Good Morning Folks. Yesterday the news broke that Polygon, a gaming website that I actually really enjoyed was sold to Valnet. This is a company largely known for being a content mill, with pretty awful working conditions, and also know for being exceptionally litigious. This is not necessarily a new thing and part of the larger general trend of the “enshitification” of games media. Similarly yesterday it was announced that Jeff Grubb left Giant Bomb which comes on the back of multiple rounds of layoffs in 2023 and 2024… and will likely signal the official end of that site. This comes after being acquired by Fandom, aka the folks behind some of the absolute worst gaming wikis you have ever had the displeasure of reading. This is a tale that has been told so many times in the past from the gutting of Vice Media to the explosion of Joystiq and all of its subsequent brands… to the gobbling up of so many sites you cared about by Ziff Davis. Though honestly… those under the thumb of ZD seem to be faring better than others at least thusfar.
Why is this happening? Because someone out there thinks they can turn a buck from “enthusiast industries”, so that they can convert your love of something… into questionable advertising dollars. The thing is… the shedding of writers generally comes first as part of the “restructuring” plans. Generally speaking we flock to specific sites because they develop a voice, a voice that we feel represents our certain perspective on the world. We develop a relationship with these sites, because we begin to feel like we can trust their opinions. The thing is… “voice” is not what a large media conglomerate wants. They want slick advertiser friendly prose devoid of emotion or opinion, that effectively amounts to a regurgitation of whatever was said in the press release. I know this because I am on the same mailing lists as all of these folks and see the press releases a few days ahead of the articles coming out.
I am small and unimportant, and hopefully so much so that no one cares enough to notice me writing about this topic. The thing is… I am also someone who paid attention to those bylines and noticed who’s voice I was caring about. One of the brilliant things that has been happening almost as a counter movement to the corporatization of games media… is that the authors have been spinning off and creating their own things. What I suggest to you as my reader, is to stop going to these sites that have become devoid of spirit… and instead make a conscious effort to go to more independent voices. That is not to say that these sites do not have their own conflicts of interest as they attempt to fund the ventures through a combination of patreon and ad revenue… but they are better than the alternative.
Massively OP
When Joystiq largely blew up in 2015, it caused several of the sites that I cared about the most to effectively die. One of these sites was Massively, because at that point I had transitioned from only caring about World of Warcraft, to caring about MMORPGs in general. Thing is over the years of being on gaming Twitter I had become friends with a good number of the writers there, so when they decided to spin off and make their own thing happen, I was one of the original backers of the kickstarter. Even today I chip in a meager $5 per month and have done so since the patreon went live. I don’t actually READ any of the news through Patreon because quite honestly I cannot be bothered, especially when I have it delivered to my Mastodon feed their their aggregator account there. However I suggest you get in the habit of reading the about page for the sites you are consuming, so you can understand a bit better about how they are organized.
Blizzard Watch
Another Site that spun up as Joystiq was dying, was Blizzard Watch. This site was crafted out of the flames of WoW Insider, which is responsible for my very first viral moment on this blog. This is another site created by a dedicated batch of writers who care deeply about Blizzard games, and kept writing about them. This is another patreon that I backed for quite awhile, and they even have set up residence on our very own Gamepad for their Mastodon account. While my own interest in Blizzard games has waned over the years, the site has continued to be an excellent source of news. Once again check out their About page to understand who is making the site what it is.
Aftermath
Remember the bit where I said follow the writers behind these sites? Well for years I have followed Gita Jackson, first on Twitter and then later on Bluesky. During one of the dust ups at Kotaku, they spun off into Vice Media’s Waypoint. Then with Vice Media blew up and killed Waypoint and a few other sub-brands, I followed them as they branched out to do their own thing with a bunch of other folks from Waypoint, called Aftermath. Like I have said numerous times, you can learn a lot about a site by reading the About link. I follow the site’s BlueSky account and they tend to cover anything major going on in the gaming industry. If you’ve never read the site, I highly suggest you check it out.
404 Media
Similarly when Vice Media exploded, it also took out Motherboard, which was a more generalist technology issues site. I followed the team over to 404 Media when they launched it in in 2023. Lately they have been chasing the Signal messages thread in United States political discourse, but they have also devoted a lot of page time to investigating various purveyors of AI slop. As far as authors go I specifically really enjoy the writing of Jason Koebler. Mostly I am throwing this out there to show that there are independent sites that have spun off for almost every subject you can think of, because the general abuse of writers has been wide spread enough to general an entire industry of folks who have had enough of this bullshit.
Loading Ready Run
I cannot talk about independent games journalism and entertainment however without also mentioning what I consider to be the gold standard. I have loved Loading Ready Run for so many years, and remember back when they were tied to the Escapist. Originally known for skit comedy, the have become this entire cottage empire making content about the things they care about. Qwerpline is one of my favorite things to exist on this planet, or whatever planet Nsberg is located on. Checkpoint embedded above is effectively required viewing every single week, and it is pretty common that we end up talking about some topic first introduced there on our own podcast. Over the years they have segmented their YouTube channel a bit into one devoted to Video Games, Tabletop Games, Magic the Gathering, Comedy, and then one that is mostly their live productions. Better than all of this is the fact that many of the folks are actually active on Mastodon, my social network of choice. At this point I assume you know about LRR but just in case… my god you have been missing a lot.
Independent Bloggers
Whether or not I necessarily intended to… through the poorly thought out creation of Blaugust in 2013… I have become a bit of a nexus at least in the games blogging community. Each year I update my blogroll on the side of this blog with the current list of participants, and among that are a number of really great voices that are out there saying the things they think about games on a regular basis. While some folks view Blaugust as a race to be run, and stop being quite so active after August has passed. There are folks like Wilhelm with The Ancient Gaming Noob that you can almost set your watch by with just how frequently he posts. Similarly Roger is constantly spinning up discussions about how he feels regarding games and media on Contains Moderate Peril. Legitimately just go down the list from Scopique, to Tipa, to Nimgimli, and countless more you have a constant flow of posts coming from independent voices. All of which are more thought provoking than anything you would read on an industrial slop site.
Basically I am just trying to show you that there are options out there rather than supporting these sites that have proven year after year not to support their writers. The answer to “fixing the internet” is to take back some control, and that means adding a bit more intentionality into your media consumption. The content mills need our eyeballs to succeed, and ultimately it is our responsibility to take them away. Do I think this will change anything? Hell no… I am not that deluded. However I did feel like I had to say something.
