Another End of An Era

If everyone would like to take a shot you may do so

It seems like too often in the video game industry, that there have been websites that have been shutting off the lights. Whether it was Electronic Gamer Monthly or Game Informer. it seems to frequently that this has happened.

Yesterday it was announced that not only has Polygon been bought by Valnet, a website known for making click baity type titles to try and get you to click on their stories, but has also reportedly laid off most of the games journalists. Giant Bomb is also reportedly going through a major shuffle of the deck so to speak as its parent company Fandom is reportedly changing the staff of many of its websites. (Yes I’m linking Kotaku. Who else is left?)

Though it seems like a shock for many, however there people out there that consider this to be a win. Probably because games journalism since the whole GamerGate incident has been more about click baity titles that get your interest instead of…actual journalism. And that’s not the fault of the games journalists themselves. Being a denizen of the internet since 2003, I’ve noticed a large shift in reporting.

At 14, I had friends who had worked on a now defunct anime website called Shonen Junk. Shonen Junk was the collaboration of Junk-Anime’s Steven A. Hammock and Wendell P (I forget his last name, though I also remember just calling him Wendy, don’t ask but we all did it.) of Shonen Anime. At the time they were the powerhouses of anime sites and forums. Until the decline of anime websites and forums in 2006, when the shifted from anime and manga to just being about Japanese culture from the fashion to the music and video games. Since then the site has been largely defunct.

Now the reason why I bring this up is because Shonen Junk was the cornerstone of my teenage years. It’s where I saw the rise of social media, it’s where I met so many different people. So I can understand why a lot of people are freaking out about this. We saw this major shift from anime and manga blogs to social media and it took out so many different sites. Shonen Junk wasn’t the first that decided to go by the wayside as it also took out Spirit Detective, which was a comprehensive site dedicated to Yu Yu Hakusho.

It’s the same for Polygon and Giant Bomb both being the cornerstones of the video gaming industry. Now regardless of how you feel about both sites, it’s certain that a lot of people had just lost their jobs. And gamers who have relied on both Polygon and Giant Bomb as a source of their gaming news just lost a cornerstone of their life.

Though for some it might be a good thing for gamers because now we can try to formulate our own opinions in regards to games. Though it’s ignoring the large part of the controversy surrounding a lot of Polygon’s articles is looking at the range of people reading Polygon’s articles that come from social media. A lot of the articles I’ve looked at over the years seems to be echoing sentiments from different people who share those same views.

I think perhaps it’s time for us to ignore what comes out of social media and focus on the one main thing that’s important and that is video games. It doesn’t matter about what side of the political spectrum you come from, or what you notice about a game. The main takeaway should always be this : Did you enjoy the game and why? If you didn’t enjoy the game, why didn’t you? And the answers to those questions should always focus on the games itself. Anything else and you just become an empty wagon lost in the woods.

While for many games journalists out there it may seem like a scary time. But for the rest of us this could be a new opprotunity in the future. Who knows what the future might bring?

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