Archive: https://archive.is/2025.04.10-001341/https://aftermath.site/video-games-journalism-2025
We’ve (sadly) covered a lot of games media stories thatinvolve writers being laid off, sites being shuffled around and sometimes even whole companies shutting down. For Inside Baseball week, I figured it might be a good time to check in with some of the few people left still making a living in video games journalism.
I spoke with a number of writers and voices who are a) drawing a full-time salary writing or talking about video games, and b) are working at what I’d call a “major” site, the big ones with historical brands that are still in a position to be paying people decent wages. These folks are the lucky few survivors, those in jobs that a decade ago were relatively common but which today–thanks to the aforementioned layoffs and closures, not to mention other contractions like a growing reliance on freelance and guides– are increasingly scarce.
I asked a number of questions about their past, present and, perhaps most pressing, their immediate future, with their answers to each below. To protect their identities and jobs their names have been changed, and outlets omitted where requested. By way of introduction, I spoke with:
Apart from Eurogamer I basically get all of my information from random people on Lemmy and Mastodon who link to interesting stuff. I don’t frequent any games sites anymore.
Edit: and podcasts but not specifically games related ones.
The industry killed themselves off when they lost creditability by over-scoring shite games. When you consistently give even the worst games 6-7/10 people stop taking an interest in what you have to say. And a lot of the other articles are just filler that might as well be generated by AI.
We had 12 years or so of “GTA 6 RELEASE DATE ANNOUNCED” with bs content reading “we currently do not know when it will be announced, but here are our guesses”.
Their clickbait game was a short term win and everyone knew it. Long term they destroyed their names chasing the profits.
No sympathy, industry has never been something to be particularly worthy in a long time, if it ever was.
If it creates a vacuum for others to have a go, then I am all for it. I have no loyalty to the status quo.
Robert knows what’s up.
If you want to see where this goes check where mobile gaming journalism is currently. After Touch Arcade went tits up last year there’s basically nothing that isn’t 90% sponsored content or a SEO farm.
We don’t need journalists anymore, because CoD and Assassins Creed are the same game every year and Silksong is never coming out.
Steam reviews and Youtubers overtook game journalist websites/magazines for me.
Yeah we need more people like second wind to go independent it just sucks there is less money going around for investigation journalism to happen.
Video Killed the Radio Star
Entertainment replacing entertainment is fine. Journalism being replaced by ads isn’t.
