I feel like this may be a moment where I'm preaching to the proverbial choir. Everyone on this site is a gamer, and I'd guess that most - if not all - of you spend good amounts of time browsing various websites to get the latest news on games and the industry.
And as such, you're probably no fans of Kotaku. Heck, I know I've got little reason to be.
Maybe instead of the preaching metaphor, this is one of those moments in which yours truly shuffles to a group of his peers with a beer in hand, wearing a look of complete befuddlement upon his face. The words coming out of my mouth form only sentence fragments in between bits of stammering and pauses, which are in turn interrupted by sips from said beverage before it relocates to my forehead in an effort to cool down my frazzled brain. And like the good friends you are, you listen to my woes with your own drinks in hand.
Games journalism wasn't something I really followed until I joined 1Up. I'd read the occasional article, usually only those which struck my immediate interest. I didn't have ideas of which sites were good or bad, or if there were any particularly crummy writers out there period. I got a bit of a crash course in that after reading articles on 1Up and from many other sites.
Kotaku wasn't an unfamiliar name with me, but I never visited their site at all. I wasn't curious, but I knew a few groups across the internet had a respective bone to pick with them. And got-dang, I can still see why.
Frank Cifaldi tweeted his disappointment yesterday at an article/blog published by Kotaku about documents released by the FBI stating some of their findings in the home of Adam Lanza, the Newtown shooter. Go ahead, read it and see if you don't have a reaction similar to his.
I don't know why, but part of me feels like this frustration is kind of my fault. It's as if I should just come to expect this kind of frustrating garbage from Gawker Media. I have a number of friends on Facebook who post links from Jezebel, another website from said media family. And Kotaku itself is really playing the "feminism in gaming" card, because that's currently a hot topic, even if their articles themselves are trash (see: Patricia Hernandez). Don't get me wrong--I think it's a discussion that needs to happen more than even some gamers realize (and definitely more than the industry may think).
But then we get crap like this. We get a post that manages to blow its load early on an inflammatory headline and some of the most hackneyed writing I've ever seen. Fitting that the author used to work for Time, because only such a sensationalist, virtually removed article like this could go into a publication that doesn't actually cover games. But just as fitting, because what is a Gawker article without the structure to make it prime click-bait?
And that seems to be Kotaku's thing: putting up content that's sure to bring in the views but lacks little actual substance. I've read from one or two other sites that they're also quite notorious for claiming their status as "just a blogging site" when an article gets blasted, but shortly thereafter referring to themselves as a serious game website. I don't know, I don't have any proof or experience to exactly back that assertion up--but having read a couple of actually good articles on there, and then getting a prime turkey like this one, I'm inclined to throw some more faith behind that claim.
I'd like to think that games journalism - a field not without its fair share of controversies - has been growing stronger year-by-year as it attracts many more writers, from the professional level even on down to amateurs like ourselves. But getting crap like this makes me wonder how much longer that fine-tuning process will take. Gawker isn't small potatoes, and I wonder how long it'll take for them to either get constantly good content (focusing on writing actual articles, telling the crappy writers to hit the showers) or get left in the dust.
All I know is that that process will sadly take too long, and the internet will collectively be grinding its teeth until that day comes.
Happy Mask Salesman, displaying my feelings where words have failed.
(Author's note: I'll admit that this hasn't been one of my better posts anywhere online. I've been fighting a bit of a headache tonight, and some of this REALLY hasn't made it much better. But I needed to get it out, and I'm sure I'll revisit this topic sometime in the future with results you'll find far more satisfying.)
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