110

A Video Game Flopped Harder Than Anything At The Box Office This Year, And The Mainstream Press Barely Noticed (kotaku.com)

submitted 12 hours ago by ampersandrew@lemmy.world to c/games@lemmy.world

29 comments fedilink hide all child comments

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.

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments

[-] RonnieB@lemmy.world 64 points 12 hours ago

A game no one heard of until it shut down isn't that interesting of a story. It's not that deep.

[-] ampersandrew@lemmy.world 37 points 12 hours ago

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.

[-] RonnieB@lemmy.world 15 points 11 hours ago

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.

[-] ampersandrew@lemmy.world 0 points 11 hours ago

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.

[-] spankmonkey@lemmy.world 12 points 11 hours ago* (last edited 11 hours ago)

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.

[-] ampersandrew@lemmy.world 0 points 11 hours ago

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.

[-] spankmonkey@lemmy.world 4 points 11 hours ago* (last edited 11 hours ago)

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.

[-] ampersandrew@lemmy.world 1 points 11 hours ago

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.

[-] spankmonkey@lemmy.world 1 points 10 hours ago* (last edited 10 hours ago)

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.

[-] ampersandrew@lemmy.world 0 points 10 hours ago

For the New York Times, that's not really their incentive system compared against their subscription model. Still, it's a disparaging difference between how they treat both industries. Losing hundreds of millions of dollars would be news in any industry.