This feels like the last week when folks in the US can say “things aren’t looking good” before Monday’s inauguration happens and we start to see how grim things are actually going to be. I’m sure I’m not alone in wondering how to meet the moment, which is a polite way of wondering what the hell I’m going to do not just personally and politically, but professionally.
Journalism broadly has already begun to crumble under the onslaught: load-bearing outlets like The Washington Post and the Los Angeles Times bending the knee in advance, the potential chilling effects of ABC’s settlement, Trump and his ilk’s threats against the press. As tech billionaires–people who exercise some sway over how the journalism we’ll still be able to do gets out into the world–line up to kiss the ring or declare themselves “the media,” we can assume it’s just going to get harder for journalism to survive and for journalists to publish the truth.
I’ve been thinking a lot about what it’s going to mean to be a games journalist after Monday. Journalists can be a bit self-important, not entirely undeservedly, and while I’m proud to tell people what I do for work, when they ask for details, I’ll often say I cover tech. This is true, but it’s also a way to avoid trying to explain what games journalism is or of having to defend why it matters. The beat can often feel frivolous or unnecessary; I think we’ve all had days when the work we do feels out of step with the world around us. If the years of job cuts, closures, outsourcing, memory-holing, and degrading reinventions are any indication, the people who fund games journalism or own games outlets generally feel the same way. Media owners are happy to grind games journalism up for parts and clicks, and there’s a vocal portion of our audience, fed on a diet of conspiracy theories and insecurity, who’ll cheer them on.
But if you’re working in this field, or reading this website, you know games journalism is worth more than that. A games journalist’s greatest strength–the one I’ve highlighted desperately to every higher-up who’s come to slash my site’s budget or cut my people’s jobs–is how versatile we are, how much “writing about video games” is actually writing about everything else. A games journalist is an art critic, a business and labor reporter, a service writer, a tech expert, a culture analyst. We regularly have to work outside our niches or comfort zones, pushed to where different topics overlap and making sense of that messy space. As the people coming to power try to tell a falsely simplistic story about the world, games journalists know how to paint the full picture for readers, to show them where topics and issues intersect and explain why those intersections matter.
Part of the reason we know how to do that is because we’ve been here before. Games most commonly get dragged into politics as a scapegoat whenever violence occurs, but we know that the soon-to-be ruling party took its playbook from our beat. We’re intimately familiar with its tactics and how they’re deployed to silence journalists, woo the young and disaffected some claim swung the last election, and spread misinformation that primes people for more. We’ve learned–and are still learning–how to stand up to those tactics, and our audiences know how to see through them too. We have skills to share with other journalists, and we have examples to point to of how the communities we cover foster positive environments and use their passions for good in the face of opposition. And apart from us, people in gaming and online cultures have made their own information ecosystems to educate and empower each other, to identify and counter the hatred and lies that are only going to get louder.
That was all part of the first Trump administration too, but as tech moguls take their seats alongside Trump this time around, games journalists and our audiences are uniquely situated to point out how technology and money collide to shape culture. AI, the metaverse, and NFTs have and are playing out in real time on our beat. Games journalists are–or should be–particularly good at seeing through the latest bullshit, at resisting the hype and buzzwords we’re all being bludgeoned with. We know how people are really using technology, and we know what happens when money motivates art and the effect it has on both audiences and workers. The best games and tech journalism focuses on the real human experiences at the heart of technology and art, all the stuff AI grifters and media execs and platform owners want to bury under their own self-serving visions. However infinitely more embarrassing and harmful these people are going to get once they have even more power, we and our audiences are prepared for them.
In our own careers, we’ve been at the forefront of the degradation of the internet and of journalism widely. Games sites and verticals have been early to the chopping block in the face of consolidation and economic changes. We know how tweaks to search and social media algorithms can affect the work our owners ask us to do, lessons more and more outlets are starting to learn. We’ve lived through–and continue to live through–the conflicts that can exist between traditional journalists and the “personalities” or influencers more and more people turn to for information. And while none of that’s been pretty, and none of us are out of the woods, it’s also taught us how to do good work regardless of circumstances, whether that’s at established outlets or outside of them. We’ve had a scene of independent outlets and non-traditional formats long before the wave of worker-owned sites that spawned Aftermath and our peers. Our audiences know how to find us, and they’re willing to support us.
And if this is all starting to sound overly serious, even if you look at games journalism as little more than covering what basically amounts to expensive toys, that’s a beat full of writers telling stories about all the different ways that people find joy, and an audience full of readers who want to hear about it. We’re going to need those experiences in our lives in the years ahead, and we’re going to need those stories and examples.
I’ve been wrangling with how grandiose this all reads, and I won’t lie that I wrote it at least in part to have something to pep up a future version of me who’s pinned to his couch in despair. But maybe it can help you too: Journalists outside of games are going to need the skills we’ve honed in the coming environment. Our readers are going to need all the skills they have to navigate an even louder, more confusing world of misinformation, one with higher stakes than just whether or not you should buy a video game. On so many days, games journalism can feel over, but next week, I think we’re going to need it.
