Thanks for writing this. We're seeing the exact same thing happen again and again in science journalism, too. Popular Science is the latest (and perhaps most beloved) casualty of their VC owners.
I'm gonna play devil's advocate. (Warning: subjective opinion incoming) Videos are the dominant form of game journalism now. I used to do this as a living and I have many 'old school' gaming friends who used to fawn over magazines and websites. They all now use YouTube for gaming news, no exceptions.
And looking at the data posted by some of these excellent Substack outlets (yours included), there is a disconnect between game media coverage and what gamers seem to care about. Fot example, there was a lot of copy about MS/Activision, which I can assure zero people I know cared about, even the COD and Diablo die-hards.
I think most gaming media isn't really serving the market properly. They are still covering games in story and type how we did 15 years ago, with Edge and Gamasutra as the exceptions, imo. Then we moan because people who make money decisions see the forest for the trees.
There was a saying in my magazine days: you just need a few bad months to go under. Maybe game publications should think about how to grab the attention of gamers again. I don't see popular YouTube channels complain about these issues...
Thanks for the great newsletter! I do like how the more niche sides of game business coverage has found homes on Substack.
To say everyone just uses YouTube for gaming news (even oldies like is) is a bit of a generalisaton, even for Devil's Advocate purposes. I think the issue is that these YouTube news channels don't source their own material they tend to repackage content they find online instead.
There are so few video outlets out there that do the labour intensive work of research, interviews, source tapping etc. excluding likes of People Make Games or NoClip. If these more traditional media outlets like GI, Eurogamer, RPS dissappear there will be less news and less sources to draw from and the industry suffers as a result (less product variety due to harder discoverability, more trend chasing for clicks/sensationalisation and more focus on big hitters).
The bigger issue for me is that all these media oulets tend to be part of larger conglomerates/networks so even profitable, self-contained silos have the potential to get shuttered. The future for longform videogame journalism sadly seems to be destined for crowdfunded Patreon-like services. That has its own challenges and means that younger demographics, who have less disposable income, are walled off from the good detailed journalism that was commonplace during the 00s went advertising-based web revenue was viable.
I don't know, I definitely yearn for the simpler times on this. Seen this 'YouTube/Twitch content is the future' variation so many times and you likely are not wrong but it still misses the mark a bit for me.
Fair comment, I reckon. My son (now at Uni) is a voracious gamer and has never once picked up a magazine or read a review. To the best of my knowledge. He’s definitely consuming media on Youtube/Twitch/etc.
Tom's piece was quite the surprise, as Eurogamer always seemed so resilient and independent, even when under a corporate umbrella. Just a few months ago I was told its traffic was better than ever, so this sale seems particularly mercenary. As ever, I'll channel my gormless hope into some miraculous new model to save the day, or the EG network somehow buying itself out. I guess a lowball bid from considators-par-excellence Future Publishing is out of the question?
Future killed off several of my beloved mags (especially ONM when Matthew Castle was editor). A deal with Future, unlikely as it is, would surely only be a stay of execution.
Very tough news to hear. And yes, sadly this is how acquisitions and restructures work, you are bang on right there. Brutal, this kind of thing. If it’s any kind of consolation, even if only in the longer term, there is good work out there for great journalists, editors and visualization experts. Not in games media, perhaps. But other media.
I should add that I work for a financial information services company that specialises in business news reporting (commodity markets, in my case). If any reporters/editors/content creators fancy a crack at that we are pretty much always hiring (knock on wood) and people should feel free to come look at the reporting jobs we have going — https://www.spglobal.com/commodityinsights/en.
Wishing everyone a happy and fully employed end to the year.
Thanks for writing this. We're seeing the exact same thing happen again and again in science journalism, too. Popular Science is the latest (and perhaps most beloved) casualty of their VC owners.
I'm gonna play devil's advocate. (Warning: subjective opinion incoming) Videos are the dominant form of game journalism now. I used to do this as a living and I have many 'old school' gaming friends who used to fawn over magazines and websites. They all now use YouTube for gaming news, no exceptions.
And looking at the data posted by some of these excellent Substack outlets (yours included), there is a disconnect between game media coverage and what gamers seem to care about. Fot example, there was a lot of copy about MS/Activision, which I can assure zero people I know cared about, even the COD and Diablo die-hards.
I think most gaming media isn't really serving the market properly. They are still covering games in story and type how we did 15 years ago, with Edge and Gamasutra as the exceptions, imo. Then we moan because people who make money decisions see the forest for the trees.
There was a saying in my magazine days: you just need a few bad months to go under. Maybe game publications should think about how to grab the attention of gamers again. I don't see popular YouTube channels complain about these issues...
Thanks for the great newsletter! I do like how the more niche sides of game business coverage has found homes on Substack.
To say everyone just uses YouTube for gaming news (even oldies like is) is a bit of a generalisaton, even for Devil's Advocate purposes. I think the issue is that these YouTube news channels don't source their own material they tend to repackage content they find online instead.
There are so few video outlets out there that do the labour intensive work of research, interviews, source tapping etc. excluding likes of People Make Games or NoClip. If these more traditional media outlets like GI, Eurogamer, RPS dissappear there will be less news and less sources to draw from and the industry suffers as a result (less product variety due to harder discoverability, more trend chasing for clicks/sensationalisation and more focus on big hitters).
The bigger issue for me is that all these media oulets tend to be part of larger conglomerates/networks so even profitable, self-contained silos have the potential to get shuttered. The future for longform videogame journalism sadly seems to be destined for crowdfunded Patreon-like services. That has its own challenges and means that younger demographics, who have less disposable income, are walled off from the good detailed journalism that was commonplace during the 00s went advertising-based web revenue was viable.
I don't know, I definitely yearn for the simpler times on this. Seen this 'YouTube/Twitch content is the future' variation so many times and you likely are not wrong but it still misses the mark a bit for me.
Fair comment, I reckon. My son (now at Uni) is a voracious gamer and has never once picked up a magazine or read a review. To the best of my knowledge. He’s definitely consuming media on Youtube/Twitch/etc.
Tom's piece was quite the surprise, as Eurogamer always seemed so resilient and independent, even when under a corporate umbrella. Just a few months ago I was told its traffic was better than ever, so this sale seems particularly mercenary. As ever, I'll channel my gormless hope into some miraculous new model to save the day, or the EG network somehow buying itself out. I guess a lowball bid from considators-par-excellence Future Publishing is out of the question?
Future killed off several of my beloved mags (especially ONM when Matthew Castle was editor). A deal with Future, unlikely as it is, would surely only be a stay of execution.
Can you imagine the horror of Future being able to absorb RPS back into PC Gamer? It's like a decades-long Cronenberg story.
Very tough news to hear. And yes, sadly this is how acquisitions and restructures work, you are bang on right there. Brutal, this kind of thing. If it’s any kind of consolation, even if only in the longer term, there is good work out there for great journalists, editors and visualization experts. Not in games media, perhaps. But other media.
I should add that I work for a financial information services company that specialises in business news reporting (commodity markets, in my case). If any reporters/editors/content creators fancy a crack at that we are pretty much always hiring (knock on wood) and people should feel free to come look at the reporting jobs we have going — https://www.spglobal.com/commodityinsights/en.
Wishing everyone a happy and fully employed end to the year.