by Jack Dunn In March, Fandom Pulse reported that Jen Glennon, who took on the role of editor-in-chief in October of the previous year, submitted her resignation at Kotaku, the video game news and strategy website. Glennon stated in her resignation letter that the management's recent decision to prioritise guides over news led to her decision to step down. Glennon follows Patricia Hernandez, dismissed in August 2023, as the second editor-in-chief of Kotaku since Stephen Totilo's departure in 2021. Then, on March 7 Levi Winslow disclosed on X that he and three more staff members were laid off from Kotaku. But it is not only the video games industry and video games journalism that is being hit hard with layoffs, tabletop games journalism industry has been shook hard this past week with news of layoffs and speculation about the shutdown of Dicebreaker, the board games, RPGs and tabletop games website.
I remember the era of thick magazines like Computer Games Strategy Plus, Computer Gaming World, and the 700+ pages of the monthly PC Gamer. In the past, it was the hardware and software nerds writing articles. They cared about the games as games, development, and the companies, both small and large. Things started shifting in the early 2000s, the "geek culture" became mainstream, and mainstream people who couldn't get press jobs elsewhere took over the industry. Quality collapsed. And now we are seeing the sad deaths of the once great giants.
Ah, I remember those. They have gone niche. Places like Matrix Games will still push them out, but sadly they are now long disconnected from the greater PC games cosmos
I remember the era of thick magazines like Computer Games Strategy Plus, Computer Gaming World, and the 700+ pages of the monthly PC Gamer. In the past, it was the hardware and software nerds writing articles. They cared about the games as games, development, and the companies, both small and large. Things started shifting in the early 2000s, the "geek culture" became mainstream, and mainstream people who couldn't get press jobs elsewhere took over the industry. Quality collapsed. And now we are seeing the sad deaths of the once great giants.
I miss that old PC Gamer, and the reviews of hardcore Avalon Hill-style wargames. That's a genre that seems to have disappeared entirely
Ah, I remember those. They have gone niche. Places like Matrix Games will still push them out, but sadly they are now long disconnected from the greater PC games cosmos
Just looked up Matrix Games. Dang, that sends me back! I need to build a PC now
I’m not on Twitter but I see that Matt Jarvis has pronouns in his bio and that tells me all I need to know.
I've been following video games religiously since the 90s and I had never even heard of Dicebreakers. Literally who?
Dice breakers covers tabletop games. I’m an avid D&D player and I had never heard of it before.
So they either suck at marketing or Google and every other browser service determined it was too far outside my interests to recommend.
Basically, it must have been horribly useless if I haven’t heard of of before now.
Ding dong, you know the rest. There's definitely upsides to these publications being so terrible.