a certain someone has been trying to coax a Take out of me re: the one IGN video that's been buzzing recently, and I'm at a loss as to why—not just because I have nothing to contribute to a discussion centred on Baldur's Gate, nor do I have any intention of watching the video, but because the very notion of expecting anything but malformed pap from IGN seems preposterous... like, this is the same place that recently had to dismiss their Nintendo-side editor when it was discovered that everything they ever wrote or expressed, up to and including jejune think pieces on Why Nintendo Fans Are Excited For The Smash Brothers, was plagiarised from external sources and even other IGN content written by their contemporaries, with the little-discussed excuses for ever hiring this guy being "we don't necessarily exercise oversight for everything or anything we publish" and "our pool of applicants for that position was not deep (ie the pay/conditions they're offering tend to preclude anyone competent or anyone willing to do so much work for such meagre compensation)"; of course they're still cranking out garbage, ain't no institutional repercussions for it, and nobody with strong convictions about editorial standards has paid them much mind for years.
I still haven't watched the video, but I have seen three things that prompted me to write something on this topic: one, I was sent a transcript of the video (which I have read and summarily forgotten; dude spent nine minutes hoping to trip over a point); two, I saw that he cited several knuckleheaded youtube outrage merchants as direct inspiration for his video; and three, I found out dude isn't just some random freelancer or inexperienced entry-level hire, they're IGN's Director of Content Strategy. Dude's been there for twelve years!
I'm sure anyone who's been around long enough understands precisely why none of these corporate games media outlets—IGN, Kotaku, Polygon, whichever other outlets are even still kicking—are ever going to meet their potential, but IGN is unique in that there are a not-insignificant number of people who've been there for decades and have long-tenured directorial positions; where other outlets have been subject to constant employee churn that inevitably keeps them from cultivating talent or any sort of broader editorial voice, a lot of the same people have been steering the ship at IGN forever, so of all the existing ~institutions~, one would hope and expect that they'd have developed some sort of identity or even just basic standards for publication, but... nnnnnah, it's the same old content mill it always was, and always will be. Why should anyone be surprised that their lead video dude feels a professional camaraderie with youtube trash peddlers and not any of their actual colleagues, or anyone else in the sector of the industry that they not only occupy but has granted them a position of dubious authority? Why would anyone looking to join this industry be expected to take inspiration or guidance from outlets that struggle to publish anything with any degree of cultural longevity?
I've refrained from even mentioning dude by name because as far as I'm concerned, he's irrelevant: dude's video sucked, he'll probably continue to produce similarly shallow content for the rest of his professional days, whatever, life goes on. What bothers me is that the primary purpose—and really, the only purpose—of any of these tenured outlets in this day and age should be to provide researched, well-informed and implicitly credible counter-arguments to the outrage mill that permeates all Discourse, and yet they're all willingly ceding whatever fig-leaf of authority they should have to these dumbasses, not just because they don't know how to beat them but because they want to join them (and they're not even good at it!).
People working in games media all know it, too, but even as this video gives them the perfect platform to examine exactly why and how an outlet like IGN published such dreck and how these long-standing outlets could potentially be steered, from both the inside and outside, in a more worthwhile direction, they have to continue walking on eggshells so as to not jeopardise their own careers, and to not impugn any of the hard-working and insightful people working at these outlets because the career ladder in traditional games media is three rungs high and past a certain point, people run out of options. Fuck, I'm friendly with people who work at or for some of these places and I feel a certain amount of pressure to not be too harsh for fear of them thinking they're being subbed or whatever, and I'm nobody.
Is there any chance that this video might bring on a larger-scale reckoning about the purpose of these outlets in the modern age and the responsibility we all have to at least try to impose onto them some sort of accountability, or pride, or any fuckin' thing beyond Content? Am I wasting my time posting this a week after y'all got over this video?