My New Years Resolution: To Stop Reading Kotaku
My Google Reader is always full. Subscriptions to sites like Giant Bomb, Joystiq, Gamespot, Movieweb, and ESPN give me plenty to soak up daily. The one site that should be a major source of video game blog news, Kotaku, seems to always be the dead weight in my RSS feed digestion.
As much as I respect Brian Cresente, Brian Ashcroft and Stephen Totilo, and I do, believe me, those guys are doing great things with game journalism, Kotaku seems to take a strange approach to what they consider “post-worthy.” Its like they are trying to turn Kotaku into the catch all for gaming counter culture. Everything from fan art to cos-play to bizarre Youtube videos, Kotaku’s RSS is filled with drivel that probably drives traffic from meme-happy interweb-dwellers. If this is their goal, then bravo, they have succeeded.
However, as a reader that craves smart, text-heavy thought provoking material Kotaku is too hard to sift through. For every high quality opinion blog that’s posted there’s just as many unnecessary fluff topics. Volume-wise, Kotaku posts 30%-40% more content than Joystiq, IGN or Gamespot and nearly 10 times more than Giant Bomb or Destructoid. Sure some of those sites have drastically different coverage models, but 1000+ articles in a month is simply more coverage than what’s actually happening.
A good game site has three types of posts, news (game announcements, studio closures, basically anything grounded in fact), opinion (reviews, editorial posts etc.) and previews (informative pre-release coverage that contains equal parts news and opinion). Kotaku has added a fourth type to this that blurs the line between professional journalism and real time gaming culture pulse measurement. By taking popular game related links from the internet and posting them, Kotaku is essentially sharing the best of the Neogaf and/or 4chan forums as if its worthy to sit beside their Metareviews and Gut-check columns.
This diminishes the value of the real editorial posts, inflates the value of random Legend of Zelda fan art and it creates an overall watered down experience. Is this innovative? Probably, but its not what I want. I’m not looking for cutting edge Skyrim glitch videos or 7 different Asain girls dressed as slutty Bayonettas. Even that video of a frog attempting to eat bugs on an iPhone screen, as funny as it is, doesn’t belong in MY RSS feed. Its time for me to cut the cord.
The news piece of Kotaku I can get from Joystiq, they are fast, clean, and concise when rolling out gaming news. The preview piece I will get from Gamespot and Giant Bomb. Between the two I will get both a vanilla (Gamespot) and colorful (Giant Bomb) idea of what to expect out of upcoming games. The editorial piece I will miss, but there are a number of other sites that can fill the void.
Gawker took alot of heat for their new page layout, but despite that, Kotaku and Gizmodo are still huge names in tech and gaming news. I hate that I’m about to end my subscription to such an oft-quoted source, but with the way their posts are dumped into the world its just easier for me to wait for someone else to reference their material and go from there.
Sure, I will still visit the site during huge media blitz weeks, especially TGS, Gamesconn and other international shows. Their editorial staff typically makes the international trips and covers them extremely well. However, day to day RSS feed reading of Kotaku will probably stop for me all together. I’ll find something more focused in which to subscribe.
