Kotaku is Cooked

 

It's no great controversy to say that Games Journalists have a rough go at endearing themselves to the public. Especially if their name just so happens to be 'Kotaku', in which case theirs is a company best identified for their audacious publicity stunts over their hard hitting journalism or staunch integrity-based values. Any respect they might have fostered within the space has been slowly whittle down after a decade of rage baiting, web spinning and all around sewer-tier 'journalism'. Of course, Kotaku have not been alone in this endeavour, many are very much just like them- following in the path to most consistent low-effort 'success'. (How temporary that victory might prove.) But as the face of this side of game journalism, Kotaku have no public fyrd rising to their aid when moves are made to blatantly wipe them off the face of the Internet by the callous folk that sign their pay checks.

Kotaku recently lost their Editor-in-Chief who let their reasons for leaving absolute beyond a shadow of a doubt on the way out the door. Jen Glennon resigned in direct response to the Kotaku parent company G/O sending down the directive that future journalist endeavours from the website should deprioritize 'political statements' and replace that push with 'gaming guides'. A hilariously bizarre heel turn given the various other sites that have the market in this area, and the growing division of people who simply rely on Youtube for those guides so that they don't have to consult poor map directives as though receiving life-saving directions from a Morrowind citizen. ("Keep following the road until your left nipple starts to ache- then you'll know you've gone too far!")

Kotaku may not be my favourite company on god's green earth but I can tell you one thing- they don't make their bread and butter by being the Internet's utility gaming site! We've got IGN, Rock Paper Shotgun and Fextralife for stuff like that- Kotaku has always filled the role of being the trashy gossip rag, run by the terminally online who fill up their day construing all the world into miniscule battles of good and evil that they are the paragons of in their own little imagination. But even then they hardly hold the monopoly! IGN were the one's caught drudging up the old immensely tired rhetoric that having nearly exclusively Black people feature in a game about a zombie outbreak in Africa was inherently racist. (Whilst the actual sentient masterminds of Resident Evil 5 were both neither black nor African. Where do these guys get off?) So surrendering ever more of their Marketshare is akin to profit burning. 

In fact, the only time I've seen Kotaku manage to wiggle its way into relevancy all throughout 2024 was when one their of less... shall we say 'competent'... writers decided to spout their embarrassing lack of taste on main by publishing the title- 'Halo Season 2 sticks the landing- I told you so'. Now, Season 2 of Halo is much better than the first, that much is for certain, although I struggle to see any way it can be considered 'great'. It seems to struggle despite itself to be somewhat competent and when decent strides are hit there's so little runtime that everything has to be condensed into highlight reels of action- genuine character moments be damned. But more than that, the 'I told you so' part refers to the fact that this same writer affirmed that Season 1 was good too- and that's... well... let's just say I never thought I'd see Kotaku, loud-mouth contrarians that they are, come to bat for a show that portrays a sexual war crime as a romantic touchstone. (Which they try to play up again in Seasons 2- urgh, I wish they just crushed Makee with a comet immediately and forgot about her, thanks.)

Where the shoe really lands on the Kotaku necks, however, is with the expectant output of these game guides. Apparently Kotaku has been told to distribute 50 a week, an absurdist degree designed specifically to burn out the team until they either get so sick of the content that they quit or they struggle to meet mandates providing a decent enough justification to fire them. Truly it is the act of a company quite eager to be done with a division they have no legal power to simply shutter thanks to labour laws. Which of course means that the dissolution of Kotaku is something of a forgone conclusion. Even should the team manage to whether this storm, there will be a new one behind that- the game simply doesn't come with a Kotaku win condition.

Of course morality itself overrides my personal feelings in this matter, regardless of the quality of the people themselves on the block, it is truly ghoulish for any company to lean on it's own like this. Trying to force their people out of their seat, presumably to avoid having to pay fairly for an amicable firing, is just about the worst you can pull yourself down to. That is the real scum writhing around all the journalism world, even wherein people can call themselves genuine-to-god writers and not just gaming website content fillers. Although I don't think any great value would be lost in a future of games journalist sites ruled by corporate oversight, given that this circle has done precious little of good with their freedoms up until this point anyway.

For a very long time there has existed a general distaste admits the gaming community betwixt the gaming public who shun the pointing finger of the grandstanding media who seem to loathe having any association with them. Sure enough, the gamers tend to strawman a lot of the time, bringing complex issues down to easy to digest bite size targets and lumping the world's of responsibility upon just them- it's a human thing, we all do it. But Games Journalists assume this almost omniscient role of pre-eminence declaring themselves moral arbiters and intellectual superiors. The amount of time I've seen general label statements admonishing every gamer as some level of ignorant for some primal truth that only them and their cadre of headline writers are privvy too, I cannot help but cringe. Also, it has to be said: whoever was the person that invented the idea of 'entitled gamers' needs a time out. The day I, as a paying customer, accept being told how 'entitled' I am for feeling like someone took advantage of me- is the day a sentient TV with anger issues takes full control over hell.

Of course, just because Kotaku is on it's way out that doesn't mean anything significant is going to change. You need merely briefly scan the sorts of topics that these writers have championed over the past few years to get a decent idea of how addicted they are to viewing themselves as some sort of influential mouthpiece, so no doubt a lot of the worst are gathering to slide into friend's publications or perhaps even band together to create their own underground little counter-website. But they won't be as mainstream as they were. It's hard to imagine any publication rising to the mainstream loathing that Kotaku haply took on. And maybe that's for the best- the last thing this industry needs is more lit torches from the consumers side, please god.