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Comment by JamesBarney | Hacker News Reader

This article is all over the place.

It's about the reduction of single player games, nevermind it's about the the move to cloud gaming, surprise it's about Google's data center energy production, just kidding it about developer work environments, nope just the environment.

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It reads like the primal scream of a game journalist who's written one too many outrage porn pieces.

It's the abject desperation of a media group in full tail-spin. Not only is their journalism constantly in the mud but their jobs are in constant peril. They're projecting the tanking of their own industry onto the industry they cover.

The Gizmodo media group, including Gizmodo, Jezebel, Deadspin, Lifehacker, Splinter, The Root, Kotaku, Earther, and Jalopnik, were all bought for $135 million in 2016 and were recently purchased again for "much less" [0]. A generous assumption is that Kotaku is worth around $15 million back then and around $8 million now.

[0] https://techcrunch.com/2019/04/08/great-hill-partners-acquir...

Welcome to Kotaku!

Yeah it reads like a clumsy hit piece - not that the industry doesn't have problems but it falls so short of professional writing standards you have to ask if they get paid for it.

The Journalism industry can't go on like this.

Journalism isn't really an industry so much as a lifestyle for well-to-do people who don't need real jobs

I'd say the standards of gaming "journalism" are even lower than current journalism standards. But there are still a few exception, including at Kotaku.

When I said exceptions, I mean there are articles which were actually coherent, well-researched and well-written pieces. But that's not the majority, in any publication.

I think the issue with gaming "journalism" is that it's supposed to be for the consumers so that they can do informed purchases, but since it's ad-funded by the industry they are reporting on, it tends to become a corporate mouth-piece.

From what I've heard, kotaku stopped paying its writers years ago. Right now it's basically a hobbyist blog aggregator.

Kotaku doesn't pay particularly well, but they don't pay out of line with the rest of the industry.

That particular publication also tends to be the electric bug zapper for a lot of chuds, so there's a lot of misinformation out there.

>That particular publication also tends to be the electric bug zapper for a lot of chuds, so there's a lot of misinformation out there.

What's that mean?

The reactionary movement that grew out of GamerGate has largely knee-jerked about Kotaku since its inception; they named their favorite subreddit after the site. And they straight-up make a lot of stuff up about anything they don't like. There are plenty of actually-real things to criticize about the games journalism industry but hen you see somebody spittle-flecking about Kotaku or any of the other publications with the gosh-darn temerity to hire women or black people or trans people it's striking how little you must go down the rabbit hole you to SJW conspiracies and the like.

This article kinda sucks, but the groups taking shots at Kotaku/Polygon/etc. at this point tend towards a default-chud stance.

You didn’t answer the question - what does this slur “chud” mean? Is it a catch-all slur for those critical of journalism? Or only those who are proven to be motivated by your laundry list of regressive attitudes?

I think it's fair to watch the watchmen. Journalists and outside observers shouldn't be demonized for being critical of media, and likewise people shouldn't be demonized for being critical of journalists who err in their duty in some way.

"Chud" is slang especially on the left internet for a reactionary.

> the groups taking shots at Kotaku/Polygon/etc. at this point tend towards a default-chud stance

Too bad they tend to make more noise than those who criticize Kotaku/Polygon/RPS/etc. for reviews for friends. Hum I suspect the journalists are even happy that their loudest critics are besides the point.

Thinking about the energy consumption of a data center is absurd. Printing out paper forms and keeping them forever is far more energy intensive and requires more man power which in turn means more energy consumption. There are some exceptions like bitcoin mining which is inefficient by design but they are a minority and the article isn't talking about them.

I'm not sure why this bothers you. It's clearly an overview of many the challenges the game industry is facing going forward. Discussing multiple things is not an error!

Discussing them is not, but creating an understandable narrative seems like a step in the right direction. Clearly the step here was taken somewhere else...

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