ldx

games, engines, odds & ends

i make @bitsy (and some other things too)


🕹️ games
ledoux.itch.io/
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in reply to @danielleri's post:

Even not having worked in games media and only in games, I feel so much of this. From the emotional struggle of organizing a workplace to getting laid off abruptly without warning. Thank you for writing this and I hope we'll all hold on hope that better things are possible.

Even when my last job in games media before hard course-correcting back into game dev felt relatively secure, it was so, so hard to see a future in that space. You're regularly in town halls with executives who say wild shit like "good writing can't happen with remote staff". You're watching other outlets under your publisher shed staff. You're watching incredibly talented veteran talent still struggle to hold onto work, and incredible new voices fail to find any meaningful foothold. Sites that seemed unique and unstoppable vanishing overnight.

And even in the sites and staff that survive, you feel the walls closing in. You feel the pressure of traffic and numbers creep higher and higher, the opportunities for meaningful reporting or smaller-scale coverage shrinking.

Game dev is hardly a model of sustainable employment. But compared to games media, it feels practically idyllic. There are so many wonderful writers and editors and producers who deserve so much better than that industry.

Thank you for your thoughtful post Danielle. Another thing that has been nagging me as merely a "fan" is that, the games media that has always been so taken for granted by the executive classes IS the reason I cared so much about video games to begin with. I've probably spent more hours of my life reading, watching, and listening about video games than playing them.

The publisher driven marketing, the hyper parasocial "influencer," and the media execs that want numbers or buyouts have no idea what to do with folks like me. They have no clue because I want a genuine connection and insight from people, not just "engagement" or "activations" or "sponcon." They think it's fine to keep pulling and duping from this amorphous mass of "fans" but I worry what happens when there's no outlets for folks to discover gaming the way I did as a kid, that inspired decades of interest to follow the critics and devs so closely for so long. When they think they've won and turned this whole business into "engagement," we all lose. And once again they'll act surprised.

i really feel like artists and critics/journalists across a bunch of different fields are going to need to find a way to band together and collectively work to push things in a different direction if we want some sort of alternative to influencer culture basically dominating all aspects of culture. i don't know what that looks like, but it feels like the only real solution i can imagine.