Good.
They need a bit better website design though. You shouldn't need to scroll through an editorial column to get to the articles.
Ex-Kotaku staff go independent and launch Aftermath
21–30 of 178 posts
Re: Ex-Kotaku staff go independent and launch Aftermath
#22Not 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.
Re: Ex-Kotaku staff go independent and launch Aftermath
#23I recently came across The Game Discoverer Newsletter, which seems to be about 100x more insightful and data rich than boilerplate journalism like Kotaku. They also have some other interesting data tools for game developers. More broadly, I'm not sure general "journalism" really has a bright future outside of the big names that can field huge advertising budgets. I'm more convinced that niche sites should specialize…
> More broadly, I'm not sure general "journalism" really has a bright future outside of the big names that can field huge advertising budgets.
To be fair, it doesn't have a bright history outside of that, either.
Re: Ex-Kotaku staff go independent and launch Aftermath
#24Interesting timing—a bunch of people from The Escapist either were fired or quit yesterday, including Yahtzee Croshaw.
Re: Ex-Kotaku staff go independent and launch Aftermath
#25Earlier quoted context omitted.
Is this a good or bad thing? I don’t really know much about kotaku. But I do know game journalists don’t exactly produce the greatest content, everything from “the game is too hard 1/10” to IGNs obvious paid for scores to “this game has a male character, therefore it must be sexist”.
This is a pretty hyperbolic take on games reviewers, other than the paid reviews which does exist but is pretty easy to identify and ignore. I've seen games being criticised for being too hard but even Elden Ring, Lies of P et al aren't getting 1/10 for that. I've seen people lamenting the same lazy copy-pasted male character being the protagonist again and again, but never decrying that it's outright sexist that a m…
The gaming community is often delusional and will rant online about a journalist giving a game a 9/10 instead of a 10/10. Good reviews, where the journalist actually played the game and has experience to compare it to, goes unnoticed. Garbage articles, like "Nintendo used a disability slur in a song" (turns out they're speaking Japanese) get huge attention.
Re: Ex-Kotaku staff go independent and launch Aftermath
#26I recently came across The Game Discoverer Newsletter, which seems to be about 100x more insightful and data rich than boilerplate journalism like Kotaku. They also have some other interesting data tools for game developers. More broadly, I'm not sure general "journalism" really has a bright future outside of the big names that can field huge advertising budgets. I'm more convinced that niche sites should specialize…
> More broadly, I'm not sure general "journalism" really has a bright future outside of the big names that can field huge advertising budgets. To be fair, it doesn't have a bright history outside of that, either.
I actually do think there are many great opportunities for journalists to reframe themselves as sources of intelligence for business use cases, in the way that Game Discoverer has. There are a ton of Substacks that have this same basic model. Another great example is the Financial Times, which seems to be doing well financially.
The key point here being that these publications are providing businesses with useful information, not just writing reviews and commentary for a mass audience.
Re: Ex-Kotaku staff go independent and launch Aftermath
#27Not 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…
Careful, it’s gatekeeping to prefer that your game journalists have ever played a game at all other than when researching for an article.
They write like this because it’s how anyone writes on a topic about which they have no experience. If you embed me as a wartime reporter, I’ll talk about the weird food and noise, not what most people reading the article want to read about.
Re: Ex-Kotaku staff go independent and launch Aftermath
#28Not 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…
> 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.
You and I have very different memories about what "passionate articles from gamers" were about in the 90s and 00s.
Re: Ex-Kotaku staff go independent and launch Aftermath
#29Not 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…
I’d you all you talk about is games, eventually you’ll have to talk about the fucking coffee machine in the video game.
Re: Ex-Kotaku staff go independent and launch Aftermath
#30Not 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…
I don't know anything about Kotaku, but I read that same article and thought it was pretty clearly a tongue-in-cheek faux investigative article and laughed at it.