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> The gaming press is more press than gaming; they're often people with writing degrees who are disproportionately fond of "literary" games compared to the buyi
by aikah 8y ago
> The gaming press is more press than gaming; they're often people with writing degrees who are disproportionately fond of "literary" games compared to the buying public.
The real question is how influential are they today? I think they might not be that influential when it comes to AAA titles, however, some outlets are extremely influential when it comes to indie gaming, since it's a small scene where "knowing the right person" can make a difference when it comes to coverage.
My problem with the press is that there is essentially 2 categories:
- marketing outlets AKA content farms such a IGN,Gamespot who add very little value to the content they produce as they seek quantity over quality.
- pseudo-intellectual outlets like Eurogamer or Polygon which talk about gaming through the lens of "intersectionality", which is their right, but after 10 hours of work getting yield at by my manager I'm not interested in articles that are more about identity politics than the games I play when I get home.
Personally, I take more pleasure in hearing Joseph Anderson babbling about hitboxes in Dark Souls 2 and how you get critical damages even though the NPC sword stroke was PI/2 radians off your character's position, for 3 hours straight on youtube than any of the former.
- bilbo0s 8y ago>Joseph Anderson babbling about hitboxes in Dark Souls 2 and how you get critical damages even though the NPC sword stroke was PI/2 radians off your character's position... Yeah, um, that won't get your average gamer excited either. HN User 'lmm' was right, everyone from the gaming press, to the youtubers, to the people at the conferences etc, publicizing things that the average gamer could care less about. No one cares about hitboxes off by Pi/2 radians, or your "high art" narrative based games, or your slick C# or Rust based backend server and how cool it is. The press and the youtubers are, of course, free to focus on whatever they want to focus on. I'm just saying that a lot of people out there are just using games as an escape, we really don't want all those details. And I'd go even further, a lot of games, tech, and issues they concentrate on are out and out boring!
- breakbread 8y agoI gotta say, though, that the Digital Foundry crew at Eurogamer consistently put out excellent technical analyses of current and (usually every Sunday)retro games. I love it. No politics, no drama, just an in depth look at the tech under the hood. https://www.youtube.com/user/DigitalFoundry https://www.youtube.com/user/DigitalFoundry