Kotaku EIC Resigns Over New Editorial Edict - Aftermath
Kotaku EIC Jen Glennon resigned Thursday, citing a deprioritzation of news in favor of guides content at the G/O Media-owned gaming site.
aftermath.site
Kotaku has died, the owners want to convert it into a web for guides.
aftermath.site
wonder where are the days of either short or long text, but usually hard worked .txt files of Gamefaqs. I completed quite a few games or learnt amazing tips reading those Gamefaqs guides back then, from F-Zero games, to Halo, to Castlevania Symphony of the Night or Bloodstained Ritual of the Night, etc etc. They worked even if the formatting could be better.
Where I think current guides are usually better, formatting aside, is at explaining puzzles in adventure games like Deponia, Larry adventure games, etc.
Riddlewire
Regular
Gamefaqs is still my first destination when I get stuck in a game.
I can't see ever going to Kotaku for such help.
I can't see ever going to Kotaku for such help.
Garrett Weaving
Newcomer
An utter shame. Kotaku is one of the few "major" western websites that publishes critical reviews and opinion pieces. I hope some of the people working there find a job at a different venue.
There are definitely full game guides that are worked on passionately by gamers, that encompass vast information and attention to detail. There are a lot of sites though that simply focus on short form keyword search farming for clicks.
arandomguy
Veteran
Gamefaqs was just "volunteer" contributed content, and it's still there.
But the thing is if you are able and willing to do that these days why not just create content on youtube/twitch/etc. and make money and gain more notoriety for it?
I don't want to get to social commentary heavy on this but I know online discourse tends to just want to scapegoat businesses/corporations but seems to ignore what fundamentally drives people individually.
Dumb question; didn't Kotaku sucked and we hated them for buying/destroying all the decent sites a while back? I could have sworn I should be happy about this 'cept for the people put out of work.
Johnny Awesome
Veteran
Yes. The devil's in the details. They were probably losing their shirts being a news site. With all the YouTube content that is out there now there's probably 10 videos up in 10 minutes whenever something actually happens that's newsworthy. Hard to compete with that with a traditional news site.
They thought guides were a way of still making money. Who knows if they're right or not. We don't have the numbers.
They thought guides were a way of still making money. Who knows if they're right or not. We don't have the numbers.
arandomguy
Veteran
I think should be kept in mind that the tweet here might be overly melodramatic. It's not like Kotaku, or really any of these "news" sites, and the writers are doing some sort of original hard hitting investigative journalism. They're basically churning out those quick click news pieces. They signed up to churn content, guides are just another form of content.
Pretty much. Richard Lewis called them out by name on stage at the eSports Awards years ago and got multiple standing ovations.
Eurogamer has a guides section but it's part of the whole, so they for one aren't pushing guides. They have added an optional subscription model to bolster ad revenue.
I never could and never did.
GameFAQs has been around forever and is still the place I usually end up for guides. Most of the guides on there are a small number of large pages with simple text and some images, so they load fast and are easy to browse and ctrl+f. I've tried other guides and they often have very low information density so you have to scroll endlessly, or the guide is broken up into a bazillion pages so ctrl+f is useless.
Compare these two.
www.ign.com
GameFAQs ftw.
Compare these two.
Walkthrough - Final Fantasy XVI Guide - IGN
This FF16 Walkthrough guide provides a complete list of all main story quests within Final Fantasy 16, and includes links to individual walkthroughs of each
GameFAQs ftw.
oh my, I now realise that Gamefaqs guides include pictures and videos. It's been quite a while ever since I completed a full game using Gamefaqs as reference, most of them were classics like the Bond game from Nintendo 64, Perfect Dark, or simpler to explain games like F-Zero Maximum Velocity and the likes.GameFAQs has been around forever and is still the place I usually end up for guides. Most of the guides on there are a small number of large pages with simple text and some images, so they load fast and are easy to browse and ctrl+f. I've tried other guides and they often have very low information density so you have to scroll endlessly, or the guide is broken up into a bazillion pages so ctrl+f is useless.
Compare these two.
Walkthrough - Final Fantasy XVI Guide - IGN
This FF16 Walkthrough guide provides a complete list of all main story quests within Final Fantasy 16, and includes links to individual walkthroughs of each
GameFAQs ftw.
Yes, I like the Gamefaqs style more in this case, not as convoluted, and it should work really well for adventure games like Deponia or Broken Sword, etc.
I've been playing a lot of JRPGs and there is usually a bunch of easily missable stuff in those games. I like to play through it with no guide and then when I come to a "point of no return" I'll pull up the guide and make sure I'm not missing anything important. Most of the guides I've used have a summary of missables at the end of each section which is very nice.
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