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Post by GamerL on Jul 30, 2014 11:27:23 GMT -5
if one wants to keep abreast to what's going on in the world of gaming without relying purely on magazines like it's the dark ages, is there a website out there that's not overrun with pretentious think-pieces and/or a cynical, fucking annoying comments community?
my site of choice since 2007 has been Destructoid because in it's early going it was fucking awesome, it was a shockingly good gaming website with good writers and a tight-knit, fun to be around community
then times changed, the site became more popular so more people posted in the comments, which as we all know the more people that post in comments = the stupider they are, but the biggest problem was they lost their best writer, Anthony Burch, who went on to write the Borderlands series for Gearbox and left gaming journalism entirely, which is a shame because he was great, the only guy I've seen to write gaming themed "think-pieces" that weren't pretentious and were actually interesting, plus he contributed cool articles like "games that time forgot" where he highlighted a forgotten game of yesteryear to see if it was any good
the site today is mired by two problems, one is there not much to it beyond purely news and reviews, gone are the standalone articles, secondly I hate most of the people that comment on it, for example every single fucking story related to The Last of Us now has to have a dozen shitheads spouting their opinion saying "durrr overrated game is overrated harr harr", guess what? NO ONE FUCKING CARES
it's exactly that kind of shit that makes most other gamers almost intolerable to be around on the net these days
also, recently The AV Club started a gaming spinoff that was pretty good, but after only a little over a year it died
so my question is, is there some site out there that's not quite famous yet and is actually a quality place?
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Post by Malroth on Jul 30, 2014 11:36:23 GMT -5
Polygon has several fantastic pieces on it's site, but it definitely falls into the category of "pretentious." It also frequently posts terribly researched opinion pieces that are little more than click bait, like one piece on how Nintendo hates gay people. The writers there regularly like to tear men a new assholes for all the games that are developed that don't feature a realistic female leads, or they just rip into men in general. In fact, if you're a white male expect to see many articles ostracizing you.
If you can push past all of that bullshit there's some worthwhile gaming journalism there. Me? I guess I'm just too thin-skinned for that right now - I don't particularly enjoy being blamed for all the ills of society and gaming in general because of my skin color.
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Post by GamerL on Jul 30, 2014 11:42:03 GMT -5
Polygon has several fantastic pieces on it's site, but it definitely falls into the category of "pretentious." It also frequently posts terribly researched opinion pieces that are little more than click bait, like one piece on how Nintendo hates gay people. The writers there regularly like to tear men a new assholes for all the games that are developed that don't feature a realistic female leads, or they just rip into men in general. In fact, if you're a white male expect to see many articles ostracizing you. If you can push past all of that bullshit there's some worthwhile gaming journalism there. Me? I guess I'm just too thin-skinned for that right now - I don't particularly enjoy being blamed for all the ills of society and gaming in general because of my skin color. ugh, that's exactly the kind of shit that I hate in modern gaming journalism
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Post by Weasel on Jul 30, 2014 11:55:18 GMT -5
About the only game news sites left that don't completely suck are Joystiq and Siliconera. Joystiq, however, only seems to cover the Most Important stuff (they don't seem to bother with even vaguely niche stuff), and Siliconera seems to focus almost entirely on the niche stuff that, in a lot of cases, will probably never leave Japan.
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Post by Malroth on Jul 30, 2014 11:55:51 GMT -5
It's a damn shame, too. Before Polygon went that route, the comments were thoughtful and respectful. Now that it's their bread and butter, the comments have tanked, the editors regularly get shitty with people that disagree with them, and the entire site just feels unpleasant.
Gengame is decent, but it's not on top of the latest gaming stuff as much as I would like. Siliconera is pretty decent, but it has a much heavier focus on foreign games. There's nothing wrong with that, but my importing days are over for the most part. It's still a pretty decent site, though.
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Post by cambertian on Jul 30, 2014 12:03:03 GMT -5
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Post by GamerL on Jul 30, 2014 12:08:38 GMT -5
by the way, allow me to pour one out for Dtoid again this is the perfect example of both how good a writer Anthony Burch was and how good the site used to be linkit really breaks my heart to think how how downhill the site has gone and I've stuck with it all this time out of both force of habit and the hope that one day it may come around, but I've noticed that I seem to be the only person on there now who has visited since back in 2007, all the old names in the comments are gone and I think none of the original staff is left now either (Jim Sterling was the last one to go I think)
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Post by Dee Liteyears on Jul 30, 2014 12:10:55 GMT -5
I miss the days when Joystiq was still "Insert console here"-fanboy. They reported about all kinds of homebrew stuff for DS and PSP
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Post by Weasel on Jul 30, 2014 12:17:04 GMT -5
I miss the days when Joystiq was still "Insert console here"-fanboy. They reported about all kinds of homebrew stuff for DS and PSP Yeah. All that changed when they became an AOL Network site.
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Post by dskzero on Jul 30, 2014 13:26:56 GMT -5
I've been told Giantbomb is a nice website. I used to like Rock, Paper, Shotgun but nowadays they are terrible.
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Post by Garamoth on Jul 30, 2014 13:55:13 GMT -5
I was wondering the same thing about game news sites.
I also used to like Rock Paper Shotgun, but they've fell down the usual hole of identity politics, "social justice" and cynicism about anything that isn't certain indie games. Sometimes the authors seem to have outright psychological meltdowns over details.
I doubt there is a single website with healthy comments, though, unless they are heavily moderated (...and then: HOW DARE THEY MODERATE MY BRILLIANT THOUGHTS, AYTRDGFDH!?!?!). Spending too much time on the Internet is unhealthy as it is, at least trying not to read the comments is a smart thing to do.
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Post by GamerL on Jul 30, 2014 14:28:06 GMT -5
I was wondering the same thing about game news sites. I also used to like Rock Paper Shotgun, but they've fell down the usual hole of identity politics, "social justice" and cynicism about anything that isn't certain indie games. Sometimes the authors seem to have outright psychological meltdowns over details. I doubt there is a single website with healthy comments, though, unless they are heavily moderated (...and then: HOW DARE THEY MODERATE MY BRILLIANT THOUGHTS, AYTRDGFDH!?!?!). Spending too much time on the Internet is unhealthy as it is, at least trying not to read the comments is a smart thing to do. that trend of "social justice" is absolutely killing gaming journalism, I hate it so much, it's all a bunch of people taking this shit waaaaaaaay too seriously and reactionary, sensationalist bullshit I don't want to derail the thread into a debate about it, but if you believe that big boobied video game heroines are an actual "serious issue" then you really need to take a look at the world around you does nerd culture in general have some issues with sexism? sure, but come on, it's nerds were talking about, a group of people who are traditionally male and traditionally don't have much sex, which tends to create frustration and feelings of resentment and when someone like Anita Sarkeesian comes along to chastise them is it any surprise a few guys are gonna take their hate a little too far? no and it's NOT indicative of a "larger issue" within the gaming community remember The Guy Game? now there was a game that really was a misogynistic piece of trash and everyone saw it as such and ignored it, I shudder to think what would happen if that game came out today and you would see a million "does The Guy Game prove gaming is sexist?" nonsense think-pieces I apologize for the rant but I needed to get that off my chest, it's just so bizarre to me how this trend came out of nowhere all of a sudden and I despise it
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Post by TheChosen on Jul 30, 2014 15:17:46 GMT -5
twitter.com/NeoGAFNewThreadI use this for all my video game news for now. Works really well and I dont have to slosh through any journalism.
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Post by ReyVGM on Jul 30, 2014 15:26:10 GMT -5
www.usgamer.net/Owners of Eurogamer, some of the former 1up staff is there (such as Parish, Kat Bailey and Sharkey). They pretty much don't report news like the other sites (unless it's something huge) and they prefer to write articles and reviews. And as with most sites that don't report the usual dudebro/nintendosux/microshit/sonyfail news, they don't have too many visitors. But to their defense, the site is less than 2 years old.
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Post by Joseph Joestar on Jul 30, 2014 15:31:33 GMT -5
www.usgamer.net/Owners of Eurogamer, some of the former 1up staff is there (such as Parish, Kat Bailey and Sharkey). They pretty much don't report news like the other sites (unless it's something huge) and they prefer to write articles and reviews. And as with most sites that don't report the usual dudebro/nintendosux/microshit/sonyfail news, they don't have too many visitors. But to their defense, the site is less than 2 years old. I like that site as well. Parish and Bailey have been writing some really awesome stuff there lately. On the minus side, you also have Bob Mackey using articles to whine and cry about "social justice" but you gotta take the good with the bad. As for GiantBomb, I never liked Gerstmann. I tried to check out the site and even their podcast at the recommendation of Tangobunny on IRC, and I still think he's a prick.
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