having beliefs that inform their lives from them having a political agenda? And where did you ever get the idea that politics is this thing that lives in a bubble, so innocuous as for its effects to be separable from our lives, such that we all have agreed to conduct our lives and careers without mentioning anything related to that bubble? Is it possible you see political ideas you agree with throughout each day and don't find them to be an agenda because they don't make you uncomfortable?

A lot of the blog news sites beyond just gaming had a vibe switch in the 2010's.

You used to find passionate and hungry writers with something to say. Then it became bitter and jaded misanthropes that don't recognize they're misanthropes. They tried to keep an alt-media rebellious tone, but warped it into tired boomer-splaining.

A tragedy really. I had to admit it was over when someone argued an opinion I already agreed with and they were still pissing me off.

You might enjoy rock, paper, shotgun?

https://www.rockpapershotgun.com/

If you actually read the article instead of reacting violently to the headline, you'll find that the coffee machine subject is just a conceit to talk about Starfield's clumsy aesthetics and lack of cohesion as a whole.

How do you reconcile being a journalist, who WANTS to write an in-depth piece (being a writer and all), and the powers that be wanting you to write an advertisement for their game? You lambast something innocuous like the coffee machines to get your furvor for writing out.