There are three big players in the gaming press: GameSpot, IGN and 1UP. Actually four, with GamesRadar from Future, but since they are in their infancy, I’ll exclude them for now. I’ve had a lot of exposure to each of these, and a lot of thoughts have been floating around for a while now regarding them. For sake of time, I’ll just write a digest here, but I’ll try to expand on the subject in a later post.

I had mentioned that GameSpot was up to something big, after coming out with their media blitz of different formats and deliveries. Podcasts, daily video digests, video reviews. They were ahead of their time. But now it seems like time (and their competitors) has caught up to them and in some cases surpassed them. For one, streaming video is a thing of the past. Especially streaming through the website itself. We are a society on-demand, and with increased bandwidth we would much rather download and watch at our convenience, or better yet transfer to our favorite media player and watch on the go. GameSpot, although they have the production chops, still haven’t caught up to this way of thinking. Two, they depend on their website to drive content. You’ll see what I mean by this later on. Websites are now supplanted by RSS aggregators and digests, as people don’t have the time to live on a site and absorb all of its content. I still think GameSpot has the best crew of actual gamers, and they report with objectivity that the industry needs. But their attempts to catch up with some of the society functions that are offered by the other sites seem to fall a little flat. The blogs are pretty inconsequential, the community groups are an indecipherable maze, the proprietary forums are a chore, and most recently the YouTube-like video posts are going to sink them. After all, YouTube itself is going through a million dollars a month in bandwidth costs – is GameSpot ready for this?

IGN has been around for a while, and I really like the fact that it has different editorial staff for each platform or subject. While I believe branching out to Cars and Babes is spreading them a little thin, and the SpikeTV/Maxim/FHM gimmick is growing a little old, the way each site is a silo under a main umbrella is simple. They were late to get on the user blogs, they were late with video reviews, and their Insider-only reviews almost cost them their readership; but their forums have always been active, if a little too populated with immature fanboys. They also are most consistent with offering high definition game trailers and video downloads, even if most PCs and media devices can’t play them. I think as media hubs, such as Windows Media Center and Vista, become more popular, these will be more prominent. They also started a podcast series which is sketchy at best – availability or any kind of schedule is inconsistent, and they haven’t yet incorporated podcasts into each of their silos – something that might be because each silot has its own editorial staff.

1UP is really emerging as the leader in game journalism, because they are doing a lot of things different. First, their video podcast The 1UP Show is a great mix of sketch and documentary with excellent production. With recent editorial staff turnover, the quality has gone south a little bit and now borders on inside jokes and braggart screen personalities (yeah you, Mielke and Kathleen), and Jane Pinckard has the presence of a classical radio DJ after having been bitten by and transformed into a zombie. What surprised me is the emergence of the 1UP Radio Network, led by Garnett Lee’s own 1UP Yours podcast. 1UP is really smart – they are creating podcasts for each of their publications under the 1UP banner – CGW, EGM, 1UP. The site itself is a mess, and the excellent blogs by staff and industry insiders are almost lost in the process. But what saves 1UP is a luxury most other gaming sites don’t have – printed media. They are using the podcasts and magazines to direct people toward the website, almost like a map, so in a sense they don’t have to have the best laid-out website, they merely have to refer to new or exciting content, and let the reader drop in, read a few blogs and articles, even maybe start their own. 1UP’s reviews aren’t all that spectacular, and they are almost too abbreviated to be dependable, but they are most famous for their interviews. Remember when Shoe had that “scathing” interview with Peter Moore? Actually it was pretty tame, but it’s the first time in the gaming press someone actually interviewed rather than wrote PR. And one last thing worth mentioning – although I know some of GameSpot staff by name, I barely know any from IGN. Compare that with all the name-dropping I’ve done in my writeup about 1UP. Here’s an interesting anecdote: I remember in college I wrote EGM blaming them for biasness in their reviews, and I said if they were going to be biased at least post the name of the author so the reader can go into the article knowing what to expect from them. Their response was that they wanted to direct attention to the article, not the author. My how things have changed. 1UP is as much about the author as it is the content, and I think that’s a smart move that will trickle slowly but surely into the rest of the gaming press. Just think, when someone from the 1UP staff leaves to a competitor, they bring their reputation and personality with them. That’s going to be viral, and will eventually bring integrity to the gaming media.

So those are my quick thoughts. I know I’m missing some things like FilePlanet, Metacritic and Gamevideos, but I’ll save those for a more in-depth article. It will be interesting to see how these sites evolve a year from now, the growth of GamesRadar, and if any new competitors emerge.