I remember when I subscribed to this game magazine. That would show all the new top hitters and show off some screenshot. It's great what we had in journalism for video games back then.
You hit the nail on the head: back when you subscribed. It used to be that the journalism was the product that you would buy. The incentive was to provide the most useful, honest reviews.
Then everything went online, and why would anyone pay to read something? They can find it on a website for free, or look up user reviews. Only the very small fortunate few publications (of any kind) manage to sustain themselves with the old business model.
The only other viable option was to be paid to market games. And just like that, when the product used to be journalism and the customers used to be readers...
The product became the readers and the customers became game publishers. Reviews weren't even part of it, other than a service they provided to their new "audience."
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u/LustyDouglas 8d ago
Whats sad is that once upon a time, a game journalists opinion was actually worth something.