Oh yeah, thanks UCP.

These are the same people that tell me the government is putting chemicals into legal weed to track people when they later unlegalise cannabis. The point is that this is not a large movement, but a fringe loud group that gets way more attention then they warrant. Don’t let me stop you from calling these people out though, they do deserve the criticism but not so much the coverage.

Oh I also don’t get the UCP love in Alberta, they are terrible and only seem to push “NDP bad, Fed bad with a side of corruption”. But its still a jump to full blown treason for most of Alberta.

How about the last election with the “republican party of alberta”?

You know the one that had less then $1000 in donations before the name change and trump getting in office that somehow ran a whole ass call center (they called me 2 to 3 times a fucking day)? The one that reported $191,194.50 from nothing somehow?

The reported amounts they got January 1, 2025 to September 30, 2025 vs What they got for all of 2024

Note they did not even make the deadline for the 2025 final Likely due to how much they got stomped in the one by-election they ran in. (even in Olds where they where claiming victory before the polling stations even closed).

And the really funny part is that its now been taken up by the silly separatists (or what ever they are calling them self’s this week) just like the Forever Canadian group assumed they would as by law they can not have 2 referendums at the same time on the same issue. Its gold since the one that has been signed and approved does not say if Alberta leaves, so even if somehow (though dirty deeds no doubt) the referendum comes back with a “No” result that does not mean separation and there is a cool down time so hopefully this can be done and dusted.

Great play by the Forever Canadian people.

? the only really stanch separatists I know are just as much from Calgary as areas around it. They are generally considered really, really dumb in rural Alberta. These are the same people who did anti UN parades and what not.

I don’t know why people have to assume that outside of a city people become wild uncivilized traitors.

As is Canadian tradition. It is not even the biggest waste currently in military spending.

Same as all other tax funded projects, by some elected people who likely have no idea about the project.

Joking aside, we will see more of this funding due to governments moving to open source software as they tend to want to fund their own stuff.

Like they just licked a French doods ashtray.

Oh it has, but the implications become clear when you look at the ones that did. Like evergrand…

Its a non functioning product at launch, something that should be called out in a review. It is a low quality slop review, whether or not I agree with the conclusion. You can like or dislike a game counter to a review but I expect that at the very least an attempt will be made to point out pitfalls, and that was not done. The Suicide Squad was a bad game, someone liking it does not justify a dishonest or lazy review. You can not toss out one anecdotal view while pushing your own without looking a bit silly.

In this very thread, you can see people who are convinced that reviewers are paid off or playing difficult games on extra easy modes, neither of which are true, because they just can’t reconcile that anyone could possibly enjoy a game that they didn’t enjoy or weren’t interested in.

Neither of which are true is a bold statement that needs more then a “trust me” level of response. Next your going to tell me that redfall was actually good without much issues is more likely then some one was paid to write a fluff piece (a thing that happens in all forms of journalism). You seem to be pushing the idea that its the audience is wrong and desperately assuming that people don’t like the media state due to an inability to reconcile their own preferences with the articles (wild and odd).

Yeah, review have always had a slant and people forget just how bad they where in the past. I would rather watch someone play the game and skip the reviews, however it must be said the old slanted review model has largely died off. We don’t buy magazines with advertorials anymore, and the appetite to pay for such content is at a low point by both consumers and advertisers.

Tradition, their egos, money and entitlement seems to be doing a fine job. (but yeah the access journalism model has to go)

I am not writing for a publication but sure I guess you expect the same level of journalism as VGC so lets cover it a bit.

Lets use their own words About how they 5 years ago where getting 7 million views a month. That great, and the article although a fluff piece about themselves is not nearly as bad as the one linked before. But hey that could just be different writers after all, but nope both done by the editor in chief Andy Robinson. And don’t get me wrong VGC is one of the better ones, but at 7 million views a month they are not competing with video from places like twitch and you tube. In fact the written coverage on games has become a walled garden of insiders writing tone deaf articles and reviews in general.

Take the reviews for example, VGC’s coverage on Borderlands 4 Does not even address the games broken state but gives it 4/5 stars vs VGC’s coverage 6 years ago on Anthem Where they lambaste the game for it’s faults. Hell we can take this further and look at coverage on the same thing under different media in current times, the VGCs review of Borderlands 4 has no view counter on it but also has no comments, where as a smaller creator on youtube using clickbait has over 6000 comments and more views then they have subscribers (425,000).

I am sorry you don’t see the degradation of written games media, and I understand it was never top shelf stuff, but it is not a controversial take that needs extraordinary evidence. People are clearly not happy with the quality and content (hence the constant downsizing due to dropping revenues) leading places to sell out more to cover the bills thereby leading to a death spiral. Just look at coverage of some of the worst most broken releases to get why audiences are turning away:

Redfall getting a 4/5

Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League getting a 4/5

Redfall getting a 90

Vampire: The Masquerade - Bloodlines 2 getting a 8/10

Legendary Drops seems to have some solid takes. I find I get more of watching people play the games though these days.

How would you have cited “declining quality of writing” as an inciting factor? How would you measure it? And why did it just become a problem in the past few years rather than any of the problems that are listed in the article?

The part I am talking about is below the the part you are quoting. It was a critique on the part that goes:

"According to Press Engine’s database of ‘tier 1’ publications that cover games (which is defined as major websites, both specialist and mainstream, with seven-figure-plus audiences), the global pool of game journalists has declined by 25% in just two years. The vast majority of these departures were from specialist games websites like IGN, Polygon, or Gamepot.

If amateur, part-time, or freelance writers are included, the number of departures from the games media swells to more than 4,000 people since October 2023."

I am not sure if you are just a touch upset that everyone does not agree that your writer owned slop factory is of high standards or if you just missed the part where I was trying to point out the weak writing as asked. But if I was to “cite” the declining quality of writing, I could do so by referencing old popular articles compared to current ones, I could show screen shots of the ever mounting assault of ads, or I could do what I am doing here and just assume that my audience is not wilfully ignorant of the current state of the format.

You can not out of one side of your mouth state the industry of writing is dying then say out of the other that the writing has not suffered.

I’ll say that you state that as fact, but it’s a perception that not everyone shares.

Not everyone shares the perception that we live on a sphere, what is your point?

This reeks of wilful ignorance to the facts of the state of the media currently.

I have old some old magazines that are at least readable with ads that don’t move. This is not a radical take, just like all corporate media the quality has declined in general (not suggesting that there was a lack of bad journalism in the past). Also, they may not have hard quotas there but the writers are paid to make articles and content to fill the site (it is like how best buy did not do commission vs future shop but where both the same company and fired those that did not make sales regardless).

As for how to improve this particular article, I would say a good start is to pick a format, is it a op ed or an interview? Or is it a report on events? I would go the op ed direction myself and rely less on the quotes from other journalists and data from the weird internal marketing source. I would have likely incouraged having a message and then sprinkled in actual employment numbers from major publications throughout the article and not done what this one did that was “this program sends out less free codes” as a data point. The data used is too weak for anything other then an opinion piece but the article is too light on the writer’s input to be one.

There is also a big “citation needed” part that should have set off a editor.

“If amateur, part-time, or freelance writers are included, the number of departures from the games media swells to more than 4,000 people since October 2023.”

“If” indeed! They went from 25% down and then if you include free lancers swelling to more then 4,000 people. That’s just sloppy writing. At least give initial numbers and keep the format consistant.

Do you feel that way about the site reporting the linked article?

Yes, although I am not the first dood, but posting as someone who did read the linked article it is a barely veiled attempt to support the “writer’s” media and looks more like a lazy filler article to meet a quota. I use quotes around writer as the article in question is 2/3s quotes more in the style of an interview with “Veteran games journalist Alex Donaldson” and a few comments from “Press Engine co-founder Gareth Williams” (nothing wrong with that per say). The other 1/3 is “data supplied to VGC by Press Engine…” (again nothing wrong with this on its own). The issue is when we take the article in its whole this seems more like someone talked to a colleague or two then put a header on it using in house data from a “… popular PR tool used by developers and publishers to distribute codes and press releases to a global database of journalists and content creators.” and adding a few other comments from the very founder of the program used in house to round it out making a very thin and kinda lazy article. This reminds me very much of the stuff written I saw many many years ago when I worked at a newspaper watching that media circle the drain.

Also on the point of:

The sites are all completely cluttered with ads, a lot of the articles are just AI slop, and the industry is driven by greed.

This is not AI slop but good old fashioned 4:30 on a Friday human slop covered in ads, for example I got 2 pop ups with ad block reading it. This is what it looks like without ad blocker:

But then again, you get what you pay for and I guess the irony here is that the article (that could be used as a captain obvious joke) pointing out the collapse of games media is in itself an example of a degrading quality of writing leading to the demise of said media. The real joke is that the article does not even touch on the degrading quality of the writing and experience (other then a “…lack of diversification in content…”) but instead putting the blame on every thing else (thanks google, AI, COVID and advertising spending I guess?).

Yeah, it turns out people don’t like advertising pretending to be reviews.