strange headache
Banned
RockPaperShotgun used to be my favorite gaming outlet. When I first started visiting the website in 2008, I was immediately hooked by Rossignol's and Kieron Gillen's witty reporting as each author contributed in their own style. In part, it felt like a continuation of Old Man Murray and while they started out small, the site quickly grew an amazing community glued together by the writer's enthusiasm, humor and passion for gaming. They managed to set themselves apart from the usual cut and dry corporate speech of their bigger competitors. To put it simply, back then it was fun being a gamer on RPS. Despite the humor, there certainly was enough room for serious criticism, but it was all conveyed by a certain levity that made it easy for regular readers to get behind and discuss whatever new nefarious trend plagued our shared hobby.
One could see that RPS was their pet project as they squeezed every ounce of their creativity into it. Gillen, Walker, Meer, Smith and Rossignol were quite different personalities and after a while you didn't even need to look at the byline in order to guess the author. Despite their differences, one always had the impression that they were friends, riding on the same wave, like Snake Plissken in Escape from L.A.
I used to visit their website on a daily basis and at some point I even became a supporter... until it all went downhill a couple of years ago. With the radical politicization of the hobby one could notice a massive shift in tone and culture. When Kieron left for greener pastures in the comics industry, Jim went into the game developer business and Walker became more and more frustrated with the hobby and its surrounding community, the whole thing kinda fell apart. It all became so damn serious and gloomy, with Walker's seething discontent oozing out between every single line of his writing.
Long story short, RPS and me parted ways a couple of years ago. I realized with a heavy heart that it wasn't me who has changed, but RPS. When they were acquired by Gamer Network and then by Reedpop, the website suffered a major redesign and a fundamental restructuring of their forums that fractured the whole community even more. When I decided to pay them a visit a couple of days ago, RPS was basically unrecognizable. If you take a look at their site statistics, things don't seem to go well for them, with traffic only taking a recent nosedive:
Theirshort-time traffic is kind of in an uptrend since the redesign, but people don't seem to stick around.
I stumbled upon this forum post which kinda exemplifies the problems that have plagued the website since 2014. Diversity is all well and good, but the growing list of freelance contributors has robbed them of their identity. RPS used to be their website, their pet project, but nowadays it feels like they have been thrown out of their own home. Worst of all is the self-flagellating discontent with themselves that their new community seems to have instilled into them. In response to the forum post linked above, this was Graham's reply:
Like what in the holy hell is even going on there?
First of all, there is nothing wrong with the way how Graham looks, absolutely nothing. What's important is the way he writes and Graham always did strike me as a nice person. Second of all, how inhumane has your own community become if it takes issue with the way you look? It kinda pains me to see the creators of a website that I once adored being held hostage like this by their own community. Despite everything that happened, it saddens me to see these once confident and brilliant writers to be reduced to mere husks of their former selves. Instead of celebrating their creative minds (something that everybody has the chance to cultivate if they wish so) they are now desperately apologizing to their own community for their immutable external characteristics.
So my question to you: Are/were you a reader of RPS? If so, am I alone in my assessment or do you have similar experiences to share? In any case, thanks for reading this lengthy post.
EDIT: I accidentally confused ALEXA rankings with website traffic and posted the wrong image. It should be fixed by now. I'm glad that they are doing better than I initially thought, but my criticism about their shift in political culture and their newfound community still stands. Sorry for the confusion.
One could see that RPS was their pet project as they squeezed every ounce of their creativity into it. Gillen, Walker, Meer, Smith and Rossignol were quite different personalities and after a while you didn't even need to look at the byline in order to guess the author. Despite their differences, one always had the impression that they were friends, riding on the same wave, like Snake Plissken in Escape from L.A.
I used to visit their website on a daily basis and at some point I even became a supporter... until it all went downhill a couple of years ago. With the radical politicization of the hobby one could notice a massive shift in tone and culture. When Kieron left for greener pastures in the comics industry, Jim went into the game developer business and Walker became more and more frustrated with the hobby and its surrounding community, the whole thing kinda fell apart. It all became so damn serious and gloomy, with Walker's seething discontent oozing out between every single line of his writing.
Long story short, RPS and me parted ways a couple of years ago. I realized with a heavy heart that it wasn't me who has changed, but RPS. When they were acquired by Gamer Network and then by Reedpop, the website suffered a major redesign and a fundamental restructuring of their forums that fractured the whole community even more. When I decided to pay them a visit a couple of days ago, RPS was basically unrecognizable. If you take a look at their site statistics, things
Their
I stumbled upon this forum post which kinda exemplifies the problems that have plagued the website since 2014. Diversity is all well and good, but the growing list of freelance contributors has robbed them of their identity. RPS used to be their website, their pet project, but nowadays it feels like they have been thrown out of their own home. Worst of all is the self-flagellating discontent with themselves that their new community seems to have instilled into them. In response to the forum post linked above, this was Graham's reply:
Like what in the holy hell is even going on there?
First of all, there is nothing wrong with the way how Graham looks, absolutely nothing. What's important is the way he writes and Graham always did strike me as a nice person. Second of all, how inhumane has your own community become if it takes issue with the way you look? It kinda pains me to see the creators of a website that I once adored being held hostage like this by their own community. Despite everything that happened, it saddens me to see these once confident and brilliant writers to be reduced to mere husks of their former selves. Instead of celebrating their creative minds (something that everybody has the chance to cultivate if they wish so) they are now desperately apologizing to their own community for their immutable external characteristics.
So my question to you: Are/were you a reader of RPS? If so, am I alone in my assessment or do you have similar experiences to share? In any case, thanks for reading this lengthy post.
EDIT: I accidentally confused ALEXA rankings with website traffic and posted the wrong image. It should be fixed by now. I'm glad that they are doing better than I initially thought, but my criticism about their shift in political culture and their newfound community still stands. Sorry for the confusion.
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