What has changed in the games media industry over the past 30 years?
Giant Bomb’s new Jeff, of the Grubb variety, was my guest on Thanks for the Knowledge last week. I had the pleasure to speak with Jeff Gerstmann this week. He recently quit the outlet he co-founded to start his own business. It was great to talk about 2022’s games through the lens of AEW. But I was also curious about Jeff Gerstmann’s thoughts on becoming an independent wrestler after nearly thirty years of wrestling.
Since I began paying more attention to games media, I believe it has changed in several key ways. This field has a lot more diversity than it did when I first started to pay attention in the mid-90s. While we still have a lot to do, I believe that there is an incredible variety of perspectives available to us through podcasts, print, and video. This is a wonderful and necessary thing. When I’m not chasing algorithms to feed myself, I think we are improving our journalistic worth. It’s amazing that we do so much business and labor reporting than any other time in the industry. It’s not possible to see the same (still slow) reckoning at large companies like Activision Blizzard without investigative reporting.
Jeff asked me what he felt like we had lost over the past 30 years. The podcast episode contains the entire discussion. However, I enjoyed Jeff bringing up Cory Barlog’s recent treatment and the God of War Ragnarok team. While this distance between the creator and their audience can be beneficial, it has also created an environment for abuse and harassment. This has been happening for over a decade. It’s not something new. However, the harassment directed at him and his team over the perceived murkiness of God of War‘s launch date was on our minds and I appreciate him raising it.
