Polygon is the new Kotaku?

[Raikas]

Eh, I think they have decent articles. Not where I go for reviews or videos, but I think the main issue is one that a lot of gaming sites have: instead of focusing on what they do well (in their case the journalism side) they have people doing a bit of everything.

 

[Andy Shandy]

Eh, Polygon actually has good, interesting articles, so I'd say that they are better than Kotaku in that regard.

The only thing I can say that Kotaku has going for it is that it is usually first to post news on anything, but again that is just because they post short stories just so they can be first. It's like idiotic commenter in that regard.

 

[BrotherRool]

There's a difference between referencing someone else's article and running an overall bad website. Polygon had good investigative journalism for gaming, which is why they are referenced so often. Other than that, they're bottom of the barrel for a gaming website. The Escapist may not have the best articles, but it does have, with a few exceptions, great videos, good interviews, a forum that's actually extensive, and its reviews aren't just a mouthpiece for publishers.

I disagree on the reviews one. I think Escapist reviews are often noticeably generic and soulless. They don't have the depth or critical examination that things like Errant Signal, Super Bunnyhop or Arstechnia (or to lesser and lesser extents Rock Paper Shotgun and Polygon), but they also lack the spirit and strength of emotion that Angry Joe or Destructoid reviews have. It's very commercial.

But I don't want to be negative without being constructive so 1) The opinion piece videos on the Escapist are great and really form an identity that you don't get in other places. And even if the escapist fanbase couldn't support them, it gave things like Doraleus and Associates and Space Janitors a place to garner attention.

and
2)I think the problem with the reviews is that often the reviewers give the impression of trying to be fair-minded and commercially useful but this leads them to be a little too formulaic and detached. They tend to break the game up into pieces instead of talking about it as a whole and judge it a lot more on functionality than the overall feeling. If they encourage the reviewers to put more of their own personality into the reviews but then fill it with the 'but other people might think like this' it'd be for the best. (And if that requires longer reviews, then maybe they can format the pages, possibly with headers so it breaks up the text and doesn't feel as long.) Reviewing is a hard job and the Escapist reviews are functional, but there are a lot of reviewers out there and the Escapist has lots of place to improve