I’m on the fence about paying a sub at EG. I’ve definitely hung around there for a larger fraction of my life than I feel comfortable with and so feel they deserve something back, especially as I think the race to the bottom on the net over the last decade and more has harmed everyone who tries to make a living creatively.
But then, I think that EG hasn’t been supportive of that very often. The amount of times they’ve dog whistled a dev trying ( sometimes very clumsily and rarely, even indefensibly ) to defend their right to earn a living from the work we all enjoy, well that’s struck me as hypocritical. The lack of apparent play time in the Kena review is emblematic of a long term problem I feel they’ve always had. Asking the wrong person to review particular games.
It was particularly problematic during the early VR days where a lot of the articles seemed to be written exclusively by Wesley Yin Poole who couldn’t get out of the barf joke cycle to save himself.
Also, I’ve often viewed the new editor as pretty wearyingly cynical and verging on trolling at times.
Buuuut. Donlan is one of my favourite writers in any industry, I really enjoy a lot of Robert Purchese’s stuff and Martin Robinson is a really really excellent sim racing writer. I feel like good, hard working, creativity should be supported. And the video team, esp. Ian Higton and his VR stuff can be entertaining. I just wish I could support them individually somehow.