Not to continue beating a dead horse, this article is really about mainstream media’s relationship with video games, or the lack thereof. For the first time in my life, I pay for a subscription to news, because the same problems that crop up from getting news from reddit happen just as easily here in the fediverse. There are actually really great pieces written about video games and their creators in the New York Times, but they’ve only got a couple of bylines between them, and a frequency that matches how many people they’ve got working on it. Meanwhile, they do have a section under Arts dedicated to Dance, which I somehow doubt has anywhere near as many readers interested in the subject.
A game no one heard of until it shut down isn’t that interesting of a story. It’s not that deep.
It’s interesting in the sense that something went catastrophically wrong here.
This isn’t just a small indie dev wasting a bit of money, it’s hundreds of millions set on fire by an established company in this industry.
The fact that “no one heard of it” is exactly the point. What went wrong here?
I think it’s a story when it’s perhaps the largest flop in the medium, much like John Carter. It’s somehow worth writing five articles about the Joker sequel flopping.
I’m not saying it’s not a story, just not one most people care about. Avid gamers had barely heard of the game before it flopped, average non-gamer wouldn’t care.
Joker sequel flopping is a bigger story because the first one was well recieved, also celebrities are involved.
If the next call of duty sells 14 copies and shuts down in two weeks it would be a big story.
Do you think more people care about the average video game story or the average story about the theater? Live performances, not movies. Theater, Dance, and Visual Arts all get their own sections in the NYTimes, for instance, but video games are demonstrably bigger and don’t get the same attention. There’s rarely even a mention of the likes of Call of Duty in mainstream media when they do exceptionally well, let alone exceptionally poorly, and that’s really the crux of the article.
That has more to do with New York having a thriving theater scene and a NY newpaper promoting a local thing that is popular with its readership and the companies that pay for advertising. It is something that sets NY apart from a lot of other locations, even if theater is pretty common in most areas.
Kind of a chicken and egg when it comes to games, since readers won’t be expecting games news in mainstream sources they don’t dedicate resources to writing the articles. That makes business sense because most people who are looking for game news already have a number of web sites to choose from.
I agree that theater is something that New York has in abundance over most areas, but are there not movie focused sites better delivering those articles on movies as well? Is it not worth covering something at all just because it’s at other news sources? If it wasn’t, any news outlet would only print exclusives. And this extends beyond the Times, as the article points out; that’s just the outlet I personally have a subscription to, and their circulation extends far and wide regardless.
My point is mostky about people’s expectations and that people who want news on games probably aren’t interested in gaming articles from papers/major news sites and companies in general aren’t looking to advertise on gaming articles in the same way that makers of fashion would want to advertise in the theater section.
I really like this post btw, I never really thought about how sparse reporting on games is outside of dedicated sites.
Like I said though, they do have some really great articles in gaming, just not with their own header, so they’re harder to find. And they do know what isn’t covered by other outlets, because they tend to do profile pieces rather than news coverage. But if Joker’s sequel is worth writing five articles about, surely the largest failure we’ve seen in games is worth one, you’d think.
An article about Joker 2 has the novelty factor of bombing as a sequel to Joker, which was a massive hit. They will got a lot more views on any one of those five Joker 2 articles than they will from multiple articles about a game nobody heard about.
More views = more money. It doesn’t matter whether something is more ‘worthy’ or not.
I think more people who pay to subscribe to NYTimes care more about live theater than video game news.
How about CNN, ABC, BBC, etc.?
How many times are you going to move the goal posts?
No one is watching CNN for gamer news.
I didn’t move the goalposts. I brought up some of the other publications listed in the article.
John Carter didn’t get that much attention either, and what it did was mostly about the leadership changes in Disney tanking the advertising and not about the movie itself.
Sounds familiar…
As a fan of the books, the movie was pretty bad. The only good parts I can recall were the CG, and the actors who played Tars Tarkus and Kantos Kan. Everyone else in the film was mid to bad.
They story should have been how a $200m investment into a live service game failed. An investor who knows jack shit about games reads that and now thinks live service games are a risky invetment strategy.
Also, generally speaking, people interested in news about games read and seek out gaming sources that cover gaming info. Like kotaku.
Gaming is popular enough that there are several dedicated news and information sites to choose from. The “news” is for stuff of general interest. They could cover some gaming news, but for the most part people who want gaming news get it from more dedicated sources.
I do find it interesting though that the finals is another game that basically has not been advertised to anyone, and that has a very strong but small community. So not advertising your game is not automatically a death sentence although it probably doesn’t help.