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Kotaku EIC Resigns Over New Editorial Edict (Aftermath)

dreamfall

dreamfall

Member
Oct 25, 2017
6,062
Insane headline, and out of touch with reality loser Spanfeller strikes again! Definitely give the article a read, Gita Jackson and Riley MacLeod are the best, Aftermath is worth checking daily!

https://aftermath.site/kotaku-eic-resigns-over-new-editorial-edict

"I firmly believe that the decision to 'invert' Kotaku's editorial strategy to deprioritize news in favor of guides is fundamentally misguided given the current infrastructure of the site," Glennon wrote. "[This decision is] directly contradicted by months of traffic data, and shows an astonishing disregard for the livelihoods of the remaining writers and editors who work here."
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Like who at G/O really thinks they be going to Kotaku for game guides, what YEAR IS IT. They got so many cycles and years of great writers, controversies with actual game journalism and they think people come to visit Kotaku for "game tips." These motherfuckers must be on the moon.
 
Manu

Manu

Banned
Oct 27, 2017
17,191
Buenos Aires, Argentina
I've said it before but CEOs really have the best job in the world.

Get hired by a company, ruin hundreds of livelihoods in search for an infinite money cheat, quit with a golden parachute while everyone else gets fucked over, get hired by a different company, repeat.
 
Wrexis

Wrexis

Member
Nov 4, 2017
21,461
This feels like one of those things where they want people to quit. Kotaku's done it seems.
 
platypotamus

platypotamus

Member
Oct 25, 2017
7,522
You know, I've been kind of looking for that last straw to finally subscribe to Aftermath and this'll probably be the thing
 
PucePikmin

PucePikmin

Member
Apr 26, 2018
3,892
All sites want guides, guides, guides. They tend to get better views per post than news, and that's all the bosses look at. Of course, nobody takes into account that they take much more work to produce. 50 guides per week is nuts, even with a staff to do it -- as someone who writes guides, there's not 50 things to write guides about per week unless, like, the new Zelda just came out. It's just going to turn into "How to swing your sword..." style spam to meet quotas.
 
Gentlemen

Gentlemen

Member
Oct 25, 2017
9,627
kotaku ranks somewhere between 7th-23rd place on google search returns for new video game guides by my very unscientific, 10 second experiment.

the number of serious people still trying to cover games as journalists instead of as fansite editors continues to dwindle, with all the money going to the people credited with destroying it.
 
PJTierney

PJTierney

Social Media Manager • EA SPORTS WRC
Verified
Mar 28, 2021
3,736
Warwick, UK
According to a source close to the situation, Kotaku's staff will be expected to create 50 guides a week at the site. Currently, Kotaku's homepage features a prominent "game tips and guides" module at the top of the page, in a space that was previously reserved for major stories and breaking news. Staff members have criticized the homepage redesign on social media, noting that Kotaku's major source of traffic is not guides.
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That's 10 guides a day.

At best (considering meetings, other work etc.) that's 30 minutes per person per guide.

That's not enough time to write a good guide on anything of note for the vast majority of games, when logically you'd want the writers to also play those games and be experts on them.

Also, there's competing sites, as well as dedicated achievement hunting communities one has to compete with, alongside YouTube and TikTok.
 
daegan

daegan

#REFANTAZIO SWEEP
Member
Oct 27, 2017
2,935
The way that company has run all the G/O sites is akin to buying an Olive Garden and getting pissed that they don't make a good hot dog.

Fuck literally everyone who ruined these sites, going all the way back to Thiel and Hogan.
 

bb1173

Member
May 1, 2022
1,316
PucePikmin said:
All sites want guides, guides, guides. They tend to get better views per post than news, and that's all the bosses look at. Of course, nobody takes into account that they take much more work to produce. 50 guides per week is nuts, even with a staff to do it -- as someone who writes guides, there's not 50 things to write guides about per week unless, like, the new Zelda just came out. It's just going to turn into "How to swing your sword..." style spam to meet quotas.
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was just thinking, split collectibles into their own thing.

e.g. instead of one overall guide for starfields snowglobes, make 13 individual guides

(got 400 collectibes? that's 400 bitesized guides)
 
PucePikmin

PucePikmin

Member
Apr 26, 2018
3,892
PJTierney said:
That's 10 guides a day.

At best (considering meetings, other work etc.) that's 30 minutes per person per guide.

That's not enough time to write a good guide on anything of note for the vast majority of games, when logically you'd want the writers to also play those games and be experts on them.

Also, there's competing sites, as well as dedicated achievement hunting communities one has to compete with, alongside YouTube and TikTok.
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The article's slightly confusingly-worded -- I think the whole staff has to do 50 guides per week. 50 guides per person would be literally impossible. 50 guides per week for a staff of around 10 people who still have to do other things is still quite a bit.
 
RailWays

RailWays

One Winged Slayer
Avenger
Oct 25, 2017
15,879
Some of the suits creating these requirements clearly have no idea how any of these things work. 50 guides a week, jesus christ...
 
IIFloodyII

IIFloodyII

Member
Oct 26, 2017
24,323
Seems like an incredibly hard market to break into between all the Trophy/Achievement sites, IGN and a few other guide sites who have been doing that stuff for years at this point. IGN especially have pretty much came in and combined a lot of those sites into 1.
 
Shemhazai

Shemhazai

Member
Aug 13, 2020
6,625
Not surprised they're pushing Kotaku in that direction. Guides are a huge driver of traffic, far more than articles tend to be. I've done a few in the past and it's essentially low effort work for something that tends to be in high demand. With a site like Kotaku, which is well known across the gaming-sphere, they'd get decent click through from people that are aware of the brand and trust it more than the millions of randomly named sites they've not heard of before.

Also, unlike news, you don't get people on forums posting them and just copying the main info from article in the opening post.
 

t26

Avenger
Oct 27, 2017
4,612
I think right now neoseeker is the best overall site for guides. I am looking for a Star Ocean Second Story R guide and they have the most complete guide.
 
bsigg

bsigg

Member
Oct 25, 2017
22,669
How to buy more dice rolls in Monopoly Go

How to change your haircolor in Dragons Dogma 2

How to equip a gun in Helldivers 2

How to change a formation in Unicorn Overlord
 
PucePikmin

PucePikmin

Member
Apr 26, 2018
3,892
IIFloodyII said:
Seems like an incredibly hard market to break into between all the Trophy/Achievement sites, IGN and a few other guide sites who have been doing that stuff for years at this point. IGN especially have pretty much came in and combined a lot of those sites into 1.
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It actually isn't. It's all Google traffic, and they don't differentiate -- as long as the guide is decently-written and has a clear title (and a lot don't have those things). There aren't a lot of people who are, like, "Well, time to go to my favorite guide site for this answer" they just type their question into Google.
 
pinkurocket

pinkurocket

Member
Oct 26, 2017
754
Google has ruined game guides. It will have separate pages for certain questions you google, and each page will have a full review of the game and paragraphs of irrelevant information, and the answer you're looking for is hidden somewhere within this. And don't forget the countless ads popping up and autoplaying videos. Very misguided to think you could break into that when these other sites perfected their seo.
 
IIFloodyII

IIFloodyII

Member
Oct 26, 2017
24,323
PucePikmin said:
It actually isn't. It's all Google traffic, and they don't differentiate -- as long as the guide is decently-written and has a clear title (and a lot don't have those things). There aren't a lot of people who are, like, "Well, time to go to my favorite guide site for this answer" they just type their question into Google.
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Sure but between IGN and Reddit good luck on banking on Google feeding your stuff over them or the seemingly endless bot looking sites that have like a billion guides, that make googling it a waste of time half the time as it is either barely a guide or a guide for something else, despite the title.

But there is a lot of people who do that too, which is why a lot of these guide sites have been around for years at this point.
 
iksenpets

iksenpets

Member
Oct 26, 2017
6,572
Dallas, TX
Are they saying 50 guide-ass-guides a week? Because then even if you hit that goal, which you can't, you'd be sometime in week 3 when you just ran out of games anyone is currently playing.

Or are they meaning any basic how-to article, because in that case the whole site is just going to be stuff like "How to Jump in Mario" (Subhed: It's the B button).

And just, no one goes to Kotaku for guides. They have an entire staff built around news and crit, and anyone going there is going for that. You're not going to SEO your way into being a guides powerhouse against the people who have spent years building their guides sections.
 
MrBenchmark

MrBenchmark

Member
Dec 8, 2017
2,045
This is just to fuck with people and make them quit for sure. People don't deserve to be messed with like this.
 
Kyrios

Kyrios

Member
Oct 27, 2017
14,929
Even with how many games come out a month, there's really nothing that necessitates 50 fucking guides a week.
 
Firima

Firima

Member
Oct 27, 2017
4,505
shadowman16 said:
Polygon likewise does some amazing guides, leagues ahead of IGNs in my opinion.
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+1 for Polygon. I've seen Neoseeker and Powerpyx also mentioned, which are top-tier but as far as traditional game outlets go, Poly is likely the best of the bunch when it comes to game guides.

Can't tell you how many times I've clicked on an IGN guide for something not exactly recent and discovered that it's an empty placeholder that still serves ads. Meanwhile Poly actually explains things rather than giving vague instructions.
 
UAZ-469

UAZ-469

Member
Dec 12, 2023
327
iksenpets said:
Are they saying 50 guide-ass-guides a week? Because then even if you hit that goal, which you can't, you'd be sometime in week 3 when you just ran out of games anyone is currently playing.

Or are they meaning any basic how-to article, because in that case the whole site is just going to be stuff like "How to Jump in Mario" (Subhed: It's the B button).
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This is where I'm at. They'll be incentivized to break things down into sub guides, or maybe guides per level? Even then they'll run out.

It has to be an excuse to flip mostly to LLM-generated stuff, I can see a Dunning-Kruger CEO going full steam ahead with that. He's going to lose money, it doesn't even make sense in a greedy evil way, but I'm sure he'll find a way to discover that it's someone else's fault.
 
PucePikmin

PucePikmin

Member
Apr 26, 2018
3,892
IIFloodyII said:
Sure but between IGN and Reddit good luck on banking on Google feeding your stuff over them or the seemingly endless bot looking sites that have like a billion guides, that make googling it a waste of time half the time as it is either barely a guide or a guide for something else, despite the title.

But there is a lot of people who do that too, which is why a lot of these guide sites have been around for years at this point.
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IGN is fast with guide content, but they do a Wiki format rather than punchy answer-to-question articles. That's what gets Google traffic -- "How do I get my horse? How do I beat this boss? Where do I unlock the secret ending?" ect. And yeah, a lot of guides are very low quality, which Google keeps an eye on. They'll give preferential treatment to anything that seems like it was written by a human.

The thing with guides is they're less volatile than other types of posts. With news, something may hit and you get 100,000 views, but your next story may get 500 views (these figures are just hypothetical to show the comparison). With guides, you're getting that 5k to 10k of traffic for each guide like clockwork. So, the bosses look at that and think "Hey, if we did nothing but guides we'd get higher more reliable traffic," again, overlooking that a) guides are hard to write well and b) there's a limited amount of stuff to guide-ify.
 
mute

mute

▲ Legend ▲
Member
Oct 25, 2017
25,404
If the expectation is 50/week I can't imagine the guides are any more involved than "how to beat this one boss" or "how to find that one thing".
 
shadowman16

shadowman16

Member
Oct 25, 2017
32,474
Firima said:
+1 for Polygon. I've seen Neoseeker and Powerpyx also mentioned, which are top-tier but as far as traditional game outlets go, Poly is likely the best of the bunch when it comes to game guides.

Can't tell you how many times I've clicked on an IGN guide for something not exactly recent and discovered that it's an empty placeholder that still serves ads. Meanwhile Poly actually explains things rather than giving vague instructions.
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Yeah, Poly's just feel better researched with some excellent screen shots, maps etc. Basically really explains all you need to know, its usually THE place I go for guides these days.
 
BrightLightLava

BrightLightLava

Member
Oct 25, 2017
7,419
shadowman16 said:
Polygon likewise does some amazing guides, leagues ahead of IGNs in my opinion.
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I prefer the Polygon layout for guides too. I check there first before just googling.

Worst for me would be fextralife, where they will just make pages for everything before they have any information about it. Good for clicks I'm sure, but not helpful to me.
 
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