This current buy will end in mass layoffs and an extra homogenizing of business opinions.
IGN has bought the Gamer Community. The Gamer Community, for many who don’t know, is comprised of various completely different shops that lots of you may actively learn every day, together with GamesIndustry.biz, Eurogamer, RockPaperShotgun, and Hookshot. Hookshot alone handles a number of websites which can be, once more, possible 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 mother or father firm Ziff Davis. What does that imply? Layoffs, naturally. Website closures are doable, too. Nasty issues which were impacting the sport business itself will quickly be spreading all through the journalism facet of the enterprise. And whereas this alone is miserable information, I might argue the extra nefarious challenge 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 various who confer with mainstream information websites as entry media as a result of they’re shops which have, properly, entry. Entry to media corporations that provide early entry to video games, films, and TV reveals, 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 best way these media corporations need you to, unexpectedly that entry can evaporate. Now think about this paradigm in a world the place as an alternative 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 laborious to consider that company affect isn’t going to mitigate how freely writers might be to voice their opinions. Now don’t get me improper, I’m not accusing Ziff Davis of silencing anybody, I’m merely saying that one entity ruling a lot of the video games journalism business 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 seeking to stability opinions about, say, a recreation evaluation by evaluations throughout a number of web sites. Should 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 critiques on a single recreation when, maybe, one or two would do. Which saves the company cash by slicing working prices, definitely, however in flip limits the number of thought that readers are searching for.
It additionally doesn’t appear possible 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 staff which can 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 business, I’ll all the time desire extra opinions to much less.
Even in an ideal world the place exterior influences by no means influence information protection, it positively turns into so much more durable to consider that form 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 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 unfavorable one. I think I’m not alone.
Whereas I hope for one of the 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 an enormous firm swoops in, buys a bunch of smaller ones, after which begins consolidating. In an business like video games journalism, freedom of thought is paramount with a purpose to maintain narratives about video games sincere. Shoppers have a proper to know when video games suck, when video games are nice, when corporations are making selections that go in opposition to shopper needs, and on and on. If the business retains shrinking, as an alternative, discovering honesty goes to change into more durable and more durable. These days, the place digital manipulation of public discourse is so frequent, that’s a daunting proposition.