So today’s Saturday article is touchy enough that they posted it with comments closed from the get go.
I don’t really care about the politics of the article itself, although even for a lefty like me I think it’s a massive stretch and is problematic in some ways.
What bothers me is that they clearly are aware of this. By closing the comments - and yes they would be a shit show (imo that would be down to them) - they turn the whole thing into a commandment.
The place is turning into Kotaku junior. I feel like there’s a drive to create controversy, which echoes but isn’t quite at the level of some of the worst things Kotaku did.
I’m thinking here about Kotaku emailing the developers of Journey to a Savage Planet and trying to catch them in a word trap around the word “savage”, in an attempt to embroil them in a race controversy (this was in a Wireframe piece I should still have somewhere).
IMO the worst thing about it is that this shift has happened after the first very positive wave of yearly subscriptions.
Some of their headlines lately have been really misleading. And frankly it’s just become joyless.
It doesn’t sit right with me at all.
I’ve noticed a few of the old immortals that I had time for (there weren’t many tbh) have left recently, including some who had paid their sub.
I certainly feel like I dodged a bullet not subbing. I love Donlan and Richard Purchese and Martin Robinson. I miss Ellie, and I think the worst thing to happen was to lose Tom Bramwell. Regardless of where people stand on his sexism article. There was a love of the medium that was infectious from that crew.
But EG as it stands now seems to love preaching, and by shutting down the comments section straight away they’re creating an echo chamber. And it’s not as if echo chambers haven’t been the problem for the last decade or so. And I’m saying this as someone who quietly hoped the last big crash was the end of capitalism. So I should be in alignment with the gist of what’s being said. But I’m not.
I’ve been there since just after it started, but I don’t think I can support them any more. I’m going to have to retrain my index finger to type VGC in the address bar instead.