Genre-thematic features of Russian video game journalism (using the example of StopGame You-Tube channels)

Ershova Irina PhD in Philology Associate Professor, Department of Russian Language Instruction in Other Language Media, National Research Lobachevsky State University of Nizhny Novgorod 603000, Russia, Nizhny Novgorod region, Nizhny Novgorod, Bolshaya Pokrovskaya str., 37, office 223 imilashevskaya@mail.ru Other publications by this author

Dyachenko Anastasia Mikhailovna Bachelor, Department of Journalism, National Research Lobachevsky State University of Nizhny Novgorod 603000, Russia, Nizhny Novgorod region, Nizhny Novgorod, Bolshaya Pokrovskaya str., 37, office 223 dya4enko-nasty@yandex.ru

Introduction

Video games, having appeared as entertainment for adults, eventually gained popularity and became the basis for an entire industry. The number of games is increasing every day, there is a need for content covering such topics, which inevitably leads to the emergence of a new branch of journalism — gaming journalism. Game journalism, as a fairly young branch of journalism, has not yet been fully formed, so now you can observe a constant transformation of its formats and genres. Thus, the relevance of the research topic is due to the opportunity to consider game journalism in the process of its formation and development.

The issue of the mobility of the boundaries of formats and genres, their variability in the digital environment is one of the key issues of modern journalism studies. A. L. Kodanina and A. O. Sturova in the article "Game journalism as a mass communication phenomenon" ^[1] highlight the trends of game journalism, pronounced in the magazine "Navigator of the game world". In the course of the study, it becomes clear that gaming journalists prefer writing reviews, and it is also noted that genres such as interviews and reports are common, but they are often found only in video journalism. The peculiarities of the language used in the materials of game journalists, for example, narration in the first person, are separately emphasized.

V. I. Tarmayeva in the article "Computer games and game journalism" ^[2] studies the genre of the review in more detail and comes to the conclusion that the review in this branch of journalism acts as an integral, synthetic genre of technical art. It is also noted that, working with this genre, the journalist relies on his gaming activity and gaming abilities.

M. I. Kozachenko in the article "The specifics of the structure and content of the gaming Internet portal StopGame.ru "^[3] notes changes in the structure of the official StopGame website: until 2005, it served as a collection of cheat codes (a sequence of letters, numbers or keystrokes that is used in computer games to get a positive effect), game wallpapers and other game files. The first reviews appeared only in 2005, and the first video reviews — in 2008.

A. S. Korovina and A.V. Mukha in the article "Features of the genre of reviews in a gaming magazine" ^[4], as well as V. I. Leonov in the work "The relevance of the new media genre of stream in modern gaming journalism" ^[5] consider the genre and format of gaming journalism — review and stream, respectively, highlighting their characteristic feature — emotionality of presentation content.

The theoretical and methodological basis of the research is the work of A. A. Amzin ^[6], V. E. Belenko ^[7], A. L. Kodanina ^[1], P. E. Arkhipov ^[8], A. S. Ochkin ^[9], E. O. Kudryashova ^[10], E. S. Muratova ^[11], A. A. Uvarov ^[12], N. A. Zinovieva ^[13], O. E. Vidnaya ^[14], E. V. Galanina ^[15], Howard D. Fisher ^[16]. It is worth noting the attraction of the above-mentioned researchers to the study of the written format of game journalism, which means an insufficient degree of scientific development of this topic relative to its video format, therefore, this article will analyze the content of StopGame YouTube channels.

The empirical base of the study consists of 45 videos on the StopGame YouTube channel (https://www.youtube.com/@StopGameRu) and 15 videos on the StopGame Infact YouTube channel (https://www.youtube.com/@StopGameNews), published in the period from January to May 2023. StopGame online gaming portal (https://stopgame.ru /) started its activity in 1999 as a resource for various media files related to computer games, which was similar to numerous similar sites of the early 2000s. However, later StopGame began to produce higher-quality content, the characteristic features of which were the presence of analysis, consistency and factual reliability, which set it apart from competitors, thanks to which more than 2 million people have subscribed to this resource in our time.

Research part

The main StopGame YouTube channel contains materials of different genres, divided into several categories. Before considering specific headings and videos, it is necessary to analyze the release structure and language features, since they are unchanged for all materials.

The review material is constructed according to the standard scheme "introduction — main part — conclusion". Let's analyze the nature of the information found in the introduction:

1.                  The history of the development of the game, if there are interesting or unusual facts in it.

2. Information about a series of games, an excursion into the history of a particular universe.

3. If the game openly copies another or partially resembles a well-known game that has already been released, the introduction will necessarily be built around this fact.

4. If the journalist is familiar with the series, this will be mentioned in the introduction to emphasize the significance of the author's experience.

Of course, these are just a few possible variants of information that is often found in the introduction to the review, but according to them it can be concluded that the introduction, as a rule, provides information useful for understanding the features of the game, while entertaining the viewer.

The main part contains a description of the gameplay (the component of the game responsible for the interaction of the game and the player) and the plot. Of course, the plot is considered fragmentary and as brief as possible, so as not to deprive the player of the opportunity to get acquainted with the game on their own, but the gameplay, the pace of events, the sensations of passing are described in detail so that the viewer can draw his own conclusion about the quality of the game. Since the journalist reviewing the game must have read it personally, he shares his experience and emotions from the passage. This part also gives tips on the passage, concerning which sequence of actions is best followed in order to move through the plot as easily as possible.

In conclusion, the evaluation of the game is given according to the same system as described on the official StopGame website (on a scale from 1 to 5: "garbage", "scum", "commendable", "amazing", "our choice"). Sometimes the author explains whether he will still return to the game or whether it was worth playing it just for a review. There may also be a comparison of the game with its previous parts, if this was not mentioned earlier.

When preparing the text, StopGame journalists actively use: 1) colloquial vocabulary, including stylistically reduced, and slang; 2) emotionally colored vocabulary; 3) definitely personal sentences; 4) memes; 5) links to movies, comics, music, books. Such features are not typical for traditional journalism, but they are ubiquitous in the gaming sphere and make the presentation of information more entertaining and informal, friendly. Although the informative function remains important for this genre of videos, the features of the text presentation and the structure of the proposed materials allow the viewer to watch the release exclusively for relaxation.

Let's move on to analyzing StopGame content by genre and topic. Reviews are the predominant genre in StopGame in terms of the amount of material published on the main channel. Reviews are presented in several headings, the difference of which is expressed in the object under review (one game, several games, novelty, retro game, games of a certain genre and other possible categories).

The category "Reviews and previews" contains the largest number of materials published during the studied period — 14 videos, the average running time of which is 19 minutes, while the longest video does not exceed 26 minutes, and the shortest lasts at least 14 minutes. The average number of views for such materials is 460 thousand; this number is higher than any other category on the channel. Similar record—high values have the indicators of comments and likes in this genre - 1.3 thousand and 28 thousand, respectively. The category is popular with viewers, which is expressed in active feedback: in the comments, journalists are often praised for their work, asked to record an issue dedicated to a particular game, share their impressions about the game, and also react to the information presented in the video.

The main object of consideration of the "Review" heading is a game novelty, therefore, the main condition for the success of the video is that the more popular and expected the game is among consumers, the more views the video will gain. Another important criterion for the popularity of the material among viewers is how demanding the game is to the technical characteristics of the computer. Due to the high cost of a good PC (personal computer), not every gamer can afford to install any new product, sometimes you have to be content with journalistic reviews on the most "demanding" games from a technical point of view.

The video that scored the highest number of views among all the analyzed videos belongs to this category: this is the "Atomic Heart Review" with 1 million views. What attracted so many viewers in this video?

1. Long waiting for the game, its release date has been postponed more than once. At the same time, the trailer of the game was replete with jokes, which aroused consumer interest in the final product.

2. The place of action in the game is an analogy of the USSR, which attracts a Russian audience.

3.                  The demanding nature of the game to the technical parameters of the PC, as a result of which not every player will be able to afford this game.

4. The price of the game. Atomic heart is available in three versions, the cheapest of which costs 2500 rubles.

5.                  Consumers' dissatisfaction with the constant changes in the game that has not yet been released. Many believed that the changes made by the developers worsened the game, while interest was still heated up, because people wanted to find out what would become of the game at the final stage of its development.

From this list of reasons for the popularity of the video, it can be seen that the number of views, or rather clicks on the video, is more influenced by the object of review itself. At the same time, the language of the journalist, the release structure, language tools — all this works to convince the viewer to stay and watch the video to the end. High-quality text provides a large number of comments, because with the help of them the viewer reacts to what is said in the video and often praises journalists for the work done, and a lot of likes, because they are the main way to show their appreciation of the video. Unfortunately, YouTube has removed the public display of dislikes, so we do not have the opportunity to compare the number of positive and negative ratings. The number of views of the other videos in this category for the studied period is almost the same, so it does not seem appropriate to single out any video based on the number of views, in addition to the "Atomic Heart Review".

But, unlike the situation with Atomic Heart, when the negative experience did not lead to a decrease in viewing figures, because there were a number of factors that fueled the viewer's interest, the video "Review of Crime Boss: Rockay City" has the opposite result in popularity: it scored about 300 thousand views, which is one of the lowest rates in reviews for the studied period. This is due to the fact that the reviewed game is a copy of the previously released Payday series, which the journalist mentions more than once. Although the game had its advantages, for example, the stellar cast, it received a low rating ("passable"), and despite the fact that the viewers who watched the review, it caused a lot of positive emotions (as can be seen from the comments) in connection with its humorous content, the rest of the subscribers of the channel did not there was a desire to watch the video, because they initially expected that the game would be bad.

The heading "Mobile Ues" consists of reviews of mobile games, not necessarily good ones, because unsuccessful ones are also affected, and Mobile Ues is the pseudonym of a journalist, the author of materials. During the studied period, 2 such videos were released — lasting 30 and 50 minutes. The videos have collected an average of 650 comments and 16 thousand likes, which are low indicators. The average number of views is 245 thousand, a rather small number, which is associated with the negative attitude of the gaming community to mobile games. There is a widespread opinion among gamers that mobile games are "fake", and only children who cannot afford to buy a computer play them. It is also believed that developers do not make good mobile games, because the phone as a platform is too weak. At the same time, the category has a sufficient number of fans, as evidenced by numerous comments with requests not to close the category. Mobile games have few fans, but a certain audience remains loyal to the category. Infrequent releases are associated with both a lack of information and their low popularity.

"It's scary, knock it out!" is a category presented by only one hour—long video for the selected period. Games of the horror genre, i.e. horror, are reviewed here. Horror is an amateur genre: someone likes to be scared, while others can't watch horror or play it, which determines the average popularity of this category. Watching a video with 264 thousand views, 600 comments and 17 thousand likes, you can understand that the category still has its own fans, although it is unpopular with the mass audience.

"Refand?!", which means a refund for a game with an unsuccessful experience of its passage, is a category that introduces the viewer to new indie games (computer games created by an individual developer or a small team without the financial support of the publisher). The need for this category is due to the fact that new games of large companies are considered in the category "Reviews", where there is enough content on average for a 19-minute video, and indie games, in turn, are not always spectacular enough, full-fledged, so StopGame combines a review of 4-5 games in one video and sets a goal — to identify which of them deserve attention. The name of the category is due to the fact that on the site where you can buy games (store.steampowered.com ), the refand function is active. If you don't like the game, you can return it within a certain period of time and get the money back. In this section, the journalist helps the viewer decide whether to purchase the game.

During the studied period, 4 videos were released in this category, the average duration of which is 41 minutes. Such videos gain an average of 228 thousand views, 580 comments, 12 thousand likes. The situation with low indicators for these three parameters is associated with the low popularity of the games in question among viewers. Here, the opinion of the author of the materials is expressed more strongly than in other categories: out of 27 games reviewed in 4 videos released during the studied period, he sent 10 games to the refand, noting at the same time that this is his subjective assessment, but the viewer may like the game.

Speedrun is a genre exclusive to game journalism, combining the features of passing and review. It is presented under the heading "Speedrun in detail". Speedrun gives instructions on how to complete the game in the shortest possible time. Like a walkthrough, it performs an informative function and tells the viewer how to complete the game, and, like a review, it analyzes a specific game. The materials of this category are popular. The average duration of 4 videos released during the studied period is 11 minutes: this length is convenient for the viewer, viewing does not take much time, while the videos are informative. The audience's love for this category is also indicated by the average number of views, which reaches 380 thousand, and the average for comments and likes is 32 and 705 thousand, respectively.

In addition to the duration of the video, the viewer is also attracted by its increased informativeness: many players have tried to complete the game by speedrun at least once, because when a favorite game has already been played many times, the pleasure of passing disappears, and in this case you can come up with new restrictions, for example, a time limit. On the other hand, an audience that is not going to play the game in this way is often interested in such materials, because it is natural for a person to enjoy watching ideal actions, which is what speedrun is: it demonstrates perfectly honed actions necessary to minimize the time of passing the game.

The popularity of a separate video in this category depends on how many technical errors (vulnerabilities) there are in the game. For this reason, the video "How to pass both Forest in 10 minutes [Speedrun in detail]" is the record holder for interactions in this category among the analyzed — 1.3 thousand comments and 43 thousand likes. The Forest 2 game is in early access, so there are a huge number of errors in it, which means that the author of the speedrun can use these errors. This makes the commentary more comical, which attracts a large number of viewers.

"Hardmod" is a category that reviews not the whole game, but the style of its passage at the highest difficulty. Such videos are characterized by analytics, expressed in pedantic detail, which people note in the comments. Sometimes a journalist does not just consider one game, but compares it with the second, which adds more analytics to the material. Having considered two videos published in this category during the study, we can distinguish 4 average indicators: the length of the video in 43 minutes, 750 thousand views, 1.9 thousand comments and 45 thousand likes. These indicators exceed those observed in other materials, the reason for which is the exclusivity of the content: players rarely turn to the high complexity of games, and the journalist in his works helps viewers to learn about this gaming experience. For potential viewers who want to try to pass the game on high difficulty, the author gives tips on successfully completing this difficult task.

Debriefing is a category built on interaction with the audience that supports StopGame with money. Using the website boosty.to any viewer can subscribe for money, thereby helping StopGame, and in return receive additional content. One of the options of such an add—on is the ability to choose one of 5 games for review in the "Debriefing", the games change once a month.

The materials of this heading have the features of passing and conversation — an analytical genre having a dialogical form. Debriefing tells about old games that other gaming journalists no longer talk about, and the information is presented from the point of view of a modern player who is accustomed to the highest quality games from a technological point of view — this is the uniqueness of the heading. Such releases last an average of 1 hour and 20 minutes, the timing is longer than the previously reviewed videos, which is due to the peculiarity of the presentation of the material by journalists engaged in this category: two journalists are working on it, who react to the actions in the game alternately, conducting a dialogue. This approach is very successful, and despite the large timekeeping, the category is popular: 4 videos released during the studied period averaged 512 thousand views, 1.4 thousand comments and 21 thousand likes.

The materials of the heading "Results of the people's vote", in our opinion, have the features of such an analytical genre of journalism as a rating, because the best games in various categories are named in the heading. Since the videos of this category are released once a year, only one such video was released during the study period.

This video presents the best games of the categories "Action (a genre of computer games that focuses on the exploitation of the physical capabilities of the player) from the first person", "Horror", "Third-person action", "Role-playing game", "Tactics", "Strategy", "Adventure" (adventure), "Race", "Supplement", "Technological game", "Art Design", "Plot", "Disappointment of the Year", "Former exclusive", "PVP" (the ability for players to attack each other in accordance with the rules of the game), "Cooperative" (the ability for players to play together), "Hot Chick", "West" (wild West theme), "Indie game" (a game from an independent developer), "Cinematic game", "Near-game movie", "Soundtrack", "Game of the Year". The video, which is an hour and 40 minutes long, has received 571 thousand views, 2 thousand comments and 32 thousand likes. Each category is accompanied by a mini-review for an average of 5 minutes, and there are two results in the nominations: one from StopGame journalists, the second from the audience. In the comments, viewers point to one of the reasons for the popularity of this category: it is an opportunity to see the faces of StopGame journalists, who usually remain behind the scenes.

The results of the study show that among the genres on the main StopGame YouTube channel, the most popular is a review, or a review, and the more complex data for independent search are the basis of the review, the more popular it will be. Another type of review that gets a lot of views is a review of games or parts of games that are not available to most players. The journalist describes the games, touching on the plot, talks about the pros and cons of the gameplay and thus helps the viewer form an opinion about the game. In the conditions of increasing prices for gaming products, gamers gradually lose the opportunity to purchase all game novelties and check their quality independently, which leads to a significant increase in demand for such content.

Table 1. Genre specifics of the materials of the main StopGame YouTube channel

Of the 45 materials studied, 33 are distributed under the headings mentioned above, the remaining 12 are single videos reviewing games according to different criteria. As a rule, they have features of already analyzed genres. For example, the video "How visual novels will boost your IQ" examines visual novels (text quests), arranging them sequentially from the easiest to pass to the one that requires certain knowledge, such as language. This video, in our opinion, has rating features. The timing of such videos varies from half an hour to an hour and a half. The videos gain an average of 353 thousand views, 1.1 thousand comments and 21 thousand likes.

Among those analyzed, it should be noted the video "The History of The Elder Scrolls series. Issue 3. A Dark Fairy Tale" and explain its high viewing figures, namely 798 thousand. Series stories are a frequent topic on the channel, such issues consistently enjoy success with viewers and gain a large number of views. Firstly, players are often interested in the history of a particular game series, but it is quite difficult to analyze themselves, so the work of a journalist in this area is generously rewarded with views. Secondly, the game considered in this issue was released in 2002, so the video causes nostalgia among viewers, which increases interest in the video.

Despite the fact that most of the materials on the main channel are reviews, one video for the studied period is a news release. "Criticism of Diablo 4, Ubisoft's neural network screenwriter, Marvel's Midnight Suns, the announcement of Counter-Strike 2..." is an interesting experiment from StopGame, because according to its format, this news clip was supposed to be released on StopGame Infact, but as a result it was published on the main channel. This was supposed to remind or tell the viewer about the existence of a news channel. If the average number of views on the Infact was 80 thousand, then on the main channel it reached 209 thousand, which is due to the wider audience of the main channel, which as a result of the experiment did not switch to the news channel, because the number of views there remained unchanged.

The StopGame Infact YouTube channel presents news clips that are released every 1-2 days. The average length of such a video is 8 minutes, and consists of one issue of 6-10 news. The title of the video states the main and loudest news of the gaming world, and already in the description all the topics of the issue are listed. For example, the video with the title "Diablo 4 without Roach, Aliens: Dark Descent gameplay, Ash of Gods 2 release, Armored Core 6 details ..." in addition to the already named ones also contains the following news: "The authors of Gord demonstrated fresh gameplay; the java strategy Revival was continued in the form of a full-fledged PC game Revival: Recolonization, so far, only in early access; a man with a double-barreled shotgun carries zombies in an 8-minute demonstration Beneath; Dune: Spice Wars expects the largest and most important update, and the game itself will be released from early access in the second half of 2023; Breathedge and Poker Club survivors are distributed for free in EGS."

The statistics of viewability and viewer interaction with the videos are good for gaming journalism in general, but the number of views is very small for StopGame: the average values for such videos are 80 thousand views, 250 comments and 7.6 thousand likes. In the studied videos, these three indicators mostly did not go far from their average value, and rare deviations were associated with the popularity of the games mentioned in the release and with the cover of the video.

For example, the cover of the video "Demo Unrecord, resurrection of Lawbreakers, announcement of the desktop Call of Duty, the new hero of Apex Legends ..." depicts the heroine Eloy from the Horizon series of games. The Russian audience has a negative opinion about this character, it is due to the developers' emphasis on the image of the female body as it is (special attention was drawn to the hair, or rather the fluff on the heroine's face), and the image of the female character as strong and independent. Due to this attitude, the number of views of this video is minimal among the studied — 6.9 thousand views.

And the video "Game of Thrones in Crusader Kings 3, Minecraft Legends scores, FF XVI gameplay, strikes from Nintendo ..." became the most popular of the analyzed materials from this channel. This may be due both to the image of a screenshot from The Legend of Zelda on the cover, since this series of games is especially loved by the gaming community, and to the mention in the title of such popular titles as "Game of Thrones", Minecraft, Final Fantasy XVI.

An attractive cover and interesting headlines ensure good views, but do not guarantee receiving a large number of likes or comments. The video "Gameplay of Men of War II, reviews of Dead Island 2, Forza Motorsport, Park Beyond, Monster Hunter Now..." with 387 comments and 11 thousand likes has the highest figures in these categories. A possible reason for this is the kind of news the release starts with. In this case, it tells about the Nintendo trial with a hacker, this topic is more attractive to the gaming audience than other news, so the video gets a lot of likes, and also gives a lot of reasons to discuss what people are doing in the comments. Thus, low views of materials of this genre may be related to the specifics of the information provided, with what kind of audience it will attract.

Let's identify the topics that are most often touched upon in StopGame news clips: 1) the release of a new game, as well as everything related to it — critics' ratings, user reviews, gameplay excerpts provided, etc.; 2) developers making any changes to the games - corrections, improvements or additions; 3) release new game consoles, helmets, joysticks, etc.; 4) all kinds of litigation companies with players. This information will definitely be useful for people who earn money from games (streamers, gaming industry workers), it may be interesting to some casual players, but most ordinary gamers who turn to games for the purpose of relaxing after work, this information is not always necessary. It does not entertain, does not tell whether it is worth buying a game or not, but only informs about the release of a new game, which users can learn about from the store, or about the release of new equipment, which currently not everyone can afford.

Conclusion

Summing up the results of the study, we note that when studying the genre-thematic features of videos posted on the StopGame and StopGame Infact YouTube channels, materials with features of various genres were analyzed: news, reviews, walkthroughs, conversations, ratings. The most fully represented genres are news, reviews and walkthroughs. The frequent appeal of authors to these genres is explained by their demand among the audience. News helps to find out information about the gaming sphere, which is often presented in English on the Internet, and StopGame provides reliable, high-quality information in Russian. The review helps the consumer to form an opinion about the game and decide which of the new products to purchase, and which ones should not be paid attention to. The walkthroughs show how to complete the game, and help the player who can't do it on his own.

The analysis of materials posted on the main StopGame channel made it possible to identify and formulate thematic features of the "review" genre: video reviews are devoted to the history of game development, the history of a series of games, report on the similarity of games, and also contain references to the author's experience in the gaming field.

The analysis also made it possible to describe the thematic features of the "news" genre on the StopGame Infact channel. Releases on this channel inform about the release of a new game or updates to it, inform about the opinions of critics or users, about the litigation of players with developers, about new electronic devices related to the gaming sphere.

The study revealed stylistic features of the materials: colloquial vocabulary, slang, emotionally-colored vocabulary, frequent use of definitely personal sentences, reduced vocabulary, links to movies, memes, comics, music, books.

Gaming journalism continues to develop rapidly. The number of subscribers of individual resources reaches several million, which indicates the need of society for such content. Studying the current state of the gaming media industry allows us to conclude that computer games are gaining an increasing audience, and the spread of gaming activities in the amateur segment stimulates the development of esports and the growth of its popularity. So, in June 2023, the International Olympic Committee will hold the first Olympic Week of esports, and in 2024 Kazan will host the "Games of the Future", combining video games and traditional sports such as football, basketball, hockey and others. Thus, the popularization of video games and game journalism in society makes it relevant to further study its features.