AI and the future of games journalism

I’ve kept my counsel on the whole AI gaming journalist debate, but now it’s time to speak out because the noise gets louder — the distractions are growing. That emdash is a joke by the way.

Anybody who knows me personally already knows my views on AI replacing writers, but for wider consumption let’s dig in a bit.

First and foremost AI can replace any gaming writer. Or indeed book authors and increasingly, presenters. That is where we are at. Calling it slop matters not, because in our capitalist society it is all about the dolla. And that’s okay too. It’s always been that way. Henry Ford introduced an assembly line and people lost their jobs. The Industrial Revolution changed industry forever and people stopped sewing. I live in the shadows of former mills in the heart of industrial Northern England. They are all one and two apartments now going for two grand a month. Progress.

You are raging. You have read that last paragraph and your blood is boiling. “He is condoning slop”. Calm down. I am not. I am being pragmatic.

You see what AI can’t do is what I do, and have done for decades since writing for games magazines in the 90s. AI does not have my irreverence, knowledge and lived experience in the space. However, what I bring to the table is only something certain publications are going to want in the future.

If it’s all about “content”, I am a dinosaur wondering what that fecking glow in the sky is right now. If it’s about something exceptional to read that the person on the other end of the pipes gets something out of, well how you doin?

You see, you don’t need me to write you a game guide when 10 other game guides on the same subject matter exist. Fundamentally it is the same content, getting thinner with every dupe. Sure they may all have been written by people who once worked at Dexerto before Google screwed them, but they are all the same guts at the end of the day. An AI can write that in a passable enough way that it can be published with minimum tweakage. And guess how many boardrooms have noticed?

Now sure thing the AI is just “stealing”, it’s just a shadow of what real humans are doing, and yet it’s not. The core content of a game guide is the same. It’s just the opening and closing paras that differ from put X into Y and pick up Z.

Okay. so the AI has not put time and effort into playing the game. Are you sure every human that writes a guide page has played the game? Because I am not. Are you sure all those Top 5 4K TVs in 2026 reviews written by a human have been tested by Jonny TV?

The race to the bottom began before we all got Chat GPT. Clickbait is not a new word. You will never guess what games are coming to Game Pass next month. When people stopped having to pay for magazines and newspapers because, well, the future was bright, reader loyalty disappeared obviously. If we did a shit issue of Amiga Action or PlayStation Pro in 1996, the month after we would get less sales. That doesn’t matter anymore. It can all be shit. And often is.

You see, ultimately we are missing the key question? Why are publishers interested in replacing humans with AI writers? Here’s a multiple choice.

1. To save money
2. Because they think it will help/force humans to write more in the time allowed
3. Because they get the same end result
4. Because it is helpful to the writer

Now each case is probably different and there will be a lot of A, B and C in there, but there will be some with a C. And also, as a writer I am a bit D as well.

I learned my trade being bollocked by sub editors and editors, having work given back to me to improve before it went to press. Today’s writers do not have that opportunity to learn. Today’s games writers don’t have a Sub Editor saying, “why not try it like this, do you think this sounds better?” Most don’t even re-read their work in my experience.

So I use AI, in the first instance as a Sub Editor. I feed it my human written story and ask it to point out mistakes and where it might get tightened up - just like Alan Mac used to do when I was writing for Amiga Action. I then choose if I won’t to, most of the time I don’t take its suggestions but if I have spelt ‘you’ ‘yuo’ for the 10th time that page, I will change that. It’s just Grammarly on steroids.

I then ask it to write my page meta so Google can ignore it. I ask it to generate me a page slug and I ask it to give me ALT text for an image. Things I can’t really be bothered with. You see I use IT as my assistant. The danger only comes when IT uses me as ITs assistant, to just upload, humanise and press publish.

We have been messing around in the background feeding in literally hundreds of my pages into an AI to train it to see how close it can get to being me. A McNallyBot for the future. I can give it a press release and it will jizz out 400 words that are passable, but it’s not me. It doesn’t sound like me, it’s not as funny/spiteful as me. It cannot do it. It is interesting to watch it get better but it cannot do it.

I don’t have the best view of a lot of games writers these days. It’s not their fault, the companies that hired them didn't care if they became great writers, they just wanted people to pump out pages for the algo. Then everybody pumped out the same pages and Google realised, hang on, why do we need to rank this guide over that guide. They say the same thing, here’s a condensed AI version of that. Ad revenues went down, everybody lost their jobs and suddenly we had a lot of people who were very good at writing pages but perhaps not interesting the reader. We had a lot of green Open to Work badges and people not well trained enough to go into other aspects of writing.

I’ve lectured university students looking to become journalists in this day and age and openly told them, the one thing you need to hang on to, when the publisher is jumping up and down demanding more traffic and more clicks is that people are really busy these days. You are privileged if somebody comes along in their busy day and spends a little time with you and your writing, the very least you can do for them is make it enjoyable.

AI can’t do that. And I am not sure it ever will be able to so you need to find somewhere that lets you be you.

The Escapist has been that bolt hole for me. Higher-ups told me, you know games better than us, write what you want. So we have, and it's fun. And we have readers again, and engagement and the industry seems to like what we are doing on the games front.

So what happens now?

This is interesting because AI still needs people to have written the initial content. Let’s stick with guides again. We already know the AI doesn’t play the game (at this point) so we need a human or two to have done that first.

But, if we get rid of all the humans writing new guides it’s like that bit in Back to the Future where Marty gets off with his mum. There is nothing for AI to write in the future - the future future, not just the future. Marrrrttty?

I could let my Chat GPT boom out 100 Minecraft guides but it's all on old stuff. I can let it rewrite press releases - I can do that better, and do, but I could also spend my time better telling the stories that matter, Speaking to people in the industry and telling their stories. AI cannot do that. I have an ability to get people to tell me things they didn’t think they were going to tell me. No AI will do that and then spot that it is a moment in time worth talking about.

There’s a point nearer now than it was once was where I won’t be doing this anymore. And even then I will still be better than AI. But if the world itself doesn’t want people who can write with a flourish any more than it now needs somebody to hand stitch a petticoat a week then I have to make my peace with that.

Basically you lot need to decide what you want. Calling everything slop is pointless. Doing hit pieces and moaning on socials about publishers doing this and that just ultimately ends up with more human journalists out of work with green badges so we can all have one massive pity party together.

Be careful what you wish for. Support the writers and games makers that are left, allow them to make mistakes and, importantly allow them to dabble and find their path. Don’t hound them out of work into other industries because you think there may be AI in a screenshot.

I don’t have any better advice than that children of the future.