Why does IGN suck so much now?

I remember when IGN was the place to get game reviews. They'd rank games on graphics, story, sound, gameplay.

Give you proper walkthroughs. I mean they had every opportunity to make them great. Pre-2013 IGN that is.

Now all it is is just ads. Like OMG this website is so clunky and borderline unusable. What happened to game journalism? Did they just decide to give up one day?

7/10 too much water? what does that even mean?

You have the easiest job in the world! You blew it!

It's a process called "enshitification" that happens to most things on the internet. The thing is created by a group of passionate friends who have an idea they think is cool. The thing catches on and makes them big money. A big company sees big money being made, and buys the thing. Big companies always want things to make more money now, than it was making at this time last year. More adds are stuffed in. Permanent staff are fired in lieu of freelance writers that can be paid less, and are given less time to complete articles. Editors are made redundant until there is one guy checking everyone's work. Thing gets shittier, is passed around by several different parent companies until no one wants it anymore. Thing dies.

Once gaming went mainstream, core gaming became a niche for enthusiasts. Big web sites won't cater to nerds who want to get into the weeds about things.

Now gaming is just mixed in with general entertainment news and focus on what is sensational.

If you want something more specific or hardcore, that doesn't appeal to the mainstream, so it doesn't generate a lot of money. You will have to look for smaller dedicated groups, but they will not have the same access to large companies and won't have the advance copies of games to preview/review or many interviews and everything that comes with NDAs and reputations and all of that.

If anything, game companies will even move further away even from these entertainment tabloid style news sites and focus on influencers who directly engage with audiences and push the messaging the companies want.

@judaspete: Yeah, this is it. The OP is right, the site is almost entirely unusable on mobile. And if I can't use it on mobile, I'm not going to use it on my desktop.

Because Chobot. j/k

til: enshitification.

good explanation, thanks man

@Macutchi: It's the technical term used by highly educated experts.

Pre 2013 you say?

Sounds like capitalism happened. They got sold to Ziff Davis, a publicly traded company with a track record of having little interest in what made their acquistions beloved so much as how much they can squeeze out of them for their shareholders. That means quality goes down as they try to squeeze as much out of as few staff as possible while ads go up to further increase revenue.

Immediately after the sale ***in 2013***, IGN laid off a bunch of people.

IGN hit with layoffs; 1UP, Gamespy and UGO shutting down (engadget.com)

In other words, their built up trust and reputation...and you stopped mattering once that sale happened.

Horray capitalism and trash companies.

Think the Youtube stuff (alt media think they call it) has had a profound effect on them and likewise Gamespot.

No, the changes in ownership had an effect on both sites. Site owners changed, site changed. And not for the better.

And their mismanagement of talent and underapprecaition of Jeff and others, resulting in the huge exodus from this site after the formation of Giant Bomb.

These forums used to POP. Posts velocity was measured in seconds, minutes at most. Now they're measured in days. Go just 5 or 6 threads down and you're looking at threads that haven't had a post in days, sometimes several days. Unthinkable that you'd even see a day old post on page 1, let alone just a few threads down. That's what happens when a forum dies. Same with sites like Neogaf, which is damn near as dead as this site (certainly relative to where it once was). Leadership ruins a site for one reason or another, then forgets that people can spend their forum time at greener pastures. Guess what? People will pack up and leave trash sites for better ones. Internet is littered with dead forums and this one is as on life support and in a vegitative state as I've ever seen.

You're a young cub on this site but as I've said before...as someone who started posting here a decade before you then left with the GB exodus and has come back in the last few months just to check in on my old home...it's a shame what this site has become. Site used to be an internet forum staple for gamers. Now it's all but dead, with more trolls than quality contributors. I hope you got to see at least a little activity and not what this experience is in 2024.

It always sucked! Even when it was GameSages!

IGN chose the path that kept them alive and successful.

Unlike Gamespot (rip).

I do not.

What game triggered you that got a 7/10 ?

He's not wrong. IGN was a good place for many game reviews as I'm a former IGN user.

I left IGN after 2014, haven't log-in since and I don't see myself coming back at all.

I simply don't trust them. I trust Easy Allies the most. IGN isn't even worthy to tie EZA's shoes.

Appear to not be distinguishing between a forum and a front-page.

The front-page of websites such as IGN and Gamespot is where the bread and butter comes from, ads, revenue what sites care about, as opposed to nostalgic self-aggrandizement.

$$$ < - That

Gamespot is still one of the most trafficked gaming websites. With alt-media (using the term loosely for Twitch) ahead.

https://www.semrush.com/website/top/global/games/

Generally only exceptions to this rule is sites like Resetera. Outside of that though, new forms of social media have killed or greatly diminished forums. Twitter, Discord, Reddit. And indeed, Youtube etc... In the 90's and early 2000's traditional forums had far more appeal.

Certainly Gamespot did have a "mass exodus" but that was 20 odd years ago, Gamespot specific, and has little to no relevance now.

The gaming landscape changed drastically since then with alt-media and new forms of social media a competitor/adoption for sites such as IGN and Gamespot. That's what they actually care about, not unions or deeply impressive gaming discussion.

You will see the same thing happen elsewhere as well.

I don't even know how they managed that with 8 year old articles on the front page for the last 6 months.

Dumping 20 articles about the same game instead of 1 article with 20 bullet points and a "gun expert" talking about every single weapon in every game is apparently good SEO which is worth more than keeping a presentable front page with actual interesting articles that people can browse daily.

Easy, the answer to most problems: $$$$$

They let advertisers run amock and let devs/producer bribe them for better scores. Banners and popup advertisement bullshit everywhere. Spoilers in headlines. Shitty scores. Hiring fake "gamer" girl models who never played a game in their life in their shows. All in the name of cash money.

Doritoes Pope exemplifies this trend in gaming "journalism".

@robertos: It's worth nothing that it was the *appearance* of all that, not that it was actually happening. Journalist sites are well equipped and prepared to prevent stuff like that from happening.

However, it *did* actually happen with YouTube and Twitch personalities, which ironically is where people who didn't like the appearance of bias went to. Most Youtube/Twitch personalities have no training on journalism, so they are super easy to influence and they readily accept promotional deals and money to promote a product.

As a former IGN user myself, I disagree.

I don't typically put alot of weight in reviews from game sites anymore, but in IGN's defence, at least their forum notfications actually work.

Short version? Bought by huge company, focus transitioned from providing quality product to a focus on profit and volume.

Quality goes down as a result.

Since the time I've been here I think the companies (IGN and Gamespot are same company right?) that bought this place has been like four or more? It was like CNBC, Red-something, Fanatic, etc.

lol that's a great term, hope you don't mind if I steal it. Sounds like the place I work, too.

Started off as a private company, with dedicated people that crafted a good product. Was profitable, and that's enough; didn't need to grow a lot via artificial means (i.e. going into markets they didn't really need to)...life was good.

Grew organically by being good at what they do, caught the attention of larger corporations, owner got old and didn't have kids, started shopping around for buyers.

Was bought by a huge multinational corporation, suddenly not being profitable was enough, now we had to grow. Started going into sectors we had no business going into, didn't do well, didn't grow despite being busier than ever, fired long-term people, brought in temporary replacements, cycled them in and out, lacked passion. Quality went down, volume decreased, no longer profitable or growing lol.

Pretty convinced distorted capitalism and mismanagement is to blame for 99% of the world's problems (note I said distorted capitalism, not capitalism in general....so no one accuse me of being a communist, OK?)

@mrbojangles25: Ha! No worries. I stole the term from Cory Doctorow. Saw it in an article about the decline of BandCamp.

I agree, IGN used to be fairly reliable source for reviews and information, these days they are full corporate sellouts. The reviews are obnoxious and untrustworthy.