First off I need to address that it has been a few days since my last initial blog post. Given how I'm somewhat new to personal blogging, I don't know if there's an exact protocol that needs to be followed when it comes to posting content since I assume that folks should be given a reason to actually visit and read my rubbish.
My delay in posting anything isn't a sign of negligence on my part, nor is it a warning sign that all is not well with my new gaming site. Unfortunately, my girlfriend for the last six years, who is also the mother of my 1 year-old daughter, was hospitalized for nearly two weeks due to a blood infection. So while I myself have been recovering from my own sudden flu incident, I've been tending to my girlfriend and of course been raising my sixteen month old daughter.
Now let's chat about some actual business in my typical way as I'll be calling people out and blowing up spots. As many of you no doubt know, the ever wonderful media event that is E3 2014 is nearly upon us. Being someone that has deeply been into video games for as long as I can remember, I must say that it was amazing when I first attended E3 myself since it lived up to the hype and hoopla I witnessed on the GameSpot streams or on G4 (RIP).
The problem it seems with E3 now is that it's such an easy target to generate hype prior to the event actually happening. Obviously the point of various publishers or PR companies is to generate hype for their games through early announcements or teases, yet actual game "journalists" will jump on any sort of E3 rumor for the obvious reason: to generate hits. It’s understandable for a site to drum up some hype in order to generate revenue via ad clicks or what have you, though seeing sites like DualShockers, GamingBolt, or OnlySP essentially post every possible rumor that is floating around is simply disheartening and it essentially takes games journalism ten steps backwards from whatever progress it may have made.
Sure, a site like DualShockers may preface their story by saying the details they’ve heard are “rumors”, but why bother posting something like that in the first place? Stuff like the recent Sony E3 conference details that “leaked” sound cool in theory, yet it’s obvious that it’s nothing more than a bunch of crap that will never happen since it’s playing up to every possible thing a Sony fan would want to see. Would it be awesome to see The Last Guardian make an appearance at E3 this year? Damn right it would, but there’s no way in hell that it’s going to be a 2014 title on any platform. The same goes for a new Wipeout game on the PS4. Why would Sony close Studio Liverpool and cancel a Wipeout PS4 game that was in early development only to reactivate the project again under a different studio? Wouldn’t it be easier to just let Studio Liverpool do business as usual, and perhaps make a few cutbacks, rather than stopping and starting up a project over the course of two years? But alas, sites like DualShockers will throw away whatever credibility they have in order to get some hits and have a dozen or so sites link back to them.
I’ll admit that I used to post rumor articles back in the day so I’m not going to act like I’m some sort of high and mighty chap that has never done any wrong. After all, posting rumors is a natural part of the games journalism business more or less since there have been some credible leaks from folks such as CBOAT and Ntkrnl on NeoGAF. The main problem I have with how most sites go about posting rumor articles is that it seems like they have no common sense as far as taking a second to think, “Could this really be legit or is it just pure wankery at its finest?” It’s also somewhat sad to me to see sites like GameSpot, which I actually still enjoyed post the infamous Jeff Gerstmann incident, to jump on the rumor bandwagon and go hog-wild by posting articles about everything. Does a site like GameSpot really need to go that avenue to gain hits given their other content (reviews, features, video content)?
It’s true that not every gaming site out there will post a crap rumor article, but it does seem like it’s an easy enough thing to do, thus a lot of sites will actually do that. I think getting excited about potential gaming reveals is a natural thing since we all like to get hyped about what sort of megaton or surprise may be made, however I would greatly appreciate if more writers exhibited some common sense and restraint as opposed to selling their integrity for the sake of getting a high CPM.
In other news: progress on the new has been a bit slow as of late for the obvious reasons. I still would like to get the site up and running more or less around August or early September, but I’m staying realistic in knowing that I’ll have a crapton of work to do in the coming weeks and months to build the type of site that I actually want to do.
That said, if anyone out there is interested in potentially working on the site either in a writer, tech aid, or other capacity then just let me know. I definitely would like to have a proper staff of writers so if you want to talk about games and let your voice be heard then shoot me a message either here or on Twitter. I’m not looking for people that have prior experience in writing, though it is a bonus, so if anyone is looking to break into the biz more or less then I’m certainly willing to help a chap out.
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