A few years ago the world was still comparatively simple: topics relevant to the public were picked up by trained journalists and published in local, national or multilateral media. In the age of the Internet, not only the sources of information have changed, but also the basic structure of the media landscape. Not only professional journalists, but also web and video bloggers bring their expertise to the public - and are regularly very successful with their self-designed websites.
Bloggers are regarded as experts by scene connoisseurs, but are rather ridiculed by "real media professionals". How wrong this view is from a publisher's point of view is shown in particular by the recent development of the websites of large media portals. Many print magazines are increasing their web presence, are looking to get closer to their readers and no longer shy away from a supposedly flippant letter that they criticized bloggers years before.
The web magazine piqd takes a new (old) way on the subject of games and culture journalism, which wants to provide its registered readers with hand-picked, high-quality articles. Reason enough for us to take a closer look at the "Games and Culture" section on piqd.de. How new can you really make old things?
What the hell is piqd ?!
With the seemingly endless number of blogs, chats, websites, channels and forums, even the most active Internet users find it difficult to keep track of things. Missing important topics is probably one of the greatest fears that one can have as a discussion-loving web user. With piqdwould like to establish a portal in the news network that presents users with a handful of selected articles on the subject areas they are interested in - the contributions are literally handpicked ("picked") and commented on by experts. The expert commentary explains why a topic can be a trend. Readers should be encouraged to engage with journalistic contributions.
Experts in the sense of piqd are always professional journalists who only pick out a single article per day from the airwaves of net news, comment on it and feed it to their subscribers. That sounds like a gigantic RSS feed that is broken down manually into a few hand-picked specialist articles, but in practice it is a quite remarkable contribution to the media landscape.
Medial attention diffusion
For the subject area Games and culture At the moment, one thing is particularly important on piqd.de: the range is comparatively manageable. This is certainly in the spirit of the portal's founders, because quality, not quantity, should be in the foreground of journalistic topics, but it does mean that the target group is minimized. Those interested in culture, but above all players, would like the latest news from their department. For many users, the Internet is still a fast information superhighway, only rarely the digital version of the features section of a Sunday newspaper. Until internet users receive the offer of piqd accept it as a virtual Sunday paper, some time will pass. The selected contributions are purely qualitative piqd In any case, it is worth reading because the entertainment value is high - but the specialist journalistic research is sometimes neglected.
After all: the experts look for topics that would be wrongly drowned in the mass of daily articles - also because they have little search engine character. Which women, for example, with a player for money Overwatch would gamble regularly only appeals to Google users who actually want this kind of virtual gaming prostitution. Purely thematically, such an article is rather funny, not valuable.
Other topics are more common: Gamification and horror games are ongoing trends that the piqd- Experts cannot escape. The articles within the individual departments are not up to date, but always interesting - sometimes even polarizing. Many of the articles offer readers a good basis for discussion. piqd does not want to make opinions, but does motivate users to deal with peripheral issues in a differentiated manner. That is good and important, but old hat in times of countless blogs and news sites.
What piqd Users are required to think outside the box - a trend that is desirable. Also for the German media landscape 2.0, in which niche sites and semi-professional writers still get far too little attention.
Big Players grow bigger: the usual suspects
With all the good intentions, the experts of piqd.de Put up with criticism. Which contributions are handpicked is a purely subjective process. The selection does not follow an automatic algorithm, but the individual interests of a single journalist. The result so far: the big players in the international media landscape are getting bigger, smaller pages with substantial content are being pushed to the sidelines.
That as sources for the area Games and culture Well-established websites such as kotaku, rockpapershotgun, Eurogamer or The Guardian may not surprise, but it does not bring about an upswing in game journalism 2.0, which has long since ceased to be served by professional media professionals.
There are enough media participants with rigid corsages. It is the usual suspects that get the crowd's attention. Rightly, because quality is delivered. Often, however, also without criticism, despite poor background research.
If you look at the sources of the German contributions, the selection is even more sobering. The time, the mirror or the golem are all portals that those interested in news regularly go to anyway. Whether and how the selection of experts changes over time ultimately also depends on which articles the hand-readers of piqd become attentive. And attention is directly related to the reach of individual news magazines. If the curators spend time on intensive topic research, pursue new web projects and promote articles from sources outside of the major publishers piqd contribute to changing the media landscape in the long term.
The fact that quality must be in the foreground of the web project results not least from the monthly costs that users should willingly pay. While a lifelong membership costs a whopping 299 euros, users have to invest three euros in the monthly subscription. In return for their money, members receive personal recommendations, including comments - and the opportunity to contribute their own opinion.
In conclusion, it is always worth reading it because every article you read helps broaden your horizons.
