Topic: Why I'm leaving most of mainstream gaming media behind.

Over the course of recent months I have become disillusioned with most of the big gaming sites. It's become pretty clear to me that most of these sites either (A) severely lack proper journalistic skills (B) become nothing more then PR for publishers or (C) bring up their own political engender as click bait. Now what I mean by "lack of proper journalistic skills" is when throughout all these big AAA games arrived broken on launch, where were these so called journalists? When they should have been demanding interviews with game directors and CEO's so they can give them the hard questions about releasing broken products on launch. Of course they would never do this cos they don't want to lose the privileges of getting scoops on Ubisoft or EA's next game instead of looking after the people that should really matter to them, the readers. Of course I knew exactly where I and many others stood after Gamergate, the likes of Kotaku and Polygon made it clear who they sided with. The irony is that mainstream dedicated gaming sites are slowly dying out with the shutting down of Edge, Joysiq and CVG because a lot of people are turning to either more niche sites (such as this) that are for specific demographics or more likely You tubers. I find it rather telling that IGN's two most well known personalities chose to leave the rather safe job security of IGN to become fulltime YouTube's, it makes me wonder whether they felt the same too.

Click bait's a weird thing, because at the end of the day, everyone wants their articles to be read. As long as you're not being deliberately misleading, I don't think it's as bad as people make out — heck, this thread title caught my attention, and subsequently, here I am responding.

I think the best practice, as with most things in life, is to find what you like, and stick with it. The big sites are massive for a reason, and there'll usually be lots of good content and people there — you just might need to scratch under the surface a little further to find it.

I will say in defence of some of the big sites that everyone will have different experiences. I played plenty of LittleBigPlanet 3 for review, and I only had one minor issue where it crashed. I decided not to report on this because I never — and still have never — experienced anything else. However, if you read the IGN review, they reference dozens upon dozens of problems.

Sometimes you can only report what you see — but I agree that the whole industry needs to do better in this department.

I didn't think my topic title could be seen as click bait, ironic really lol. You bring up some could points and yes it is about finding what people like. I come to this site everyday cos I'm a PlayStation fan and I want news and features all about PlayStation cos it's relevant to me. Sometimes though I go to these big sites to look at various people's opinions on games etc but that's when I get a sense of double standards. Eurogamer was the last straw for me (which was a shame cos Digital Foundry do some really great critique on the technological side). They had an article and video up about "Why you might not want to preorder The Order 1886" now their concerns might not be without merit but the problem I had was "Why didn't they do something similar with Assassin's Creed Unity or Halo MCC or maybe Evolve with it's ridiculous DLC's, why The Order?" It's the constant double standards that get me, when good games get criticized for "lacking innovation" yet Call of Duty doesn't you kind help but wonder "something's wrong somewhere"

This guy leaves mainstream gaming behind. What he does next will shock you!

I do agree with a lot of your points. At the end of the day, media is out there to make money. Often times these big organizations have a larger management team to answer to where as smaller groups of media might not have the same obligations. This is just how business works. I saw that same article about The Order and had a similar reaction. It's been a bit of a controversial game so some media groups might take advantage of people's skepticism (which really originates from the media to begin with). All in all, I think those big name groups have their strengths and weaknesses. It's nice they often can cover everything VERY quickly even if it's not always reliable. On the other hand, smaller media sites might not have as much coverage or 'special articles', but benefit from more personable staff.

If I saw an article on here bad mouthing Freedom Wars, it's easy for me to say "OH THAT'S JUST SAMMY HE NEVER LIKES ANYTHING I LIKE" where as on a big site like IGN, posts are more homologous with the brand rather than the writer.

As for click bait.. I hate it so very much, but it's here to stay. It's clearly an effective strategy.

Something that I hate of these mainstream sites is how they ignore some games, particularly indie games. Scram Kitty is one of my favorite Wii U games, incredibly original and IGN never even reviewed it, as if it never happened.

The small devs are the ones who could use more publicity but of course only Ubisoft and EA seem to exist.

I love Push Square and its sister sites because they try to cover everything (NL boasts of reviewing every single eShop game) and the moderators keep the community aspect very clean. The WGAYPTW feature helps to keep staff and readers engaged and sharing impressions with each other. Great stuff.

IGN has actually reported on the bugs plaguing games like Halo MCC and AC Unity. They buried them in 2 minute videos that were released on youtube and elsewhere with a bunch of other short videos but they were there. I do agree they could've done more. An article asking the hard-hitting questions would've been nice. EGM used to do that when it was one of the big outlets, too bad the suits at the top at ZD screwed all that up.

I read reviews here, get bits of info from EU PS blog and I only ever use IGN to watch gameplay/trailers etc, if one does not have a BS detector then that's just too bad.

I think the core issue is just a lack of professionalism

I would walk away, give it a year or so then tentatively check back in, as things can change. The recent IGN Pokemon ORAS review left me reeling. I know the reviewer didn't play through that game from the inaccuracies in the review. I think I'd been a bit too trusting of reviewers before that.

Easily my favourite site atm is Nintendolife, it's great. Also, Good Game and Good Game SP are telly programmes that can be viewed at their websites and are excellent. If the reviewers haven't played more than a few hours or don't generally like a kind of game they will say so during the review.

I have reservations about polygon and the route they have taken, I was a big fan when the site formed, however I recently unfollowed them (big gesture or what!!) as it was yet more articles on sexism and racism. Now these are important topics, and they do need to be looked at, not just in gaming but society. But the articles are so self fulfilling and lacking in any source material it comes across as click bait, the general commentators are not politicians or skilled orators and the arguments would fall flat and be cast aside if highlighted by more experienced social justice campaigners and human rights lawyers. The articles written wouldn't pass a first year university paper as they are so lopsided and take such a tunnel visioned view its exhausting. One article a couple of weeks ago was inciting Zelda was racist. This was the final straw - its so ridiculous and untrue Nintendo could probably take them to court. One of the major problems with polygon and setting this as a main agenda, is the audience (which at one time was quite intelligent) who seem to propagate these messages and troll each other, leading to more and more articles. I've found the perfect site here - please stick to gaming guys and never change. Social justice needs to be lobbied in the correct manner through your council, boots on streets and petitions - not in the comments section of ign, polygon, eurogamer or kotaku.