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GameSpy And IGN To Merge
Bagels writes "'I had a big company, and he had a big company, and now we have a very big company.' This very appropriate Simpsons quote begins IGN's announcement regarding its imminent merger with GameSpy Industries, their former rival. GameSpy has its own announcement about this, as well. The official press release claims the companies' two websites will remain separate entities, and those websites will retain their original feel; the merger is mainly to pool the financial (and likely informational) resources of the two companies. The merger will be completed in the first half of 2004 - SpyGN, anyone?"
so now we get 2x as bad reviews... or do they just cancel each other out. Either way, the only good game reviews are those written by the individuals playing them... not trying to make money off reviewing/selling them.
Wouldnt you like to be a pepper too?
"The quality of IGN's articles is far beyond that of Gamespy's... Hopefully the Gamespy editorial staff gets downsized in the process, and thus forever freeing games.slashdot.org from stupid Gamespy filler articles." No, that would only lower the choices of stupid filler articles... Eventually we will accept the inevitable.
I think that the reviews on Gamespot.com are way better than ad hoc reviews *or* stuff on Gamespy and IGN. Also, their video features and clips are much more representative . . .
On one hand, with a single dominant company we are likely to get more visitors who are disenchanted with them. Before, manly people (not all, of course) went to IGN if they disliked GameSpy and vice versa; now they'll spread out over the smaller sites, and we are likely to get a piece of the pie. In addition, publishers will most likely catter to smaller sites more, as they won't stand idle while a marketing channel is getting monopolized.
On the other hand, this merger does have some negative effects on me as a reviewer and a gamer. First, the new company would have enough leverage to try to push us out of the gaming field or acquire us, mainly by signing exclusive deals with publishers. Second, they'll have much more resources to overhype a game, which will result into high-quality titles (adventures, wargames, turn-based strategies) being pushed even further into background, killing of their developers and offering a smaller choice of games for me.
those websites will retain their original feel;
I'm sorry, but IGN lost its original feel about a gazillion annoying ads ago.
Do they even have content anymore?
You can't take the sky from me...
You're incorrect. We went from having zero independent sources to having zero independent sources. IGN is the worst, with a notable proportion between a game's advertising and its review score. Gamespy's reviews have been better (their console reviews are quite decent), but they are the model for what's wrong with the Internet today.
Gamespy is the ultimate consumer-feeding media machine. You don't go to Gamespy to find out what's cool; you go to Gamespy to be told what's cool. It's the online equivalent of MTV, complete with drooling fandroids absorbing the mindless consumerism that the advertisers want. That's all Gamespy is--one large, expertly crafted advertisement. There's no original or meaningful contribution to the Internet there. They take mod/map authors' work and basically sell it (specifically, they sell bandwidth to it).
They cater to the absolute lowest denominator of the public. There is never an engaging idea, never a meaningful news item, rarely a forum conversation with a coherent theme on Gamespy. I could understand if it was mainly kids there (as it was in years past), but I'm honestly concerned about the state of gaming when I look at the intellectual midgets that populate Gamespy today.
I don't think people see it. It's right fucking there, all in the open. Read. A game being announced is news. A game being released is news. A game being patched is news. Never mind it was broken in the first place!
Each and every aspect of Gamespy has two purposes: the first, to gently shape the visitors' thought, to encourage them to buy; second, to show the advertisers what type of people visit Gamespy--those that can't differentiate between an advertisement and a news story!
Yes, I'm disappointed too. Not because two companies have turned to one, though. I'm disappointed by the fact that Gamespy has enough visitors (and hence ad revenue) to grow. Gamers of the past were more discriminate and more demanding from gaming journalism. This newest batch of gamers has shown a new trait. They don't think. They just listen.
"God is a comedian playing to an audience too afraid to laugh." -Voltaire
I could reinforce my arguement with links, but they would be to sites that don't exist anymore. There may be some true independant games journalism left on the Internet, but they won't be of sufficient size to matter. It's a complex situation: the game companies often give the exclusive previews and ad money to the pseudo-journalists like Gamespy. And people want that up-to-date content, slant and bias be damned.
"God is a comedian playing to an audience too afraid to laugh." -Voltaire