I'm very fortunate to have a job that lets me regularly write about video games and enjoy health care. I worked hard to get here, but I'm also lucky to have this chance. So it's been absolutely demoralizing to see countless other talented video game journalists lose their opportunities as wave after wave of layoffs rips through the industry, silencing veterans and denying newcomers. It doesn't have to be this way.
Even if you don't think you care about video game journalism, you should. Video games are art, and the video game community as a whole is so much poorer without a strong media that's able to champion and critique that art. That media can't exist without support for its workers.
What Is Happening to Video Games Journalism?
You can say this is a bit inside baseball, and honestly, I wish it was, but the current layoff nightmare is by no means exclusive to folks who write about video games. PCMag covers tech news, so that means we've written about thousands of people losing their jobs at Amazon, Meta, Microsoft, and Twitter. These massive corporations sucked up so much cash, especially during the height of the pandemic, and yet have "no choice" but to put an unconscionable number of employees out of work as they "get ahead of the recession."
But video games are what I care about and what I follow, which means paying attention to my peers in this space. It also means seeing a soul-crushing succession of news stories detailing the latest publication that suddenly decides to "scale back."
In the past few months, we've seen layoffs at Fanbyte, GameSpot, Gamur Group, Giant Bomb, Vox Media, The Washington Post, and other outlets. Sometimes only a few people were let go; sometimes entire websites ceased to exist. But no matter the layoff scale or the amount of attention it received, at least one person lost their job and suffered the potentially life-threatening consequences that follow.
Left Behind
These fatal wounds to video game journalism don't just hurt these writers and editors, they hurt games and they hurt readers (and viewers and listeners) who care about games. We're rapidly losing our smartest voices, and it's killing our ability to regularly have the intelligent and meaningful conversations that help games and players grow. When we build up game media, we draw more attention to small projects that deserve more love. We openly criticize big projects that deserve more scorn. We step back and examine a game's bigger potential role in society. We speak to hard-core enthusiasts as well as the curious mainstream. We aren't force-fed corporate marketing points or fanboy misinformation. Why throw that all away?
In a way, this crisis mirrors the ongoing video game preservation crisis. It's a similar gross disrespect for history and the value of institutional knowledge. We need to honor the past to move forward into the future. Just as we can't keep erasing old games, we also can't keep preventing writers from having lengthy careers covering games. We can't keep preventing them from gaining the perspective and communicating the wisdom that such a long career would provide.
There will always be people so passionate about video games that they'll want to share those thoughts with the world, even if they have to be exploited to do so. But those people deserve job security. They deserve a healthy and stable labor landscape that recognizes them as human beings with careers that need fostering. They're not just AI that happens to be made of meat. Companies should do right by their employees, or audiences (or unions) should force them to. Otherwise, things will just get worse. We've already seen a growing chorus of former games journalists discouraging aspiring writers from entering the field, saying things like, "Just treat it like a hobby instead." We can't all strike gold as Twitch streamers.
Video Games Need Video Game Journalism
This is a gigantic bummer because a better world is possible—a vibrant and talkative games community that flourishes free from capitalism's most crushing restraints. When you get a glimpse of it, it's beautiful. I saw it at the most recent New York Video Game Awards, where thoughtful writers from across all publications came together to discuss and celebrate gaming's best. And I also hope you'll see it in my upcoming book, Video Game of the YearVideo Game of the Year, where dozens of outstanding writers contribute their own arguments for the best games of all time.
Video games are a hugely popular and profitable industry. Millions of people play games and care about video game coverage. Letting video game journalism slip away isn't just a tremendous loss; it's nonsensical. To everyone who lost their jobs, best of luck. I'm sorry we failed you.