What's Left for the Young Games Journalist, Critic

I have a hard time pinpointing exactly when I joined the games journalism industry. 2014 is when I began contributing regularly to my first video game website. 2016 is when I worked my first job as a gaming news reporter. But 2012 was when I published my very first article about a video game, writing for my alma mater's newspaper.

For the purpose of this essay, let's say 2016 was when I became an established writer in English-language games media. That was the year I joined CGMagazine as a daily reporter, when I penned my first contributions to The Mary Sue , when I was first published in Waypoint , and when I became a news contributor to Kill Screen . That same year, I graduated college, left a toxic job, and ran headfirst into the world of freelance writing. The first few months were painful; some months, I could barely make rent. But I wrote my way into a position at Daily Dot, and the rest is history. I went from reporter to editor to strategist; it would be accurate to say I graced levels of the games media leadership hierarchy that are often inaccessible to transgender women. For this, I've been both parts grateful and remorseful, as my time as an editorial strategist at GAMURS involved implementing one of the greatest sins of games journalism's digital media era: Corporate directive on acquiring organic search traffic. This, more than anything, spelled the beginning of the end for GAMURS .

I've been reflecting a lot on my decade in games journalism for two reasons. First, there was the whirlwind of my time at NuWaypoint during April-July 2025. Significant controversy followed my decision to contribute to the site, whereas very few have commented negatively on my strategy work at GAMURS. This has disturbed me, as I believe the public is not fully aware of the damage caused by the organic search traffic model. This essay is a mea culpa to contributing to that destruction, something unethical that I aided in that has gone without proper scrutiny.

Secondly, and more importantly, I've been thinking a lot about my time in games media during the 2010s, and how I can no longer advise young writers to join the games journalism industry in good faith. It would be unethical to tell this group to apply to any of the remaining sites under ValNet, or any sites running a GAMURS-like strategy model.

Games media was already unstable by the time I joined in 2016. But something shifted in 2021, when I joined GAMURS. Increasingly, I felt it was irresponsible to tell new writers that they could contribute their way into full-time work. As an editorial strategist, I saw GAMURS' SEO-driven traffic strategy worked, but it only worked because it was done at a cheap rate. At one outlet, we were paying contributors $25 for 400 word stories (a pay bump I negotiated for). These rates were unreasonable, yet similar rates were also at play at our competitor ValNet. Cheap organic search traffic was a strategy, and like ValNet, GAMURS built its media empire off this approach.

The industry began to feel like it was slipping through my fingers. In 2022, Fanbyte was gutted with a brutal layoff wave . The following year, Kotaku's then-owner G/O Media fired Patricia Hernandez , just months after the Waypoint team was brutally separated from Vice. C-suite no longer valued games criticism and games journalism as a product; leadership looked at websites as digital real estate listings, turning sites with high domain authority (i.e., strong Google search performance) into avenues for search content strategy. They would squeeze money from these sites via ad revenue, dictating content focus even if it clashed with the very brands they inherited. The games journalism landscape was being remade in GAMURS' image: Cheap SEO copy ushered out in bulk, paid for at a terribly low rate.

This strategy worked... until it didn't. 2023 was a brutal reckoning for websites reliant on SEO traffic , as outlets prioritizing organic search were heavily hit by changes to Google's search algorithm. GAMURS saw much of its traffic tumble over summer 2023; that fall, the company let go of numerous writers and editors on a rolling basis (a measure to save face given our spring layoff wave ). During the 2010s, games journalism sites either had no formal content strategy plan or defaulted to a very loose search/social traffic focus; by 2023, c-suite within media companies were essentially GAMURS-ifying the landscape. This proved a disastrous decision that led to further destruction within the industry. 2025 was marked with a series of cuts at various other games media websites . Meanwhile, GAMURS sold off both The Escapist and its flagship venture, Dot Esports . An October 2025 report estimates that over 1,200 games journalists have left the industry since 2023. And while outlets like IGN, Kotaku, Game Rant, Polygon (now run by ValNet), Eurogamer, and GamesIndustry.biz still remain, the glory days for the industry are deep in the past.

The search-focused games journalism model, the very same one I was tasked with aiding the implementation of, it cratered games media's quality at a dramatic rate. Too many sites were paying too little money to writers that too urgently needed the work. This increased the likelihood of factual errors and low quality reporting, a problem that increased as c-suite executives demanded more and more output. Every egg was placed in the Google search basket, and when Google toppled the basket, no one could cook an omlette.

As games journalism dealt with this strategic disaster, content creators exponentially filled the void. An endless supply of self-starter YouTubers and Twitch streamers emerged, specializing in games at borderline obsessive levels. Underpaid guide writers and news reporters simply could not compete with the superior quality provided by a YouTuber in it for the love of the game.

This is the landscape that remains for the young, aspiring games journalist: Low-paying gigs at the final standing outlets. Only the luckiest and most established can receive a 9-to-5 with health insurance and holidays, and even the Kotaku's and the PC Gamer's of the world still feel the clarion call of search traffic. For the young, new, and eager games journalist, games media is a post-apocalyptic wasteland. Sure, there are settlements to visit, explore, and maybe make a few caps for Jet in the process. But the days before the blast are long gone.

What comes next? Blogging has emerged as an answer for games criticism, returning the field to its Web 1.0 roots. I'm on board, but for those of us with established platforms, I worry whether this could become a masturbatory exercise in nostalgia. I see a world where professional writers embrace the blogging format of yore and claim themselves inheritors, all while newcomers struggle to have their works read amid bigger names monopolizing the space's readership. I would rather each and every one of us use the blogging format to improve on where the industry failed. Otherwise, we run the risk of turning games criticism into a field dominated by a small segment deemed worthy of being published and shared.

When I think about games criticism's future, I think about the video essayist. There is something so beautiful, so admirable, about the 30+ minute YouTube video game deep dive by a NEET trans woman VN fan, a lifelong outsider who can only calm the passion raging in her heart by opening her pirated copy of Premiere and creating, creating, creating. This is who we should aspire to be. This is who we should emulate. That's not to say that the writer should give up and become a YouTuber, but perhaps those of us with a couple bylines under the belt should approach the post-games media landscape with humility, with an urge to reinvent, with an eagerness to learn from our kin in the content creation sphere. And with a readiness to accept fault in our past lives.

As for those who wish to become reporters, I'm not sure blogging is the future. But there are models to study. Alyssa Mercante's hybrid streamer-writer style, Stephen Totilo and his work at Game File, or the advocate-journalist model I've put out in my paypros work. Rogue, Aftermath, they also offer guideposts for a collective operating as a games journalism website. Though I am less optimistic about games journalism's future as a written medium without significant investment. Decent journalism takes training and experience; excellent journalism takes rigorous editorial support. Most independent journalists operating on Substack lack the latter, and even experienced journalists flying solo make mistakes. I personally believe the quality of my NuWaypoint VTubing reporting suffered from a lack of proper editorial resources from Vice's owners — I would have benefited from several editors debating and arguing angles and conclusions in certain stories. While I have certainly levied plenty of criticism toward Aftermath, its co-owners have handled this problem well by editing and reviewing one another before publishing major stories. It takes a team to publish a good piece of journalism.

Again, I mentioned the idea of a post-games media landscape that does not repeat the sins of the past. This death is not an end, but an opportunity to move on and grow. All of us, each and every one, will have to consider what that means. Guidance, suggestions, advice, established writers have plenty. But for those of us that worked in the field, do not ask us for the solution. We likely cannot provide a way out of the mess created for us — and in some cases, by us. Nor should we. I believe the future for games media will be up to the next generation, those that read our work and blaze a new path forward. My work in games media is complete, is what I am saying, and it is time to let the future generation lead the way.

To new and aspiring games writers, the future lies in your hands. This should frighten you. But it should also inspire you. Build something better than what we created. There's a renaissance to be had for the critic and the reporter, even if many of those 1,200 will never reach the promised land. Learn from our mistakes. And show us the way.