Gaming journalism is a practice founded on digital innovation. With the world of journalism changing constantly, and a Ready Player One future approaching, it’s time to have a look at how far we’ve come!
What is gaming journalism?
I think a lot of people in the industry get caught up in pretty arbitrary definitions, this one included. For the sake of this blog, ease of explanation, and my own sanity, I believe that a ‘journalist’ is a pretty loose term for a broad group of people. If I had to define it myself, I’d just say that a journalist is someone that collects information and reports on it in the media. It’s not exactly too profound or articulate, but let’s be honest, not many journalists are.
Where did it all start?
Whilst this wasn’t exactly what we’d call ‘gaming journalism’ today, it would be criminal not to mention the genesis of it all: Play Meter. This 1974 gaming magazine was a periodical that covered coin-operated arcade games aimed solely at the industry, we were still a few years from getting anything for the consumers. It was founded by Ralph C. Lally II, who I’m not entirely convinced isn’t a Castlevania character, and ran until July 2018 (that’s 44 years!).
But journalism for the fans didn’t come around until the Golden Age of Arcade Video Games. This melodramatic title was given to the late 70s, following the success of games like Space Invaders and Asteroids. It marked the beginning of gaming as a cultural phenomenon and, during this era, hundreds of articles began popping up about the industry. Namely, columns like Arcade Alley, Weekly Shonen Jump, and The Vid Kid emerged during this time.
November 1981 saw the grand birth of the creatively titled Computer and Video Games magazine – now lost to the big ol’ respawn zone in the sky. It was exactly what you would expect from the time, and you can find over 100 issues online at archive.org.
In 1983, the gaming industry faced a recession due to the saturation of the market, leading to the closure of many publications. It was obvious that the gaming magazine market suffered the same problem: a quick glance at a few pages will tell you that most of the popular magazines were almost identical. But this era of magazine clones was eventually interrupted…
Welcome to the web
With the rapid growth of home computers and wider access to the beautiful/scary world of the Internet, web-based journalism began to expand with speed. Game Zero and IG Online were amongst the first to cement themselves as regularly published online gaming magazines. Pat Garratt, the business development manager of Eurogamer, criticised the print journalism industry for not moving onto the web. And considering most of the print publications mentioned have ceased production, I’d say he was right!
More recently, the boom in the accessibility of gaming and popularity of eSports and streaming has greatly increased the demand for gaming entertainment journalism. Current giants such as IGN, Escapist Magazine, and PCGamer established themselves in the 90s-2000s without a print background. The mid-2000s also saw the creation of most social media websites, which would come to impact gaming journalism later.
Where are we now?
Social media websites caused our gaming news to completely fragment into different sources. Whilst companies like IGN, Game Informer, Polygon, and Kotaku are still going strong, they’ve also expanded into different social media (such as Polygon’s successful YouTube channel). Not to mention, we’ve also seen a more prominent rise in citizen journalism. I’ll be explaining this concept a little further in the following weeks, but this term describes a more independent approach to journalism where anyone can be a reporter. Take, for example, Twitter users. I receive most of my gaming news over on my Twitter, as it can be an easy way to find out when something’s gaining traction due to the number of people talking about it (and it doesn’t hurt to follow a few aforementioned companies).
YouTube is arguably an even better example. I was pretty excited to see the release of Planet Zoo a few weeks ago and have been following it since its announcement. But I hadn’t been following it on their website or Steam page, I’d been watching YouTubers report on all the information that had been thrown out there. In my opinion, one of the main roles of journalists is to condense everything into a more digestible and entertaining method of receiving information; the audio-visual format of YouTube supports this perfectly. YouTube is a new home for gaming journalism, as both fans and companies can take to the format and post reviews, memes, and gameplay. Social media has facilitated the evolution of ordinary individuals into reporters and journalists.
What can we expect in the future?
Gaming journalism was founded upon innovation, as arcade machines rapidly became gaming consoles, paper magazines became interactive websites, and the average gaming fan became a journalist. If you take anything away from this post, it’s that this industry is constantly changing, and fast.
Animal Crossing’s Katrina may be a fortune teller, but sadly I am not (as far as I know). However, I think it’s pretty clear that we’re moving into a world where anyone can be a journalist due to the concept being so loosely defined. We can never predict what technology will come next, but maybe we’ll find a way to receive news differently.
What do you think? Do you think journalism as we know it will stick around much longer? I’d love to hear your thoughts! Stick around over the coming weeks to learn a bit more about what we can expect!
