Nobody knows how to run a video game outlet, and it's somehow our fault
Cue the "are video games art" headlines while I transform into a crab.
Back in maybe 2014, I sat down at a local Boston pub I was deeply familiar with. It was the local hangout for people who worked at the alt-weekly down the road. I was a web and social media intern there, but I also used the open, laid-back environment to start writing about the New England video games scene, which I thought was sorely lacking coverage from many of the local outlets. I sat down with the editor-in-chief that day to talk about a possible web gig, but then he started asking about video games.
“So, are video games commerce or are they art?”
I remember my brain started working overtime in that moment to formulate an answer. Of course video games were “art.” Hadn’t that been what people in the industry were screaming about when Roger Ebert dared to exclaim that video games could never be art? (What he specifically said was that “No one in or out of the field has ever been able to cite a game worthy of comparison with the great poets, filmmakers, novelists and poets” and then added later that it’s not really his place to validate game makers. “Let them say [they’re art], if it makes them happy.”) But video games are also a product, a piece of tech that was popular but mostly misunderstood, especially by people in the media.
The editor wasn’t wrong. Video games are both commerce and art, but that’s no different than describing movies, TV shows, or books. You have have something that is moving, deeply emotional, and life-changing, but that thing can also make money. It can be created to specifically make money, and that’s fine — those things aren’t mutually exclusive.
“It’s tough right?” I responded. “Video games tell stories and are creative works, but they also are technology. It’s a business.”
I wasn’t old enough or experienced enough to argue that video games as technology didn’t mean they were different from the stuff the alt-weekly featured in the arts section. But I also don’t really care about the distinction personally. If anything, it’s neat that video games can straddle that line and be both artistically and mechanically interesting. It’s what makes them unique.
But that made it difficult for a journalist who wanted to write about video games to grow in legacy, local media. Like the editor, there was nobody in charge who knew what to do with them. The answer is obvious: hire people who have that knowledge about video games to teach you and the readers. It’s journalism 101 — outlets do it all the time for other subjects like technology — yet publications seem to have trouble with that point. Somehow worse is when they decide to put in the effort to understand and hoist up video games, and then take it away when they get bored. If there was a modicum of understanding, maybe it wouldn’t happen. Or maybe there’s a part of me that knows it fits right in with the rest of the subjects journalism covers and shouldn’t be diminished or singled out.
You know that feeling when somebody’s very wrong and you’re the only person who can educate them?
When I was working at a legacy newspaper, I came across one of the articles that was scheduled to go up over the weekend. Titled “Can video games be art?” it was about an exhibition encompassing the games of Jason Rohrer. The article itself is honestly fine, a breakdown of a local art exhibition where the critic was having a bit of fun. But that headline… oh boy. Where would I even go to get that changed? I talked to my boss about it, and while she understood, there was no reason to change it. That’s what was running in the paper.
In the mid-2010s, it seemed like video game coverage was at the start of a mainstream moment. Gaming-specific outlets existed at the time, although the scene had recently seen the shutdown of a handful of smaller but impactful sites that focused on criticism. But in 2016, it was announced that Austin Walker would be joining Vice to launch a new dedicated gaming vertical, which eventually became Waypoint. It was one of six new verticals the company would be launching during a period of huge expansion, which feels like a lifetime ago. (Full disclosure: I wrote a few times for Waypoint).
Just this week, Vice announced it would be shutting down Waypoint, along with Vice News Tonight and a number of other layoffs. (I again point you to my inaugural piece on the subject.)
This is devastating to the video game community, which has seen dozens of writers and editors lose their jobs over the past year. I had previously reported on the shuttering of Launcher, which was the Washington Post’s effort to cover the industry, so the fact other dedicated sites followed suit isn’t surprising. It feels like just another nail in a coffin that was already pretty securely shut.
(As an aside, it’s worth re-reading Walker’s Waypoint introductory post, at least for a bit of nostalgia for what could’ve been.)
But to see more mainstream outlets dive into the world of video games was so exciting to me, at least for a time. I felt like an outlier in the legacy media newsrooms I worked in. I was so deeply into video games and wanted to write and cover them, but couldn’t get stories placed at those outlets. I was able to get a few published by taking broader angles, tying them to local interests, or finding more politically-minded publications, but each was a struggle to write. I felt a lot of pushback from editors to explain basic concepts or to justify why the stories were important or worth writing. And none of this was really their fault; it’s tough to commission and publish stories about subjects you know nothing about.
But then why not hire editors with video game expertise? Why not set up dedicated verticals to cover them so you don’t have to?
You can argue that these publications don’t need to cover video games if they don’t want to. But with video games rapidly growing into a multi-billion-dollar industry with huge impacts on the larger business world (cue up the conversations about how video games intersect with the metaverse and crypto) and the economy, it’s tough to ignore. And they know it, which is why there are attempts to write about video games in a way that’s relevant to business or arts audiences, a lot of which fail to understand basic concepts like why video games weren’t a “niche hobby” until “fairly recently” (from the New York Times) or they fall on tired stereotypes about players (oh hey, the New York Times again) or dare to ask once again if video games can be art when a huge AAA game manages to have a decent narrative.
It’s obviously frustrating as a person who thinks the video game industry very much has a place in larger cultural conversations, but it’s even more so these days as actual efforts are shut down for seemingly no reason beyond promises to greedy investors and executive mishandling.
That leaves video game journalists in a bind. Where can they go to get work when there are no jobs, or where any job is focused on building SEO, writing guides, or getting people to buy products through affiliate programs? There’s nothing wrong with any of these gigs (I do a lot of them), but there’s no space for in-depth criticism, detailed, informed analysis, or weird embedded pieces on the niche communities that define the medium, all subjects that Launcher and Waypoint excelled in covering.
I fully expect this all to happen again.
Once investors stop freaking out over dropped profits, newspapers and media conglomerates will again try to start dedicated video game teams or hire video game journalists. Then years down the line, they’ll shut it all down. It’s the cycle of life.
In the meantime, the game publications that survived the rapture will continue to do a lot of great work while looking at all the writers and editors who go into PR or development because there weren’t any journalism jobs. And mainstream publications will continue to utterly fail at covering the industry like it’s 2023 and not 2003. They’ll publish pieces about how games aren’t just for children anymore and ask people if they knew that they could tell good stories when The Last of Us’s second season finally airs. And we’ll roll our eyes and point to the sign that says “Invest in Video Games Journalism” again and again.
We’ll continue to have conversations about whether any of this is worth the time. Are they art? Are they commerce? Sure. Just write about it.