Succinct, and hilarious. It actually applies to pretty much all Web-exclusive content, unfortunately.
Sprinkle in useless metaphors and orthogonal pop-cultural references.
This is pretty much why I don’t really like Bill Simmons’ writing very much — it feels like he’s just following a recipe for writing, and useless metaphors and/or movie references are his punchline setups.
I’m like a the stupid girlfriend on the Montel Williams show. I hate gawker sites but I keep going back to them! What videogame blogs do you frequent? I’d love to replace Kotaku, but I haven’t found anything that has better writing and is updated regularly.
One gawker site that was really great for a long time is their auto site Jalopnik, though it has been on a slow downward slide for awhile.
I don’t read too many gaming blogs, as it were. I read Quarter To Three’s forums, Evil Avatar (in spite of the occasional craziness and Internet drama), Rock Paper Shotgun, and now Fidgit as well.
I have most of these just set up as feeds in my RSS reader, and if anything strikes my fancy I go to the site to read more, or to read comments.