Actually, It's about Relocation in Games Journalism

[feelthedarkness]

Moving around every few years is the best way to get financial bumps. 

[chummer]

Sites playing musical chairs again, eh?

 

 

Odd, I got the feeling he was looking to spread is wings a bit further than that.

 

burn.

[tegan]

I can't believe you've done this. Why would you lie like that on the internet?

 

[eot]

Maybe he just wanted to work with Totilo again

[seamus2389]

Kotaku huh. 

 

Odd, I got the feeling he was looking to spread is wings a bit further than that.

 

I wonder what he can do there that he couldn't do at Giant Bomb?

 

 

Same. Though I've been impressed with a bunch of their long form articles I've gotten direct links too, I never go there on the reg. Maybe he just wants to do more writing and journalism and less video / podcasting.

 

I think it is the focus on writing. A couple years ago he mentioned wanting to have a freelance budget for writing which is 100% what GB isn't about. Kotaku is a better fit that way. 

 

There was a Kotaku podcast at one stage a couple of years ago, not sure how long it lasted.

 

Reading about the changes Kotaku are making - getting rid of previews, having writers cover specific games after they are out to see what happens with them (like with Pokemon and Smash) I do think they are dealing with changes in how to make money covering video games in a way that is very different from GB but potentially just as successful considering their pages views rising. 

[Reyturner]

That actually sounds interesting! Maybe I should start going there on the reg. 

[Pepyri]

I think it is the focus on writing. A couple years ago he mentioned wanting to have a freelance budget for writing which is 100% what GB isn't about. Kotaku is a better fit that way. 

 

There was a Kotaku podcast at one stage a couple of years ago, not sure how long it lasted.

 

Reading about the changes Kotaku are making - getting rid of previews, having writers cover specific games after they are out to see what happens with them (like with Pokemon and Smash) I do think they are dealing with changes in how to make money covering video games in a way that is very different from GB but potentially just as successful considering their pages views rising. 

 

I guess my problem is, I feel like the site has very little personality. I don't know who works there, other than Stephen, Patricia, and Klepek(Checking now, I see Kirk is still there. neat!). The layout and style of the content makes it difficult to tell instantly who is writing something, and as to that thing of having writers stay with certain games, they don't exactly make it easy to filter down to the games/personalities I want most.

 

And, frankly, trying to put personality out there via any means that doesn't include someone's voice immediately diminishes it by large factors.

 

Edit: Frankly, the entire design of Kotaku should probably be taken out back and shot:

 

 

Yeah, I sure need those ads for sites-I'm-not-on, and your "Discover More" hamburger menu should definitely have a big Powered by Kinja at the top, and then a bunch of links to blogs with literally no information about them at all.

 

Polygon's been around for what, 2 years now? The design on Kotaku is the kind of stuff a developer makes out of bootstrap in half a morning in the first week of development.

[Reyturner]

Hmm, 99% of what's on Kotaku is either day old /r/gaming content, youtube complications, gifs or albums of cosplayers. 

 

Though, you can craft a curated RSS feed by subscribing to the individual writer's kinja feeds. Maybe I'll do that. 

[tegan]

I still associate Kotaku with cakes, though I hear they've gotten a lot better about that.

[RubixsQube]

I like to think that Patrick Klepek being at Kotaku will be similar to how Tim Rogers (ostensibly) writes for them. I couldn't care less for how they pay the bills, really, with dumb articles about cosplay or old "news" reports from other sites. I just want a platform for the people I care about to get paid to write about video games. Patrick Klepek has a great voice, and cares about what I care about, and while I think it's sad that he left Giant Bomb (as now that website has zero content that I care about), it'll be great that he's paid to write anywhere. 

[Bjorn]

I wish I had a gaming news site that I actually enjoyed visiting.  Joystiq lost me at some point (a combination of the McElroy's leaving and the changed  comment system gutting the former regular community there).  Polygon never clicked with me as a place to browse news quickly.  The design just drives me away.  I always kind of associated Kotaku and Destructoid as being the trashy gaming sites (whether that was fair or not). 

 

Kotaku does seem to be trying to re-invent themselves.  I hope they pull off the transformation. 

[Pepyri]

I wish I had a gaming news site that I actually enjoyed visiting.  Joystiq lost me at some point (a combination of the McElroy's leaving and the changed  comment system gutting the former regular community there).  Polygon never clicked with me as a place to browse news quickly.  The design just drives me away.  I always kind of associated Kotaku and Destructoid as being the trashy gaming sites (whether that was fair or not). 

 

Kotaku does seem to be trying to re-invent themselves.  I hope they pull off the transformation. 

 

Polygon definitely has a design that isn't great for checking news quickly, but I enjoy reading their articles more than really anywhere else on the web. Even Vox, a site that uses a very similar structure, doesn't feel quite as 'right' for the natural reading experience.

 

But it's also pretty terrible for headlines, or following certain games.

[Apelsin]

Rock, Paper, Shotgun is fine I think, although any posts past the first page are a pain to find. 

[mikemariano]

I stopped reading Kotaku because of all the creepy stories about Brian Ashcraft's wife and her uncomfortable pregnancy circa 2010.  Ashcraft seemed to think that the more pain his wife was in, the stronger his son would be!

 

And the Gawker house style is awful—the clickbait and trolling articles are inextricable from any content you might want to read, and that's on purpose.

 

I have all Gawker sites killfiled and will never again see any of their content.  I've never heard from Nathan Grayson since he quit Rock Paper Shotgun and I'll never hear from Patrick Klepek, either.  Oh well!

 

 

I wish I had a gaming news site that I actually enjoyed visiting.  Joystiq lost me at some point (a combination of the McElroy's leaving and the changed  comment system gutting the former regular community there).  Polygon never clicked with me as a place to browse news quickly.  The design just drives me away.  I always kind of associated Kotaku and Destructoid as being the trashy gaming sites (whether that was fair or not). 

 

Kotaku does seem to be trying to re-invent themselves.  I hope they pull off the transformation. 

 

I have the Idle Thumbs forums and nowhere else!

[Thrik]

I've been reading Kotaku for the best part of a decade now, and I definitely think that there's been a marked increase in quality during the last year or so after what was a pretty long spell of mediocrity and mysterious viral headlines leading to uninspiring material.

I've seen the odd post here and there about how they've intentionally shifted their focus away from upcoming shit and more on what's already available, which seems good for me seeing as like many people I'm perpetually quite behind the curve and appreciate content that's a bit more timeless. I know that a lot of TV sites and such assign writers to show-specific 'beats' for ongoing in-depth analysis, and there seems to be something similar going on at Kotaku.

Whatever it is, I'm finding more of Kotaku's stuff enjoyable to read. There definitely seems to be less news and more random cool shit to read, which as pointed out above I can imagine does largely come from other sources like reddit. But frankly, I don't have the time to trawl the billion sub-reddits I might have an interest in, so it suits me fine to have sites curating that place and adding some fun narration on top.

[Architecture]

Well...

 

 

 

I wish I had a gaming news site that I actually enjoyed visiting.

Gamesindustry.biz, Euro & US Gamer are the best places to read anything about games at the moment. Between that and my podcast subscriptions, I've got all I could ever want.

[chummer]

Rock, Paper, Shotgun is fine I think, although any posts past the first page are a pain to find. 

 

I still really enjoy RPS and that's probably the only site I got to regularly as I'll often stumble upon a good freeware suggestion or neat article. (they recently had one extolling the virtues of Far Cry 2 and another on Tomb Raider mods). Other than that I have an RSS app that I scroll through every so often just to see what headlines are popping up. Twitter is probably my main source for news as I follow a few games peeps there.

[Merus]

Brian Ashcraft and, to a lesser extent, Luke Plunkett, are easily the worst that Kotaku has to offer. Kotaku's reputation would rise significantly if Bashcraft moved on.

 

Then again, if I'm reading Kotaku I mostly read the Australian edition, which has some great writers as well as a lot of Kotaku's content (though they refuse to republish some of Bashcraft's stuff.)

[Jake]

I've been reading Kotaku for the best part of a decade now, and I definitely think that there's been a marked increase in quality during the last year or so after what was a pretty long spell of mediocrity and mysterious viral headlines leading to uninspiring material.

I've seen the odd post here and there about how they've intentionally shifted their focus away from upcoming shit and more on what's already available, which seems good for me seeing as like many people I'm perpetually quite behind the curve and appreciate content that's a bit more timeless. I know that a lot of TV sites and such assign writers to show-specific 'beats' for ongoing in-depth analysis, and there seems to be something similar going on at Kotaku.

Whatever it is, I'm finding more of Kotaku's stuff enjoyable to read. There definitely seems to be less news and more random cool shit to read, which as pointed out above I can imagine does largely come from other sources like reddit. But frankly, I don't have the time to trawl the billion sub-reddits I might have an interest in, so it suits me fine to have sites curating that place and adding some fun narration on top.

 

I think it's because the Kotaku editoral staff got tired of feeling like their job was to direct-paste press releases and promote prelaunch hype. I'm very glad that their focus has moved almost entirely to review day and afterwards -- most writing about any given game at this point is about what the games respective communities have done with the game, or what is happening to it now that it is available. I honestly don't read much gaming news at all at this point (other than RTS) but I find Kotaku way more palatable than I used to.

 

Regardless of what you think of Kotaku collectively as a site, I suspect that when it comes to each individual person on staff, writing at Kotaku actually gives a person more freedom to work on outside projects than you'd get at, say, a huge entertainment conglomerate like CBSi. I wonder what corporate hoops Klepek had to jump through to clear doing that Lost Rewatch podcast he did for a while, for instance? I bet the number of hoops you have to jump through to launch a personal podcast side project as a Gawker staffer are zero.

[SecretAsianMan]

Regardless of what you think of Kotaku collectively as a site, I suspect that when it comes to each individual person on staff, writing at Kotaku actually gives a person more freedom to work on outside projects than you'd get at, say, a huge entertainment conglomerate like CBSi. I wonder what corporate hoops Klepek had to jump through to clear doing that Lost Rewatch podcast he did for a while, for instance? I bet the number of hoops you have to jump through to launch a personal podcast side project as a Gawker staffer are zero.

 

That seems to be what Patrick has in mind.  He's said that he still plans to continue Worth Reading and streaming horror games so at least two kinds of content that he made at GB will still be around in some form.  I wouldn't be surprised if he had other stuff planned too.

 

As for my personal opinion on Patrick being at Kotaku, I think it could be good because even though he was the "news guy" at GB, I never really thought of GB as a news site.  At the very least it's not the first place I'd check for that kind of thing.  Places like Polygon and Kotaku are my go-to's for checking on news stuff so it'll be nice to get more Klepek there.  My main concern is his voice getting somewhat lost in the crowd because frankly a lot of the time at Kotaku I have no idea who's writing what.  A lot of the time it doesn't matter to me.

[Stuart]

White guy video game journo musical chairs is real. Question is, what established game website is going to pick up another white dude from his previous gig now?

[gavku]

I still check Polygon but it seems to be turning into an ign/kotaku hybrid with slightly better comments.....seeing articles like http://www.polygon.com/2015/1/2/7481563/spider-man-3-sam-raimi-messed-up which is pretty much just dialogue ripped from a Nerdist podcast just adds to noise on that site I dont care about.

 

Might have to keep an eye on kotaku now Patrick's there....

 

 

[Architecture]

Polygon has always been hit or miss, and they managed to ruin The Interview with an alarmist headline prior to the film's release. Regardless of one's interest in the film, it's a bad way to do business.

 

I also find Ben Kuchera nigh insufferable, even if his editorials have unintentional comedic value.

 

I'm a fan of Mr. Klepek's writing, but I've always avoided Kotaku for the aforementioned reasons other people stated in this thread. Unfortunately, his migration isn't likely to get me to change my habits. I do wish him the best, however.

[Deadpan]

White guy video game journo musical chairs is real. Question is, what established game website is going to pick up another white dude from his previous gig now?

 

Very true, but I'm still working out how I feel about it in the case of Klepek. He's shown awareness of these issues and a lot of commitment to reaching down and helping other people up, promoting other people's work. To compile those "Worth Reading" articles on Giant Bomb, he probably had to wade through several times the material he ended up including, and I doubt those we're ever particularly popular. Just something he probably felt was important to do regardless, and I have a lot of respect for that.

 

Maybe that doesn't make it better. Maybe it's actually worse that the result of a guy promoting the work of women and other marginalized folk is that that guy gets promoted instead of any of the people he points to. I really hope at least GB does something differently this time, but it seems much more likely we're looking at another case of people getting preemptively mad at Samantha Allen even though she didn't even apply for the job.

 

 

I think it's because the Kotaku editoral staff got tired of feeling like their job was to direct-paste press releases and promote prelaunch hype. I'm very glad that their focus has moved almost entirely to review day and afterwards -- most writing about any given game at this point is about what the games respective communities have done with the game, or what is happening to it now that it is available. I honestly don't read much gaming news at all at this point (other than RTS) but I find Kotaku way more palatable than I used to.

 

Kotaku has been doing a lot of smart stuff in recent times, especially that transition to post-launch coverage, and I still can't work out how I feel about them on the whole. They're throwing a lot of stuff at the wall hoping that some will stick. If you look only at the wall, I guess they're a very decent site. If you look only at the pile of garbage on the floor, they seem like quite the mess. Probably the truth is somewhere in between? Perhaps it's not the best approach to look at it as a(n in)coherent whole though, because of the freedom that its writers generally enjoy.

[BadHat]

Hmm. Not sure how to feel about this, I already mentioned I'm not the biggest Kotaku fan in another thread. Then again I haven't made a real effort to browse their front page recently so maybe I should give them another shot before I totally disregard them. Still, if this gives Patrick the freedom to write more interesting content, and he keeps highlighting interesting stuff with things like Worth Reading, I'll keep following him.

 

Hmm, 99% of what's on Kotaku is either day old /r/gaming content, youtube complications, gifs or albums of cosplayers.  

 

Though, you can craft a curated RSS feed by subscribing to the individual writer's kinja feeds. Maybe I'll do that. 

 

I threw his Kinja page into my RSS reader and it seems to just be showing me his comments completely out of context. 

 

Then again, if I'm reading Kotaku I mostly read the Australian edition, which has some great writers as well as a lot of Kotaku's content (though they refuse to republish some of Bashcraft's stuff.)

 

How do you see the US front page? I just noticed it redirects me to the australian site and I don't see an option to switch back...

 

Edit: I tricked it into working with a proxy extension I use. Good lord what is this layout. Oh god, I can't convince my eyes to focus on anything. Where does one article end and another begin. Aahhhhhh.