I think there's a whole host of things keeping gaming content off of Medium--and struggles that it faces across the internet in general. Just look at the recent implosion/scaling back of several prominent sites, or all the current drama between Twitch and their top partners.

Gaming content went through a huge explosion in interest during the pandemic lockdowns when everyone was stuck inside, and now it's going through a sort of "interest recession" where everyone is struggling for views. I've seen that in my own numbers, and others I'm familiar with on this platform and in other places have as well. If you're seeing growth right now that's all you can hope for. Games media in general is at a very low point right now, but it'll inevitably swing up again, especially as more true "current gen" releases start to come out over the next couple of years.

I think it'll eventually settle out, and I think that small creators still ultimately have certain advantages as the audience continues to fracture and seek out more like-minded people rather than just listening to big media companies in the space. IGN will likely survive, but someday soon they might be the only "major" in the whole space.

Medium used to run a cool and somewhat large tech pub in-house called OneZero that I did some work for, but they all got cut during the Medium staff purges. The current leadership, with their focus on people and perspectives over raw algorithmic performance, has the right approach, I think. I have seen some good numbers on some gaming stuff in recent days. If I hadn't, I probably would have given up entirely by now or tried moving to a new place.

I've already gone through a couple of pivots in my content. I used to cover a lot more hardware, and before that a lot more headphones/audio stuff. It's just the nature of things. I don't always chase readership. I want to write about stuff that I'm interested in. But it can be discouraging and difficult for sure.