@milkman said:
Reading a well-written article about a game can tell me a lot more about it on a much deeper level than just a video of someone playing it for a bit.
I think there's an interesting distinction to make, though. The kind of writing we're talking about here isn't really just an "article about a game". That shit still exists everywhere. GameSpot and Kotaku are rife with that everyday.
What Cara excels at is a very specific kind of autobiographical games coverage. She elucidates the impact of a game on her life and experiences and explores its place in the wider world through her own very personal lens. It's far beyond the burgeoning kind of "subjective" criticism that allows for a reviewer to critique a game according to their own tastes, rather than a "general consumer". It's more like gonzo diary accounts of a person who also happens to play a bunch of video games.
A lot of that doesn't appeal to me, honestly, but it's undeniably interesting. At the same time though, I don't think it's too big of a stretch to say it's undeniably appealing to a pretty small number of readers. She herself, along with other similarly styled folks (Jenn Frank. etc.) have written about how slim the margins are for any kind of writing these days. So when you're a writer (in an ever more video focused medium) whose work has an extremely narrow audience, you're just kind of boned.
It sucks, and I think it's more of a general capitalistic problem than anything else. (having to maximize profits from creative work leading to stifling unique ideas) But overall, it's hard to blame larger game sites that already aren't hugely profitable anymore for not hosting content that only a miniscule fraction of their audience would engage with.
I'd never seen that Offworld site before this thread, and that seems awesome. Not sure how they're funded, but some kind of Patreon situation might help these voices from disappearing. Hopefully?!
Maybe I'm just extra depressed about it because I feel like I've heard Dan exclaim the virtues of hard work (and its rewards) in this industry every few weeks, while female writers doing good work are dropping out of the industry like crazy.
Regarding what I said above. Dan and Cara are both "game journalists", but the content they create is just fundamentally different. Dan is a master of dumb shit, in an industry that can't get enough of it. Cara is a master of pensive explorations of the personal affects of games. There's just an exponentially smaller audience for that.
I think it's more of a messed up economic problem. The fewer folks an artist's work appeals to, the less viable it will be to continue making it. But still, as I said above, there can be some hope in that Offworld site possibly subscribed to like GB, or supported in a Patreon way. All hope isn't lost. It's just frustratingly hard to find it sometimes.
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