There certainly was some actual “ethics in video game journalism” discussion early on that I felt was legitimate, but that got drowned out pretty quickly by the misogynists (which, from what I gather, was the entire point - it seems the misogynists started the whole thing and used the “ethics in game journalism” thing as a front to try to legitimise their agenda).
I think the discussion about the personal relationships game journalists have with developers in general was a reasonable one to have. It unfortunately ended up just laser focusing on Zoe Quinn supposedly trading sex for good reviews, which was untrue, sexist and resulted in nasty personal attacks. But I think it was worth at least examining the fact that game journalists and game developers often have close relationships and move in the same circles, and that game journalism can often be a stepping stone to game development. Those are absolutely things that could influence someone’s reviews or articles, consciously or subconsciously.
And another conversation worth having was the fact that gaming outlets like IGN were/are funded by adverts from gaming companies. It makes sense, of course - the Venn diagram of IGN’s (or other gaming outlets’) readers and gaming companies’ target audience is almost a perfect circle, which makes the ad space valuable to the gaming companies. And because it’s valuable to gaming companies, it’s better for the outlets to sell the ad space to them for more money than to sell it to generic advertising platforms. But it does mean it seems valid to ask whether the outlets giving bad reviews or writing critical articles might cause their advertisers to pull out, and therefore they might avoid being too critical.
Now I don’t think the games industry is corrupt or running on cronyism, personally. And I certainly don’t believe it’s all run by a shadowy cabal of woke libruls who are trying to force black people, women (and worse, gasp black women shudder) into games. But I do feel it was worth asking about the relationships between journalists, developers, publishers and review outlets - and honestly, those are the kinds of things that both game journalists and people who read game journalism should constantly be re-evaluating. It’s always good to be aware of potential biases and influences.
The fact that the whole thing almost immediately got twisted into misogyny, death threats and a general hate campaign was both disappointing and horrifying. And the fact that it led to the alt-right, and that you can trace a line from it to Brexit and to Donald Trump becoming US president, is even worse.
It’s nice to see someone acknowledge that it started it as an actual, important conversation about the shady monetary influence that game publishers have on gaming news sites. That’s what made the hijacking and eventual media branding of Gamergate even worse, because the media bought into their narrative that there were the same conversations, by the same people, and everyone sort of threw the baby out with the 4-chan-brigaded bathwater.
If you look up histories of Gamergate now, sites like Vox actually talk how it began on 4-chan and later 8-chan as a troll campaign, but no one ever really talks about what it was they were hijacking.
I think a lot of those conversations, like publishers’ power over reviews via withholding review copies (as perhaps most famously, Bethesda did to Kotaku), and what it meant as a reader to trust the sites that hadn’t been blacklisted, got totally forgotten after the dust had settled.
It also says a lot about our mass media, and it’s willingness to elevate and legitimize troll campaigns for the clicks.
There were a lot of valid conversations to be had about journalistic integrity. Which made it all the more damning that Gamergate never once had any of these conversations, ever.
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There certainly was some actual “ethics in video game journalism” discussion early on that I felt was legitimate, but that got drowned out pretty quickly by the misogynists (which, from what I gather, was the entire point - it seems the misogynists started the whole thing and used the “ethics in game journalism” thing as a front to try to legitimise their agenda).
I think the discussion about the personal relationships game journalists have with developers in general was a reasonable one to have. It unfortunately ended up just laser focusing on Zoe Quinn supposedly trading sex for good reviews, which was untrue, sexist and resulted in nasty personal attacks. But I think it was worth at least examining the fact that game journalists and game developers often have close relationships and move in the same circles, and that game journalism can often be a stepping stone to game development. Those are absolutely things that could influence someone’s reviews or articles, consciously or subconsciously.
And another conversation worth having was the fact that gaming outlets like IGN were/are funded by adverts from gaming companies. It makes sense, of course - the Venn diagram of IGN’s (or other gaming outlets’) readers and gaming companies’ target audience is almost a perfect circle, which makes the ad space valuable to the gaming companies. And because it’s valuable to gaming companies, it’s better for the outlets to sell the ad space to them for more money than to sell it to generic advertising platforms. But it does mean it seems valid to ask whether the outlets giving bad reviews or writing critical articles might cause their advertisers to pull out, and therefore they might avoid being too critical.
Now I don’t think the games industry is corrupt or running on cronyism, personally. And I certainly don’t believe it’s all run by a shadowy cabal of woke libruls who are trying to force black people, women (and worse, gasp black women shudder) into games. But I do feel it was worth asking about the relationships between journalists, developers, publishers and review outlets - and honestly, those are the kinds of things that both game journalists and people who read game journalism should constantly be re-evaluating. It’s always good to be aware of potential biases and influences.
The fact that the whole thing almost immediately got twisted into misogyny, death threats and a general hate campaign was both disappointing and horrifying. And the fact that it led to the alt-right, and that you can trace a line from it to Brexit and to Donald Trump becoming US president, is even worse.
It’s nice to see someone acknowledge that it started it as an actual, important conversation about the shady monetary influence that game publishers have on gaming news sites. That’s what made the hijacking and eventual media branding of Gamergate even worse, because the media bought into their narrative that there were the same conversations, by the same people, and everyone sort of threw the baby out with the 4-chan-brigaded bathwater.
If you look up histories of Gamergate now, sites like Vox actually talk how it began on 4-chan and later 8-chan as a troll campaign, but no one ever really talks about what it was they were hijacking.
I think a lot of those conversations, like publishers’ power over reviews via withholding review copies (as perhaps most famously, Bethesda did to Kotaku), and what it meant as a reader to trust the sites that hadn’t been blacklisted, got totally forgotten after the dust had settled.
It also says a lot about our mass media, and it’s willingness to elevate and legitimize troll campaigns for the clicks.
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There were a lot of valid conversations to be had about journalistic integrity. Which made it all the more damning that Gamergate never once had any of these conversations, ever.