This current buy will lead to mass layoffs and an additional homogenizing of trade opinions.
IGN has bought the Gamer Community. The Gamer Community, for individuals who don’t know, is comprised of plenty of totally different retailers that lots of you may actively learn each day, together with GamesIndustry.biz, Eurogamer, RockPaperShotgun, and Hookshot. Hookshot alone handles a number of websites which are, once more, doubtless each day reads for many, together with Nintendo Life and Time Extension. And now, all of those publications are underneath one umbrella.
As GIB notes, this acquisition has resulted in a number of redundancies throughout IGN father or mother firm Ziff Davis. What does that imply? Layoffs, naturally. Web site closures are doable, too. Nasty issues which were impacting the sport trade itself will quickly be spreading all through the journalism aspect of the enterprise. And whereas this alone is miserable information, I’d argue the extra nefarious concern at hand is the additional homogenizing of thought in video games journalism that’s prone to come up from a transfer like this.
There are numerous who seek advice from mainstream information websites as entry media as a result of they’re retailers which have, nicely, entry. Entry to media corporations that provide early entry to video games, films, and TV exhibits, unique entry to expertise for issues like interviews, and so forth. And in the event you don’t play ball and report or react to the information the way in which these media corporations need you to, swiftly that entry can evaporate. Now think about this paradigm in a world the place as a substitute of ten web sites being run independently of each other, they’re all owned by a single entity. That’s not a comforting thought.
As video games journalism shrinks, so too does the number of opinions that readers are going to see. If a single entity can personal a minimal of ten different information websites, as is the case now with Ziff Davis, it turns into arduous to imagine that company affect isn’t going to mitigate how freely writers shall be to voice their opinions. Now don’t get me fallacious, I’m not accusing Ziff Davis of silencing anybody, I’m merely saying that one entity ruling a lot of the video games journalism trade by its nature is limiting.
Simply take a look at how this acquisition is being described as producing redundancies inside Ziff Davis. It actually doesn’t really feel like a redundancy for readers seeking to steadiness opinions about, say, a recreation evaluate by evaluations throughout a number of web sites. In the event you’re an organization that owns ten of these web sites, nevertheless, there may start to be questions on whether or not or not it’s financially essential to have ten web sites writing opinions on a single recreation when, maybe, one or two would do. Which saves the company cash by reducing working prices, actually, however in flip limits the number of thought that readers are in search of.
It additionally doesn’t appear doubtless that individuals who will lose jobs because of these so-called redundancies are very appreciative of this homogenizing, both. As a result of within the eyes of a company, that’s the suitable approach to describe the state of affairs of employees which are being laid off. They’re eliminating redundancies, they’re reimagining departments, they’re downsizing, they’re restructuring, and each different nauseating little bit of corporate-speak they’ll consider to sugarcoat sending folks to the unemployment line. Whereas I actually have qualms with a number of the high quality of writing I see within the trade, I’ll at all times choose extra opinions to much less.
Even in an ideal world the place outdoors influences by no means affect information protection, it positively turns into lots more durable to imagine that type of factor isn’t occurring when data dissemination turns into so centralized. With issues like bot farms getting used to control public narratives about all types of various subjects, and the aforementioned risk of entry impacting the integrity of reporting, notion issues. And the notion I’ve of all these web sites being underneath the purview of IGN is a damaging one. I believe I’m not alone.
Whereas I hope for the very best, I don’t see something good coming from this deal in the long term. It’s at this level a story as outdated as time, the place a giant firm swoops in, buys a bunch of smaller ones, after which begins consolidating. In an trade like video games journalism, freedom of thought is paramount to be able to hold narratives about video games trustworthy. Customers have a proper to know when video games suck, when video games are nice, when corporations are making selections that go in opposition to client needs, and on and on. If the trade retains shrinking, as a substitute, discovering honesty goes to grow to be more durable and more durable. This present day, the place digital manipulation of public discourse is so frequent, that’s a daunting proposition.
