Earlier quoted context omitted.
Are you trying to well-poison "caring" about the scope and quality of entertainment media? What's your aim here? Am I supposed to pretend that total randoms flooding entertainment media with their off-topic pretentious garbage is normal and alright?
Genuine question: what other „entertainment media” are you reading in 2023 that does not contain what you describe as „off-topic pretentious garbage”?
Ex-Kotaku staff go independent and launch Aftermath
141–150 of 178 posts
Re: Ex-Kotaku staff go independent and launch Aftermath
#142Earlier quoted context omitted.
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…
I'd consider someones review if they bought the game themselves, they don't generate any revenue from it and we have had similar taste in the past. Even the most brief word of mouth praise of something from a friend is going to be more valuable than any length review from a biased source. It might also be possible to find a collection of random people on Steam to follow just for their reviews. I've never tried this, but I think it would abide by my guidelines of trustworthiness.
Re: Ex-Kotaku staff go independent and launch Aftermath
#143i do wonder how many people are willing to pay almost $100 annually for blogging. defector seems to be successful-ish with that model? if you can make it work, the editorial independence is probably amazing. i don't really care for kotaku now or back in the day, but wish them luck nonetheless - funding for journalism in general has been badly broken for a long time.
I think there's two things interacting here that make this more tractable than first impressions - first is that the cost of running one of these sites as a sustainable business is a hell of a lot lower than whatever crazy shit the PE & hedge funders were pushing for. I also think people's willingness to pay for quality content is higher than has been assumed, and I think part of that is a lot of us have seen what the cost of free content is over the last couple years.
I think you're right that these sites will never be more than niche by subscriber count, but I think there's more appetite now than before and I think it's entirely possible to make a sustainable business here.
I'm also generally in favor of a world where writers and creators get paid a decent wage to write and create things I find valuable or interesting, so I'm biased here.
Re: Ex-Kotaku staff go independent and launch Aftermath
#144Earlier quoted context omitted.
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…
> a bunch of people were convinced to go all the way from 90's style "toxic masculinity" to a totally puritanical anti-sexuality stance
To the contrary, I find that there is more sex - including a greater variety in the expression of human sexuality - in mainstream video game titles than I can ever remember there being in my lifetime. Surely a lot of people are paying money for these video games, or else they would not be produced.
Edit: fixed redundant phrasing.
Re: Ex-Kotaku staff go independent and launch Aftermath
#145Earlier quoted context omitted.
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 gene…
When I see this I just think of that old joke that gamers think there are two sexes: male and political. Two races: white and political. Two sexualities: straight and political. etc etc you get the idea.
Bad news tho the political subjects are already in your escapist media your only choice is how you engage with them. Regarding any aspect of it as nonpolitical is itself a political act.
Re: Ex-Kotaku staff go independent and launch Aftermath
#146Earlier quoted context omitted.
Wow! I thought you were joking but the first name is the dude at the center of what started “gamergate” and everything that followed it. Thanks for pointing that out. This site is just another in a long list of game journalism sites that is worthless.
I thought a deranged online mob started Gamergate.
It may be wrong, or right, but that is the narrative in my head around this. So it's probably the same in a lot of other disgruntled peoples' minds.
Re: Ex-Kotaku staff go independent and launch Aftermath
#147Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
But both were still solid games. now ME:A had its faults (especially at launch), but to this day I blame Kotaku for single handily causing that game to fail and the public perception of it being the way it was and we never got the DLC that was clearly hinted at in the game. Which I am still frustrated about.
It seemed like on a daily basis for a couple weeks we got a negative article about ME:A from Kotaku and suddenly everyone talked about how bad it was even though they never played it.
Disclaimer: I have a Mass Effect tattoo that I plan on turning into a sleeve so I am not exactly... impartial
Re: Ex-Kotaku staff go independent and launch Aftermath
#148Earlier quoted context omitted.
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 gene…
> i'm not personally willing to engage in political subjects in my escapist media When I see this I just think of that old joke that gamers think there are two sexes: male and political. Two races: white and political. Two sexualities: straight and political. etc etc you get the idea. Bad news tho the political subjects are already in your escapist media your only choice is how you engage with them. Regarding any asp…
i'm not signing under your strawman, because it's not true. but i know the tactics you people use, because you took them straight from the commissar books of my homeland. history books will not treat you kindly.
Re: Ex-Kotaku staff go independent and launch Aftermath
#149Earlier quoted context omitted.
> i'm not personally willing to engage in political subjects in my escapist media When I see this I just think of that old joke that gamers think there are two sexes: male and political. Two races: white and political. Two sexualities: straight and political. etc etc you get the idea. Bad news tho the political subjects are already in your escapist media your only choice is how you engage with them. Regarding any asp…
this thread started with me basically saying that i'm not willing to engage, and there's a lively downvote brigading going on against the original comment (it goes from -3 to 3 over and over and over again, the grand battle of ideologies!) i'm not signing under your strawman, because it's not true. but i know the tactics you people use, because you took them straight from the commissar books of my homeland. history b…
Re: Ex-Kotaku staff go independent and launch Aftermath
#150Earlier quoted context omitted.
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 gene…
You can escape from politics in something like FIFA or Madden, I suppose, as long as you're willing to ignore the politics of the team ownership/management and how players are treated. And of course something like Tetris isn't intrinsically political, as long as you ignore the origins of the game itself (which is totally reasonable in a 'separate the art from the artist' fashion).
In practice with many games whether they seem 'political' to you or not depends on whether the game's politics are legible, and depending on our upbringing and education we may or may not be able to recognize a given political theme in a given game. It feels naive to act as if x% of games are Political and y% of games are Not Political and thus coverage should entirely avoid politics. Typically when you see political themes brought up in games coverage, it is usually in regards to games that have political themes beneath the surface, if not directly out in the open in the text of the game itself.
I totally understand the desire to escape from politics, and a good way to do that is to avoid reading coverage that focuses on the politics and to avoid playing games that engage too deeply with political themes. It just feels deeply misguided to me when I see people criticizing games journalists for 'bringing politics into it' when usually the games they're covering are already deeply political. It's fine to want to ignore that as a player but they are rarely bringing something in that isn't there.
A great example of this would be the Yakuza/Judgment series of games. They are filled with social commentary and themes that are most legible to someone who grew up in Japan, and if you read coverage of them from journalists with that context it can seem very political. To me as an American, I lack most of that cultural context so it's very easy to treat them as apolitical fun romps where gangsters fight against corrupt politicians or dirty cops. But even so, corrupt politicians and dirty cops are a problem here in my country too, right? To call these works apolitical from any perspective is perhaps trying a little too hard.