“For quality games media, I continue to believe that the best form of stability is dedicated reader bases to remove reliance on funds, and a hybrid of direct reader funding and advertisements. If people want to keep reading quality content from full time professionals, they need to support it or lose it. That’s never been more critical than now.”
The games media outlets that have survived, except for Gamespot and IGN, have just about all switched to this model. It seems to be the only way it survives.
I noticed you haven’t mentioned the actual quality of the content. Is it a responsibility to give money to a medium simply because it takes payment instead of using ad revenue?
The competition for what’s in those magazines is with independent online reviewers.
I would have thought my judgement of the quality of the content I’m willing to pay for would have been implicit. For further context, for what it’s worth, I’m a British guy in my late 40’s who plays single player offline games. I don’t use or follow anyone from twitch, discord, or YouTube, mostly due to a lack of both time and inclination.