[Gamedeveloper.com] Former Polygon staffers establish independent video game website Rogue

holding studios accountable for their actions
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Always Sunny Fx GIF by It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia
 
Yep, this will be the one - this will be the website that finally captures the modern audience that has failed to materialise for everyone else - including them - who are all trying to do exactly the same thing and failing multiple times before. In related news, did you know that 99% of gamblers quit right before their big win?
 
Doomtrain said:
"we still need to pay our bills in this economy defined by late-stage capitalism"

Capitalism is WHY you can make a living from games. Just once, I'd like to see these people put forth some of their favorite socialist video games. Offhand, I can mostly think of America's Army, which was funded by our government in an attempt to coerce children into signing up for the army.
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At the end of the day, making money always rules all blabbering points any company makes. Thats why these guys were out of a job to begin with. Whatever content they made at Polygon was junk so the company spiraled down the toilet.

Once the well runs dry, everything they stand for regarding personal politics, worker/employee relations, charitable donations, PR brown nosing, Bungie trying to be cool giving free cooking and knitting classes etc.... all come crumbling down. All due to the almighty dollar.

It's easy to boast like a big shot when there's money to cover the bills. Not so brave when it runs out where scraping up money becomes a full time job pushing away anything that suddenly now seems like a waste of money or people.
 
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Doomtrain said:
Some choice quotes from their "About" section:

"Rogue is worker-owned and independent"
"we still need to pay our bills in this economy defined by late-stage capitalism"
"We are fearlessly inclusive, and that means we will never tolerate bigotry, hate, or exclusion"
"trans rights are human rights, no human is illegal, billionaires should not exist, and fascism is bad"

Essentially nothing in there about games.

EDIT: I'm going to dig into some of these quotes, because I hate myself, I guess.

"Rogue is worker-owned and independent"

So was PewDiePie, and the legacy press (Polygon included) constantly pretended this made him less legitimate than the "real" media.

"we still need to pay our bills in this economy defined by late-stage capitalism"

Capitalism is WHY you can make a living from games. Just once, I'd like to see these people put forth some of their favorite socialist video games. Offhand, I can mostly think of America's Army, which was funded by our government in an attempt to coerce children into signing up for the army.

"We are fearlessly inclusive, and that means we will never tolerate bigotry, hate, or exclusion"

I always love the immediate "we're inclusive, so this is why everyone who disagrees with us should die in a fire." There's nothing "fearless" about pandering to the same pre-approved groups as everyone else in the space.

"trans rights are human rights, no human is illegal, billionaires should not exist, and fascism is bad"

Stunning and brave.
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One has to wonder what actually goes on in the brain of the people who write this flotsam.

Do they not realize, that when you need money to survive, immediately cutting out a massive portion of the people you are targeting, from an already dwindling group of people who would visit a site like this, is tantamount to suicide?

This is not how any of this works.
 
KINGMOKU said:
One has to wonder what actually goes on in the brain of the people who write this flotsam.

Do they not realize, that when you need money to survive, immediately cutting out a massive portion of the people you are targeting, from an already dwindling group of people who would visit a site like this, is tantamount to suicide?

This is not how any of this works.
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It's a mindset issue a lot of creative/artsy people have. Loud, emotional, always on Twitter kind of people who think their brain cells are the top totem pole of exquisite taste and ethics. You dont really get that in other kinds of people or companies.

It's a funny thing because whether it's a giant corporation selling products globally across 100 different brands, a married couple serving bagels and coffee from a small cafe, a mortgage broker at a bank, or an independent blue collar guy fixing HVACs all seem to have a purpose to sell you a product or service as is. A customer has an issue and needs to buy something and they fill that need in a smooth transactional kind of deal. The company is open arms and tries to sell to anyone who likes their content with no fuss or bringing up trans people or whatever hot topic they can think of.

You'd think people writing articles or doing podcasts could do the same. Just be friendly, dont bring politics into it trying to lecture people, and hope with digital content it can get global attention from the press of a button on a YT page kind of thing. No factories, inventory, showing up at someone's house to fix it is even needed.

Yet leave it to media crazies to go ape shit with attitudes that turn off people right from the get go without the final product even released yet.

And they wonder why so many outlets are broke and they make crap money doing these kinds of jobs.
 
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I have no idea why so many threads on here are about things that people here don't like.

Personally, good luck to them.
 
We already have youtube and we have GAF.

Whats the point of this unless its some sort of laundering operation for a drug cartel?
 
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Absolute fucking parasites legends of the entertainment industry.

K0uMBxgTFtEWFQ9X.gif

Got to love the "going rogue" implications. You just KNOW they all spilled their lattes and rubbed their nipples when one of them suggested the name.

cuEkxFFKP5FRjQQd.gif


Keep on fighting the opressors, I guess? 🤷‍♂️
 
Doomtrain said:
Some choice quotes from their "About" section:

"Rogue is worker-owned and independent"
"we still need to pay our bills in this economy defined by late-stage capitalism"
"We are fearlessly inclusive, and that means we will never tolerate bigotry, hate, or exclusion"
"trans rights are human rights, no human is illegal, billionaires should not exist, and fascism is bad"
Click to expand...
humanize developers and their process while holding studios accountable for their actions [and] create content that is made by humans, for humans, without catering to algorithms."
Click to expand...

oejcHxcv9KwFgeoH.png
 
SomeNorseGuy said:
Absolute fucking parasites legends of the entertainment industry.

K0uMBxgTFtEWFQ9X.gif

Got to love the "going rogue" implications. You just KNOW they all spilled their lattes and rubbed their nipples when one of them suggested the name.

cuEkxFFKP5FRjQQd.gif


Keep on fighting the opressors, I guess? 🤷‍♂️
Click to expand...
That's media for ya.

If a site or company doesn't have established content (let's say ESPN doing sports updates or Nat Geo doing low key nature videos), a lot of content creators need to go for shock and awe to get views. Click bait headlines, the YT video with guy with a gaping mouth, hot topic politics etc....

Most stuff made by content creators are pointless. Nobody is searching for it unless it hits them in the face with a baity catch as they surf the net. That's why the industry is such a mish mash of instability, low wages, and contract/freelance work. Mild diversions that come and go.
 
Doomtrain said:
Some choice quotes from their "About" section:

"Rogue is worker-owned and independent"
"we still need to pay our bills in this economy defined by late-stage capitalism"
"We are fearlessly inclusive, and that means we will never tolerate bigotry, hate, or exclusion"
"trans rights are human rights, no human is illegal, billionaires should not exist, and fascism is bad"

Essentially nothing in there about games.

EDIT: I'm going to dig into some of these quotes, because I hate myself, I guess.

"Rogue is worker-owned and independent"

So was PewDiePie, and the legacy press (Polygon included) constantly pretended this made him less legitimate than the "real" media.

"we still need to pay our bills in this economy defined by late-stage capitalism"

Capitalism is WHY you can make a living from games. Just once, I'd like to see these people put forth some of their favorite socialist video games. Offhand, I can mostly think of America's Army, which was funded by our government in an attempt to coerce children into signing up for the army.

"We are fearlessly inclusive, and that means we will never tolerate bigotry, hate, or exclusion"

I always love the immediate "we're inclusive, so this is why everyone who disagrees with us should die in a fire." There's nothing "fearless" about pandering to the same pre-approved groups as everyone else in the space.

"trans rights are human rights, no human is illegal, billionaires should not exist, and fascism is bad"

Stunning and brave.
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"Remember when VICE got shitty and lame and was just a bunch of scolds talking about shoving things up their ass? And how their market value immediately collapsed and became an afterthought? Yea let's do that"
 
StreetsofBeige said:
That's media for ya.

If a site or company doesn't have established content (let's say ESPN doing sports updates or Nat Geo doing low key nature videos), a lot of content creators need to go for shock and awe to get views. Click bait headlines, the YT video with guy with a gaping mouth, hot topic politics etc....

Most stuff made by content creators are pointless. Nobody is searching for it unless it hits them in the face with a baity catch as they surf the net. That's why the industry is such a mish mash of instability, low wages, and contract/freelance work. Mild diversions that come and go.
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That's a given, got to get those clicks. But there's no denying that there's been a subset of "journalists" that just use games media as an outlet for their own socio-political activism. Not to speak of the underlying hostility that many of these sites sites has shown against gamers since gamergate.

Yeah, one of the worst consequences of this is the rise of the counter-rage influencers. They play by the same bad-faith rules and thrive of anger-clicks.

There's a larger issue at hand when it comes to the broken trust between gaming outlets and it's consumers, that's not easily fixable. But things does seem to have gotten a tiny bit better over the last few years, even if access media will always be a thing.

Guess most of these sites are struggling to thrive after the massive rise of new media and AI starting to eat their lunch. Will be interesting to see where this all leads.
 
SomeNorseGuy said:
That's a given, got to get those clicks. But there's no denying that there's been a subset of "journalists" that just use games media as an outlet for their own socio-political activism. Not to speak of the underlying hostility that many of these sites sites has shown against gamers since gamergate.

Yeah, one of the worst consequences of this is the rise of the counter-rage influencers. They play by the same bad-faith rules and thrive of anger-clicks.

There's a larger issue at hand when it comes to the broken trust between gaming outlets and it's consumers, that's not easily fixable. But things does seem to have gotten a tiny bit better over the last few years, even if access media will always be a thing.

Guess most of these sites are struggling to thrive after the massive rise of new media and AI starting to eat their lunch. Will be interesting to see where this all leads.
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Agreed.

Creative jobs are like that. They got a certain amount of freedom (100% freedom if it's their own company) to do and say whatever they want, including personal politics.

You cant do that shit working at a bank, being a plumber or working as a stockboy in a grocery store. Vast majority of jobs are functional and transactional in nature confined to a certain role or task. And almost all jobs dont involve publicly uploading podcasts, videos or articles daily to the net.

Creatives can wing it saying or drawing what they want. One day it's this, next day it's that. One day there's no politics, next day it's a political rant. And because most of it is low quality fodder in the millions of pages on the net, most fail and is forgotten or ignored content. It's an industry of spur of the moment entertainment based on a mix of baity low brow content (hot takes) or established legit content (ESPN scores and stats). And most baity kind of content fails, while the big established sites continue with zero rants needed.
 
StreetsofBeige said:
Agreed.

Creative jobs are like that. They got a certain amount of freedom (100% freedom if it's their own company) to do and say whatever they want, including personal politics.

You cant do that shit working at a bank, being a plumber or working as a stockboy in a grocery store. Vast majority of jobs are functional and transactional in nature confined to a certain role or task. And almost all jobs dont involve publicly uploading podcasts, videos or articles daily to the net.

Creatives can wing it saying or drawing what they want. One day it's this, next day it's that. One day there's no politics, next day it's a political rant. And because most of it is low quality fodder in the millions of pages on the net, most fail and is forgotten or ignored content. It's an industry of spur of the moment entertainment based on a mix of baity low brow content (hot takes) or established legit content (ESPN scores and stats). And most baity kind of content fails, while the big established sites continue with zero rants needed.
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It's not that journalists can't infuse some of their personalities (many of them are popular because of it) and cover themes that they care about. I think every good writer use this to their strength. Otherwise we might aswell just have A.I do it all. But it seems like some of them majored in political journalism, didn't land a "real" job, and settled for a writing gig in gaming.

I don't follow many other types of entertainment media, so I can't really speak if this hostile form of journalism is used in these avenues aswell.

It's the brow-beating, lecturing and bad-faith arguments that completly loses the plot IMO. Yeah, it get's them clicks in the short run. But, I don't think it's been healthy for them in the long run.
 
EviLore said:
oejcHxcv9KwFgeoH.png
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There's a much larger thread in here about how catering to the algorithm directly led to divisive politics being shoved into games media. Studies have shown that people click on, and more importantly, share, things that make them angry at a rate of roughly 8x anything else. This applies to SEO, as well: the algorithm then favors articles stuffed with divisive keywords. I strongly suspect this is why the concept of "intersectionality" took off the way it did: articles that were only really focused on one divisive topic could suddenly be filled with ALL the divisive keywords.

At the same time, Twitter was taking off as a dominant social media platform, which suddenly allowed unsubstantiated gossip to spread further and faster. Publications were discovering that there wasn't quite enough legitimate gaming news in a given day to satisfy the speed of the modern internet news cycle -- but if they supplemented it with bullshit tabloid rumermongering, they could pump out more articles, faster articles, and articles that were more divisive and made people angrier. Essentially, games media started trying to replicate the success of Gawker.

This is where I'm about to get cynical, but I also think this is the most interesting thing: I suspect the discovery that trash content made money happened BEFORE games media shifted to the far left. The Gawker business model was proving to be the most successful financially, but people don't want to think of themselves as writing for tabloids. So how do you reconcile those things? You recontextualize. You tell yourself that reposting unsubstantiated Twitter rumors isn't catty gossip; it's a vital step in social progress. You convince yourself that you're not pumping out mean-spirited, under-researched slop -- you're doing important work that helps people. You do this, and you can sleep at night.

I think on some level, most of the writers involved do think of themselves as good people who want to do helpful things (as does almost everyone). No one wants to face the idea that they're basically a smear merchant writing for the National Enquirer. So they build up defense mechanisms and bubbles to stop them from confronting that.

We had an explosion for a while where that was getting clicks, but then it got hypersaturated. The audience is exhausted and the market is too dense with imitators chasing the same business model. Now the audience is starting to leave, and these sites are being forced to shut down.

The sad/hilarious irony, of course, is that all of this posturing is ultimately just following (lol capitalist) market trends. They've built up these layers to stop themselves from having to think of it that way, but it is. But because they've trained themselves not to see it that way -- to see it as an important mission, not a cynical attempt at getting clicks -- they can't see what the problem is. To use their own language, they sacrificed longevity for short-term gains.

tl;dr: games journalists are capitalist swine just like the rest of us.

... and there was a lot of money to be mined from attacking capitalism.
 
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Doomtrain said:
"We are fearlessly inclusive, and that means we will never tolerate bigotry, hate, or exclusion"

"trans rights are human rights, no human is illegal, billionaires should not exist, and fascism is bad"
Click to expand...

Up for a good start already lmao
 
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SomeNorseGuy said:
a04vjnuleAEZzhdt.jpeg

Article:
A host of former Polygon staffers have established a new independent video game outlet called Rogue. The seven founding members have reunited after new Polygon owner Valnet made a number of layoffs when acquiring the website from Vox Media in May.

They explained Rogue will strive to help readers find games that resonate with them on a personal level and spotlight both triple-A and indie titles. It will also work to "humanize developers and their process while holding studios accountable for their actions [and] create content that is made by humans, for humans, without catering to algorithms."
Click to expand...
2E5zXyjI4bBoEEds.gif
 
Will echo what a shit logo. Looks like someone went into Blender, stuck a basic bitch texture on a flat plane, subdivided the plane, and converted their company name to a displacement map image to stamp on to the surface...but were to inept to turn the strength up so it's barely legible.

These people really are useless without financial backing from corpo venture capital. AI could do this better, but they seem the type to be luddite about using it.

EDIT: Looked at the site for a quick second, first headline I saw "I active reloaded on a PS5 while playing Gears of War: Reloaded, and now I feel like a pervert"...the cringe did not disappoint.
 
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Another political website masquerading as a gaming website, we have about a dozen of those already.
 
Crayon said:
holding studios accountable for their actions

Oh lord. This will crash and burn.
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Rogue: Hello, Rockstar? This is Rogue.

Rockstar: Who?

Rogue: A new progressive gaming website. I am calling to hold you accountable.

Rockstar: About what?

Rogue: Blatant sexism, ableism, misogyny, transphobia, racism, toxic workplace, crunch time.

Rockstar: Oh, ok. Sure.

Rogue: We are now holding you very accountable. To the biggest extent imaginable!

Rockstar: Got it. Anything else?

Rogue: Could we get review code for GTA6? Hello? Anyone there?
 
"Holding studios accountable"

Looking forward them complaining about Marcus Fenix not being a queer transman with dyslexia in Gear of War E-Day.
 
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