Asmongold TV - We've had a tragedy happen.. | Asmongold TV

Episode Date: October 20, 2025

We've had a tragedy happen.. Asmongold show for all of his stream highlights, competitions, reactions & more. ---- ------------ Keywords: gaming news, twitch clips, game reviews, streamer reactions, streamer content Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

We've had a tragedy happen. There has been a death. Recently, a new gaming publication, an old gaming publication, actually, has died, and we have killed it. You know, we've been following the decline of Games Media on this channel for over a year now, and it's because I find it absolutely fascinating. Because from my perspective, these guys have all the tools at their disposal to be as successful as possible. Far more successful than I could ever be, but they don't wield it with any real, conviction. In most

cases, it's wielded with ego more than anything else. Yeah, they're just stupid. They have the access, they have the experience. The thing is that whenever you have a person that has access to tools and then they don't, like if you watch a monkey, you ever seen a monkey try to hammer, use a hammer

and nails, it can't figure it out. You know why? Because it's a fucking monkey. It's stupid. Yeah. That's it. They have the pipelines, the platform. They used to have the audience, but they don't have that anymore. The reader, the gamer, the people that they need to be able to have a job in the first place,

they became insignificant to them. For an enemy in some cases. And when you turn your back on the people that keep you employed, well, you find yourself unemployed. What a surprise. Odd how that works. Wow. Polygon is the latest to fall, and I think they're emblematic. Because in a lot of cases, they represent the meme of the journalists that hate the gamers.

When Kotaku dies. gamers will have one. The moment that Kataku shuts down, that will be the total gamer victory. Just the ones that they disagree with, which just so happens to be the vast majority of them,

which doesn't work out very well. Celebration stream? Yes, it will be. You know, talented writers know how to cross that bridge. Maybe that day I'll be going through the job application process to work at Burger King. They know that you can still communicate and find ways to communicate with an audience

that you disagree with. But Polygon is the best example of what happens when you turn your back on them entirely or you take up arms against them. So today what I want to do is I want to talk about the fall of Polygon. I want to talk about the continued death throes of legacy media. But I still think written media has value. Written media has more value than any other kind of media in terms of transmitting information. The problem of why written media is dying, there's two problems. Number one, written media has been co-opted by people with.

biases and those biases are so overt, so overt and so badly hidden that it just basically alienates anybody reading it because they realize that they're reading bullshit. So that's number one. And number two, people are becoming less verbal and less proficient in reading. So people are getting dumber and the articles are getting dumber. And you put those two together and you don't have a lot of people reading. diversity of opinions and platforms is necessary. But that would require for games media to be relatable

and to start delivering value. And I don't see that happening. Polygon has been sold off to Valnet. Most of its staff has been laid off. Only a few senior staff from Maine made their Doom 2016 gameplay video live on as a testament to their contributions to this industry. While it may come as a shock to some, it shouldn't. Especially given how severe the layoffs have been

across gaming media. Anyone who's been paying attention could have seen this coming. The entire writing staff announced their exits on Blue Sky, which tells you everything that you need. That's right. Need to know.

And in the eyes of many gamers, this wasn't a tragedy. It's because Blue Sky actually isn't popular. And them leaving Twitter to go to Blue Sky is them shooting themselves in the foot. Nobody's going to go over and follow you on Blue Sky and read you on Blue Sky. All you want is a safe space for other people

that agree with you. but there's no organic viewership or growth there at all. That's the problem. I'm just going to say it. For any non-Americans, Blue Sky is the, it's the mental health center for people who can't cope with Donald Trump and Elon Musk. Nobody reads gaming articles like they used to. It's for Americans.

I've documented this decline before, but it's worth reiterating just how far these platforms have fallen. Legacy sites like IGN, Kataku, PC gamer, GameSpot. Oh, no. He's not bringing out the graphs. Oh, geez, he's using the graphs. Why you have to do this to him, man? You had to bring out the graphs on them? Oh, shit.

All of them started their descent around 2014. And they had a steep decline after 2018 that they never bounced back from. In the eyes of the players, these sites have stopped being informative. They've stopped being relatable. They started pushing. 2014 is when Gamergate happened, by the way. Gamergate is what started. all of this and killed them.

They just didn't realize it until years later. He was parroting PR talking points and outright alienating the very people who once supported them. Most articles now feel like sanitized marketing or worse, ideological messaging wrapped in clickbait headlines. And year after year, we've watched as these sites have consolidated, laid off, or pivoted to something completely irrelevant in a desperate attempt to stay relevant. Well, they just can't make any money because people aren't going to the website.

and this is so the real problem and this is like a really good example of this is that so do you remember this this tweet that this girl so she got fired from kataku ironically or unironically uh is that she made a tweet talking about like me because i was discussing live streaming and like why i thought that it was less important for a new content creator to live stream and she's like talking about like right wing extremism and it's like when all you are is a hammer every problem looks like looks like a nail. And the issue is that these people are so one-note and one-dimensional, that they don't have any real intelligence to be able to evaluate things in a way that makes sense. So the problem isn't even entirely the ideology. It's that the ideology is being used by people that can't really communicate very well, don't understand ideas, and can't conceptualize anything beyond their one-dimensional understanding of the world. that's the issue and that's the real reason

why these people are losing their jobs it's because they can't write articles that are good and interesting because they're dumb that's the problem it's literally that simple no other outlet better represents that downfall than Polygon when Polygon launched in 2012

it was ambitious they wanted to be more than just a review side they wanted to set a standard uncensored opinions long form journalism video documentaries cultural think pieces and for a while it worked their earth earlier reviews were sharp, polished, and well-written. They gave you far more than you asked for, but you read it anyway because it was damn good content.

In a lot of ways, some of their earlier writing. Like, that's the reason why. Is that most writers nowadays, people don't realize that writing is a form of leisure for a lot of people and reading as a form of leisure. And so many people who are writers don't understand how to write with any degree of brevity or wit or, like anything other than transmitting information

in a very boring way and the ones that do do it in a self-indulgent way where like they're trying to make these like metaphorical references to something that they learned about in AP English in 12th grade and it's like ha ha this is like this is so clever because we're a theater kid they're just not good writers at the end of the day and reflects what we see in video reviews and commentations

today. Introspective takes on how playing a game makes you feel, what it reminds you of, what you wished other studios could learn from, and they had a solid pulse on what concerned players the most, but then there was a cultural shift. And Polygon just didn't shift with it. Instead, they veered off a cliff. The turning point came with Gamergate 2014, a controversial flashpoint in the industry that changed the tone of games media pretty much across the board. Well, it changed the tone of games in general. I think that almost all the problems with video games now in terms of like any of these social messaging issues can be tied back to GamerGate. I think that is if it is unironically the original sin.

Outlets were a little bit more cautious. Polygon went all in leaning into this activist adjacent socially progressive lens that they began to frame every game for identity politics. So Gamergate for anybody doesn't know it was like 20, 2014. This like girl got exposed for having a sexual relationship with a person who wrote a review for her game. And then it was kind of like a watershed moment where, or straw broke the camels back, where as soon as this one thing came out, there were a lot of other instances of journalistic behaviors that were unethical. Right.

And also, like, by the way, it's okay to write a review of somebody's game, but you have to disclose that you're in a relationship with that person, right? I mean, I think that would be logical. And honest things for 10 subs. I appreciate that. And so, yeah, games risk of rain too. And so that's really what it is. And so unethical quid pro quos.

Yeah, exactly. So like Total Biscuit gave an example of this is that like somebody sent him a video game to review and they sent him an Xbox to review the game on, to play the game on. And then they said, well, you can just keep the Xbox after you get done reviewing the game. Well, if you do that, you're obviously. giving somebody consideration, and when you give somebody consideration, there's a reason for that. It's because you want something back. And I think that that type of quid pro quo, you know, like, and it's this for that, which is like Latin, basically. It's like saying, like, we're going to do

one thing for you, and then you're going to give us this back. That's what that term means. And so that term and like that prevalence caused gamers to feel like all the media and the things that they were receiving were completely inauthentic and wrong. And that criticism was shifted to being that like, oh, well, because it's with a woman, that you're just, you're not mad about this thing. You're mad because it was a woman. And so it got shifted from being a concern. And by the way, I'm sure there was a degree of like negativity towards women, just like there

always is. But it was maligned as that. And you see kind of what I'm saying? about how this happened. Yeah, it was, it was framed in a way that made it like misogynist as like gamers or bad, et cetera. And that's what I think radicalized a lot of gamers against games media. And that's why so many gamers have been celebrating the failures of games media is because games media participated in this unethical behavior and also this complete mischaracterization of people that play their games in general. The reviews weren't about what a game did well. They were about what it

failed to represent. And I think their review of Bayonetta, too, is probably the best example of this, a mechanically brilliant action game, well-loved and reviewed across the board. And they knocked it down to a 7.5 out of 10 because the reviewer didn't like how sexy the main character was. Not because it left me asking how many different ways Platinum could find to run a camera between Bayonetta's legs. What's funny to me about this is that you think that's a problem.

That's why people play the game. of the gameplay, not because of the performance, because of problematic sexualizing. It's sexist, gross pandering. It's totally unnecessary. I disagree. I like it. And I think this is the problem is that back then a lot of gamers tried to make it out like, oh, it's art or it's whatever. And I think what's really kind of caused a lot of these people to lose relevance is just the accepting of, yeah, I know it's completely sexist and it's total gooner content. And that's what we want, give it to us right now. And I think that I think really what proved that to be true is gotcha games. Every gotcha game, look at any subreddit and it's all fan art of the female characters making out with each other.

That's just how it is. Telling people what to do. Yeah, exactly. We're now okay with saying we like boobs. Yeah, but you remember, right? Look at the creator of Bayanetta. I know that there's plenty of women that are okay with displaying sexuality. But what my point is is that I think that a lot of men felt insecure about doing it.

And I think now that it's more socially acceptable to do that, guys are more than willing to say like, yeah, that's exactly what we want. So give it to us. And I think that's one of the other big reasons why now I think these people are losing the narrative war. This is the kind of scoring that doesn't just confuse people. It infuriates them. Polygon wasn't just judging the game. They were judging the player.

I'm not saying it overtly. they were saying that this is the kind of content that shouldn't exist and you shouldn't be okay with liking it. Then came their review of kingdom. Come deliverance, where they called the game woefully bland and claimed that women in the game seem to only have three functions. They either perform as two-dimensional sex objects,

fetched water from a river, or do needlepoint. I've got bad news for you about the 1400s in Europe. I've got really bad news. and they're not going to like it. The setting, 15th century bohemia, ignoring Teresa, the woman that saves your life protects you and then shares one of the most emotionally grounded relationships

that are in the game, ignoring the historical context entirely because it didn't fit the narrative that they wanted to push. A game that prided itself on historical accuracy needed to bend itself to popular media trends and revisionism. Instead of just letting it exist as a contrast to how far we've come as people, and as a civilization. I don't think these outlets or these writers understand

the kind of damage that this approach does. Not only does it do damage to their own credibility, but it does it to the games themselves. Contrast matters. Games that are exploring historical themes or history itself

should be able to present that. Well, it looks like bullshit. Like when I'm playing a historical game and then they have a bunch of female like warriors, I'm like, okay, this is one of those bullshit weird games. Because everybody knows that didn't happen. Like, and then also, also like, oh, but there's like Joan of Arc or like three other examples.

Exactly. That's the point. Yeah, anytime I see that kind of stuff, I immediately am like, oh, okay, it's one of these games. That world as it was, not as they wish it would have been. But rather than allow creative talent to stand on its own, the media often demands ideological conformity, filtering everything through modern social commentary. And when the game doesn't comply, they will. their platforms like weapons, shaming these developers, poisoning discourse, and trying to turn

the audiences against them. He's completely right about this. He is 300% right about this, is that they weaponize their platform. And the thing is that, and this is the reason why I do the same thing now. Because like these people are never going to stop doing this. So the only way to do, the only way to fight back against this is to do it back to them. And by the way, there's a lot more. of us than there are of them.

As you can see by the fact that my channel is doing really well and they're laying people off. Keep going. Oh, I will. I will. I will. I will keep going until it's done. Final Fantasy 16 went through the exact same thing. Square Enix wanted to tell a grounded Northern European inspired fantasy story.

Oh, right. There's no black people in the story. I forgot all about this. Oh my God. In that excessive diversity would conflict with the game's lore and tone, he was met with headlines like Final Fantasy 16 Dev has a terrible answer for why the game is so white. Or Final Fantasy 16 has no business abiding by historical realism.

By, yeah, like, no, actually you're wrong. Nope. Nope. This wasn't coverage. It was a correction. Exactly. Yeah, this is not journalism. This is activism.

Even fiction needs to submit to ideological vetting. I think that these developers should have the freedom to create without being publicly shame for not fulfilling someone else's social agenda. Not every game has to represent everyone and not. every creative decision is a political statement. That's right. To be fair. And these people have no problem saying that when a game like South of Midnight comes out.

They have no problem saying like, well, this game isn't made for you. Okay, fine. Well, what about when a game's not made for you? Okay, well, that has to change. I can already hear the counter argument that players have mounted pressure campaigns to pushing back against what they view as force representation or initiatives that they don't agree with. but there is a difference between market feedback and institutional pressure.

One effect sales, the other shapes perception. The media controls how these games are framed and who sees them. When they start pushing... Like they push the narratives and they try to force these things into video games and they create a chilling effect inside of game development where if games don't capitulate to their behavior, they will write stories and tell lies about these video games in order to make them look bad. And that's why now for video games that do play into these.

narratives and they do actually listen to these journalists. It's like, you know, like the, the siren song of Odysseus, right? It's like, you know, if you want to sail your ship onto the rocks, that's fine. And guess what we are? We're the rocks. We'll destroy the ship. And it's worked. And that's why so many of these video games have died. It's because there's been so much pushback from it. And now these companies are afraid of doing it. Get wrecked? Yeah, get wrecked. There's blood in the water now? Yeah, exactly. And you can, by the way,

if enough people are negative about a game, you can absolutely kill the game. Don't ever believe that you can't do it. You can. Believe in yourself. Ideology over insight, it stops being criticism and it starts becoming coercion. What the media never seems to be able to grasp

is that this outrage cuts both ways when they pressure studios to mold games into ideological statements. It creates a backlash. not just against that game, but the very idea that these games need to carry a message. Assassin's Creed Shadows, South the Midnight Concord. They didn't draw fire in a vacuum. The media helped build the environment where these players now push back.

You kept shaping the discourse. Don't be surprised when discourse shapes you right back. For every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction. I mean, this is the reason why Polygon and many of these other media outlets have lost their relevance over time, and it's because in the eyes of players, they've become an oppositional force. they're wrong. That's the reason why. It's because their viewpoints and their

way of seeing the world is simply wrong. People don't have a problem with politics and video games. People have a problem with the mentally ill SSRI addicted upper middle class white woman

progressive American politics. That's what people don't want to hear. Nobody has a problem with Metal Gear Solid's politics. People do have a problem with politics like Concord. That's the big difference. It is using their platforms to pressure studios to make changes. It's not that we don't want politics. We don't want your politics. Players before themselves. And that's all been proven with recent statements made by Daniel Varva, the creator of Kingdom Come deliverance. In a recent check interview, Kingdom Come creator, Daniel Varva opened up about the impact

Polygon and others had on him after the first game. He said that if felt like there was a... Daniel Varva was the guy that was the creative director. I don't know. Sorry, someone as I go AFK, but he was the creative director for Kim Come Deliverance, and he got a ton of hate back when the game originally came out because the game didn't adhere to certain social norms. Lord of Damocles

hanging over his head. And he admitted he was very afraid that journalists would pull what they did with the first game on it. This, by the way, is a metaphor for like a Greek story where there's like a sword hanging over a guy's head with like a fine thread on it. And it like, it's the idea of like you being on edge.

that you're going to be cut anytime. Complaining that the sequel wasn't very diverse and blah, blah, blah, to quote him directly. He talks about how he was afraid that they would scour his Facebook, auto-translate his political rants, and write up that he's now a Trumpist right-winger against this and that.

He talks about how that felt like a threat to him and how he was prepared to get fired over it. That is the legacy of Polygon, not just irrelevant articles, fear, self-censorship, development choices made out of survival, not creativity. you can have your... And also, do you want to know one of the really big proofs that gamers are actually not right wing at all? And this is a totally fake narrative that's being created by weird Karen freaks is the fact that metaphor was one of the greatest games that came out last year. And I think that very few people debate that. Metaphor covered very progressive social issues, but it did so in a way that wasn't patronizing to the player. And it was respectful and it was mature. the entire idea that like gamers like I don't know what they think that they want right and so uh the middle evil so the media called dan out yeah I don't know but metaphors are on

a top three games all the time it's a very good game right Luis Skiaburn well I think Luis Skiaburn is a really great example right is like if he was a if he was a villain in a western video game he would not be intelligent he would not be well spoken he would not be clever he wouldn't be able to discover the king's magic, right? He wouldn't have been able to do any of these things. He would have just been like this big, dumb, ophish retard that nobody likes, but we have to kill him. Right? He'd have one charisma. He wouldn't, yeah, he wouldn't be attractive. Exactly. Opinions on Varva, the choices that he's made and the things that he's said. However, this is what happens when coverage turns into punishment, when the writers think that they are moral arbiters

instead of critics. Yeah. When review sites become political weapons instead of industry observers. When the players see the media wield this sort of influence, when they see them fail to represent them, what do you think the end result of that is going to be? And it's not like they've only done this once. They've been doing it the entire time with articles like Yakuza examines masculinity with care, but leaves women behind.

God of war. Do you want to know why it leaves women behind? Guess who's playing Yakuza? Just take a guess. I wonder. Oh, geez. What a fucking mystery. Like, I played the pirate yakuza game. This is absolutely a shonen.

It is. It's a total shonen. The entire thing is like that. Like, it really, it's a story written with the spirit of a young man. That's the way it is. And that's who it's going to appeal to. Some women might like it. Sure. And there's guys that like Animal Crossing. But let's talk about averages. director on toxic masculinity and why

Cratos has to change. Gaming's toxic men explained. Why are game companies so afraid of politics in their games? You watch as their coverage turns from... Because they're not. They're just afraid of your politics because your politics are stupid. Criticizing the industry to criticizing the audience for not agreeing with them. At first it's a couple of studios that are the issue.

And then it's everyone except them is the issue. And you can't expect your readers. to want to stick around for that, nor be supportive of you or your industry. I mean, at a certain point, you have to wonder who they're even writing for, because clearly it isn't for the player, because the average gamer is not looking...

And that's another really good component that he's bringing up, is like, who is this for? Like, whenever you're writing these articles, like, who's going to read these articles and, like, how many people like that are out there that are going to read them? And we found out the answer to that. Not very many.

To be scolded, psychoanalyzed, or... Not very many. moral failure every time they load up a title that doesn't match with the editor's worldview. But that's what much of their writing has become a performance of superiority that's aimed at the very people that they need to stay in business. Instead of cultivating a community, they treated them like they were an obstacle. Instead of insight, they're offering disdain.

You cannot insult your readers, ignore their values, and then act surprised when they stop showing up. I mean, look at one of the articles that they wrote. I mean, gamers was used as a pejorative term, and that was started by games journalism. Like, I mean, I'm sorry, but like, that's a really bad way of marketing yourself. This year. These video games kill fascist, cathartic video games to get your anger out in a healthy way. Listen, I'm all about staying abreast on current events,

but watching the fascist white cis heteropatriarchy put boots on the necks of anyone they want gets old fast. Not for me. I loved Space Marine, too. It was actually amazing. Yeah, I had fun. It was great. If you feel like dismantling the systems of oppression with wanton destruction, these games provide the sweet feeling you get from bringing the ruling class down a peg.

This is written by some fucking like either fat as fuck or 90-pound kid that's like at Starbucks. Like this is a kid that has to like cry in his bathtub if the DoorDash delivery driver rings the doorbell instead of leaving. to food at the door. It's the most pathetic fucking shit that you've ever seen. Bro, what the fuck is this? Have you ever thought about the fact that the vast majority of the gaming audience doesn't tune into this?

Likely aren't even paying attention. We're thinking about the ruling class. What the fuck is wrong with you? To politics and they see this extreme rhetoric and honestly veiled. And it's also like what it's so one dimensional and childish. I think that's also the big problem that a lot of people aren't bringing up,

is that the way that they explain these issues are just so bad. For violence as weird and uncomfortable as hell, you write something like this. You publish this under the banner of a games journalism outlet and that you wonder why you're sold off and your staff is laid off.

What are the odds? You alienated your audience. You scared developers into silence. You turned your platform into a weapon. Then you pointed it at the very industry that once embraced you. And for what? Look, let me be clear, there are hardworking people in games media who don't buy into any of this.

Talented writers that just want to talk about games who care about storytelling, systems, and creativity. But they have been dragged out undermined by the loudest voices in the room, the ones who treat players like problems, developers like enemies, and their own platforms like a soapbox. This is how you kill an outlet. Congratulations, mission accomplished. You have a lot of these outlets and writers that are talking at people in. not with them. This is what I said, by the way.

Let me see if I can find it here. Yeah, this is it. This is what I said whenever this came out, the news of it. Welcome home. Just the way it is. But the exact same time being completely detached from reality, which does not help their situation whatsoever. They're pressuring these games to be made.

They're pressuring these changes to be made within these games that players aren't even asking for. They're making articles that the audience that the readers aren't even looking for. Look, man, I am not here for marching orders. I am here for gaming news. And if that's not what you're going to give to me, then I have no reason to be here. That's what's happening right now.

You know, I'll be honest, I had no idea the Polygon was this bad. I had no clue. I haven't really read them in a long time. I usually stick to insider gaming because they stick to the news and they have some pretty good writers. But I started going through their article history

and they have some talented people, really talented people. There's some good stuff that they write. but the human eye is trained to find things that don't belong and there is a lot that doesn't belong on Polygon or on the internet at all, to be honest with you. But you find yourself asking who is this stuff even being written for and even more so, why would you even think it's tasteful?

Well, we found out. We found out who it's been written for. No one. Post some of this stuff. And I know people want to point out the writers, and they are the ones that are writing it, but you have editors. They found out too. How did you have jobs?

You don't have many more, but. How did you have jobs? You should have known not to be posting this kind of stuff. You should have known that's going to drive people away. No, no, they don't know that because they put themselves in an echo chamber and all the people that are around them agree with them and tell them that they're right. And if you do that for long enough, you start believing your own bullshit. And I think that's what's happened.

In a lot of ways, it's just social immaturity. That if you disagree with someone on anything, they have to. to be the enemy. End of story. That's just where this goes. And you can't include their perspective in good faith because, well, it has to be vilified. It has to be demonized. And you're not going to A great example of these are stellar blade and blackmuth Wukong. I think those are two really great examples of that happening. Audience that way. And you're definitely not going to be making any money that way. And I think that the industry, I think these outlets did the same thing that the industry essentially did, which is post-GamerGate, they abandoned the initial audience that they

had in search for this wider audience. I think that what they wanted to do is they wanted to go beyond games media and games journalism, and they wanted to become like full-on journalists. But the problem is that they didn't have the skill, insight, or knowledge or probably even, like, a mindset to be genuine real journalists. So they thought that if we, like, it's kind of like this. is a weird metaphor, right? Or analogy, but I'm going to make it, is I love doing these.

It's kind of like, you know how people say like, oh, you have to start in gay porn in order to get to straight porn? I think this is the way a lot of these games journalists thought is that, okay, well, I'm going to start writing about video games, and then I'm going to become an established journalist in a general sense. Do you see kind of like what I'm saying? I heard that. Yeah, everybody's heard that before, right?

That's virtual signaling? Yeah, and I think that's the real reason. that was out there that had shared values. No one says that, bro? I don't know. I hear it all the time. But it just doesn't exist. That's just...

Literally ever heard that? You know, they have to come to the sobering reality that no matter how much you don't agree with your audience, how vile, how vich, how abhorrent they are. You have to find a middle ground with them. Yeah. Here's a great example of this, like with streaming. is that like I do think that streaming is like it takes some degree of effort and some degree of time.

It's not like a super easy thing to do in all circumstances. But I'm not going to sit around and soapbox about that because at the end of the day, I understand that my audience, number one, like if you go to your barber to get your hair cut, you don't want to listen to your barber complain about their job. So you have like the like just really kind of common sense perspective of people don't want to watch a stream where a person is complaining about having to stream. The same as, you know, again, like a barber or whatever. But it's also that people just don't see it the same way that I do.

They don't have the same insight that I do because they don't do it. And I don't do what they do either. And so when you try to force people to see the world the way that you do, all you're going to do is force people to see the world the opposite way. In general, the more that you try to push people into believing something that they don't want to, the more that you will push them away. You have to find a way to be able to reach them. And I know that people are going to point it out and say,

well, LD, look how the gaming audience is. These guys do the exact same thing. They pressure these companies. They use social controversy and things. That's exactly what we'll do. That's exactly right.

Because it works. It worked for games media for years. Absolutely. It doesn't matter. Yep. Guys, I'm just going to tell you, I'm just going to you straight. And also, by the way, the customer is always right in matters of taste.

Games media isn't the customer. We are. That's the difference. They're the ones that are paying. They're the ones that you need their attention. Yep. So either you figure out a way to be able to reach them or you are reaching for a job application. That's it.

You know, that's the thing. The media has just continued to... to adapt to a lot of these different cultural changes, even the way that media has been consumed over the years. A lot of that has changed and they haven't adapted to any of that. And from my perspective, while it might be Polygon today, I think they're all going to be Polygon tomorrow. I'm sorry. Good one. Guys, we aren't just losing Polygon. We are starting to lose all of them. In an article written by Christopher Dring titled, The Number of Video Game Articles dropped by over 100,000. That's a good start.

thousand in quarter one. He writes the top 135 video game websites published over 635 articles in quarter one this year. That's right. Press engine data reveals. That's a drop of over 13% or more than 100,000 articles compared to the same period in 2024. That number covers reviews, news, guides, teachers, and code pages and includes websites from all around the world. A lot of the biggest drops were at guide-based productions, but there were also big declines amongst major media outlets, including IGN, GameSpot, Emmetsu, and Eurogame. The reason for this decline is no big surprise. According to Press Engine, it has seen 2,9002 press contacts disappear from its database

over the past two years. Those press contacts include amateur, part-time, and freelance journalists, but it ultimately highlights a significant drop in people writing about video games, with redundancies having hit almost every major media publication. There are other factors that are influencing the drop in video game articles, including a continued shift towards covering the biggest titles, a decision. driven by changes to Google search engine. 100,000 fewer articles and nearly 3,000 fewer press contacts is a dramatic shift.

But let's not pretend like this is coming out of nowhere. That 13% is a symptom, not a disease. The audience... It's only the beginning. It's only the beginning. Just keep that in mind. This is gone. The content isn't landing.

And thanks to the changes in Google search algorithms, prioritizing the biggest names, unless you're IGN, Forbes or PC. Gamer, you're basically invisible. Snowball. And even then, you have to wonder, who's even reading this stuff? I'm not even saying that to be cruel, but I would be hard pressed to name more than a dozen gaming outlets off the top of my head, let alone 135. And that's coming from somebody who actually reads this stuff. But then again, what would those missing articles have been about?

While some are going to be shocked by this sudden drop, I'm definitely not. I'm wondering who's actually going to miss them. We don't need 15 articles all regurgitating the exact same press release. I've joked about this before. the media using return to form like it's a summoning spell every time a new game that they like flops but that's the reality the same quote same take same structure barely any variation take that's also like he's bringing up a very good point about this is the fact that a lot of the writing is at a fundamental level very bad it's boring it's repetitive it's not interesting

yeah it's like again if a i can only regurgitate things that were already written and you're worried about AI taking your job as a journalist, then maybe I think you just self-reported. You know, maybe, right? I thought of six delay. It was everywhere, but not a single outlet provided anything beyond the basic announcement, no exploration of take two stock dropping, no discussions about how the pressure to meet earnings forecast could shape rock stars. And this is the problem that they have, right?

is that they're incapable of any form of second order analysis at all. And the reason why is that they're so one note with like the way that they see things that it's boring to watch and it's boring to read. Like people don't want to read like this is one thing like I think even newspapers have this problem where and I think this is a decline of the, this is the decline of people's command over the English language and their ability to communicate with it. And I think that it's been going on for years now, probably 20 years, 30 years, my whole life. Like, I feel like every year people become less literate. Decisions or set a precedent across the industry, just the same surface level

reporting echoed across a dozen sites. That's not journalism. That's a carbon copy feedback loop designed to farm SEO. And of course it is because it's all just a pipeline for ads. It's no surprise the players are tuning out. Most of these sites are unreadable without an ad blocker. auto play videos that are blaring over text, walls of pop-ups that choke out the... There were porn sites in 2001 that were less intrusive than these different games journalism websites. Content, even if you do manage to navigate that mind-field, half the time a paywall is going to slam down on you mid-scroll. It's not just bad, it's an actively hostile environment for readers. So players are going elsewhere. They're turning to YouTube and streamers, Twitter, and Reddit, TikTok, wherever else they're

can go because at least those people are talking to them, not down to them. At least they're entertaining. At least they're authentic. At least they respect your time. You can throw a video line in the background, let it ride while you're at work or you're commuting and you can get an actual discussion, not a barely rewritten press release. That's also another really big point is that this is a meta-level shift in the way that individuals consume content in general, is that most people consume content through multitasking. And I think that's also one of the reasons why people like subtitles and movies is because sometimes they'll be listening to or paying attention to two things at the same time. And so the reason why is that whenever you're reading something, you need to be

one-dimensionally focused on what you're reading. Whereas whenever you're listening to something, like how many of you guys have me on your second monitor right now? Well, it's hard to have an article on your second monitor. So that's again another structural weakness that many companies like this have. It's another problem that writing has, and it's harder for, and the issue really is, like, how do you solve that? You write things that are more compelling, but they can't do that. ...in ads, which honestly, that makes this all the more baffling that these outlets have not

adapted. Videos should be their strong suit. They already write this kind of content. IGN does a good job of this, to be fair. Do a voiceover, add some footage, posted to YouTube, Twitter, TikTok, anywhere. There is no excuse. You know, I was stunned to realize. that I am catching up to Kotaku

and YouTube subscribers. Me. A guy that's making videos that's... Look at this. 2K views. Kevin Smith. This guy is a fucking legend. This is silent fucking Bob. And you have a... it has 2,000 views. How do you get

Kevin Smith on your channel if you're only getting 2,000 views after seven months? It's pathetic. In his spare time, closing the gap on an outlet that's been around since 2004. more relevant? Bullshit.

If Kevin Smith was on Theo Vaughn, that episode would have over a million views. Gone. Has 1.4 million subscribers. And sure, some of their videos actually get some pretty solid views, but they only post once or twice a month. And when they do, it's stuff that people didn't even ask for, like a lore video or a lore breakdown video

and how a vow does lore better than everybody else, a game that's already fading from memory, and was widely criticized for being bad at lore. I mean, the business side of me is genuinely frustrated that these guys are sitting on a gold mine of content and they are wasting it. Skill up and Gamer ranks, write articles and newsletters and then they turn it into content. Why can't they?

They write multiple articles a week. Convert them into videos. Double dip. Instead, they cry about AI stealing their jobs and sue Open AI, even though half of their writers are probably using Chat GPD behind the scenes to... No, they're not using Chat GPD. If they were, the articles would be better. They're deadlines

by spinning up slightly different versions of what everybody else has already written. The truth is, there is no outside force that's killing them. Not AI, not YouTubers, not Google. It's their own lack of adaptability. I would disagree with this partially. I actually do think that they're being kind of, like,

you're burning the candle at both ends, but there's five ends, right? Like, attention spans are going down. Media consumption trends are changing. The audiences are becoming increasingly polarized against you. You're pushing narratives that don't resonate with an audience. And you put

all these things together, and it's death by a thousand cuts. So it's not really just the fact that they are woke or whatever. This is a problem that's facing all media. It's facing newspapers even. So the fact is that there's just been a generalized shift away from this overall. People cannot read more than a menu. Yeah.

Lack of relatability, that's what's actually eating these guys alive. This collapse is total and it's systemic. It's not just a few bad outlets or a couple controversial takes. It's not just Polygon or Pitacus. that's writing things that nobody cares about. It's an entire media apparatus out of step with the players, out of touch with developers. Well, it's because any time that somebody mentions one of these problems

and gives it any form of authenticity, they get reprimanded by everybody else in the professional industry. So there's a chilling effect for talking about these things in any sort of an authentic way, which makes people think that the media is biased, and it's because it is. Completely unprepared for how media consumption has evolved. They haven't just failed to adapt.

they've doubled down in the very behaviors that is driving audiences away in the first place. Massively authoritarian. Instead of reflecting, learning from the failures of their peers, they are lashing out. Instead of reporting, they are correcting. Look no further than PC gamers roundup of 2024's biggest gaming controversies. They boil down the criticisms of Assassin's Creed shadows just to outrage over Yoske, as if concerns about historical authenticity were conjured out of nowhere, definitely not. And it's also like, and this is the other thing too, is that these people think that they have the authority

to tell people what they're allowed to care about. If somebody doesn't like Yaske, it doesn't matter what the reason is for it. They're still not going to buy the game. And so if you want to create an apparel, and this is the problem is that these people are so selfish, they think that creating and insulating developers from any form of genuine feedback or criticism is something that's helping them. And then these developers get laid off and their lives are ruined because they were falling for a lie. They were being told a lie by these game developers, or sorry, these game journalists and these companies telling them, this is what people want.

No, it's not. And because you've been lied to, what's happened is that you've led yourself down this path that's damaging. Brought up by Ubisoft themselves, they ignored valid conversations, and by doing so, they poisoned the well. Then there was their response to Black Myth Wu Kong when game signs didn't apologize

for some loose allegations that were made against them. In my opinion, I think this was the worst one. Because it was the most blatant attempt at, it was the most blatant attempt at the media mafia and it was the most transparent example of it happening it was such an attack it was naturally the usual parts of the Twitter sphere were thrilled to see a developer being so based especially since Blackmuth Wukong was a hit

proof positive that real gamers don't want politics in their games or some such others viewed the whole thing more as just strange and a little creepy there are no others they didn't exist it's just you This is what media likes to paint a false majority by having terms like proponents, opponents, people online, voices, things like that. But what they're doing is they're creating a false parody. There actually is no parody. There's like three or four people saying this and then everybody else is calling them retarded.

It's like a literally 95-5 or 991 situation that they're trying to perceive, make people perceive as if it's 50. Then they finish with saying, it's hard not to read the silence as a sign that game science feels it has nothing to apologize for. Yeah, maybe that's because they don't actually have anything to apologize for. Maybe not every developer needs to pass a moral purity test before they're allowed to ship a game. Maybe some of these studios just want to make something cool without having to grovel for forgiveness for every manufactured scandal. But instead of respecting that, the media wants to treat silence like it's an admission of guilt.

And this kind of behavior is... Well, that's because silence is an admission of guilt. and they're guilty of not getting ad revenue. They create the problem. The company responds to the problem. They monetize the problem being created. They monetize the response. They monetize everything.

So this entire problem is created by media in order to sustain media. But as soon as you take a step out of it and you move out of this problem, it doesn't exist at all. Because it never actually did. everywhere. Bias is embedded into everything. Contempt for the audiences on full display. They retreat to places like blue sky to avoid feedback, posting articles like gamers are terrible people

and we should stop being okay with it, only to follow it up later with it's time to start trusting video game reviewers. Yeah. Nope. That trust is not coming back. Not after years of talking down to players, punishing developers and turning the medium built on creativity into a battleground for personal agendas.

Polygons collapse is not an isolated failure. It's a forecast. And it's a warning sign for all of these outlets still pretending like they have a voice of authority while the audience is quietly walking away. You don't get to ignore the people that you claim to speak for. You don't get to mock the community, miss the story, and still expect to be relevant. You either revolve or you fade out. For most of them, they already have. The press didn't lose the audience.

They pushed them away. Now, they're watching the lights go out, one outlet at a time. Now, this may sound crazy, but games journalism isn't dead. The reason why I say that is because I can bring up an art. article. I can cite it. I can read it word for word and people will still engage. People will still watch the video. They'll enjoy it. They'll be entertained by it. They'll hear my opinion, the opinion of the writer. They'll come to their own opinion because it's an open dialogue, not a sermon. With so many of these outlets wanting to educate audiences instead of inform them,

it's no surprise why nobody wants to listen. And that's another thing about the educating thing. The educating term, like just the word, is very, it's patronizing. Because it's implying your ignorance and it's implying their superiority. Listen to them. You know, we can have a conversation about how women are portrayed in games or diversity in games or whatever the hell else you want to talk about. We can do that without having to vilify the audience that you're trying to reach in the first place. It doesn't make any sense. I brought it up.

The ESA reported in 2023 that 53% of gamers in the U.S. alone are men. 72% of them are white. It is not enough. It's way more than 53% and everybody knows it. The reason why it's so high for women is because they're counting bullshit games like Candy Crush. If you're talking about actual male gamers that are playing PC games that are selling for $60, you're looking at an 80 plus percent audience of men. That's just the way it is.

And I bet 80% is probably low. I really didn't know that. It's obvious. It's completely fucking obvious. You can't not count girl games. Come on. Of course I can. There's five of them. And there's 500 male games.

Effective strategy to vilify a large subsection of the audience that supports you or your industry. This isn't ideology. It's just math. You can reach these people. Here's a really great way to look at it. How many women that are popular in video gaming are not attractive? That's right. Zero.

Talk to them. And in most cases, they'll be willing to listen. But the minute that you start using buzzwords and catchphrases and try to bring politics into the conversation is the minute that their minds turn off. They turn away from the conversation. It's not an attractive appealing to men. My point is that in all of games media and streaming and content that's made for video games online, it is a prerequisite to at least be conventionally attractive for a female to be able to. to build an audience. And the reason why is because primarily that audience will be male.

That's a fact. That's it. Like, it's, it's, it's, that, Frogan, Frogan's not a streamer. She doesn't stream video games. Number one, like, that's not even the point. Effective way to run a business, and it is definitely not an effective way to have a conversation. These are things that these guys should be professionals at. Beyond that, written media, that's really what's dying out.

And some of it has to do with attention span. Some of it has to do with a lot of the ads that are on some of these sites. You know, most of these sites don't even have a dark mode. Yeah, yeah, the sites are awful. And, yeah, I mean, like, you can get away with being an unattractive guy in games media, but you can't get away with being an unattractive girl. And the reason why is because men are the primary audience. And men don't want to look in an ugly bitch.

That's just a fact. That's so aggressive. Get mad, but that's it. It hurts my eyes. man, why do you do this to me? Sorry. If it's not on Twitter or Reddit, most people aren't going to be reading it.

Somebody got to say it. They're getting most of their information from YouTube videos more than anything else. You have to adapt. You have to capitalize on that. And you have to do you have to do anything. There comes another dozen articles. Yep. And they'll all be calling me a sexist.

They'll say that I objectify women. I do, by the way. All the time I do. I'm not sorry. I'm going to keep doing it. And you're going to call me every single word except for one. And that's wrong. Other than what you're doing right now,

because it's not working. And to be honest with you, I don't really want all of them to go. I've said this multiple times. I do. There's tons of writers that I like. I do. And the minute that some of these folks

start to wake up to some of this stuff is the minute things can get a little bit better. And I genuinely hope that they do. So hopefully some writers found some gleam of solid information in here a little bit of advice that they might take into their writing or maybe they take into their YouTube career or whatever it might be.

Who knows? Thank you guys for watching. You guys did enjoy the video. Share the video. Like the video. Comment down below. Make sure you guys subscribe. I don't know how they're going to learn anything

that's going to help them doing DoorDash, but maybe I don't know. Maybe they can explain. Yeah, how is, well, maybe if they play a game like a crazy taxi or whatever, maybe they'd understand. channel so that I can go past Kataku. Yeah. Outside of that, stay cool, stay

righteous, stay safe, catch me on Twitch and I'll smell you guys later. That was a good video. I think he pretty much, he explained it like he's not even as harsh as I am about gaming journalism. Like I, I view a lot of journalists and journalism as the

active enemy of the people. And I think that they actively try to misrepresent, misconstrue, and mislead audiences and they actively work against the public. Enemies of the state. I mean, I wouldn't say they're enemies of the state, but I think that they are enemies of the truth. I think there's definitely that.

And so, yeah, but let's see here, Kevin Smith on Theo Von Scho. Oh, do you remember when I said if Kevin Smith went on Theo von Scho would have a million views? That's crazy. Wow. Wow. What a surprise. Look at that. It's fucking obvious. Everybody knows it. Yeah, duh.

Yeah, genius. Yeah, I'm not a wizard for knowing that. I'm just, I'm normal. Anyway, do you think there's deliberate efforts in the gaming industry to mute voices? Yes. I think that the gaming journalism industry absolutely tried to bully and mute people that disagreed with them. They 100% did that. And that's one of the reasons why I am not sympathetic at all to them whenever bad things happen to them.

It's because you actively use this as a weapon, and now the weapon is being used against you. And, you know, you get what you fucking deserve.