Journalism used to be a lucrative career for most, but with the death of print and blogs “cheapening” the entry barrier to be part of the press, it seems that most parlay their infamy in the press circles into careers in the industry. Not that this is a bad thing—I have no qualms about people trying to make a living—but it does bother me a bit if getting future career opportunities is a primary motivator.

Locally however, it’s a whole different ballgame. PR agents and marketing folk don’t really seem to know how to handle the press, choosing to either blackball or ignore outlets that posit any sort of criticism to the products that they represent. Most tech and gaming blogs out there straight up copy and paste press releases without any sort of meaningful analysis. The worst part of this (in my experience) is the cronyism. Some companies simply won’t work with you unless you know “someone on the inside.”

Since companies are content to hand press releases only to select outlets in their social group, and said outlets are also content to post these releases as-is, it creates a disgustingly positive feedback loop. Nobody really helps anybody out.

This is an issue that affects us as we continue to grow our readership. I know of the strength of our work (thank you for reading through our archives!) and am very proud of what we’ve accomplished so far in terms of criticism and analysis. The site’s been completely funded out of pocket so far, but I know full well that won’t be sustainable in the future.

Apart from our own local terms, I think about these issues in the “Western” perspective as well. I write for a volunteer US outlet, and I can only imagine how it must be actually doing it for a living. There’s a reason even the biggest sites continue to use unpaid contributors to make their “filler” content, like (ugh) lists. Then you have the sites that are backed by megacorporations to make their snazzy documentaries, constantly change review scores, and act as apologists for the shitty practices of games companies.

It appears practically exclusive to the games medium where people who are supposed to be the watchmen themselves become part of the industry– see the masses of people using outlets as stepping stones to make games. Seems like a conflict of interest to shill for the corporations that you’re supposed to be critiquing.

Rock, Paper, Shotgun seems to be the last big site that actually puts their writing and their writers and actual journalism at the forefront, as evidenced by John Walker’s response to Ben Kuchera’s assertions. I’m glad Destructoid remains independent, as well, especially since GiantBomb was quite hilariously and ironically bought by GameSpot.

Incidentally, we also number four over here at Kambyero. Apat dapat? Aha.

As someone who’s tangentially worked in games journalism in the US, I believe there’s an underlying financial reason behind the impassioned debate for or against site ads, advertorials, and cosplay clickbait. People who work in the editorial side of games journalism—to put it bluntly—get paid shit. To put that into perspective, the average editor’s salary for an online publication is about $25,000 less than the US’ average, median wage.

The recent (final, and merciful) demise of 1up just underscores that fact; ultimately gaming sites are entities owned by larger companies who (sadly) could give less than two shits about the wacky and kooky personalities their audiences care about.

I started a blog with three of my friends mostly because we work boring desk jobs and have a lot of downtime to write about our nerdy obsessions. We run ads on the site to cover hosting, domain, and advertising costs. I say advertising because—as we learned—good content is almost secondary to actually having eyeballs on your site in the first place. Haven’t quite cracked what makes the average Filipino reader tick; it seems (from looking at more popular sites) like regurgitating press releases and posting photos of underage cosplayers is what draws readers in.

Congratulations on the site — seriously spent a good hour scouring through the archives. I’m glad that there are more outlets covering the “srs” side of games journalism here in the Philippines.

As for your second point, I feel ya (and Eastwood). But I don’t think it’s accidental either that most games set in dystopian worlds feature a protagonist who isn’t from that world. Jack came from topside, and Corvo is a native Serkonan who moved to Dunwall. Could this be a device to help ease the player/ character’s choice of letting the rotten world burn?

Thanks for reading!

All the same, thanks for reading!