We got one of our first subscription cancellations the other day--a bummer, but these things happen!--and in leaving, this person left a short note on social media explaining (and I'm paraphrasing here) that they weren't exactly thrilled about reading so many "takes" about so much "bad news".
Part of me totally understood this person's motivations. I can only absorb so many bad vibes myself; I've ducked out of reading most climate news because the combination of high stakes and my own helplessness does nothing but make me feel doomed. So if this person was logging in over the holidays and saw story after story about how AI is ruining art, and how capitalism is ruining video games and got bummed out, I don't blame them for bailing!
Part of me shrugged and said not every website is for everyone, maybe they just don't like takes, and if this website's coverage wasn't for this person then whatever, thank you for your (brief) support. Learning how to deal with subscriber churn is going to be an important part of owning this business going forwards, and every disappointed customer is a chance to learn!
Most of me, though, got defensive. It's not my fault the news is all bad, my guy! Don't shoot the messenger! This is a medium held hostage by an industry beset by issues, part of an economy beset by issues that's powering a world beset by you get the idea. It doesn't take a pessimist to look around--at layoffs, at mass corporate consolidation, exploitative pricing mechanics and general corporate malpractice--and see that things are bad. It just takes eyes!
When an executive class treats thousands of its workers as disposable numbers on an earnings spreadsheet, and when Silicon Valley tyrants threaten the livelihoods of entire industries with digital snake oil, it would be irresponsible of us not to cover it. Especially when telling stories like this was one of the main reasons we started this website in the first place.
As sound as my defence of this website was, though, in a "winning an argument against an imaginary person in the shower" kind of way, something about what this reader said stuck with me regardless. In having the frequency of sad and angry blogs pointed out to me like this I thought, man, I sure would love to write about things that made me--and you, I hope!--feel good.
I don't mean individual games. I played a good game recently, it was fun, I enjoyed playing it and enjoyed writing about it. Or shows; I had two life-changing animated series land within days of each other, and that was great. What I'm talking about are wider trends. Whole topics and issues I can look at, write something about and think, yeah, this thing is getting better, or this thing is helping more people.
The increasing move towards accessible features (and even controllers) is one. A greater emphasis on the diversity of characters in major video games is another? But those are two very broad and long-running things that don't really break down into single, reportable events the way a round of layoffs or a dystopian statement from an AI-loving executive do (which is a wider shortcoming of modern media reporting that is another discussion for another day!).
Then there's...I dunno, the number of exciting games being released on Steam catering specifically to beloved old genres that many larger companies have long since ignored? The capacity of events like GDQ to generate much-needed cash and awareness for people in need, while entertaining us all in the process? But again, those are isolated and specific things, and whatever optimism I feel thinking about them soon gets crushed when I consider the larger, wider problems video games are facing.
I guess what I'm getting at here are two things. Firstly, I wonder if spending so long working at Kotaku, with an emphasis on hard and fast news, has trained me to spend way too much energy focusing specifically on bad shit, the kind of stuff people love to read about but which is never fun to have to spend time researching and writing about. Maybe it turned me into an asshole who can't see the good in the world, which is a hell of a legacy for a job I first took because it was...writing about video games.
And secondly, partly as a result of what I just said, I'm going to ask you: is there anything you're into, a part of or just broadly aware of that feels good to be around? I want to write about it! Let me know! We could all, myself included, do with the good vibes after the year we've just had/are about to have.
