There used to be a site, I think it was called “Gone Gold” something. It would list upcoming games and also note when they officially released. It was pretty comprehensive.
Now, I rely mostly on YouTube game reviewers but there are few that are ideal for me. Many of them cover console games as well, so that is a pass. Many of them do Let’s Plays or other stuff and that is just too much content on my feed to subscribe to. Even the ones I subscribe to are far from comprehensive, so I know I am missing info.
So the questions are: where do you personally find out about new or upcoming PC games and why them?
Gamefaqs keep a list of popular games and new releases. Let us not forget Metacritic. Also, if you ask people under the age of 20 or 25, they may know games you had not heard of.
The forums Spacebattles and Sufficient Velocity, and several Discord channels. SB and SV have an active gamer community, but they aren’t actual game forums and are therefore much less likely to have paid shills working for the game companies putting out lies. Same reasoning for the Discords; some random poster on a non-gaming Discord channel is probably giving their actual opinion instead of what they are paid to say.
Needless to say I don’t trust “official” gaming media at all.
Sheer osmosis. Friends, various forums (like this one) that may or may not be gaming related, stories on tech sites that I rarely actually read but get the name out there, the Steam store front page, etc. Oh, and I go to the Penny Arcade Expo pretty much every year. I don’t go out of my way for gaming news sites at all. I don’t really care if I’m “missing” info. Gaming is for fun, not forming some obligation to be 100% up to date on everything.
Mostly https://www.gematsu.com/ and Steam. The former is focused on Eastern gaming, which I’m a big fan of. The big Western releases are news in the East too.
I like looking through https://steampeek.hu/ to see what else is out there. It’s a discovery site that’s supposed to find games similar to your inputted game. I don’t know how it works, but it’s pretty good at it. I found Our Adventurer Guild that way, which is a decent FFT clone if you open-minded about solo dev art quality.
While https://gg.deals/pc/ is primary about finding deals on games, it’s news section isn’t bad either.
I’ve discovered more than a few good titles through their writing. I’m actually considering resubscribing to the print mag (it still exists!) after a 20-year hiatus.
Unfortunately, they also have a lot of spam articles for various hardware, so I had to make a ton of uBlock filters to get rid of those. Wish they had a paid subscription for the digital version.
Beyond that, I just check Steam a few times a week and keep an eye out the sales that pop up. With the two hour refund window, I’m quite willing to try titles I wouldn’t have otherwise, especially if they’re Positive or above. And I frequently use isthereanydeal.com to find other sales (there’s a browser extension too). Now I have a collection of Steam games I’ll never be able to finish in this lifetime, many of which cost less than $10.
I don’t really care if I miss a new title here and there. Eventually the good ones make their way across the internet, and sometimes even find their way to one of our game threads here. They usually get dramatically cheaper a year or two after release anyway.
PCGamer is the only gaming oriented website I read and I don’t make a daily habit of it, more of a “Hey, I got ten minutes to kill” thing a couple of times a week. Mostly I just get news from friends posting links on Discord. I’ve got friends who are into a pretty diverse genres (the FPS guy, the city builder guy, the all things zombies guy, etc) so I tend to see most of what’s important. It’s pretty rare that I’m super jazzed about an upcoming release and want to find out the hot news so I’m pretty casual in my gaming news consumption.
I watch a couple of Let’s Play YouTubers who tend to play the kind of games I like. I also will occasionally scan Steam under various genre keywords. But I am not really as keen on games as I used to be, so I’m not eagerly seeking them out too often.
And I’d prefer that approach even if it weren’t also the lazy one. What’s better, having a friend share a game they’re excited about, or having to tell them you know all about it already? Following every little blip of information from publishers or running into something you’ve never seen by serendipity at a gaming expo? Etc.