DISCLAIMER: sometimes we let our writers attempt to seriously interrogate their thoughts. This is probably an awful idea, but we won’t apologize. Instead, we’ll do what every website that employs writers should do: let them have a soapbox, and then put them back inside of it.

There’s a list of websites I sometimes find myself checking every single day. Most of them are places other writers call home, the occasional podcast. After that, some good old fashioned games journalism.
In life, most of us are basically gossip columnists. Think about how many writers covering video games are always looking for new ways to talk about their favorite games. On the contrary, as soon as something newsworthy happens we’ve all got immediate opinions ready to fire. Even though most writers could probably benefit from planting our feet in the ground and waiting for the news to pass, most of us don’t.

Why would we? Games criticism seems to live and die by keeping up with the news. We certainly shouldn’t ignore what’s going on in the world, and some of us can’t afford to be silent while friends and coworkers get harassed. What about the rest of us, though? For example: What the hell’s worth saying about San-Diego Comic-Con that gets people interested in my website? Noticing that even the most critical of us can kind of fall into generic punditry keeps me up at night.

Watching E3 put me into a fugue state deep enough I thought I was going to turn into a cannibal. Keeping up with all of these games forever is what they want, god. I even got up at 5am to write an article about it. Though I’m doing that again now  – let’s use the platform to say nothing. There’s going to be a new tights movie: a critically acclaimed creator is going to get drunk. Consequently, an intern is going to get fired. The convention lines up with the release of a videogame.

Conventions, E3, press-releases. It’s all trying to get us to buy something. I’m lucky enough I can make a stance against something here: There are writers at less fortunate places. At the same time I’m drinking and writing about Castlevania, someone at Polygon is pulling their hair out. In spite of all of the stomping they can do about not crossing the Amazon.Com picket line, someone in a different wing of the company is posting fifteen updates an hour about Amazon Prime sales.

That’s where the news was this week! I didn’t even notice in time, but neither did anyone else. Right in front of us the people that should’ve been the loudest about Amazon’s workers were getting embarrassed by their own marketing office. It’s old news now, but what was the important topic a week ago? We never run out of fresh issues to talk about.

In truth, there’s a lot of punditry going around in the world of games criticism. There’s not so much critique of labor practices going around as there is opinions on them. Who should do what, and when – but solutions offered only appeal to the barest audience of people that are already reading another article. As much as I hate moving into the new market of Games Criticism-Criticism, who are we trying to fool, exactly? Stories will break about the latest in shitty labor practices. Eventually it’s time to say actually you don’t have to feel bad about buying it because the creator is a person of color.

Suppose we do a little less finger wagging and ask some harder questions, what kind of world does that make? Every time there’s a press conference with an important developer, it’s always the guys like Jon Blow that get a platform – nobody ever asks a hard question in public. When they do, it tends to get lost in an immediate deluge of the same kind of takes. “People worked hard on this, we can’t actually be upset about it.”

I don’t know what’s worth saying about The Big Thing this weekend. There are thoughts screaming to break free of my head and be put on the page, and here I am starving them.
Who’s benefiting from us always craving news, anyway? When the press releases come almost daily, the interviews are between directors and staff and the press is more like an audience, should we be a little bit more careful about what we decide to make news, and how quickly?