If you wind up on the wrong side of Reddit or YouTube, you’ll likely come across bold declarations proclaiming “what gamers want.” Nine times out of ten, these takes are given in bad faith, often by people more concerned with imposing what they want than with understanding what the majority of players are truly interested in. But suppose, if only for the space of this article, we pretended otherwise. Suppose we considered “what gamers want” a constructive prompt rather than a rhetorical cudgel. In that case, the best and most honest way to find out what gamers want would be to consider what they read.
This list contains the 15 Kotaku stories people spent the most “engaged minutes” reading in 2024, per Chartbeat. The data is clear: Gamers want to know when the Nintendo Switch 2 will come out. They want to learn how to make the consoles they already have work better for them. They want to dive deep into whatever weird and wacky thing is happening in corners of the internet that the mainstream media isn’t paying attention to. And, perhaps more than anything, they want to read thoughtful writing about the games they play, the industry that makes them, and the discourse they inspire.
Don’t let anyone tell you differently.