You raise a number of really good points about the fragmentation of the gaming-related readership, some of which were already an issue for videogame magazines when sales were dwindling and we had to focus on certain audiences and topics, knowing full well those choices could turn other readers away, all in the context of a market that, back in the days of the early seventh console generation, was expanding so much on a quantitative level that the idea of full spectrum coverage with an eye for quality contents, as unrealistic as it already was, became untenable for purely logistical reasons.
Broadly speaking, I think an unbiased videogame hobbyist, here meant as someone who is willing to engage with write-ups related to this medium regardless of their precise contexts in terms of hardware, software, genre, region or period and, inside each of those, of how niche (or mainstream) their subject ends up being, doesn’t really exist in meaningful numbers, outside of a very small group of eclectic readers, possibly involved in studying this medium from an academic standpoint, and, even then, their interest can vary dramatically depending on each piece's tone and underlying intent. Most people, instead, for a variety of legitimate and understandable reasons often related to the allocation of free time, money and passion, tend to focus on a number of genres, platforms, art styles, settings or even developers, platforms or hardware generations and, even then, there's a majority that tend to be mostly invested in releases that are part of the current zeitgeist, since they're actually interested in being involved in an ongoing, lively debate just as much as in the games themselves (in a sense, this could also be seen as a gamification of the community itself).
Ironically, even those interested in game studies sometimes tend to focus on the ludological or narratological themes while debating, or outright denying, the legitimacy of the other approach, but that's its own issue. Even then, each of those contexts, as niche as they may seem, are actually their own little worlds, sometimes with hints of infighting or hostility that can split up already small potential audiences, which make things even more complicated.
Let’s consider videogame RPGs, since I mostly write about them: those interested in Western and Japanese RPGs are sometimes at odds, often as much for a sport team-like rivalry as they are for real or perceived game design or art style differences, in some instances even being unwilling to recognize historical cross-regional influences and crosspollination in terms of gameplay, narrative, art direction, cinematics and so on even when the authors themselves admit them, while also being uninterested in exploring those contexts' underlying diversity, meaning a writer could turn afoul of some readers just by comparing titles from different regions. This kind of approach is one of the chief reasons for the recurring debates about promoting strict genre definitions, which are often crafted to keep out a number of titles and series, rather than to properly portray and problematize the videogame RPG space's complex and diverse history, evolution and internal variety.
Even inside the Western\CRPG fanbase or the JRPG one, there are often people focused on certain subgenres or time periods, with little interest in other contexts and, as in many other genres, there's also the more recent split between those who actively seek indie games and those who are mostly interested in AAA titles, which often leaves so-called AA productions in a strange situation. Again, there are people who are in love with a small number of series rather than being interested in RPGs as a whole and, depending on how large a fanbase can be, part of it can end up being uninterested in your writing if you're covering an entry that isn't popular, or that's too divisive, or so on.
To make some incredibly broad examples, a CRPG fan interested in Gold Box-era titles isn't necessarily interested in articles about Infinity Engine-era games, and a The Elder Scroll fan may ignore both, including those on earlier titles in his own favorite series, while someone invested in old school blobbers like Sir Tech’s Wizardry series may end up giving a chance to contemporary Japanese so-called dungeon-RPGs while disparaging some Western RPGs’ current narrative slant, and that’s not even considering the animosity sometimes evoked by discussing turn based and real-time-with-pause systems, or how subgenres like old school roguelikes, textual MUDs or, on the popular side, hack & slash titles, can have their own audiences that sometimes have little to no interest in reading contents about other kinds of RPGs, and how part of some of those groups could well end up denying most titles outside of their backyard are RPGs in the first place.
At the same time, in the JRPG space, fans of turn based titles can end up denying citizenship to Japanese action RPGs series, some of which, like Dragon Slayer and its Xanadu and Sorcerian spinoffs, Ys, Xak and many others were actually born right when turn based combat systems were also starting to making inroads in the Japanese gaming scene in the mid ‘80s, while others are only interested in titles from earlier generations for a variety of design and aesthetic reasons not necessarily related to nostalgia. Others still are mostly invested in tactical JRPGs and, even inside that niche, those engaging Fire Emblem (a series that, itself, includes fans with a variety of different preferences) are often a different audience from those interested in more customization-heavy titles à la Tactics Ogre or FFT or, again, from those willing to give a chance to more esoteric products like, say, the Disgaea or Yggdra franchises or games like Natural Doctrine. Even writing about a single franchise doesn’t necessarily mean having its whole fanbase as an audience, as even a series with a large following like, say, Final Fantasy has a number of sub-audiences related to age, artistic, narrative and gameplay differences, which means your write-up about the structure of Final Fantasy VI’s second half may fall flat with both those who got to know the series with Final Fantasy X and someone mostly engaged with Final Fantasy XIV’s online contents, which, in turn, could also be uninterested in their respective favorite entries.
So, to bring this humungous wall of text to some sort of closure, you're absolutely right about videogame writing being chiefly a work of passion and, for those of us who do focus on very niche subjects, sometimes the only audience you can take for granted is your own self. Still, if just one more person ends up getting invested in a title they didn’t consider before, discovering its narrative and game design traits, the historical context of its development and, even more importantly, the people who worked on it, I feel it was well worth the effort. If not, at least you did your part in sharing the love.
As a software developer, the least Substack could do is create the category. I know they have a backlog of items, but it wouldn't take much to add it. But of course I'm assuming they will want to have a bit of marketing around it and an announcement. And like you said, there's certainly an algorithm in place that tries to connect stacks and recommend stacks and so on that may have to be adjusted. I just think from an organizational perspective, own own category/bucket of Video Games would be really nice.
Definitely feel you there. There’s definitely a JIRA somewhere that either a product owner or a business rule is preventing from entering a sprint. But if the categories are tied to an algorithm that needs a minimum number of substacks then it could be difficult
I'll do my part to make the horizontal connections between science and gaming though! And encourage others who write about the industry to do the same, so that we CAN make those connections and create the gaming category we deserve!
You’ve got 143 subscribers. Thats a 143 people who want your words delivered to their inbox. Thats pretty impressive.
Humans will always express themselves through word. Even if it’s a niche thing topic. We do it for ourselves and when we find our audience we do it for them.
Keep writing! You’re obviously quite good at it and have a passion. Don’t let any other factors dampen that.
Thanks Alex. I've been pretty lax writing of late due to life stuff, but also because I've felt kind of down about it. But your words have helped put things in perspective. Thank you!
A very interesting post that is probably dead on as to why it won't happen. It's incredibly frustrating because it's hard to get as much traction without that specific category. It totally happens without it but it's just more difficult. It's easier for your post to get lost in the weeds since people can't specifically look for games stuff very easily with things like Reconnect.
I've sometimes wondered if Substack even is the best place for a gaming blog, if Ghost or Beehiv might be better. To be fair I haven't looked if they've got gaming categories or something similar but it's still something I think about.
Substack feels like a political or lifestyle blogging platform and gaming is removed enough from that focus that most of us will, eventually, plateau around similar numbers. My feed is filled with political blogs being far more successful than all but a handful of games writers. And now with video I've seen a bunch of TikTok folk start coming over here too. Maybe the political stuff is just because that's me, but I still wish it was easier to gain any amount of traction on the platform. Games writing is awesome, it allows you to read about something that doesnt have to be about the end of the world. I just wish we had our own category so we were easier to find.
Love the long comment and your spot on with Substack being too political and lifestyle. It’s exactly what happened to Medium. They tried to bolster the platform with a variety of different genres but in the end only the lifestyle stuff was doing well and they pulled back all their efforts
Very well put, thank you! Since starting to write here only this year, I’ve found plenty of games writers with very little effort on my end. Something is working there and I haven’t felt a need yet for the category. We should focus on cultivating this community as it is for when that day comes. As you mentioned, we can assume most here now are doing it for the love of writing and games. Eventually that won’t be the case.
The argument is indeed sound. My hope is that eventually, as this platform grows, it will attract enough people to make this addition worth it. And I agree, the community is slowly growing, so maybe we just need to be patient 🤞
Also, with Substack adding more features, such as videos, it only makes more sense to introduce additional categories.
Don't lose hope, my friends! We'll get there eventually!
Adding videos was great for my gaming blog! I stream and then edit the videos. With videos on Substack, I can just upload there alongside the writing about the video.
The only thing I’d add, the audience exists. esports is huge, as is streaming. We all know the readers are out there. YouTube and Twitch have cracked this — to some extent.
But gaming is indeed super fragmented and tastes vary widely!
The echo chamber of Substack’s gaming writers is growing. We all find each other anyway — largely through your work Alex.
So I do hold a bit of hope that means something and eventually the gears will turn, but we’ll see!
It seems, apart from video streaming platform, not many have been able to monetise esports. Not even facebook. Not even betting companies . May be esports itself is a big self-sustaining ecosystem and doesnt rely on anyone else.
You raise a number of really good points about the fragmentation of the gaming-related readership, some of which were already an issue for videogame magazines when sales were dwindling and we had to focus on certain audiences and topics, knowing full well those choices could turn other readers away, all in the context of a market that, back in the days of the early seventh console generation, was expanding so much on a quantitative level that the idea of full spectrum coverage with an eye for quality contents, as unrealistic as it already was, became untenable for purely logistical reasons.
Broadly speaking, I think an unbiased videogame hobbyist, here meant as someone who is willing to engage with write-ups related to this medium regardless of their precise contexts in terms of hardware, software, genre, region or period and, inside each of those, of how niche (or mainstream) their subject ends up being, doesn’t really exist in meaningful numbers, outside of a very small group of eclectic readers, possibly involved in studying this medium from an academic standpoint, and, even then, their interest can vary dramatically depending on each piece's tone and underlying intent. Most people, instead, for a variety of legitimate and understandable reasons often related to the allocation of free time, money and passion, tend to focus on a number of genres, platforms, art styles, settings or even developers, platforms or hardware generations and, even then, there's a majority that tend to be mostly invested in releases that are part of the current zeitgeist, since they're actually interested in being involved in an ongoing, lively debate just as much as in the games themselves (in a sense, this could also be seen as a gamification of the community itself).
Ironically, even those interested in game studies sometimes tend to focus on the ludological or narratological themes while debating, or outright denying, the legitimacy of the other approach, but that's its own issue. Even then, each of those contexts, as niche as they may seem, are actually their own little worlds, sometimes with hints of infighting or hostility that can split up already small potential audiences, which make things even more complicated.
Let’s consider videogame RPGs, since I mostly write about them: those interested in Western and Japanese RPGs are sometimes at odds, often as much for a sport team-like rivalry as they are for real or perceived game design or art style differences, in some instances even being unwilling to recognize historical cross-regional influences and crosspollination in terms of gameplay, narrative, art direction, cinematics and so on even when the authors themselves admit them, while also being uninterested in exploring those contexts' underlying diversity, meaning a writer could turn afoul of some readers just by comparing titles from different regions. This kind of approach is one of the chief reasons for the recurring debates about promoting strict genre definitions, which are often crafted to keep out a number of titles and series, rather than to properly portray and problematize the videogame RPG space's complex and diverse history, evolution and internal variety.
Even inside the Western\CRPG fanbase or the JRPG one, there are often people focused on certain subgenres or time periods, with little interest in other contexts and, as in many other genres, there's also the more recent split between those who actively seek indie games and those who are mostly interested in AAA titles, which often leaves so-called AA productions in a strange situation. Again, there are people who are in love with a small number of series rather than being interested in RPGs as a whole and, depending on how large a fanbase can be, part of it can end up being uninterested in your writing if you're covering an entry that isn't popular, or that's too divisive, or so on.
To make some incredibly broad examples, a CRPG fan interested in Gold Box-era titles isn't necessarily interested in articles about Infinity Engine-era games, and a The Elder Scroll fan may ignore both, including those on earlier titles in his own favorite series, while someone invested in old school blobbers like Sir Tech’s Wizardry series may end up giving a chance to contemporary Japanese so-called dungeon-RPGs while disparaging some Western RPGs’ current narrative slant, and that’s not even considering the animosity sometimes evoked by discussing turn based and real-time-with-pause systems, or how subgenres like old school roguelikes, textual MUDs or, on the popular side, hack & slash titles, can have their own audiences that sometimes have little to no interest in reading contents about other kinds of RPGs, and how part of some of those groups could well end up denying most titles outside of their backyard are RPGs in the first place.
At the same time, in the JRPG space, fans of turn based titles can end up denying citizenship to Japanese action RPGs series, some of which, like Dragon Slayer and its Xanadu and Sorcerian spinoffs, Ys, Xak and many others were actually born right when turn based combat systems were also starting to making inroads in the Japanese gaming scene in the mid ‘80s, while others are only interested in titles from earlier generations for a variety of design and aesthetic reasons not necessarily related to nostalgia. Others still are mostly invested in tactical JRPGs and, even inside that niche, those engaging Fire Emblem (a series that, itself, includes fans with a variety of different preferences) are often a different audience from those interested in more customization-heavy titles à la Tactics Ogre or FFT or, again, from those willing to give a chance to more esoteric products like, say, the Disgaea or Yggdra franchises or games like Natural Doctrine. Even writing about a single franchise doesn’t necessarily mean having its whole fanbase as an audience, as even a series with a large following like, say, Final Fantasy has a number of sub-audiences related to age, artistic, narrative and gameplay differences, which means your write-up about the structure of Final Fantasy VI’s second half may fall flat with both those who got to know the series with Final Fantasy X and someone mostly engaged with Final Fantasy XIV’s online contents, which, in turn, could also be uninterested in their respective favorite entries.
So, to bring this humungous wall of text to some sort of closure, you're absolutely right about videogame writing being chiefly a work of passion and, for those of us who do focus on very niche subjects, sometimes the only audience you can take for granted is your own self. Still, if just one more person ends up getting invested in a title they didn’t consider before, discovering its narrative and game design traits, the historical context of its development and, even more importantly, the people who worked on it, I feel it was well worth the effort. If not, at least you did your part in sharing the love.
As a software developer, the least Substack could do is create the category. I know they have a backlog of items, but it wouldn't take much to add it. But of course I'm assuming they will want to have a bit of marketing around it and an announcement. And like you said, there's certainly an algorithm in place that tries to connect stacks and recommend stacks and so on that may have to be adjusted. I just think from an organizational perspective, own own category/bucket of Video Games would be really nice.
Definitely feel you there. There’s definitely a JIRA somewhere that either a product owner or a business rule is preventing from entering a sprint. But if the categories are tied to an algorithm that needs a minimum number of substacks then it could be difficult
This makes total sense...a bit sad, but spot on.
I'll do my part to make the horizontal connections between science and gaming though! And encourage others who write about the industry to do the same, so that we CAN make those connections and create the gaming category we deserve!
"The stuff we love to write, doesn’t traffic. It doesn’t go viral, it doesn’t lead to horizontal movement"
This sums up my Substack perfectly. 😓
You and me both brother!
Honestly, I wonder if I should bother continuing. No one reads, or probably cares, what I write.
You’ve got 143 subscribers. Thats a 143 people who want your words delivered to their inbox. Thats pretty impressive.
Humans will always express themselves through word. Even if it’s a niche thing topic. We do it for ourselves and when we find our audience we do it for them.
Keep writing! You’re obviously quite good at it and have a passion. Don’t let any other factors dampen that.
Thanks Alex. I've been pretty lax writing of late due to life stuff, but also because I've felt kind of down about it. But your words have helped put things in perspective. Thank you!
I found this really insightful. Thank you!
A very interesting post that is probably dead on as to why it won't happen. It's incredibly frustrating because it's hard to get as much traction without that specific category. It totally happens without it but it's just more difficult. It's easier for your post to get lost in the weeds since people can't specifically look for games stuff very easily with things like Reconnect.
I've sometimes wondered if Substack even is the best place for a gaming blog, if Ghost or Beehiv might be better. To be fair I haven't looked if they've got gaming categories or something similar but it's still something I think about.
Substack feels like a political or lifestyle blogging platform and gaming is removed enough from that focus that most of us will, eventually, plateau around similar numbers. My feed is filled with political blogs being far more successful than all but a handful of games writers. And now with video I've seen a bunch of TikTok folk start coming over here too. Maybe the political stuff is just because that's me, but I still wish it was easier to gain any amount of traction on the platform. Games writing is awesome, it allows you to read about something that doesnt have to be about the end of the world. I just wish we had our own category so we were easier to find.
Anyway, great post! Sorry for the long comment.
Love the long comment and your spot on with Substack being too political and lifestyle. It’s exactly what happened to Medium. They tried to bolster the platform with a variety of different genres but in the end only the lifestyle stuff was doing well and they pulled back all their efforts
Very well put, thank you! Since starting to write here only this year, I’ve found plenty of games writers with very little effort on my end. Something is working there and I haven’t felt a need yet for the category. We should focus on cultivating this community as it is for when that day comes. As you mentioned, we can assume most here now are doing it for the love of writing and games. Eventually that won’t be the case.
The argument is indeed sound. My hope is that eventually, as this platform grows, it will attract enough people to make this addition worth it. And I agree, the community is slowly growing, so maybe we just need to be patient 🤞
Also, with Substack adding more features, such as videos, it only makes more sense to introduce additional categories.
Don't lose hope, my friends! We'll get there eventually!
Adding videos was great for my gaming blog! I stream and then edit the videos. With videos on Substack, I can just upload there alongside the writing about the video.
A great piece and a really sound argument.
The only thing I’d add, the audience exists. esports is huge, as is streaming. We all know the readers are out there. YouTube and Twitch have cracked this — to some extent.
But gaming is indeed super fragmented and tastes vary widely!
The echo chamber of Substack’s gaming writers is growing. We all find each other anyway — largely through your work Alex.
So I do hold a bit of hope that means something and eventually the gears will turn, but we’ll see!
It seems, apart from video streaming platform, not many have been able to monetise esports. Not even facebook. Not even betting companies . May be esports itself is a big self-sustaining ecosystem and doesnt rely on anyone else.