Welcome To The New Badness

Games journalism fucking sucks. Not only that, but Games journalism in Australia is practically non-existent now and I’m not sure it’s actually ever been a real thing.

When I was younger the only Australian gaming magazines were the official Playstation and Nintendo magazines, which, by way of being “official”, meant that they never actually criticized the systems they were talking about, which isn’t journalism.

Journalism, in my opinion, should be wholly separate from the subject it’s writing about. A gaming journalist needs to report facts, regardless of backlash from the industry they’re reporting on. I understand that can be difficult when you’re talking about a product that releases on a particular date and you want to inform people about said product before they buy it, which means you need to make your way into the industry to gain early access to that product, but that would make you a reviewer, not a journalist.

When it comes to Australian independent gaming sites, the biggest ones I can think of are Press Start and PowerUp Gaming. Press Start is a fine website if you’re looking for deals and endless ads, with a few reviews sprinkled in. They don’t really report any news outside of “You can buy/play this thing” and that’s ok if you’re in the market for a website that can just let you know how to spend your money, but the site is totally devoid of any kind of articles about the industry as a whole.

PowerUp at least has fluff-piece interviews with industry professionals and start-up studios in this country, so that’s commendable. Of course, that’s all mixed in with the typical clickbait articles and “guides” about what shows they think you’d like to binge on Netflix and “How Many Chapters Are There In Callisto Protocol” – things you could probably figure out for yourself by searching Netflix or playing Callisto Protocol.

Look, I understand that these websites are just trying to make money and if that’s how they think they’ll make the most money to stay afloat then fine, but games journalism in this country is in a sad state of affairs now that there aren’t any local websites willing to report the actual news.

This is all my long-winded way of saying that I’m aiming to make this website more than just fluff pieces and fake ad articles, I want Total Badness to be the place you come to get the real news about the gaming industry in Australia, because nobody else seems to be doing it. Right now I won’t be making any money from this site and I probably will eventually need to put ads on the site (or maybe start a subscription service?) but for now, I’m just going to concentrate on making this a site you can come to for news about the Australian game industry and the people in it.

I also won’t be afraid to call out other outlets and creators for their bullshit, so this is going to be fun!

Thanks for reading and feel free to leave a comment below and subscribe to the Youtube channel for upcoming videos. Let’s have a great 2025 together!

Aaron