june gloom on 10/12/2013 at 09:00
So today I noticed that Destructoid has started putting some stuff behind a paywall. It seems to be mostly stuff like talk-show videos and other random nonsense that Destructoid's been doing for some time, and not the actual meat of the site which is some actual damn news. But it still bothers me. Destructoid was one of the last gaming news websites that I followed that was halfway respectable. They don't rely too heavily on clickbait or white-knight outrage porn. But then they fired Jim Sterling, and now this.
And it got me thinking... are there any gaming media sites that don't suck? I mean, you have Kotaku which is click-bait and outrage porn du fucking jour, Joystiq's reviewers have the collective IQ of a fart, RPS is a blog that purports to be a news site except when they're posting controversial social justice stuff in which case they announce they're a blog and turn off comments, and Escapist seems to operate on the concept that people would rather stare at a horribly designed, clunky site full of bullshit blog posts and videos trying to find some semblance of news.
And you can't trust reviews of anything that isn't an obscure indie title or absolute shit -- reviews of highly anticipated games, of AAA or indie pedigree, are worthless. Either the review is this ridiculous glowing OMG GOTY FOREVER bullshit and then the game turns out to be Bioshock Infinite, or it's a legitimately GOOD game and it gets a scathing teardown because the site's writers try too hard at being Pitchfork.
So tell me -- what doesn't suck? I'm pretty sure everything sucks, and I'm trying to break into the wrong damn industry.
henke on 10/12/2013 at 09:18
The only one I read every day is RPS. Yeah I don't agree with everything they say but so what? No site, or even any other gamer for that matter, is going to agree 100% with me on everything so I don't care if our opinions differ from time to time. Their articles are generally well written and introduce me to a lot of cool shit.
Besides that I only get gaming news from TTLG, what's hot on the Metacritic charts, Giantbomb Quicklooks, and Two Best Friends Play videos.
Ostriig on 10/12/2013 at 09:44
Yeah, I can relate to the OP (except for the Infinite hate). It used to be RPS for me, but I eventually got tired of wading through a ton of bullshit before getting to some actual gaming news. And those fucking awful puns. Kotaku's the fucking Daily Mail of the gaming press, I only visit when I get linked with the promise of dramatic performance, most recently when you lot were going on about Phil Fish. I tried to get into Joystiq, but it I found it a bit bland, really. And I used to read the Escapist years ago, but these days it boils down to Zero Punctuation for me.
These days I hit up Eurogamer regularly. It's largely decent and quick on the pickup. Unfortunately, I've been noticing some terrible puns pop up here and there, acquiring RPS must not have been without consequence.
Sometimes I'll hit up Gametrailers if I want to see some gameplay footage, though I have no interest in their opinions. And I find myself linked to Polygon every now and then. It hasn't yet made it into the rotation, but who knows.
More than anything else, I rely on you drones to go out finding news and post back on the motherforum.
Muzman on 10/12/2013 at 10:44
RPS can't win.
They editorialise they get "Fuck you and this having opinions. I came for gaming news and you brought politics. Don't you know that video games are like family dinners? Don't talk about anything that people might disagree about. I am here to escape from the world. Fuck you sideways you click baiting whores. You're just in it for the money. You used to be cool man".
They post some terse gaming news and they get "Fuck you and this no effort bullshit. I come here for the personality and you just repost fucking trailer links. What are you? Kotaku? Even Kotaku is better than that these days. You used to be cool. Fuck you sideways you click baiting whores."
If I were them I would ignore completely anyone with a complaint strong enough to write in about, or voice out loud anywhere.
henke on 10/12/2013 at 11:08
Quote Posted by Ostriig
And those fucking awful puns.
I
like the pun threads. :U
Ditto for quoting Deus Ex Recut at every opportunity.
That fad of putting -FACE at the end of everything was tiresome though, but mercifully shortlived. ¬_¬
Overall, as far as comments sections go, the RPS one isn't bad.
Malf on 10/12/2013 at 11:15
Any of you guys use feed readers at all?
I got into the habit back when Google Reader came out and would never go back to getting my news any other way.
Using (
http://theoldreader.com/) The Old Reader, I've got the RSS feeds from 20+ gaming sites neatly presented in bite-sized chunks. It's a great way to spot news trend waves as they break. It takes the edge off of some of the more low brow sites and even reveals some interesting stuff I'd never usually consider reading through them. For example, Kotaku does a round-up of its sister sites on a daily basis, which allows interesting stories from iO9, Deadspin etc. to pop up in my feed.
In fact, some of my more interesting sources of gaming news have come from spurious links from such sites. I really value the info I get from (
http://www.mcvuk.com) MCV and (
http://www.forbes.com/games) Forbes' gaming sub-sites for example.
Through using RSS, I've also found that while I may not agree with some sites and their policies, I value having a broad range of opinions at my fingertips more, so I never end up cutting off a news source.
By the way, I had no idea that Sterling was fired from Destructoid. He was the reason they got added to my feed in the first place. Does explain why he's popped up in my Escapist stream so much recently though.
Briareos H on 10/12/2013 at 11:18
I edited a simple Greasemonkey script to completely filter out John Walker's messages. I find RPS much more tolerable then.
I usually go to Eurogamer to get a general opinion on games I'm usually not concerned about, and we've got a great FPS-centric news site here in France so there's the reviews/previews covered. The problem with Eurogamer is the superficiality when it's not a digital foundry feature.
Polygon has some good in-depth articles, but then they also have some terrible things on there so it's definitely not reliable.
I'm still missing some of the general and indie-related news as well as in-depth features, so I too am interested in a well-written, English-language site that doesn't suck.
N'Al on 10/12/2013 at 11:37
I use an RSS reader for my news too - (
http://feedly.com/) feedly, FWIW - to filter out articles of interest.
My main subscriptions are for Eurogamer and RPS, but I have a couple of more niche interest ones too, e.g. Flash of Steel.
Malf on 10/12/2013 at 11:41
I tried Feedly for a while when Google killed Reader, and while it's fast and neatly customisable, I didn't like the fact that they charge you for Search functionality, which is the main reason I settled on Old Reader.
Ostriig on 10/12/2013 at 11:47
Quote Posted by henke
I
like the pun threads. :U
I should clarify - I don't really mind the puns in the comments threads, it's the article titles that are the problem on that front. And frankly, the overly "witty-zany" style that runs through a lot of the writing in general.
