Welcome to the game industry: what used to be haven of all sorts of social outcasts is now estimated to be a 100 billion dollar business, eclipsing both Hollywood and the music industry.

Not surprisingly, everybody wants a bite now. But video game journalism itself is in the middle of a power struggle, sitting at the target reticule of the #GamerGate movement. Journalists in turn are trying to frame this movement as a harassment campaign in hopes to diverts discussion of journalistic integrity (or vice versa).

But even if the journalists “win” this fight, it will be a Pyrrhic victory: Not only because in the process of doing that they tainted the entire gamers community and tarnished their image in the eyes of the general audience, but also because their battle is already lost.

Video games killed the radio star

Up until a recently, the internet media was somewhat replicating the traditional print media: Even with the demise of most printed magazines, the written word still controlled the internet and so videogame websites were the guiding beacon for gamers. Reviews after all are becoming increasingly important when you are making a 60$ purchasing decision on a single piece of media.

But the past decade showed the rise of Youtube and the likes, alongside rise of video content for games: from Machinima films to “let’s plays” demos, to people just talking in front of a camera about games. The top channel in Youtube is an independet one run by the youtuber and gamer PewDiePie, with around 30 million subscribers.

On another front, Valve’s game distribution service Steam recently started offering a game curation service, where numbers show how TotalBiscuit (who runs another prominent videogame channel on YouTube) is at the top of the curators list — tripling the number of subscribers of PCGamer, a “traditional” game journalism outlet coming in the second place.

Top that with the fact that many game developers and publishers are having a direct two-way conversation with customers thanks to the rise of social media tools — and you will see how the traditional game media is slowly losing its grasp of the gamer crowd.

A billion good reasons

Just very recently (coincidentally just a day before the #GamerGate hashtag) Amazon announced it will acquire Twitch for 970 Million dollars. That’s a lot of dough for a service that lets you mostly watch other people play games in a live stream while making text comments in a mIRC style primitive chat.

When the deal was announced many people just shook their head and asked why so much? After all, who the hell would even bother with this kind of activity of watching others play instead of playing the game yourself?

I’ll tell you who: gamers. The same gamers that went over to their friends when they were younger to play the NES, or the Playstation, or the Xbox, or the shiny new PC RIG, or whatever else they couldn’t play in their own house.

As most games are designed for a sole player, the gamers took turns trying to beat that level, or just gathered around the one most likely to get to them to the ending credits. Games were always a social activity, and watching friends play was a perfect way for people to experience games from the passenger seat and without having to do the hard work themselves.

And so along came Twitch, now letting you share the same social experience of other people play from the confines of your own screen . And it lets you do this with countless other people sharing the same passion and hobby. And instead of your noob-ish friends it gives you direct access to amazingly skilled players, some actually do this for living.

Now take a look at some data about how Twitch viewers are so heavily engaged and you’ll soon ask yourself if perhaps 970 Million dollars was too little to pay:

68% of Twitch users have decreased watching TV to focus on their Online gaming entertainment and 58% of the 45 million unique monthly viewers spend more than 20 hours per week on Twitch. The average user on Twitch is 21-years old and spends their time in four main activities: 99% watch live streams, 61% chat with community, 38% watch video highlights, and 25% of users broadcast gameplay.

These numbers are really amazing. But the troubling part in bold is what might be most relevant for the media: if in the past video game websites knew gamers will come to them for news and content, and traditional TV networks assumed that games don’t cannibalize watching TV too much because it’s different types of activities, now they have every reason to worry.

Gamers are a lucrative target demographic and they now play games, watch others play games, and interact — all without the need for other traditional forms of media. One might say that for Video Game websites gamers are dead… in the same sense that your ex is now dead to you because he/she moved on and left you behind.

And so, game media launched this August 27th a (un)coordinated attack on gamer identity with multiple “gamers are dead” headlines hitting the net hours apart of one another. Some of them wrote that it’s only the term “gamer” that is dead because games are now for everyone (hey everyone! Can you replace our lost core demographic please?) while others won’t even bother to make this excuse and simply let all the hidden spite towards their years long audience finally abrupt. Never would I thought I’d see the day a respectable website like GamaSutra resort to calling gamers “obtuse shitslingers”. But desperate times call for desperate measures I guess.

A Three headed monkey!

And these are desperate times for game media. Not only are they losing their audience to youtubers and twitchers and social networks and whatnot, but now we are also asking them to uphold to a higher ethical standard than these youtubers? That’s hard to cope with.

“Look! Behind you!” They call #GamerGate. “These pesky youtubers are accepting bribes directly from Sauron for positive Middle Earth video coverage! Why don’t you call foul on their move!?” [and why aren’t we being offered any bribes?]

Well dear media, thank you for bringing this to our attention. But:

People already covered that before you cried foul. Youtube vloggers are not journalists. We still hold you to a higher standard (well, not for long I guess). This incident, while worth discussion, still doesn’t excuse your from your shady journalism, your refusal to abide to ethical standards, and your attempts to deflect any criticism even at the cost of smearing the entire game community by associating unsubstantiated allegations with #GamerGate and gamers.

Empires aren’t built in a day but neither do they collapse in a day. The change is slow and gradual, yet still the ones in power don’t see the writing on the wall until it’s too late. You might have missed some of the earlier signs, but #GamerGate is now the omen you should pay attention to.

Because whatever the outcome of the GamerGate movement is, the tide has already turned. Even if tomorrow morning everyone suddenly stops using the hashtag altogether, the whole incident up until now created such a chasm between gamers and game journalists that it won’t be easy to repair. Many gamers have already moved on, and declaring them dead won’t really make any difference except for perhaps letting you complete the stages of lost and grief.

Now, the writing’s on a wall

It won’t go away

It’s an omen

You just run out of automation

Belshazzar’s Feast by Rembrandt

[Addendum: I just realized I put a work of Rembrandt depicting a biblical vision next to a quote from a song by the Prodigy. If I had a mike I’d drop it right about now]