You know journalism must be in trouble when even videogame journalism is in crisis. OK, so it’s easy to mock…and I must admit a smile did cross my lips as I read the piece, but if you keep on reading Jonas Allen‘s jeremiad for a corner of journalism I didn’t even know existed, there are some interesting points being made. Not sure I agree with them all, but here’s his pay-off:
The more blogs that get traction, the harder it is for journalistic sites to fund their professional ventures, and the fewer journalists actually stick with the program. At that point we’re left with nothing more than “press release whores” who post “news” directly from the publishers. And the last time I checked, publishers were out to make money on their products, not provide fair and balanced coverage of them.
Now is the time for The Big Sites to re-evaluate their definition of “news,” for publishers to evaluate the value of their news rather than its volume, and for the industry to reach consumers with more emotive and innovative products rather than a bunch of genre clones. If these stars align, videogame journalism might just avoid its own cannibalistic industry.
Golly. It’s everywhere.
3 responses to “Videogame journalism – lost genres in journalism”
Videogame journalism is definitely real journalism, especially around here.
Videogames are a $12.5 billion dollar industry, and growing rapidly. That’s bigger than the U.S. movie industry. Bigger than the U.S. music industry too.
And as Jonas Allen points out there are serious issues about how that market gets reported…
I’d just like to put some context to the claim that the video games industry is bigger than X, Y or Z. It’s an easy statement to make, but not entirely accurate.
The last figures I remember off the top of my head suggested something like worldwide movie revenues of $45bn (that includes cinema tickets, DVD and video sales) while the games industry was around $30bn (that also includes the hardware to play games on).
The IFPI, which represents the music industry, tags music sales at around $15bn (not including live music).
So, entire game industry revenues are larger than cinema ticket sales and music sales, but it’s not entirely straightforward.
Video games journalism, on the other hand, is interesting in how close it is to the industry. The relationship between PR and the hacks is totally symbiotic, and has been for a long time. That happens in lots of areas, but given the size of the market I find it astounding.