Whyos

…Well, actually, it’s a bit difficult to discern cause from effect here, but either way, not a bad thing, in the long term. Just as the old media bulwarks of the game industry didn’t prosper with the growth of the business they nurtured (with the notable exception of Game Informer), neither are the game publishers. And I think that it was to some extent a symbiotic death spiral. The whole model of $60 games is daft, but the print magazines, and, to almost the same extent, online sites (IGN and Gamespot) always pushed publishers in that direction, as they rated games based upon core-gamer expectations of game depth and play duration that aren’t actually sustainable. -Despite all of the complaining that developers and publishers have done about GameStop’s used game model, and I can see the valid reasons for that, GameStop has done a bit to ameliorate the lameness of the frontline game pricing model on the console side, as digital distribution is doing on the PC side.

The game media websites have been handy resources, as they provided easy searchability for the in-depth reviews that are required to drive such a considered purchase. But still largely the same old content; deep editorial previews and reviews, cheats, walkthroughs, etc.

Don’t get me wrong; at the time of their inception, Gamespot and IGN (or at least the interesting part of its amalgam, Gamespy) were unique and groundbreaking beyond such simple content. It’s just that they’ve atrophied and their founding sparks have departed, as conventional media entities have taken over. Gamespy, with community building/user-generated content and the early integration of their matchmaking technology into frontline games, prefaced most of what’s interesting and groundbreaking today in the web generally, so many years later. Gamespot had a sub-focus on collecting all of a user’s interests into something presaging a semantic web sort of solution (that its founder is focused on today), and a content-licensing model that worked uniquely well, built on consistency of quality. If Surfas and Broady were building their game businesses now, they’d certainly be something a lot more interesting than what their abandoned offspring are up to.

Today, there far are better solutions for gamers than conventional in-depth static content. Integration of game content (via XML feeds, add-on functionality, etc.) facilitates play in a much more satisfying way than the simple aggregation of non-editorial game info (cheats, etc.). -It sort of makes you wonder if the conventional media entities will always be buying the dying limbs on the tree. Ziff’s creation, then shedding, of 1Up to Hearst, sort of epitomizes the inclination. The trend for these publications seems to be static or downward, and definitely has the feel of print pubs of 2006.  The Escapist does a nice job of providing depth and analysis for anyone wanting a good and informed read about a game or the industry, with value based upon its quality and bloggy style and structure; rather than all-inclusiveness or hardcore dissection of gameplay. And as we come closer to a business model for game sales that actually works, and we really do seem to be on that course, editorial and news from Kotaku (and, on the indie side, playthisthing.com) should be the sort of resource to drive game sales. Because that provides a much more appropriate and useful level of information for a category of entertainment product that’s now so much more diverse and flexible in form.