Gee, I wonder why it’s all AI generated horseshit from press releases these days.
The writing was on the wall when Jeff Gerstmann was fired over a bad review back in 2007. The whole game journalism industry has been on life support since then, and realistically been shafted ever since we went from purchased magazines to online.
Even then magazines would find themselves without timely review copies if they were not sympathetic to the need for good reviews.
It’s all about the money. When they give honest bad reviews they’ll end up not being invited to play early review copies, thus missing out and falling behind on the wave.
I think true journalism hardly exists anymore. Feels like most genuine reviews come from people that aren’t paid to do the reviews by either the site/magazine publisher they’re working for or the developer/publisher offering the game for review.
So many articles on big websites feel like they read entirely like AI-generated content. Some don’t even bother to hide it, they might just as well be old school RSS-feeds at this point.
you could repurpose this headline to literally any creative or journalistic industry these days. “x industry is being propped up by underpaid freelancers” is just a fact of life now. it’s just so much cheaper when you don’t owe them any benefits or dignity or anything at all in fact.
It’s also possible that he did say all of those things and they’re only changing the story due to the negative reception. It’s a Sony site/interview after all.
Technically it’s possible, but the article includes the transcript that Druckmann himself posted, so that would mean he is faking a transcript to call out Sony’s edits to what he said.
It’s funny that Aftermath is writing about bad game journalism practices when they themselves have an initial “you must register to read our articles,” but then after registration, hit you with an actual hard paywall after a couple of articles.
If they want to paywall their content, that is their prerogative, but they could at least be up-front about it, instead of only telling me about it after I went through the trouble of creating an account.
Honestly, I hadn’t realized there was a paywall on the article after having signed up a couple weeks ago.
I’ll actually avoid posting their articles here then. Thanks for the callout.
Edit: Though I’m still interested in hearing about where they are hypocritical. People keep saying Aftermath writers say paywalls are bad, but I haven’t seen that anywhere that I’ve noticed.
I quite enjoy this site. On my journey to replace a lot of my content consumption with RSS feeds, Aftermath found a home in my RSS reader. We are human and humans can be hypocrites but there’s no need to dismiss an entire publication because of a single author’s hypocritical stance.
I may be in the minority here, but I still like Phil Spencer… I feel like he’s a good dude who has been hamstrung by Microsoft from a larger overall management angle.
He’s certainly better than Don Mattrick, but admittedly Xbox has continued to suffer even after Don left.
Every time I saw an interview with Phil, he was amicable, seemed to actually understand game dev and the challenges, and he pushed to do things like Game Pass which have largely been successful.
Meanwhile Don was the guy who tried to copy off Nintendo’s motion gaming, pushed for making the Xbox do TV shit moreso than be a fun gaming console, and essentially said “get a 360” when people complained about lack of reliable internet access potentially preventing their ability to play any XB1 game.
Just because Don was bad, doesn’t make Phil good. He did a lot right at the start, but in the last few years he has basically driven Xbox as a brand into the ground. He’s the one that has pushed “everything is an Xbox” which basically means they have no product. Even the Xbox handheld is just a product from a different company with an Xbox logo slapped on.
He also pushed the primary focus of the company into a subscription service, rather than being a platform to play games. Not to mention, Microsoft has spent the last couple of years buying up a ton of competitors, only to shut down a ton of them and lay off the devs. Ultimately, I think he puts on this persona of being a “gamer” like you. But it’s clear by the actions of the company that he’s just another suit destroying the industry for profit.
True that no matter what - Phil IS a CEO, which means he’s not a good dude… but I guess I just look at it as shades of gray.
I think Microsoft decided it doesn’t want to do ANY kind of hardware, because of how poorly they did both in the X era, and in international markets like Japan…
And like you said - if Xbox becomes a brand rather than an actual piece of hardware, then there’s no reason to buy an Xbox. I had a 360 starting right before Halo 3 came out in 2007, but with every single one of their games being fully multi-platform with ZERO exclusives I never had a reason to get any of their systems after my original Elite.
Don Mattrick left Xbox in 2013. It was more than a decade ago. He may have ruined the XOne launch, but Spencer has had all the time and money in the world to rectify his mistakes and, so far, has only worsened them to the point that most doubt that a new Xbox will exist at all. Nintendo was on the brink of disaster after the Wii U, and managed to turn their fates around in half the time and with a fraction of the money. Why couldn’t Spencer?
In all these years, Spencer’s legacy has been of failed deals, shutting down/letting go multiple studios, and moronic attempts at building AAA and GAAS games on the back of seasonal contractors. We should stop blaming Mattrick for things that happened a decade after he left the company.
Don Mattrick left Xbox in 2013. It was more than a decade ago. He may have ruined the XOne launch, but Spencer has had all the time and money in the world to rectify his mistakes and, so far, has only worsened them to the point that most doubt that a new Xbox will exist at all.
Xbox’s brand was one that gained all of its clout basically as a result of Halo for the original console, and then pretty much almost the entirety of the 360 era. Damaging a brand is easy to do, and the consequences are long-standing. True that plenty of time has passed… but I still think that the main issue is that Microsoft is still pulling the strings that damage the Xbox brand.
Nintendo was on the brink of disaster after the Wii U, and managed to turn their fates around in half the time and with a fraction of the money. Why couldn’t Spencer?
Because Nintendo is completely independent, and is controlled wholly by their own CEO… they are not a division of a larger shitty company interested in Copilot and Window 11 subscriptions.
In all these years, Spencer’s legacy has been of failed deals, shutting down/letting go multiple studios, and moronic attempts at building AAA and GAAS games on the back of seasonal contractors. We should stop blaming Mattrick for things that happened a decade after he left the company.
I’m not blaming Mattrick DIRECTLY for anything that’s happened in the last 10 years… but I AM blaming Microsoft as a whole probably forcing Phil’s hands, based on the interviews I watched with both Mattrick and Phil back in the day.
I really do think Phil likes games and is basically having to fly a plane that Microsoft keeps taking away parts from. I don’t think someone who actually worked on games like Phil did early in his career wanted to close the studio that made HiFi Rush.
Maybe I’m wrong, but I’d love to see some evidence showing Phil coming across as even half as bad as ANY interview or stage presentation with Mattrick.
Unfortunately, Microsoft is bigger than 1 good dude. Remember when this one executive threatened to pull MS out of an entire nation because the CMA had an objection regarding the ABK merger? For every one Phil, there are probably 9 of these rich pricks.
Luke Plunkett asking the real questions. It must be nice to be a CEO, just failing constantly with the security that you will continue to make millions per year for years to come. If I made this many miscalculations in my job I’d be unemployed within 6 months.
As a person that has grown up in a poorer country I never have played any nintendo games as a child so I don’t have that nostalgia factor. The recent nintendo games I’ve tried were just okay, nothing to write home about in my opinion. I really cannot grasp why these people with hundreds of nintendo merch do what they do, is the feeling of nostalgia really such a great factor?
Same, old NES and SNES were pretty good for its era but for the last 30 years nintendo managed to produce exactly one game series i mildly wanted to play, Fire Emblem, and ever since i played it on emulator recently that want disappeared, it wasn’t even very fun.
They have a lot of perfectly fine games. If they were priced appropriately.
Mario, Donkey Kong, Metroid are all pretty good 2D platformers (with Metroid obviously being one of the original sources of metroidvania as a genre). But tech has advanced to the point that one person, or a small team, can make 2D games every bit as good as theirs, many small teams have (with better art in some cases), and there are many better options that start at lower prices than their “huge discount mega-sale” price of $40-45, and discount even further beyond that.
Their games sell well enough, so clearly it works on some level, but it’s just generally doesn’t make a lot of sense to get a game like Metroid Dread over a game like Ori or Hollow Knight. Games aren’t fungible, and I get that, but I genuinely think a lot of indie games are better, better looking, and much more substantial than a lot of their 2D offerings.
For those who’ve been paying attention, this has been known a long time. Remember when Nintendo would falsely claim gaming videos on YT and take all of the earnings just because one of their games made an appearance?
It’s wildly underpaid and the developers are highly highly skilled devs. They work in game dev because they want to, but the money isn’t there. Most game developers are working at tiny studios hoping for a break.
The shame of it is this kinda the way she goes for passion jobs like game dev. Similarly, EMS is a chronically underpaid career. Not for lack of difficulty or skills required, but because people want to do it. That desire to help others only translates into an ability to underpay people for the privilege. There’s a nobility to wanting to dedicate your life to helping people despite the lack of pay. A nobility that is happily exploited by private equity.
A new Mario, Zelda, metroid is what ninten does? Well, I suppose the article is technically correct. Shame the company is a dinosaur with draconian beliefs.
Indeed. I own a Nintendo Switch and Breath of the Wild but Nintendo says I’m not allowed to play it on my Steam Deck. I guess that’s the last time I buy something from them. Their games really are amazing though so it’s a shame.
After the emulation debacle I’ve promised myself I wouldn’t spend money with Nintendo anymore. As you say, a shame, because I was considering getting Botw but…
This is something I've noticed for a while now, but haven't been able to really describe. This shift away from clickbait headlines towards cryptic headlines that just refuse to tell you what they're talking about. Like The Best Part of Alan Wake Is Now On Youtube or The Best Soulslike Of 2023 Just Got Easier. And those are just a few that I've seen today. Maybe it will fade away like the worst clickbait headlines did or they'll just keep getting so cryptic and opaque that one day the headlines will be: Something Just Happened.
I’ve literally taken to pasting the articles into GPT and asking it to summarize the articles. I imagine they will be the next causality in the coming AI wars.
I would honestly be inclined to pay for a non bs news service, no clickbait titles, no SEO bs in the article which makes it 30 times as long for no reason. Just facts
I mean, they are literally clickbait. They want you to wonder what the best part of Alan Wake is or what the best soullike of 2023 is. It’s just an evolution of clickbait, but it’s still very much clickbait.
I thought they were more interesting than average, even when I disagreed with a take. The kind of site there should be a ton of, with varying takes for people to despise to a baffling degree. Sad to see it gone, or "gone" and turned intp a slop factory with known terrible working conditions for the people left.
Regardless of feelings about the people themselves, it's awful that they fired the union members probably deliberately at this point in the sale so they wouldn't have to go along with their contracts.
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