The Downfall of Gaming Journalism.

 Notice even since Xbox started that the old way of rating games disappeared.... it used to be broken down into categories: Graphics, Sound, Story, Gameplay, Value.... usually and each would get a mark out of 5 or 10.

Then you would get an overall score at the end of the review.

Ever since MSFT took an interest in gaming, there has been a shift away from objectivity in reviews, which used to emphasize quality in every aspect of a game and towards subjectivity.... where a game could be amazing, groundbreaking or just superbly executed but the reviewer was constipated that day and gave it a 4/10 and wrote all about how constipated they were..... then they publish that shit and get a backlash and their media friends all gather around them and call everyone that had a criticism of the review some form of '-ist' or toxic etc.

It was all done with an aim in mind....and still they are trying to destroy quality in gaming, saying things like 'it's not sustainable' , 'games cost too much', 'they are not original enough' or use derogatory terms like 'walking sim'.....

They are all ploys to undermine things MSFT cannot achieve and emphasize quantity over quality and low prices over fair economics, which allow all companies to compete on even footing.

All major gaming publication were and still are in great pressure to have income/traffic.
- Major corporations changed how to do marketing - dubious actions, having fans defending their brands etc.
- Everything is now about gathering fans of A console while making fans of B console angry
- Having personal opinions are easier and results in more traffic
- Boom of social media, everything became chaotic and confusing
- Gifts , partnerships and major studios blacklisting gaming publications have become normalized.

Jourmalism is informing people by using unbiased and clear information therefore, gaming journalism it is dead.

Games Journalism was bad, it was bad in the 80s with platform-centric publications shitting on "the opposition" in the UK and Nintendo-owned Nintendo Power pushing a corporate line in the US. It was bad in the 90s when game magazines hid developer names behind shared personas like "Sushi X" and took free flights to other countries in order to see products that would then get glowing reviews (mainly Euros flying to America, but I'm sure it happened everywhere.) It was bad in the 2000s when OXM was posting obnoxious cult shit (and the former head still tries to "keep the faith" on his IGN podcast.) It was bad in the 2010s when Famitsu started giving out 40s to anyone who would pay and left-wing politics+private industry social networking became mandatory. Its bad now when all of the above shit still continues.

But its getting better. And its getting better because of the rise of Youtube and Twitch, which have led to a new class of influencers who are self-employed and make a living based on audience response rather than editorial/corporate response. And yeah, there's a lot of filth there, a lot of corruption, a lot of "nerd crew" styled fake hype, forced diversity and literal retard takes on issues they don't care about or read up on properly. But most of the biggest content is also of high quality and comes from people who can and do say no if they hate something. And there's plenty of micro-influencers with smaller, dedicated, niche audiences too. So in that regard, if you think games journalism sucks, you should stop reading it and find new sources.

As an ending though, there's a few issues that I personally think are really bad for the industry now, though, and would like to see drug out into the limelight and addressed.
1) Private, journalist-specific, gaming groups that are necessary for reviewing mulitplayer games before release but have became places for call-out culture to exist for "journalists" who don't tow the community's editorial lines ("Game Journo Pros" and its successors.)
2) Shared editorial stances between different games media companies which result in Kotaku, Destructoid, Giant Bomb, etc. all reading like the same shit with a different colored header.
3) A feeling at bigger publications like IGN that they are "the enthusiast press" and thus must put a positive spin on anything they are focusing on, unless its a current community bete noire.
4) The amount of real journalism that goes on, as in digging in on and publishing stories that game companies do not want to be told, whether thats development leaks, corporate actions, industrial rumors, etc. is shockingly few. I can probably count on one hand the number of people who actually do it (Eurogamer, Jason Shrier, Forbes if its still even in gaming news, etc.)
5) Game reviewer burnout resulting in them liking, and more importantly hating, titles not based on whether an audience would like it, but on whether its easy to review. 5 hour long indie game? Yay. 100 hours of open world content? Boo.