Games

People should just stop thinking about gaming journalism as a monolith, and start thinking of it as any other job. Some people are capable of doing it and they show it, others are completely incapable of writing a decent article without resorting to snarky comments or biased opinions.

A local website in my language employs a YTuber as a reviewer for reviews on games that he is a sponsor of on his channel, and those articles are laughable to say the least (I'm not going to name the games nor the person). But I've also read good articles on the same website, written by people who actually care about their job and have the skills to do it well.

But for some reason, gamers keep parroting this awful opinion of gaming journalists being incapable of playing games or having opinions on things. No, it's just that certain journalists are better than others. (And for god's sake, people should stop using the Cuphead video as a talking point. It was not a true review, it was a joke video, ffs)

There's a reason for the early rise in popularity of independent gaming reviewers and it isn't the hard-hitting, honest quality of mainstream entertainment journalism at the time. With the advent of influencers though, it feels like everyone is just regurgitating the same pre-approved, publisher-friendly nonsense. I'm sure there are exceptions, but it feels more difficult today to find an honest review when every random internet personality is signing sponsorship contracts that require them to praise the game every 20 minutes.