Game Journalism and Structural Reconsideration

By now, anyone familiar with the sorry state of games journalism --- or, for that matter, just about any form of "niche" journalism --- is also familiar with the double-edged sword of its economic structure.



Keeping it short and to the point, Internet publication is extremely cheap and easy compared to classic print publication, with the trade-off being that it's so accessible, anyone can do it from the comfort of their bedroom.



Result: huge marketplace of competition. Normally, this is good.



What's not normal, here, is that the marketplace has long outgrown the size of its consumer base. Limited readership (in this case from gamers) is split between content providers so numerous that only a relative few are able to subsist on their share of the pie.



Normally, this would mean the lowest-value providers would drop out of the market for lack of profitability. But in the case of journalism, providing ever-shoddier goods can keep one's head above water. Tabloid journalism remains profitable, after all, for a reason.



What this has done is create a push amongst most online news outfits to produce tabloid material in order to stay afloat.



Well, we pretty much all knew that, right? So how do we fix it?



One suggestion I've been thinking of is Consolidation via site-aggregators. Reducing the overall number of websites which provide content, by having multiple producers of similar content band together under single sites.



This is essentially what many sites already do as their standard business model: The Escapist and Channel Awesome being examples. Umbrella "go-to" sites for gaming journalism as a whole would allow readers to select from a menu, and give every content producer a fair chance for their work to be seen while sharing each other's audience organically.



Essentially, co-operative cross-pollination, developing a more cosmopolitan audience through sharing than can be achieved by what currently amounts to "audience hoarding". Such an audience is more likely to, as individuals, consume more content because they find more variety more interesting. As per-capita consumption rises, there should be a commensurate on-average increase in the value of each producer's pie slice.



Of course, we're still stuck with the basic problem that the audience itself has only so many hours in the day to indulge an interest in any of this. But I think we are more likely to grow an audience through co-operation, than by sensationalism and aggravation.



Just a thought.

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