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 various completely different retailers that a lot of you would possibly actively learn each day, together with GamesIndustry.biz, Eurogamer, RockPaperShotgun, and Hookshot. Hookshot alone handles a number of websites which might be, once more, seemingly day by 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 have been impacting the sport trade itself will quickly be spreading all through the journalism facet of the enterprise. And whereas this alone is miserable information, I’d argue the extra nefarious situation at hand is the additional homogenizing of thought in video games journalism that’s more likely to come up from a transfer like this.
There are lots of who consult with mainstream information websites as entry media as a result of they’re retailers which have, effectively, entry. Entry to media firms that provide early entry to video games, motion pictures, and TV exhibits, unique entry to expertise for issues like interviews, and so forth. And for those who don’t play ball and report or react to the information the best way these media firms need you to, unexpectedly 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 exhausting to consider that company affect isn’t going to mitigate how freely writers can be to voice their opinions. Now don’t get me mistaken, 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 have a look at how this acquisition is being described as producing redundancies inside Ziff Davis. It definitely doesn’t really feel like a redundancy for readers trying to stability opinions about, say, a sport overview by taking a look at evaluations throughout a number of web sites. For those who’re an organization that owns ten of these web sites, nonetheless, there would possibly start to be questions on whether or not or not it’s financially essential to have ten web sites writing critiques on a single sport when, maybe, one or two would do. Which saves the company cash by reducing working prices, definitely, however in flip limits the number of thought that readers are on the lookout for.
It additionally doesn’t appear seemingly that individuals who will lose jobs on account of these so-called redundancies are very appreciative of this homogenizing, both. As a result of within the eyes of an organization, that’s the suitable strategy to describe the scenario of staff which might be 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 definitely have qualms with a few of the high quality of writing I see within the trade, I’ll all the time choose extra opinions to much less.
Even in an ideal world the place exterior influences by no means impression information protection, it positively turns into rather a lot tougher to consider that kind of factor isn’t taking place when info dissemination turns into so centralized. With issues like bot farms getting used to control public narratives about all types of various matters, 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 detrimental one. I think I’m not alone.
Whereas I hope for the perfect, I don’t see something good coming from this deal in the long term. It’s at this level a story as previous as time, the place an enormous 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 with a purpose to preserve narratives about video games sincere. Customers have a proper to know when video games suck, when video games are nice, when firms are making selections that go towards client needs, and on and on. If the trade retains shrinking, as a substitute, discovering honesty goes to change into tougher and tougher. These days, the place digital manipulation of public discourse is so frequent, that’s a daunting proposition.