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Ex-Kotaku staff go independent and launch Aftermath

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Re: Ex-Kotaku staff go independent and launch Aftermath

#131

Post by PurpleRamen »

izzydata wrote: post #65
Jeslijar wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 t…

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…

> 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.

Re: Ex-Kotaku staff go independent and launch Aftermath

#132

Post by ajmurmann »

djur wrote: post #128
ajmurmann wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Re: Ex-Kotaku staff go independent and launch Aftermath

#133

Post by InitialLastName »

drawkward wrote: post #95
AlexandrB wrote: post #72

I find it funny how many comments here complain about the infusion of politics into games media but not one mentions the fact that games media in general is a prime example of "access journalism". Most gaming media outlets live in fear of losing access to pre-release copies of games because it would mean their reviews will lag behind their competitors. This means they go easy on games (the average review score on any…

Food for thought: maybe because people try to make better than mediocre games, the average review score is higher than 5/10.

There's also a selection bias going on with the reviews: There are thousands of games coming out every year, so why would a publication pay someone to write reviews of the games everybody knows are going to be bad, and that readers aren't interested in reading?

Re: Ex-Kotaku staff go independent and launch Aftermath

#134

Post by throw4847285 »

klausa wrote: post #109
throw4847285 wrote: post #88

It's wild to see the sheer impact of Gamergate on online culture. The fact that this thread is filled with GG talking points baffles me. The level of vitriol for Kotaku specifically made no damn sense, given how diverse the writing staff was. I always interacted with Kotaku the way everybody should interact with a publication: there were some writers I liked, some I didn't, and some clickbait. It declined in quality…

> The level of vitriol for Kotaku specifically made no damn sense, given how diverse the writing staff was. I think you got the cause and effect backwards here, unfortunately.

I meant in terms of perspective and writing style, but fair point.

Re: Ex-Kotaku staff go independent and launch Aftermath

#135

Post by cdata »

AlexandrB wrote: post #104
jchw wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I do agree, the bickering about politics is a little silly when you consider just how terrible the actual "journalism" part is. I think there's a general feeling that all journalism has faltered a little bit in the face of the Internet and a 24 hour news cycle, but I'm not even sure video game journalism was ever good . I'm not sure it was ever really 'journalism'. I'll admit I do miss the older generation of video g…

> I'll admit I do miss the older generation of video game 'journalism' nonetheless. Had its problems, but the thing is, it did feel like people were sharing their genuine and honest opinions as a capital-G "Gamer" more often. It's important to recognize that the stakes were lower back then. When games cost hundreds of millions to develop and market and are expected to have revenue in the billions bad reviews have the…

The claim that game culture has become sexually repressive doesn't pass the smell test for me.

In 2023 I can play mainstream "AAA" games like Cyberpunk 2077 and Baldur's Gate 3. These games have non-trivial systems designed to gamify human sexual behavior, including such features as "configure your genitalia" during character creation and choose-your-own-adventure-style romantic coupling complete with nudity, intercourse and full voice acting. I would guess that these games would have been banned or classified as pornography for being too sexually explicit if they were released when I was growing up (90s kid).

If anything, the trend I've noticed over time is a reduction in the conspicuous objectification of women in mainstream game titles. But even still: there seems to be an ever-longer-tail of borderline-pornographic content entering mass-market outlets like Steam.

All of this just to say: I don't think "sexually repressed" is how I would describe the relationship people have with games in 2023. Then again, I never found Lara Croft's outsized, rectangular bosom to add much to the story.

Re: Ex-Kotaku staff go independent and launch Aftermath

#136

Post by brucethemoose2 »

nerdjon wrote: post #20
AmericanChopper wrote: post #4

The staff were the worst part…

That was my first thought, I am sure that there were some incentives from Gawker that contributed to it but Kotaku quickly became one of the gaming sites that I strongly avoided around 2017 when it seemed like they would get a crusade against any game that had some problems and just run it into the ground. (Mass Effect Andromeda was the straw for me)

Yeah, Kotaku was either a firestarter or a SEO chasing dogpiler way too often.

> Mass Effect Andromeda was the straw for me

Always good to see a fellow Andromeda appreciator/semi-appreciator.

Re: Ex-Kotaku staff go independent and launch Aftermath

#137

Post by PH95VuimJjqBqy »

klondike_klive wrote: post #22
greg_gorrell wrote: post #16

Not that I am much into gaming, but I just checked out the site and the 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. Just reading the headlines on the main page makes me feel like they have some agenda to push, in a political kind of way, a…

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

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.

Re: Ex-Kotaku staff go independent and launch Aftermath

#138

Post by r113500 »

kevingadd wrote: post #113
r113500 wrote: post #59

if you look into the names of the founders, all of them are activists, one of them has a colorful gamergate history, one mentions labour issues in their byline. their position statement is in the fourth paragraph, it starts with "widespread labor organizing, industry-changing mergers and acquisitions, sweeping layoffs", and then reads "We need a curious, independent press to hold power to account, to cut through the…

How could someone who worked for Kotaku not have a "colorful gamergate history"? What does that mean, exactly, when Gamergate was a hate campaign originally targeting Kotaku writers based entirely on false allegations? Or were they one of the organizers of gamergate somehow? You're perfectly entitled to dislike their work but it's weird to see people use language like this. Also, what's wrong with being an activist?…

hello, man from the other side of the divide! i grew up in a socialist country, so i find socialist activism frightful and dangerous, so yes, i think that they are activists for something bad, in general, though not necessarily specifically. (not having grown up in america, i don't share the same divide lines as you people do)

i'm not personally willing to engage in political subjects in my escapist media, and i generally don't. this is the part where you said "you're perfectly entitled", that's good that we agree on this. the rest of my op comment is my personal analysis of the nature of this new publication, which i thought was factual, because it's a collection of facts that i extracted out of this announcement, which i then used to make my decision about the publication. i've preemptively filed it in into a "do not click" category in my brain.

Re: Ex-Kotaku staff go independent and launch Aftermath

#139

Post by dagw »

AlexandrB wrote: post #115
drawkward wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Food for thought: maybe because people try to make better than mediocre games, the average review score is higher than 5/10.

Couldn't the same be said for movies of music? I don't think most people set out to make mediocre media. There's nothing special about games in this regard. In general the whole scale of scores for games is shifted upwards: https://old.reddit.com/r/gaming/comments/eu63f/modern_gaming...

At least it's better than the scale used by many outlets to rate wine, where 80/100 is for wines they consider undrinkable, and 91/100 is a pretty good mid-level wine.

Re: Ex-Kotaku staff go independent and launch Aftermath

#140

Post by jchw »

cdata wrote: post #135
AlexandrB wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I'll admit I do miss the older generation of video game 'journalism' nonetheless. Had its problems, but the thing is, it did feel like people were sharing their genuine and honest opinions as a capital-G "Gamer" more often. It's important to recognize that the stakes were lower back then. When games cost hundreds of millions to develop and market and are expected to have revenue in the billions bad reviews have the…

The claim that game culture has become sexually repressive doesn't pass the smell test for me. In 2023 I can play mainstream "AAA" games like Cyberpunk 2077 and Baldur's Gate 3. These games have non-trivial systems designed to gamify human sexual behavior, including such features as "configure your genitalia" during character creation and choose-your-own-adventure-style romantic coupling complete with nudity, interco…

You may have a specific idea of what it means to be "sexually repressive" that doesn't match what I mean when I say it. Porn games on steam and horniness still existing doesn't literally conflict with people having sexually repressive social attitudes.

Of course, I am not asking for a return to the pathetic days of Lara Crofts' chest. I get that this is one of the most iconic things people think of, but it's neither appealing to me nor something I think was "good". I think if developers want to do that sort of thing because they want to, well, go for it, but it's probably going to come off as stupid.

In order to understand what I'm talking about, I think you'd have to directly confront the perception of media as seen through the lens of younger people on TikTok and Twitter. Personally, I have abandoned social media of any kind (unless you count traditional forums like this, and a few chats), but the way things were trending with regards to how people treated things could not be described as anything but regressive, full-stop.

And also, there's a bit more nuance to the situation than just sexualization itself. I think to illustrate the kind of distinction I'm talking about, I'll just link to someone who writes better than I do.

https://bloodknife.com/everyone-beautiful-no-one-horny/

(This is of course, not about video games. However, I do personally believe that this is in fact a general trend, and not specific to video games or movies.)

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