The Comeback of Games Journalism

August 12, 2026 - 23:27

I was tempted to take Rami Ismail up on his offer to fly around Cologne during Gamescom. Many moons ago, I took several months of flying lessons because flying is an absolute marvel.

It is why, unlike many others, I was not surprised this week when the Federal Aviation Administration announced it had successfully filled many of its open air traffic controller positions by recruiting gamers. According to US Secretary of Transportation Sean Duffy, the FAA launched a campaign specifically targeting gamers and delivered "historic" results.

Recruiting a younger, more tech-savvy generation to solve increasingly complex logistical issues is a proud tradition.

I recall my younger brother programming our grandfather's VCR. For those of you born since 2000, that is a Video Cassette Recorder, and it allowed you to record video and... oh wow, I am really turning fifty this year. Damn. Anyway, new media technologies are often a quick favorite with younger people because they are comparatively more open than established channels. The internet, at least in its early days, was a largely green pasture that allowed people to communicate freely in ways that traditional media like newspapers, broadcast TV, and radio did not.

Personally, I have always regarded video games as a way to make sense of the world. The torrential nature of our day-to-day media experience is so overwhelming that, without developing some ability to navigate it, we would remain entirely passive. That is why older generations, the ones that did not grow up playing video games, struggle to adapt to this new information environment, and why younger ones do not.

More than just absorbing information, any shared, mediated experience speaks directly to that group's collective ambitions and anxieties. It needs no explanation why cozy games were a hit during the pandemic, as people looked for comfort, and social deduction games like Among Us provided the necessary interpersonal drama. More recently, the emergence of the Brainrot Economy is, from where I sit, Gen Alpha's attempt to carve out its own territory in the otherwise broadly owned, structured, monitored, and sold-back-to-them digital playscape the games industry has become. Precisely by making it virtually indigestible, they free themselves from parental oversight and corporate meddling.

That any of that would ultimately amount to a career still comes as a surprise to many. Sure enough, talented designers earn critical acclaim as indie devs, and teen millionaires frustrate parents with their financial success. But play sits at the intersection of many more roads than just art and tech.

I bet one hundred percent of those air traffic controllers also read books.

On to this week's update.

Next-Gen Game Journalism

Every semester, like clockwork, students ask me some version of the same question. Where to find good news sources? They seem acutely aware of both the absence of serious journalistic coverage among mainstream outlets and the cacophony of misdirection that is the internet.

I would argue that interactive entertainment is large enough to warrant attention, but that is a tiresome conversation. Book publishing is a one hundred forty billion dollar market, and, oh boy, do we get a lot of book reviews, awards, and coverage of writers.

It is not about prestige, obviously. Those are metrics relevant to music and film. Game journalism is necessary because the market is vast and increasingly difficult for consumers to navigate. Where do I find games and devices relevant to me?

Meanwhile, interactive entertainment is dominated by some of the world's most powerful firms, leaving very little room for backtalk or accountability. Other than the price tag, the fifty-five billion dollar buyout of Electronic Arts by a sovereign wealth fund in cahoots with the US President's son-in-law's private equity fund could have used more scrutiny. But, hey, it is just video games.

There are at least three reasons why game journalism today is so anemic.

First, alongside the same ceaseless layoffs among creatives that have characterized the industry in recent years, a generation of reporters lost their jobs, too.

According to ICO Partners, a UK-based consulting and marketing agency, the number of online outlets in the most prominent European markets saw a dramatic decline in the wake of the pandemic. After increasing from nine hundred forty-one to one thousand five hundred eleven between 2016 and 2021, the total number of video game websites dropped to four hundred six in 2023, a seventy-three percent decline.

Data from PressEngine, a games-industry PR service, tells a similar story at the individual level. In the first half of 2026 alone, its database lost a net of two hundred three specialist games journalists, making it the third-worst year on record. That follows a brutal 2024, when roughly six hundred specialist and mainstream reporters dropped out, and the losses show no sign of plateauing.

While the focus deservedly is on the creatives that drive this industry, widespread layoffs impact a much broader range of people whose careers depend on the same economics. Their involuntary departure, however, rarely makes the headline.