I'm finally ready to mourn Kotaku. There was a brief moment around 2014-2015 or so where they were really exciting me, innovating the way games were reported on by chasing what people were actually talking about, instead of "news." Reporting on games AFTER they shipped.
I think a people missed out on that reformed Kotaku because they kept associating it with the old "cake news" days under a totally different editor. They mostly ignored the corporate news cycle and focused on players, while crafting the best long-read news features in the biz.
Obviously they were good after that too but this was maybe the only time I ever went to a video game news site and saw a list of headlines that were almost universally interesting. There were still shades of it after that, but there was a peak around then, and it was great.
I admit I have my own personal preferences and biases here, but given that I was the news editor at two major video game websites, and that I literally run a library that has almost every U.S. video game magazine going back to the 70s, I'd like to think I know what's up.
