Twitter – Best New Source For Gaming News?
A simple round-the-clock update site now one of the biggest sources for everything news-worthy….hmm?
by GrathiusXR
©2009 Arthur Kotsopoulos:- CE (Community Editor)
It seems that over the past few weeks Twitter has been source to updates via mobile, tweetdeck, Web and other methods from various gaming developers, PR people and such. Early news and information regarding patches, announcements, etc. have been all announced either definitely or vaguely on Twitter.
This seems to be becoming the main source for many sites reporting news for the various platforms.
But is it a good thing?
Do gamers really want a brief dumbed-down vague sentence or two instead of detailed information and analysis now?
Is our attention span really that pathetically low?
Over at N4G (News 4 Gamers) of late the higher-viewed group of news with great ‘heat’ from comments and interest are tiny one paragraph articles offering no insight from the article writer reporting the news/announcements other then a few lines and the link to the Twitter page where the announcement was made.
Here is one story currently at 580° ‘heat’ (the N4G measurement of news interest) about CoD4 on the 360 receiving a patch to eliminate cheaters. After clicking the link you are treated with the exact same paragraph that you read in the short blurb on N4G meant to get your interest before visiting the real source; no other insight nothing is at the actual source.
Another story about Capcom saving some surprises for E3 currently sits on 200° and again after clicking the link you are treated to a one paragraph article on the news with half the blurb already in the N4G page for it.
One more example to illustrate my point is about Assassins Creed and how it will not be receiving Trophies for the PS3, which sits on 190° and – yes you guessed it, it’s a tiny two paragraph story on the Twitter update.
These are just some examples of some sites now using this lazy format: there have been many other sites that have the exact same thing so I’m not pointing the finger at any particular site.
These kind of stories based on Twitter updates really overshadow the better stories linked on N4G that actually have the writer put in dedicated time to report a good piece of news or delve in and discuss a matter at hand.
Lately we’re too often treated to either these kind of stories or massive flamebait articles.
Over at N4G the more intelligently reported articles usually sit at around 50° or 30° most of the time, never making the front most viewed page, and it is a real shame that many get over looked and don’t get the views that they really deserve.
My main gripe with these Twitter stories is that they offer nothing extra than what is said in the blurb on N4G; no detail, no insight, no interesting interview, no debate, no perspective, no comment at all.
By clicking the link you have wasted a few seconds, sucked into thinking “this looks interesting let’s see what else it says “.
It’s something that I believe will continue to grow now that Twitter is much more popular. I fear it will soon become all too popular a method for sites to try and one-up each other to get out news and announcements quickly, without having to put much effort into actually writing anything. And many gamers may ignore follow-up articles that offer so much more because the news will seem ‘old’.
Many Twitter updates are simply teases and rumours like the one a month back when there was a Twitter update regarding Rockstar showing off a new game many thought was a new GTA, only to find a Twit-Update later that it was taken out of context and the game was something else.
So now it seems Twitter is being used as a mainstream gaming news source. What do you think about that? Do you think it is lazy and shallow news, or do you have little time to read more detail and like mini-updates? Let us know in the comments box below.
©2009 Arthur Kotsopoulos:- CE (C0mmunity Editor)
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Filed under: Console gaming, Editorial, Industry News, Xbox 360, Xbox 360 News Tagged: | Grand Thieft Auto, GTA, n4g, News 4 Gamers, OXCGN, Twitter
Gotta love the effort you put into this blog
I’m actually enjoying twitter as an update tool and getting shorter blurbs about possible news Id be interested in. I find that the short tweet in most cases will provide enough info on whether to delve deeper into the story. Connecting with friends is actuallly the least I do with twitter. Don’t we have enough social networking already for that! Updates about games. News. Patches. Releases etc is way more intriguing than hourly updates on what sandwich u had for lunch. Updates worth being notified about
Sentry,
I agree that Twitter can be used just like our Feedburner email service (see above right column
) so that you get updates when a new article is written from a site you like with a short blurb from that article so you know if you want to read it. Used like that Twitter is a useful tool for sites.
However, as we all agree, using Twitter as a source you link to in N4G ‘articles’, or quoting the short details of a Twitter and then adding a few unimaginative words on a site is just useless.
In that respect I do agree with you, for sure, but I personally am not seeing that much lately tbh. I couldn’t care less about someone who posts an article which is a few word opinion, thats basically tweeting, not an article. But again I don’t think it’s happening TOO much right now, I still see great articles with opinions/news etc. This is one of the things that is bad about N4G, it allows crappy articles (think hip hop gamer) to stream in and beacause of it is compelling people will click, and it ends up being utter shit. Has a long way to go before its balanced but its not a huge issue atm tbh.
Nice talking to you, peace
-Sentry
As Arthur is pointing out, and not trying to argue with you, his point is being made at the increase in ppl on n4g especially, using Twitter as a source for getting traffic only. Not in supplying any form of useful information or even leads to that information.
Many sites can use Twitter successfully, but why do so when all that site needs to do is set up a simple email/rss/atom feed and thus cut down on work for themselves and help the end user.
They mainly use the twitter approach to garner views, nothing more. Several major sites are now looking at combining their forces to help eliminate this “false reporting” which IS hurting the average writer in getting their items, news or otherwise, read and seen. When the lazy-mans Twitter approach is taking the ppl away from “reading” what the news is about.
We’ve had fanboys dominate n4g which is still a huge concern. Ithas made n4g a laughing stock in the medias eyes, so much so none of the major sites even want their stuff mentioned on there now. We’ve had n4g turned from a worthwhile gamers source resource, which it originally started out as, hense the name (heheh). Into a mindless place of fanboys, rubbish “news” cough cough nd ppl simply wantingtraffic to bolster their revenue or stats for pure ego means.
There’s NOTHING wrong with desiring traffic.
That IS what sites get into business for. Otherwise, why both, you could just use a sheet of white paper and be happy that you can write. We use the net to SHARE information, so traffic is how that is done. The difference is, that there are those who simply want traffic not to deliver information, but to gain revenue from add or scores. That is what n4g has become now. A source for those who want that, rather than the original way of doing things.
And I understand fully what n4g are ‘trying’ to do. I agree with Dusty in his attempts to weed out the riff-raff, but the method he is using is flawed to the extreme, and one can not go past human intervention, even if that means culling ones userbase. It’s a hard choice to make, but IF they did that, and the readers that were once prolific saw that, they would return.
If they did cull their ranks, their views and page views per day would be significantly lowered, thus dropping their revenue rates for advertizers. Not something any major site wants, especially when you’re talking in the $$’s that major ad companies par cmp for, that’s for sure. SO I understand the delemia they are in, and would not want to be in their shoes right now.
See i think you are still missing the point i’m not talking about Twitter.. im talking about other gaming websites that take this twitter update..
and create an article on it for their website, but all they do is provide a link to the Twitter and include the blurb in the article and that is it..
There is no opinion on behalf of the article writer, which in my eyes is lazy and an effortless attempt to report a piece of news..
This then cuts down the views that many other websites deserve because of articles that are written very well and deserve the views more because there has been effort and time put into it.
Yet you have websites posting articles that pretty much are nothign but the Twit update and link to it and that is it.
So to rephrase that again im talking about general gaming websites that take these updates from the variosu Twitters and write up a 2 sentence articles basically stating what the Twitter Update says and then linking to it.
With no insight, no opinion nothing. Just a lazy effort. Thus gaining more views than other articles that deserve them more.
I believe you are also missing the point.. many sites tend to now be reporting Twitter Updates yet the Twitter update it self can range from 1 – 150 characters not words..
Thus meaning that the actual article on the website reporting it would be the Twitter Update, a link to it as well as a small 2 sentence piece to go along with it..
No other insight or opinion added.. So really the website is reporting the Twitter Update with basically another small update of similar length…
And is really lazy in regards to reporting the story because the whole blurb over at N4G pretty much IS the story
Ok? Again, the point of twitter for people with websites is almost like an RSS feed. The tweet is just redirecting you to X news article, not actually posting the article there. That would be a blog, twitter is supposed to be a quick communication network, something like an AIM chat, again.
So for example this article here would go like this in my tweet: http://twitter.com/Sentry/status/1658903292
I am not going to sit through and read through 4 paragraphs if the title is about something I dont care about or want to read about, plain and simple. For example when I saw this article title on N4G, I thought “hmm, i just recently got into twitter and use it for gaming related stuff so ill check this out real quick”
However if it was just ‘news article #2345′ then i would need to skim through paragraphs for every piece of news? Again, no offense, but I think you are slightly missing the point of this. Like I said, its not a blog, its more like a global AIM, you post insight on a topic on a blog, not with a 140 character blurp, what you do is branch to people where to check this page out..
Again, not trying to offend you or anything but what you’re describing is a blog, and thats not what Twitter is.
I think you are generally missing the point. Are you forgetting you can post LINKS in tweets? It’s basically like being on instant messenger like AIM, and you are talking to websites, developers, etc. If a website has some new news, the tweet will be the title of that article with a link sending you to the site. If a developer has new info on a game, he posts saying check this new preview out, etc. Basically replacing AIM with a web page, no one suggests that twitter will be the place to preview games now, you can’t do that in 140 characters… the suggestion is that you let all your followers know the second that preview is posted and link them to the page.
So it isn’t about ‘lazieness’ or whatever.
Again, I think you’re slightly missing the point.
That might be great – in therory, but thatis NOT what ppl do in general. As Arthur pointed out, and followed through by checking ‘many’ of them out, they offered little if anything other than what was already posted in at n4g. So in all, a great deal of travelling around for the viewer, with little or no news at the end of the breadcrumb trail.
These ARE the things that ppl overuse and abuse. By allowing this to becom ethe “norm”, then sites like n4g will become nothing more than an extension of twitter its self. Which is NOT what h4g was originally started out as. It ‘was’ the virtual hub of information a few years ago, I was here when it started out. And it gave good news, decent descriptions, solid information, and links so the reader could follow it further, if it was something they were interested in.
Now, more often than not, it is simply a few lines of text, with a “source” that leads to the same few words of text, which ads only an additional few libnes of text, and no real news whatsoever.. Which ALSO quotes a “source” . . . .
Why not go to THE source and grab the info, elaborate on it, and then post the information. That is how ppl did it originally when n4g started. no links to a link which leads to alink leading someplace. Your items was pulled if it did that.
Game Grep has a system that works brilliantly, it involves BOTH human and systems checks on ALL submissions. And there are thouhsands. Now if Game Grep can do it, and weed out 80% of the rubbish, the n4g can do it as well. I comes down to admin being somewhat lazy in following up on their work, and wanting technology to do the work for them. Computers can not differenciate between what is good or bad news, it simply follows rules.
Just watch Eagle Eye to see an example of technology not being able to ‘reason’