every so often I'll catch a news headline that just makes me chuckle like this one from bounding into Comics now I have to admit my first thought when I saw this headline was wow I'm in good company these days my second thought was nah this is probably just some clickbait uphead piece with no real basis in reality because believe it or not such things have been known to exist on the internet dear viewer but apparently it is real the source for the article is an inter done by Dan vavra the director of the Kingdom Come
Deliverance Series where he talked about the impact of online critics like myself asman gold and others and according to him we're having a real impact on multiple AAA developers listen I've even heard that they're really scared of hate tubers let's say the kind of guys like the critical Drinker asman gold and others who started criticizing big companies and now I've found out from some people that companies are really terrified of them and it's really having an impact that when somebody starts to critique the game and the corporate world that it does have an impact that
is right I am become Drinker the destroyer of Studios but fear not dear peasant for I am a merciful dictator and require only a weekly tribute of gold and booze from my subjects well that and a bit of Prima noct but only if the bride happens to be hot I shall be the judge of this of course seriously though before my ego gets inflated by all of this I think the point that Dan's really making here is about more than just me or asman gold or any one particular content creator no matter how many views
they might get he's commenting instead on the shift that's happening across the entire industry and the way people get access to news and opinions now a shift away from bloaty dinosaur media Outlets like kataku IGN and polygon and towards independent creators working out of their bedrooms and basements people who don't have professional production teams working to make their content look all slick and fancy or Insider access to high-profile games months before release or exclusive interviews with industry professionals where they answer softball questions don't believe me well take a look at IGN's YouTube page for a
second according to their sub count they've got more than 18 million subscribers that's almost 10 times what I've got on my main critical Drinker Channel but then take a look at their actual view counts most of their videos can't even break 50,000 views for a Channel with such a massive subscriber base those are the kinds of numbers that make boo look like a thriving upand cominging content creator it's the same story with Euro gamer a Channel with more than 700,000 subscribers that rarely gets more than 20,000 views per video or how about social media well
head over to X and take a look at kaku's page if their account is to be believed then more than 2 and a half million people follow them but most of their posts get less than 30 likes basically no one pays any attention to them now unless they post some obvious rage bait headline and then the only people who engage with them are to Mock and belittle them IGN's got 10 million people following them but do you know how many likes their average post gets less than hundreds Jesus I posted a picture of my dog
and got like 15,000 likes on it who's a good critical doggo anyway I could prattle on and on about this stuff but the point I'm making here is that all of these gaming media Outlets have become nothing but Paper Tigers now superficially impressive and influential but with no meaningful engagement or interest to back it up put simply people just don't listen to what they have to say anymore partly because most of them have become very obviously biased and partisan in their coverage these days and partly because there's no real authenticity to big companies like that
the people who write articles and make videos for them are doing it because they're paid to most of them don't really care about the game that they're covering it's just another job something to be completed as quickly and efficiently as possible so that they can move on to the next projects not to mention the pressure that's always on them to never be too harsh or too critical because if you do that then you'll burn important Bridges and all the exclusive access and the industry interviews and the invites to fancy events will start to dry up
and we can't have that can we on the other hand little Timmy working out of his basement with a microphone and a video capture card doesn't have to worry about any of that stuff he doesn't have an editorial staff that need to be paid or activists that need to be appeased or industry relationships to worry about or deadlines to meet he can make reviews when he feels like it he can go into as much or as little Det detail as he wants and he can choose to talk about stuff that he actually cares about and
what's most important of all is that there's millions of him like even if I personally spent all day every day making nothing but gaming content and ignored all my other channels I couldn't even come close to keeping up with every new release or piece of news that's happening but that doesn't matter because I don't have to for every game I don't review because it doesn't interest me or I don't have enough time there's hundreds of other channels out there who do and that's the beauty of the New Media land Cape that's being created it truly
is a free market of ideas where people can pick and choose the creators that most align with them and that being the case those creators will go on to become quite successful the shift towards independent creators really is a shift towards the collective power of fans speaking their own minds about the things that they personally care about it's the passion of people talking about the things that they love and that kind of passionate authenticity is going to Trump some slick corporate media operation every single time honestly I'm surprised it's taken this long for the switch
to happen but happen it has and with most of these big gaming Outlets laying off staff and downsizing now the reality is as simple as it is unavoidable we are the media now all of us so enjoy it because I think it's going to be a pretty fun rides anyway that's all I've got for today go away now
