From former Polygon folks. Let’s see of this model works.
I hope it works out for them!
Oh nice. They even have a post about RSS feeds which I use every day to get my gaming news. Added!
7$ is a bit steep but I’ve been looking for a new gaming source and 0$ gets you most access
https://thisweekinvideogames.com/
is also great, recently launched by SkillUp and friends. reviews and news articles are free, but there’s a second tier of special articles available for paid readers.
I’m more than happy to support this
Heh, this reminded me to check one of the other offshoots of the slaughter of Polygon by people that made their fortune off of rape porn and it looks like rogue.site and bigfriendly.guide are collaborating/sharing guides… hopefully.
Edit:
After writing over 2,500 pieces at Polygon, he co-founded BigFriendly.Guide with Ryan and, now, that has evolved into rogue.site.
Ah, okay. That is concerning but also kind of expected.
Yahtzee and his coworkers and team recently escaped from The Escapist (pun intended) to form a new independent group called Second Wind, too. I’m enjoying the direction that gaming media is going. Corporate media can mercilessly suck all value out of the industry until it withers and dies, and the names and legacies of these places will die with it, but they can’t destroy the talent if the community are still behind them.
Its good in the sense that independent news media is needed more and more every day.
It is bad in that the reason the corporations are killing every outlet they can is because… there just isn’t a lot of money left in the various forms of news media. There is only so much to go around and monetizing any of that is increasingly difficult. The big names (like Yahtzee) will be fine. But I am very much worried about outlets like Polygon who did an AMAZING job over the years but, outside of MAYBE Pat Gill, never really became Personalities. And they are arriving pretty late to the game since they… weren’t fired as quickly as the folk at Vice and the like.
Time will tell and I wish them all the best. I am basically ride or die Remap Radio at this point but am floating subscriptions around to the rest. 404 mostly has my “news” subscription, if not on lock then on very firmly shut. Gaming… I am not sure if I care enough about game coverage but I’ll definitely keep an eye out on Rogue.
Uhh Valnet did what now?
worker-owned
Awesome!
reader-funded
Doomed from the start.
This has not been the case for aftermath.site nor 404media.co, two sites that got started pretty much the same way this new one has.
Edit: I should clarify that I’m saying “those were not doomed from the start, and are both self-sustaining through paid subscribers.”
You might be surprised at how well indie publications can do. Look at Second Wind, they have a bunch of writers and video folks all funded AFAIK through Patreon.
SkillUp’s channel has done so well he’s hired on two more people to make videos and just launched their own site with multiple writers. In fact they just hired another columnist, all reader and viewer funded through Patreon (and directly through the site too, I think).
There are other outlets thriving in the indie gaming journalism and review space too, all most if not entirely reader funded. It’s working.
And no ads. I do want them to succeed, but, yeah.
