General Gaming What are the best journalistic video game websites?

[gamer.tv]

It’s early in the morning so please forgive the potentially wrong thread title.

 

I enjoy reading video game features (I get any game related news from here) but it seems few and far between websites dedicate time to allow allow someone to write something worth my time reading.

 

Can anyone make any decent suggestions (the realisation is I tend to look in here, Kotaku, Polygon and IGN all out of habit and then listen to the various Giant Bomb podcasts and that’s it):

[SimpleG]

There really isnt any, video game journalism is relegated to news ,advertisement, exposes, and updates . The sites you listed will occasionally have real journalism but not very often. If your looking for something in-depth YouTube channels are your best bet but not what you asked for.

[gamer.tv]

I do like some of the content on YouTube - it just seems that what would take 10 minutes to read takes 40 minutes to watch.

[gamer.tv]

Elite Dangerous players say they’re being scammed, trapped in space, and forced to work

WWW.POLYGON.COM

---

Waylaid and forced into labor 800 light-years from home

Speaking of article writing - space North Korea makes for an interesting read.

[Commissar SFLUFAN]

Polygon is the only active site that kinda/sorta does what you're looking for.

 

USgamer used to as well, but that site ceased operations at the end of 2020.

[Mercury33]

Lol “journalist game websites”

[skillzdadirecta]

40 minutes ago, Commissar SFLUFAN said:

Polygon is the only active site that kinda/sorta does what you're looking for.

 

USgamer used to as well, but that site ceased operations at the end of 2020.

this was my first thought.

 

1 minute ago, Mercury33 said:

Lol “journalist game websites”

Then this was my second 

[Best]

IGN is the most reliable and most informative "journalist gaming website.

[BloodyHell]

Gamebiz.net is probably the better of the trash.

[BloodyHell]

2 minutes ago, best3444 said:

IGN is the most reliable and most informative "journalist gaming website.

Nahh, just the most popular. IGN is trash. 

[Best]

1 hour ago, BloodyHell said:

Nahh, just the most popular. IGN is trash. 

 

I was being sarcastic. 

[XxEvil AshxX]

4 hours ago, Commissar SFLUFAN said:

Polygon is the only activist site that kinda/sorta does what you're looking for.

 

Fixed. 

[gamer.tv]

I suppose I should ask in this thread, who are the best YouTuber’s to watch that will fill this void. 

[Paperclyp]

I’ll once again defend gaming journalism in general.

 

Looks like you’re reading most of the sites that will cover the basic news in the gaming world. If you’re looking for more specific features, Vice has some excellent writers with both of their gaming side and then their more general “tech” branch called motherboard. There is tons of good shit out there if you’re willing to look rather than just pretend that most of the gaming sites are SJW activist sites. 
 

And really I’m convinced that’s what most people are doing when they’re posting a lot of the stuff you see in threads like this. Either it’s performative, or they don’t actually ever go to the sites except to hate read a piece they happen to disagree with. Like, go to polygon or ign. It’s just general news or fluff pieces or opinions like “mario sunshine is good, actually.” 
 

[Biggie]

3 hours ago, best3444 said:

IGN is the most reliable and most informative "journalist gaming website.

[Biggie]

16 minutes ago, gamer.tv said:

I suppose I should ask in this thread, who are the best YouTuber’s to watch that will fill this void. 

I enjoy Spawn Wave

[Fizzzzle]

The good and bad thing with gaming YouTube channels is that they're all typically really niche. Some will only cover news for JRPGs, or for MMOs, or retro games, or whatever. I haven't found anyone that good that covers video games as a whole.

[HGLatinBoy]

I stopped caring about video game journalism when they all became political activists. 

I love GW2 and a few years ago over the 4th of July weekend one of developers was posting on her twitter account about what its like to work on personal narrative for MMORPG characters. Then a Youtuber/GW2 partner chimed in and she threw a hissy fit called him an asshat and sexist for stating his opinion, then another Dev chimed in. It blew up on reddit and and ArenaNet fired them. Then came polygon ranting about sexism and how dare AranaNet fire a dev after being harassed by a sexist fan.

It was at this point I realized Polygon was full of shit, they later completely revised their article and took out all the bullshit but it was too late for me I never went back there.

 

Here is the Anet Partner's Tweet.

https://twitter.com/DeroirGaming/status/1014280605599748096?ref_src=twsrc^tfw|twcamp^tweetembed|twterm^1014280605599748096|twgr^|twcon^s1_c10&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Fpublish.twitter.com%2F%3Fquery%3Dhttps3A2F2Ftwitter.com2FDeroirGaming2Fstatus2F1014280605599748096widget%3DTweet

[AbsolutSurgen]

GamesIndustry.biz

Most websites are "enthusiast press" -- games industry actually has journalists.

[Paperclyp]

2 minutes ago, Fizzzzle said:

The good and bad thing with gaming YouTube channels is that they're all typically really niche. Some will only cover news for JRPGs, or for MMOs, or retro games, or whatever. I haven't found anyone that good that covers video games as a whole.

Niche and though there are certainly many quality accounts, they’re also prone to a ton of paid gigs. 

[Paperclyp]

on second thought I don’t wanna go down this road today 

[BloodyHell]

2 hours ago, gamer.tv said:

I suppose I should ask in this thread, who are the best YouTuber’s to watch that will fill this void. 

MinnMaxx, Kinda Funny, Easy Allies, Whats Good Games (plus, you get to watch Andrea Rene and Kristine Steimer).

[BloodyHell]

1 hour ago, Fizzzzle said:

The good and bad thing with gaming YouTube channels is that they're all typically really niche. Some will only cover news for JRPGs, or for MMOs, or retro games, or whatever. I haven't found anyone that good that covers video games as a whole.

 

Just now, BloodyHell said:

MinnMaxx, Kinda Funny, Easy Allies, Whats Good Games (plus, you get to watch Andrea Rene and Kristine Steimer).

All of those, as well as Spawn Wave, as mentioned above.

[ShreddieMercury]

Basically Eurogamer is it.  USGamer was awesome, but as already mentioned they are sadly no more.  It actually blows my mind how bad games journalism is on the whole.  Either you have to watch an inexplicably long youtube video that has about 2% of interesting content throughout, or you have to read poorly written short articles that are basically summaries of tweets.  Popular podcasts like Giant Bomb also seem to just boil down to "this was good, this was bad, holy shit this snack is awesome".  There is nothing of any critical substance in most anything game related in my experience.

[crispy4000]

I miss the 1up Show.  People talking casually and honestly about games they previewed, in a well edited wrap up of why you should and shouldn't be excited.

 

I feel like there's a huge opportunity lost in the indie games scene for this.  So much of the content is catch-all.  Almost nothing is carefully curated.  Just look at last year's 'E3'.

[skillzdadirecta]

Paul Tsasi is pretty good 

[Mercury33]

9 hours ago, ShreddieMercuryRising said:

Basically Eurogamer is it.  USGamer was awesome, but as already mentioned they are sadly no more.  It actually blows my mind how bad games journalism is on the whole.  Either you have to watch an inexplicably long youtube video that has about 2% of interesting content throughout, or you have to read poorly written short articles that are basically summaries of tweets.  Popular podcasts like Giant Bomb also seem to just boil down to "this was good, this was bad, holy shit this snack is awesome".  There is nothing of any critical substance in most anything game related in my experience.

Giant Bomb has episodes like that from time to time but for the most part that’s not even close to true. You only have to go back a week to their Game of the Year stuff. That’s 15-20 hours of pretty in depth and critical content on games. 

[Paperclyp]

I think a lot of the giant bomb critique is pretty shallow in their GOTY discussions. It becomes clear that a majority of the games they’re debating only 1-2 people have typically played them any significant chunk of time, and they do use a lot of general descriptors over and over. I still enjoy listening to them but i rarely hear super interesting insight. 
 

Brad probably puts the most thought into it and can usually discuss his thoughts in the most sophisticated manner. 

[Keyser_Soze]

I think Giant Bomb is not very journalistic in the slightest at least as far as this thread goes, at least it seems that's what the OP was thinking of.

 

Generally they have no idea what's going on and they read the news on the spot and give an opinion of it. Giving an opinion of a game they like I don't think is the journalistic take the OP was asking for either.