Like many, I’ve noticed a growing trend in gaming journalism in which websites and blogs will host Top Ten lists about various gaming subjects as a web-traffic grabber. Top Tens typically do well on news aggregators and user-submission sites like N4G, reddit or Gamekicker, pulling in votes or bumps as fanboys duke out over their favorite topics.
Top Ten Gaming Sex Scenes
Top 5 Best Free-to-Play FPS Games
10 Reasons Why the XBox 360 is teh Gr3at3st Thing in teh H1story of the Universe
The redundancy of these lists, in which duplicate lists often appear almost on a weekly basis, is nearly appalling and often brings down the credibility of a website’s content. Face it: anyone can create a Top Ten list about anything in video games, but that doesn’t mean that the article will be worth reading. These “filler” articles are often created when there are either slow news days or a lack of original work coming through.
That’s not to say that all list articles are bad. List articles that are based on facts and details — and not pure opinion or fanboyism — and offer up valued information have the merits of investigative journalism to carry them. And, those that are done as opinions of online communities (ie: “XXX Website Community’s Top Ten Most Wanted Games”) are often great ways to gauge how a smaller social network looks at the industry. These are no different than the “Most Wanted” lists found in magazines like Nintendo Power or the now-defunct EGM, reflecting what the readership wants/likes.
Whenever I come across gaming Top Ten lists these days, I tend to view them as cash grabs for traffic hits that usually find ways to piss me off. Someone’s saddest RPG moment may not actually be the saddest RPG moment, or at least not mine. But, people still read them if for no reason than to spark their inner gaming fanatic in hopes to disagree with the person who wrote it.
What do you think? Are you sick of videogame Top Ten lists as much as I am?
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