It was not in shock, but grave disappointment, that I found myself blocked by you this morning — an act ostensibly because you have employed the auto-blocker tool, especially as I have had numerous discussions with you via social media in regards to the classic World of Darkness, Onyx Path’s work on the 20th Anniversary series, and gender representation in RPG’s particularly that of CWoD. Shockingly, aside from terse but civil exchanges on the topic at hand, when it came to the issues surrounding the relevant RPG’s we have been in total agreement. In fact, I have on occasion defended yours and Onyx Path’s work on this very topic from other Gamergate supporters who would use that work as an unrelated venue for attacking you personally.
What, to this point I have kept rather quiet, is that I am an Onyx Path forum quasi-regular. I own some of the 20th anniversary books, I was about to start kickstarting Onyx Path products since I find myself again with disposable income (I decision I am now giving second thought), and I have provided a mountain of feedback to Onyx Path — including you personally, since you’re a regular poster there — as a gamer and consumer in relation to already-released and upcoming products. Since this whole thing started, that’s a connection I’ve been reluctant to divulge, especially since I fear reprisal, sanction, or heightened scrutiny on those forums for topics wholly unrelated to the focus of those forums. No, I won’t divulge under what name I post there, especially given this recent development putting that fear foremost in my mind.
All because, and I’ll get straight to it, I perceive a handful of individuals in prominent positions in gaming media exploiting very real issues for personal gain rather than to address them as they damn well ought — seriously, honestly, and ethically — and throwing everyone is actually is harmed by those issues under the bus to do it, especially when it comes to using those people as shields against rightful criticism. See, I genuinely support what you, the good people at Onyx Path, and people who are honest in their dealings do in regards to issues such as gender in gaming and geek culture; I simply refuse to tolerate parasitism and opportunism in service of that goal, particularly when that malfeasance denudes real issues of gravity, relevance, and credibility which is precisely what has happened during the course of Gamergate.
This is the end result of the auto-blocker, and precisely what myself and others warned against since its inception. Whose interest, in the final analysis, does that really serve, especially in communities like the tabletop RPG community? What you do on social media is your business, but as someone who has substantively and productively interacted with you in the past on them and other venues, as well as an Onyx Path customer, I implore you to consider that ramification.
I’m not one for oppression olympics or one-upmanship because I’m an actual intersectionalist who understands what that means, but in this case I believe it applies.
I’m sorry, I didn’t know Charlie Hebdo made comics about sub-Saharan Africans. You know, these people? I can’t help but notice you, nor any of your surrogates, nor supporters nor friends, haven’t uttered a word about this. It really seems you (the plural “you”, of course) ought, given all the past rumbling about the very group that pulled this shit.
Of course, I can see you’re too busy going on at length about the en vogue issue of the day to arse yourself to at least continue raising awareness about this. Then again, I guess this is something that can’t be easily coopted by Westerners for their (your) own political ends, so it gets the pass like the everything else Boko Haram does.
I’ll be brief, as my point is short and easy to make. Which American demographic plays video games the most? Youth. The same demographic which leans left, but suffers from serious turnout issues.
Now, if I were a Democratic donor, candidate, or campaign strategist, I’d be looking at the ESA’s numbers and wondering to myself, “what happens if so much as 1% of people who play video games get pissed off at the left enough by this they start staying home if they already voted, or start protest voting Republican as my own side has deemed fit to frame this a left-right conflict?”. Given what’s at stake in the next few elections and down the road looking at 2020, I’d probably be pretty fuckin’ nervous.
Of course, were I a Republican donor, candidate, or campaign strategist, I’d be looking at this and thinking to myself, “who can I label the 21st Century’s Joe McCarthy first?”. Which is ultimately what this is about, because the disorganized, fringe left who comprises anti-Gamergate (and who really are the 21st Century’s answer to Joseph McCarthy) is playing with fire, in a huge way, that can have pretty damn serious ramifications for the left and the Democratic party at large if this manifests in any way in voting behavior…and the way things are going, it probably will.
After all, we Americans take our freedom of expression, particularly when it comes to art and entertainment, pretty goddamn seriously.
The most generous estimates have GamerGate at about 200,000 supporters worldwide. That’s barely a blip on the national demographic radar, no matter how your slice it. In 2008, voters between the ages of 18-29 made up of 18% of total voter turnout, which, while not insignificant, is not the election-decider you characterize it as here. And in 2012, that demographic did grow….by one whole percent. And in both elections, we won by a much larger margin than 200,000.
And if any of this shit is still relevant by November 2016 then there truly is no hope left for humanity.
That’s 200,000 estimated vocal supporters. Throw in factors not easily quantified such as free riders and non-vocal supporters and there’s a serious problem…especially considering that if this issue takes any sort of real root in the public, considering the left-right framing and the Democratic party’s extant anti-gaming positions, the right will be extraordinarily quick to jump it (as they already have, at least within the gaming community).
You also discount the power of the youth vote. Further reading:
You also seem to forget that in order to participate in the 2008 general election, Obama had to be nominated first…and to do that, he had to go from being nationally unknown to by the DNC overcoming a candidate who was easily the most-entrenched, well-funded, and well-known Democratic candidate in recent history, and who for ulterior motives had the support of conservative Republicans in open primary/caucus states (Clinton). That was on the back of the youth vote.
Yes, the youth vote IS an election decider. Not just in Presidential elections, but in Congressional elections, state elections, and mid-term elections, which in the run-up to 2020 (Democrats’ next do-or-die year) are going to be MUCH more important than whomever occupies the oval office.
I have maybe ten minutes to write this, so I apologize in advance if my thoughts aren’t articulated nearly as well as I might hope. I don’t have a lot of time to write about Gamergate lately, so I have to take whatever opportunities are given to me by my schedule and thought processes.
I’ve discussed this before, here, here, and again tangentially here. This, put succinctly, is the problem:
An example of impartial/objective reviewing: “game X made statement Y about a social issue. I disagree with the statement [a disclosure of bias, by the way], but it was stated clearly, communicated well, and was even persuasive and thought-provoking in its statement, which is a net positive.”
An example of biased, agenda-driven reviewing: “game X made statement Y about a social issue. I disagree with this statement, so I’m giving it a bad review.” [see, Polygon and its review of Tropico 5, despite the fact the reviewer was actually factually incorrect about Latin American history and politics]
Even setting aside allegations of conflict of interest, market-meddling, and incestuous relationships between journalists and devs, what occurs now among established gaming news outlets is almost exclusively the latter, and hardly (if ever) the former. This, relevant to gaming reviews, is the problem. Simply put, the latter isn’t journalism or criticism in any justifiable sense, it’s punditry.
I know I keep going back to Birth of a Nation (see, here and here), but it’s still the best-possible example of which I can think to illustrate the point a work’s content and message, and its technical quality, are two separate entities which must each be judged on their own merits, and qualitative judgment of one should not impact the other.
There are many ways I would much rather spend this afternoon — chugging Theraflu; alternating between sleeping in the shower, on the deliciously cold floor of my bathroom, or in my bed under a mountain of blankets; or watching my favorite shows on Netflix during fevered inability to sleep — but unfortunately for me I saw this wonderful nugget of wisdom from Raph Koster on Reddit:
A couple of reasons.
1) It’s actively damaging developers’ lives. Harassment has become prevalent all over. Many, particularly women, are talking about quitting games altogether.
2) It’s actively damaging developers’ lives. Social media has basically been destroyed for us, and it’s an important part of both professional networking and customer outreach. We can’t have the sorts of discussions we would like to, because of GamerGate.
3) It’s actively damaging developers’ lives. GG is attacking the institutions that provide us with ongoing education, awards shows, job listings, networking, and so on, that we need for our professional careers.
4) It’s actively damaging developers’ lives. People are getting polarized and as reasonable discourse fades away, stupid arguments erupt and friendships of long standing are damaged.
5) It’s actively damaging developers’ lives. Our ability to even do customer outreach or launch something these days is fraught with peril. For the first time in my memory, developers have active fear of their audience.
6) GG hasn’t been effective at fixing anything we care about, and keeps trying to fix things we don’t think are broken.
So much for that. It’s bad enough I’m missing out on sweet, sweet overtime pay due to being sick, but now here I am on my computer fueled by anger despite being able to sit upright for long, responding to this. Thanks Raph.
[By the way, none of the above is an appeal to empathy. I don’t want it. I write what I do to underscore the severity with which I perceive this comment, and seriousness with which I write this. Judge my comments by their own worth, not because I’m sick.]
See, here’s the thing. Harassment has become prevalent “all over”. Or perhaps I should say “harassment”, since the definition seems to have become awfully context-dependent of late. It seems that, for some, so much as a mention in an otherwise innocuous tweet constitutes harassment while for others, doxxing, death threats, outright and undeniable abusive comments, and publicly and unironically advocating all those is entirely harmless (perhaps even handwaved as “just a joke”, never mind this is claimed by people who adhere to similar beliefs that “just a joke” is a way to enforce and justify social privilege).
As for those “talking about quitting games”…why should they stay in the industry when they’ve found something vastly more lucrative — other than to perpetuate their meal ticket (at the cost of others’ suffering), that is? The fact there are individuals in, or at least peripherally-related to, your industry who personally profit from abuse and toxicity, and therefore have a vested financial interest in its perpetuation and maximization,on its own should be cause to rethink your position, rather than embrace it.
That is to this point, saying nothing of shunning, blacklisting, ubiquitous gossip, apparently-coordinated attacks against individuals in the industry, and sociopolitical viewpoint- rather than quality- or merit-based gatekeeping by their colleagues for holding views perceived as distasteful, regardless of the quality of their work. Nor alleged contest-rigging and collusion that, if true, crosses the boundaries from merely unethical to outright racketeering. Except for the fact this has apparently been occurring for years prior to “Gamergate” even started. If the hive of groupthink, collusion, and corruption that has been uncovered by the last three months is indeed what you “need” for your professional careers, I would strongly urge you to rethink your career choice rather than cry harassment for being rightfully criticized for it.
[On a serious and more personal note, Raph, my personal background and education is in American politics, specifically campaign finance. I’ve done work in politics since I was a small child, on the stump for local candidates with my granddad. I’ve “officially” worked on campaigns, I’ve lobbied at varying times on behalf of industries and non-profit groups. I spent nearly a decade in university researching campaign finance and election law, and I got the fuck out after Citizens United and the 2010 election because politics had become too disgustingly corrupt for me to stomach any longer.
The shit that’s gone on, and been uncovered, in the last three months makes me regret that choice, because at least there is something of a social compact and rules of ethics in politics. It’s not a good one, but at least there is one, which is a hell of a lot better than I can say for vidya.]
Next, “customer outreach”. Well, first, it’s good that you implicitly acknowledge the commodification of games, the treatment of games as consumer product opposed to art in and of its own right, and the importance of consumer relations when dealing with your audience rather than hide behind “games are art” as a shield against criticism on precisely that basis, as many of your colleagues do. Of course, how this relates to social media is that you claim it’s “ruined” for your industry.
How is it ruined, exactly? let’s look to Occam’s razor. Which is more likely; that thousands of gamers, the overwhelming majority of which like myself universally condemn harassment, abuse, and toxicity, regardless of the source, have organized in a campaign to do exactly what it is we condemn by picking apart developers’ social media use; or dozens of your colleagues are, quite frankly, thin-skinned prima donnas with chronic foot-in-mouth disease (who are, coincidentally enough, the very last people I think of when I think “reasonable discourse”)?
I think you know the answer, given you’re on-record in the past as stating the need for PR for developers given their general lack of tact (we’ve had exactly that conversation via social media before). I know I do. having put myself through college by working in an IT job that was described to me in a single sentence by my boss as “keep the customers as far away from [the admins and developers] as humanly possible”.
It’s not on our heads your colleagues are endless and apparently unregulated fountains of incendiary bullshit, with tact and subtlety to make intercontinental ballistic missiles look quaint. We just call the bullshit out when it is invariably spewed. Perhaps you should be urging your colleagues to act as if they grew up in civilized society with a fundamental understanding of how the internet works (and it still blows my mind game developers of all people seem to lack this), employ people with that skillset to speak on their behalf, or at least stay away from platforms on which they can deal themselves and their colleagues lasting damage by running their mouths.
That is, people to speak on their behalf who do so without paying off or exploiting personal relationships with the press for positive attention, or who cut out the middleman by simultaneously being part of the press to do it themselves.
“…The sorts of discussions we would like to have…” Which discussions, exactly? I’d love to hear an answer to this that doesn’t include the very unethical if not illegal activities we know have occurred (or have been alleged to be occurring with strong evidence), nor includes viewpoint-based gatekeeping, that aren’t improved by transparency and engagement with (at least, merit-based selection of) audiences. Frankly, opacity and viewpoint-based gatekeeping are how the toxic atmosphere that enabled Gamergate occurred, and it seems to me honest developers who are serious about their work and relating to consumers would want an end to it.
All of this considered, maybe developers damn well ought to fear their audience. Unabashed disrespect, which as far as I can tell is and has been the case for some time, certainly doesn’t stand up to close scrutiny. especially when put on such blatant display as it has the last three months. That the gaming press, people who by all rights and reasonable expectation ought to have some idea how to speak to consumers, is also in on the game is absolutely beyond my ken. No, not fear abuse, harassment, or threats — that particular straw man doesn’t fly with me — but fear rightful criticism (and remember, criticism regardless what some would claim is never in and of its own right, harassment) for all the aforementioned illicit and unethical behavior, and making complete jackasses of themselves online in the wake of revelation after revelation; and the inevitable backlash in a consumer-driven market, which is that people stop consuming in protest.
Otherwise known as the logical consequences of their own misdeeds. Which is, apparently, something many of these individuals in question have never had to face…and it’s about damn time they did. So, you’ll have to forgive me if I’m considerably less than sympathetic to the plight of the developer in all this, especially as (emphasis mine),
6) GG hasn’t been effective at fixing anything we care about, and keeps trying to fix things we don’t think are broken.
This is the problem. It’s not about you, it’s about your audience, otherwise known as the people who put food on your table, and pertinent to you how they perceive you and your industry. Your audience has grievances with the way business in your industry is conducted, and has spoken quite clearly what those grievances are and why.
If you don’t care what your customers think of you, or what issues are important to your customers…well, good luck with that. As a consumer I’m perfectly happy playing that game and speaking with my wallet, and now that your industry has put viewpoint-based gatekeeping on the table, what’s good for the goose is good for the gander.
I promised you that I would give you a detailed reply, since something this long and well-considered deserves one.
“It seems that, for some, so much as a mention in an otherwise innocuous tweet constitutes harassment while for others, doxxing, death threats, outright and undeniable abusive comments, and publicly and unironically advocating all those is entirely harmless”
I think it’s more that each side doesn’t want to acknowledge how much this is happening to the other side.
“As for those “talking about quitting games”…why should they stay in the industry when they’ve found something vastly more lucrative ”
I am not talking about commentators. I am talking about game developers.
“The fact there are individuals in, or at least peripherally-related to, your industry who personally profit from abuse and toxicity, and therefore have a vested financial interest in its perpetuation and maximization, on its own should be cause to rethink your position, rather than embrace it.”
Is this not just as true of GG? I can think of several YouTubers for whom this has basically been bonus revenue moment. It is absolutely to their benefit to keep the rage stoked high.
“If the hive of groupthink, collusion, and corruption that has been uncovered by the last three months is indeed what you “need” for your professional careers, I would strongly urge you to rethink your career choice rather than cry harassment for being rightfully criticized for it.”
We greatly disagree on the amount of any of those things going on, is all.
“How is it ruined, exactly? let’s look to Occam’s razor. Which is more likely; that thousands of gamers, the overwhelming majority of which like myself universally condemn harassment, abuse, and toxicity, regardless of the source, have organized in a campaign to do exactly what it is we condemn by picking apart developers’ social media use; or dozens of your colleagues are, quite frankly, thin-skinned prima donnas with chronic foot-in-mouth disease (who are, coincidentally enough, the very last people I think of when I think “reasonable discourse”)?”
What I meant was “opening your mouth can now ruin your game and career.” I didn’t even tack on “for having X opinion” because we are at the point where it doesn’t *matter* which opinion you hold.
“It’s not on our heads your colleagues are endless and apparently unregulated fountains of incendiary bullshit, ”
No, it isn’t, but that wasn’t my point at all.
“Perhaps you should be urging your colleagues to act as if they grew up in civilized society with a fundamental understanding of how the internet works (and it still blows my mind game developers of all people seem to lack this), employ people with that skillset to speak on their behalf, or at least stay away from platforms on which they can deal themselves and their colleagues lasting damage by running their mouths.”
Look, I watched a colleague of mine go through a week of hell for daring to post up an article about “ways to get more women applicants.” This is a thoroughly innocuous topic. It’s not even particularly feminist. It is at best, the sort of equalist feminism that GG says it favors. It was a week of spamming, harassment, and she handled it wonderfully, but *she shouldn’t have had to.* She did not say anything at all inflammatory. She did not court any controversy. She did nothing wrong.
“Which discussions, exactly?” Ones like THOSE. The fact is that devs currently can start a discussion about damn near anything, and get sealioned in the middle of it. THAT is what I am referencing.
“This is the problem. It’s not about you, it’s about your audience, otherwise known as the people who put food on your table, and pertinent to you how they perceive you and your industry.”
Developers LOVE their audience. They wouldn’t be making games otherwise.
But a huge amount of GG has not been about the audience at all. It has been about politics. It has been about feminism. It has been about digging through academic papers, it has been about tracing Patreon links bteween dev and dev, never mind the press.
“Your audience has grievances with the way business in your industry is conducted, and has spoken quite clearly what those grievances are and why.”
The audience is also, no offense, pretty unaware of how business in the industry is conducted, and therefore has reached incorrect conclusions. That is why I have spent so much time trying to offer up information on how it all works.
“now that your industry has put viewpoint-based gatekeeping on the table, what’s good for the goose is good for the gander.”
ALL gatekeeping is viewpoint based. And ALL curation and ALL markets have gatekeeping, implicitly.
So let’s be straight here: the issue isn’t that issue-based gatekeeping is going on. It’s over what issues.
Okay, now that I’m feeling better and calmed down, a counter-response to keep the conversation flowing and hope to illuminate a few key points brought up. Thanks for reading and responding, especially to an angry post made at a point where I likely would have done much better for myself taking a step back and waiting to cool off.
The issue isn’t merely a lack of of empathy or acknowledgment of any abuse occurring on the other’s part, or more key to mention third parties and agent provocateurs. As I see it, there’s an active double standard being perpetuated by certain key figures against Gamergate and their supporters, leading to a general culture of blame, blame-shifting, and denial entirely unsupported by fact or evidence. Take, for example, Jason Schreier’s recent article on ‘Kotaku’ regarding Mateus Prada Sousa,
in which, despite no Gamergate supporter claiming support for, or personal affiliation with, Sousa — in fact, it was Gamergate supporters who uncovered the identity and personal information of this individual to remand it to federal authorities — Schreier cannot help himself but blame the movement anyway, on some nebulous notion of enabling Sousa’s activities. Never mind that Sousa has clearly engaging in these activities long before Gamergate began, nor that Ms. Sarkeesian only now claims to have taken action against him (albeit without evidence, when she has provided such in the past regarding action against harassment or threats) which for someone who is typically quite outspoken regarding harassment and threats against is at the very least out of character.
This is by far the only instance of this culture at work, merely the most visible at the moment. Discounting, of course, the events of last evening (two Gamergate supporters having been SWAT’ed, and a third — himself a games journalist and person of color — physically assaulted the night previous), which I feel uncomfortable discussing at length at the moment due to lack of hard evidence. Then, of course, there were the doxxing and abusive behavior levied against Milo Yiannopoulos (harmful and threatening objects sent via mail) and ‘KingofPol’ (who was SWAT’ed during a livestream) which do have evidence.
Frankly, one side does acknowledge the abuse and harassment of the other. That’s why individuals started the ‘GamerGate harassment patrol’, and target abusive behavior against the movement’s opponents as well. The other — or at least, key figures positioned against the movement — not only does not, nor does only justify abusive behavior against Gamegate supporters, but goes so far as to advocate it. Need I remind you of the commentary of Sam Biddle, Geordie Tait, and many others?
And no, the fallacy of relative privation does not justify it. Nor is this a new development — Gamergate opposition has been laden with this speech and worse from the beginning.
I can only speak for myself, but my ‘in for a penny, in for a pound’ moment was when Devin Faraci publicly fat-shamed Youtuber ‘boogie2988’ on social media, the last week of August — right around the same time Tadhg Kelly published an article on Gamasutra which was a veritable — at the time as some of the language was retracted without acknowledgment, comment or apology after being called out, by me, on it — cavalcade of ableism.
I have approached numerous individuals within the gaming press about the deeply problematic nature of this language. Mr. Kelly himself, along with Luke Plunkett via social media, Schreier, Stephen Totilo by extension, Bob Chipman…the list goes on. I have yet to receive so much as a simple acknowledgment this sort of language, let alone pervasively employed or saturating Gamergate opposition’s language as it is (or at least, was at the time) just might be a problem, let alone actively harmful to the socially underprivileged groups for which they claim to speak.
That’s the atmosphere of unaccountability to which I spoke earlier at work, and that needs to end.
In regards to individuals who have found ways to personally profit from abuse within Gamergate opposition, I was speaking to certain developers and not merely journalists or commentators as well. In regards to individuals who have a vested interest (out of a need for attention and drama, if not financial) in ensuring the well stays poisoned on Gamergate’s side, I certainly will not deny their existence especially as I have spoken out in the past against them myself (and faced the consequences for it), and condemn them as I have in the past. It’s certainly my hope that, in light of the events of November’s first week, now that many of those individuals have been discredited and “left” (certain to return soon once their pathological need for drama, or meal ticket, runs dry, as that is how these sorts of personalities operate), Gamergate supporters remember the lessons learned (unfortunately, the hard way) and apply social pressure to allow more rational individuals to speak.
Returning to social media, to be quite honest the phenomena to which you speak is hardly unique to gaming. It is now pervasive to the point the National Labor Relations Board keeps tabs on it and releases annual reports,
If social media has only recently been “ruined” for the games and tech industries, then congratulations to them and the consumers for remaining resilient against a phenomenon that exists in practically the entire private sector. Social media is no more “ruined” for the games and tech industries than any other at this point. Of course, that’s a matter of employer/employee relations and intersects with a vast number of other pressing political issues — privacy in the private sector, corporate personhood, right-to-work, the general degradation of labor rights in the face of rapid globalization. Whether or not it’s right is a conversation certainly worth having, and needs to be had, but that doesn’t change the notion it is much larger than the games industry.
It should go without saying this phenomenon is also politicized — or exploited by the media. Look at Donglegate, or Gawker’s spat with Pax Dickinson. Look at the backlash against the Ender’s Game film for Orson Scott Card’s homophobia. Merely the mention of Roman Polanski (chiefly, whether his criminality invalidates his work as a filmmaker) on social media kicks off a shitstorm among film buffs. Outside tech or entertainment, look at Chik-fil-A, Hobby Lobby, or Papa John’s boycotts organized via social media and driven in no small part by the social media commentary and personal views (not merely corporate policies) of affiliated individuals. I make no judgment here on any of those collective actions, I’m just bringing them up for the sake of consideration.
This is as good a time as any to bring up gatekeeping, however ‘out-of-sequence’ it may be. Of course all ‘gatekeeping’ is issue-based, and the relevant part of the discussion is what issues justify gatekeeping. After all, education, raw talent, merit, and work history are all ‘issues’ in this since around which ‘gatekeeping’ is not just prevalent, but accepted and considered mandatory. Convicts will never be in the Secret Service, I can’t walk into a courtroom and argue a case because I don’t hold a JD or have Bar approval, and someone who doesn’t so much as know BASIC has little place in the technical side of game design. But, discussing gatekeeping in such broad language strips the term of relevant context and negative connotation so as to render it functionally worthless — really, in that light we’re discussing “what constitutes gatekeeping?”.
And, in this context, I would claim what is important to Gamergate supporters is whether industry gatekeeping on the basis of social, political, cultural, and ideological positions, as well as personal connections, is superseding merit. I’d say it’s a fair concern to have, given the information revealed, and stories told by individuals within the industry and its peripheries several of whom are women and persons of color (calling into question the notion of ongoing gatekeeping as a way to uplift minority and unprivileged voices), over the past three months.
So, when you say Gamergate is politicized…of course it is. The issues raised by Gamergate supporters, at the very least, intersect with numerous sociopolitical issues. The dwindling culture of denial of many well-meaning, but misguided, Gamergate supporters does little to aid the recognition of that fundamental reality. I’ve never denied it, in fact I’ve gone to great lengths to urge others to accept and embrace it. I wholeheartedly reject the assertion this is an anti-feminist crusade to drive women out of the industry, of course.
Where the audience, and information-gathering (some, not be, but some would say muckraking) enters the picture, is…you’re right, few people have any idea what occurs behind closed doors in the game industry, the gaming press, and how those interact to present information and image to the consumer. We are angry, ill-informed consumers.
That’s the problem, but not in the way you think.
It doesn’t matter whether we’re discussing elected officials, executive agencies, “commanding heights of industry” multinationals, or an indie game company, opacity is never healthy for an institution in the long run. Opacity breeds corruption, malfeasance, and unaccountability, serving the interests of a few and harming the rest. The games industry is overwhelmingly opaque to the consumer, and the people responsible for making (and keeping) it transparent — the press — are so derelict in their jobs one cannot even rationally invoke Hanlon’s razor to presume mere incompetence; if anything, the gaming press busies itself ensuring that opacity (see, Doritogate) and poisoning relations between developer and consumer (we’ve had that conversation before; also, see Brad Wardell and his spat with Gawker media).
To what it boils down is, gamers are sick of the opacity in the industry and the excessively poor state of the gaming press (and it should tell you something when even the most ardent anti-Gamergate games journalists are among the first to admit their beat has serious problems, despite the fact they never seem to act on their grievances). We’re taking it upon ourselves to find out what goes on behind closed doors — if this leads to conclusions with which you may disagree, please urge your colleagues to open the doors (and keep doing what you already are) rather than stay the course and defend opacity.
Okay, this is going to be a fast, short post because I’m busy today and really didn’t feel like writing about this at all, yet here I am. With the recent drama involving Mattie Brice making statements that are at the least impolitic, even if we accept statements made after the fact they were in jest, I would like to bring up an aspect of all this that doesn’t receive remotely enough attention in Gamergate.
That is the appearance of impropriety. It is, according to Wikipedia (a sufficient source for paraphrasing information and informally defining terms), a circumstance in which a layperson who is ignorant of circumstantial details and context, would question the ethics of a subject. Real impropriety is immaterial in this case, what is material is that improprieties reasonably appear to have occurred, or are present.
Generally, even the appearance of impropriety is to be avoided, and for one key reason: the importance of trust in the subject of inquisition (in this case, the gaming press). A circumstance with so much as the appearance of impropriety can, and does, shake trust, and a media that cannot be trusted is of little, if any, value to its audience save entertainment value.
For example, relevant to Gamergate, when Nathan Greyson and Zoe Quinn entered into an (undisclosed) sexual relationship, it had the appearance of impropriety. I’m willing to accept, for the sake of charity, Stephen Totilo’s remarks about the relationship are true and that no impropriety occurred; however, that does not erase the appearance of it. After all, how many of us really trust at this point Totilo’s remarks about Greyson and Quinn? I certainly don’t.
What any of this has to do with IGF and Mattie Brice, is that she made statements that allude to her decisions as a judge being influenced by personal bias. In jest or not, that is a wildly inappropriate statement for one in her position to make on a good day, and on its own carries the appearance of impropriety. Unfortunately for Ms. Brice and the IGF, these statements were not made on a good day, but rather amid a major scandal involving the indie game scene and the gaming press, during which allegations of contest-rigging and fraud have come to light, that may or may not be under investigation by federal authorities. For a statement even the IGF acknowledges as inappropriate,
The impact of the statement, though — and what caused us concern — was that it raised suspicions that judgment would be made on games without due diligence. We also take seriously the impact of our judges making public statements about the process of on-going proceedings, including which games a particular judge is assigned, impressions on unreleased games in the festival, or how any of our judges intend to vote in the festival.
the timing could have certainly been better. Yet the IGF, acknowledging this appearance of impropriety and at first rescinding her seat as a judge, has since re-extended their invitation and issued a public apology to Ms. Brice…in response to pressure by others also implicated.
I don’t know about anyone else, but to me such willful disregard for the appearance of impropriety itself raises serious questions about the personal ethics, integrity, and trustworthiness of these people.
Call me crazy, and I’m sure some will, but that 7.5 Polygon review for Bayonetta 2 (and to a lesser extent, the 6.5 for Tropico 5 for much the same reason)on — by the writer’s own admittance — the exclusive grounds of the depiction of the titular character struck me as odd. I wasn’t angered over the review, especially as I’ve never been a Bayonetta fan and I haven’t played the game in question yet to have judged it myself, but it just seemed odd for reasons I couldn’t quite place.
…people are basing bonuses on Metacritic…I stopped giving out 7.5’s when I found out it needed an 8 to get your bonus…in that environment, giving a 7.5 is just a dick move.
If you don’t want to take her words for it, it’s a well-documented phenomenon elsewhere and has been for years:
Make of the phenomenon itself what you will — companies in a free-market economy incentivizing the production of a quality product, guilt-tripping critics into inflating reviews — what is important is this phenomenon exists, and is clearly elucidated.
This engenders a certain number of questions. Are certain critics, if they are docking points simply for finding the game’s content distasteful, trying to punish game developers and their publishers by denying them review-based bonuses? If so, is this emblematic of an effort on the part of critics to influence what games are produced and how they produced, contrary to critics’ claims? Is this a valid, or ethical, form of protest against content deemed objectionable by critics and those who produce it?
This, among other reasons, is why I find myself highly skeptical of game critics and their claims with regards to their influence and the gaming industry throughout this controversy, and the circumstances that preceded it. I’m not suggesting Bayonetta 2‘s developers were under such a bonus agreement — I don’t know, and have no information one way or the other — I’m merely illustrating a trend at this point, and my opinion on how we as critical consumers should approach it.
Then, there’s the question do review scores impact what games are made? If so, how do review scores impact what games are made? The games industry is fundamentally capitalist; they do what they do to make money. They make money by selling their products; the more products they sell, the more money they make, and more importantly (given games require massive investments of time, money, and human resources) vice versa.
Whether or not review scores influence sales is a topic that’s been subject to controversy for years; some say yes, some say no, and the industry clearly hedges its bets by saying “yes” regardless (at least enough to incentivize good review scores). Universally accepted is that brand and marketing matter, arguably more than review scores, which I’ll address shortly.
What is more interesting is actually looking at the data.
Those who argue for no correlation base their argument, more or less, on the fact most games (96% as cited by the Venture Beat article) sell less than 500,000 copies, and that games that sell more are statistical outliers. Fair point. This bears out in arguments for a weak correlation as well. Those who argue for correlation point to average sales by rating and general industry trends, and assert the correlation does exist — beyond the 500,000-unit sales threshold.
Before anyone gets up in arms this is “old” data, this Ars Technica article by Kyle Orland written just this year illustrates these trends persist.
What this ultimately tells us is review scores and sales do correlate…but not for the entire games industry, just the bigger players (i.e. double- and triple-A companies). This is easily explained through intervening variables — exposure, brand, marketing, the extreme amounts of resources dedicated to each by double- and triple-A companies (incidentally enabling multi-platform releases, a major driver of sales figures), but more importantly the lack of resources on the part of indies which acts as a limiting factor.
Did I mention, as per the aforementioned articles, the breakpoint for exponential sales increase is 80%? One article even identifies it as “the 80% divide”, and Orland’s article even demonstrates a sales “dead zone” for games that receive ratings in the 70’s.
Suddenly, that Bayonetta 2 — a triple-A game and therefore subject to the correlation between review score and sales — rating by Polygon seems awfully targeted.
It’s about time I turned my attention to this as well.
One of the more shocking realizations perusing Gamergate, the hashtag which is its namesake, affiliated and indie gaming news sites, opposing gaming news sites, mainstream outlets which have run the story, forums which entertain discussion on the topic (for one side or the other), or practically any other place that includes discussion, is there is a single conclusion that is near-universally accepted:
Gaming journalism is awful, corrupt even, and the gaming press is generally horrid at its job.
Biased reviews, lavish press parties and junkets, influence-bartering and leveraging access, incestuous relationships, destruction of the wall of separation between content and advertising, underpaid and overworked writers, low barriers for entry, degraded workmanship and quality…it’s all there. No one denies it, least of all people in the profession itself; it had long been to the point of being an inside, sick, joke among gamers (and the gaming press) how singularly horrid gaming journalism actually is, which I suspect is no small reason that after one scandal after another over the years, it remained begrudgingly tolerated among consumers. Even outspoken Gamergate opponent Ben Kuchera wrote about it on the now-defunct PA Report.
As a brief aside, Gamergate opponents inside the press would deflect (and have deflected) this criticism by saying Gamergate is barking up the wrong tree, by going after indies when the triple-A industry is the “real” source of corruption. I would disagree, and have written about why before. Simply put, the gaming press is the industry’s “fourth estate” and implicitly charged by the gaming community to acts as its ombudsman against the industry; that it is derelict in that duty is the fault of the press, and no one else’s.
It’s not as if the gaming press cannot dig deep, find some shred of ethical fortitude, and utilize its power as the media, or has never done so in the past. Bonus points for the fact this article was also written by Kuchera, and explicitly mentions influence- and access-bartering within the industry. Apparently, this only happens (or the topic arises) when the gaming press has vested (financial) interest in acting like journalists (or not), contrasted against principle.
Returning to the point, there is a clear consensus (even among gaming journalists) gaming journalism is in an excessively poor state, particularly in regards to industry corruption, and has been for years. There is certainly room for contention as to why this is the case (and I hope I have made my thoughts clear, if not explicit), but not that it is, in fact, the case. I would even go so far as to say the general poor quality of gaming journalism, and the continual shenanigans of gaming journalists, have been normalized, to borrow a term (chiefly, its usage and connotation) from the opposition.
This boils down to one undeniable conclusion, stemming largely from the consensus view of the state of the gaming press: the gaming press, and gaming journalists, are not trustworthy. I have written in the past about this here, more directly in regards to how the gaming press frames its protesters, as well. Of course, being the gaming press is the chief source of opposition to Gamergate, one must if they are to remain intellectually honest ask, especially if they accept the consensus view regarding the gaming press and its trustworthiness, “how can we trust the gaming press to speak truthfully about Gamergate, when the gaming press and its members themselves are the implicated party, especially when implicated parties have vested self-interest in an outcome amenable to themselves?”.
After all, the gaming press writing about its own beat-wide controversy represents a colossal, self-evident, conflict of interest — a notion egregiously swept aside in a glaring, unironic, demonstration of precisely the issues around which Gamergate coalesced. Individuals certainly have the right to defend themselves in the court of public opinion, but is this circumstance appropriate?
To this, as a brief aside unrelated to the question(s) at hand, I would add the claims made by the gaming press and affiliated individuals aren’t even parsimonious.
The short answer to both questions is no.
The long answer is, if we accept the consensus view the state of gaming journalism is corrupt, and acknowledge Gamergate’s allegations directly implicate the gaming press in at least dereliction of journalistic responsibility if not outright malfeasance, then we must conclude the gaming press cannot be trusted to speak truthfully about Gamergate, particularly in light doing so represents a conflict of interest in the presence of which the gaming press freely writes anyways.
Really, simply saying the gaming press isn’t trustworthy is sufficient, but I figured I would drive the point home due to somehow being contentious when it should otherwise be self-evident. Note the state of being corrupt directly implies untrustworthiness (the two words are synonymous, in fact). Whether or not we agree with allegations against the press by Gamergate, or believe the sincerity of those making the allegations, those allegations still exist.
Turning away from the coldly logical and into the polemic for a moment, accepting what the gaming press says about Gamergate at face value would be akin to the American public listening to Richard Nixon on November 17, 1973, and saying to themselves “well, that settles it. The President said he’s not a crook, he must not be a crook!”. This is, after all, the gaming press’ “I am not a crook!” moment.
Could the gaming press be speaking truthfully about Gamergate? Well, yes. A broken clock is right twice a day (despite being wrong the other 23 hours, 59 minutes, and 58 seconds); the wolves did eventually come for the shepard boy’s flock (never mind all those other times he cried wolf); Nixon was one of the most progressive Presidents we’ve had on environmental issues, ended the draft, and actually made a go at universal health care (you know the rest of the story. Is the gaming press speaking truthfully about Gamergate? Well, that’s the question of the hour.
Notice in an earlier paragraph, I stated “…accepting what the gaming press says about Gamergate at face value…”. That is intentional, since guiding principles in this circumstance should be skepticism and rationality. If you, the reader, understand the consensus view regarding the state of the gaming press, and why that consensus view is the case, why accept comments made about Gamergate by the gaming press at face value? Circumstances as I have elucidated them demand at least skepticism and independent investigation to come to one’s own conclusions, if one is to remain critical and intellectually honest.
“We know games journalism is awful, but…” No, no buts. We know games journalism is awful, period. Which means it’s time for you, dear reader, to reject games journalism at face value and draw your own conclusions. If, at the end, you agree with games journalists on the issue, so be it; all I, as one person, ask is that conclusion is your own.
…so I had something to walk home in before taking a quick nap and going on the air that night with Countdown. Not a word about the incident, of course, because as the FBI guys pointed out, as tempting as it was to tell the story the way I have here, from notes written in that Contact Isolation room that night, doing so would only assure the sender that he’d accomplished his sick mission, and that he had my address. They couldn’t stop me from revealing it had happened (“Jeez,” said one of the FBI guys, “if I had a newscast I’d do the whole show about it”), but in a very clear way, in revealing it, I would be helping a domestic terrorist.
So that was the story, on which I sat, and was going to, forever if necessary.
[…]
If [the New York Post] had, they would’ve been advised that, yes, there had been an incident, but, oh, by the way, the local representatives of the federal government…had asked everybody to keep it quiet so as not to provide the perpetrator with a return receipt…
That is what Keith Olbermann had to say in his book Truth and Consequences: Special Comments on the Bush Administration’s War on American Values (page 45) about one of many threats against his own life for being a high-profile, outspoken and liberal, reporter — in this case, a fake anthrax letter sent to his home.
that I felt compelled to place my full, undivided attention on the subject. We’ve read time and again, from unaffiliated reporters, public figures, and even attorneys and law enforcement how one responds to threats and harassment. Here, we have someone in the gaming industry who has received threats for his work and status, restating what we all already knew — that is, one who is the recipient of threats or other forms of abuse should not not respond to it publicly.
In the worst-case scenario, it verifies personal information to a potential perpetrator if the threat is genuine and credible. In the best-case scenario, it merely validates and enables a trolling tactic (if the threat is not credible). Worse, as sending death threats is tantamount to criminal coercion one way or the other, it can interfere with the capability of law enforcement to investigate and prosecute those that make threats.
People are right to point out threats shouldn’t be sent in the first place, credible or non-credible, but unfortunately we live in reality opposed to a utopian fantasy world. Criminals, other deranged people and criminal acts exist whether they should or should not, and for that reason individuals must first learn how to respond so as to not enable poor behavior, or in the worst-case scenarios how to not put themselves at risk while jeopardizing the capability of law enforcement to do its job.
What do certain individuals, at the heart of Gamergate or peripherally-related, do instead? Exactly the opposite of what law enforcement and legal counsel would advise (and probably has advised, repeatedly) them to do. They publicize it. They politicize it. They even go so far as to advertise it by using threats and harassment as the keystone of public speaking and fund-raising campaigns. This all adds up to one undeniable conclusion: they commodify it.
Commodification is, for the unaware, the transformation of phenomena, objects, ideas, or other entities not generally considered goods or services for exchange into such, for the purpose of generating wealth. In other words, one is turning something not generally used to make money or traded for money, into something that is. It is a lynchpin of practically every modern economic theory, from Marxism to Neoliberalism, whether it’s regarded as a positive or negative phenomenon.
And, when something (in this case, abuse) is commodified, the individual engaging in said commodification gains vested self-interest in not merely its perpetuation but its maximization. This bears out when considering publicizing threats and abuse enables, and one would even say normalizes (not in the formal Foucauldian sense, but the bastardized sense employed by the so-called the social justice movement at large today), the phenomenon.
Take it straight from Mr. Levine (emphasis mine): “…if the jerk is a troll, then you’ve handed them a victory and are effectively encouraging him to do it again. He may even tell his pals about it and encourage them to do likewise to get some of that sweet, sweet attention.“ Of course, it’s not sufficient to publicize threats; the gaming press (who has vested financial interest in reporting and editorializing controversial content) is happy to frame (distinct from report) this as the status quo among to what the gaming press refers as “gamers” (distinct from “people who just happen to play games”), which is to say threats and abuse is the norm…in other words, normalized behavior.
That last sentence is loaded with disclaimers to highlight precisely the rhetorical game in play by the gaming press: “not all people who play games but this outlying, vocal, minority we’ve cherry-picked to fit arbitrary demographic constraints, the gaming industry’s own demographic research we’re happy to parrot anyways in any other circumstance be damned, which by fantastic coincidence lends itself well to a priori outgrouping, that we perceive as the target demographic for the triple-A developers we declare as problematic, but fuck it we’ll call them gamers (excluding people along ethnic, racial, gender, sex, and orientation in the process) and present them as the majority anyways…among these assholes who we know to be unrepresentative of everyone who plays games, but we’re treating as representative anyways, threats are normal”. Look, if framing the term “gamer” has to be so precise as to exclude eighty-odd percent of people who play games (and that’s just within the US), and not even all of whoever is left, to frame a phenomenon that is universally condemned by everyone save those who actually engage in that behavior (when that pre-selected demographic isn’t even responsible for the total of that behavior) as “normal”, the line between simply reporting on a phenomenon and normalizing it oneself has long since been crossed.
Why is this a problem? Well, going back to Mr. Levine (again, emphasis mine): “…if he/she’s a sociopath, you don’t even [sic] them to even know you’ve read the threat. ANYTHING they know about you is a bad thing. Again [sic] the police…it only takes one truly dedicated jerk, so better safe than sorry”.
Not everyone has a megaphone in the form of a profit-hungry gaming press willing to report at great length and in great detail every time a “gamer” so much as looks at oneself cross-eyed, let alone send anything that could be reasonably construed as a threat, credible or not. Not everyone has a legion of Patreon or Kickstarter supporters whose disposable income far surpasses their common sense willing to donate at so much as a calamitous air biscuit being floated in one’s general vicinity. Not everyone has social privilege and publicity sufficient that law enforcement doesn’t immediately discount threats and harassment against their person — that is to say, if they’re not being shot in the back multiple times by cops or would-be vigilantes for the cardinal offense of walking down the street minding their own fucking business with a skin color darker than “chestnut”, or if that’s a serious day-to-day concern.
As Mr. Levine said, “it only takes one”…and chances are, it won’t be abuse profiteers who end up victimized. It’ll be someone powerless, without a fawning media or mollycoddling crowdfunders (among whom include members of the press who profit in turn), whose victimization was enabled by those with social power who recklessly decided to put that power to use for the sake of profit. No, it’s not sufficient to say “abuse is bad” when one’s actions betray the words, especially simultaneously engaging in an extensive dehumanization and demonization campaign that outright normalizes (and this time, in the actual Foucauldian sense save utilization of informal institutions opposed to state power) further abuse in the name of corrupt Utilitarian calculi.
Of course, can we expect better from individuals whose social power and capital is vested singularly in abuse profiteering? From where I sit, the answer to that question is a resounding “NO”. Which is why I say these individuals are nothing but a blight on the gaming community, toxic through-and-through for the simple fact their vested self-interest lies in the gaming community being as abusive as possible and for as long as possible, and if gaming is to make any strides forward as a form of art from this point, these people must be the first to be shown the door.
The bottom line is, condemn abuse. Condemn harassment. Condemn threats. But more importantly, be genuine in your condemnation. Don’t enable it. Don’t facilitate it. Don’t normalize it. Don’t profit from your own abuse, or the abuse of others, because when you do your self-interest shifts from ending abuse to perpetuating it, and when that happens your credibility on the topic of abuse goes out the window. Call out abuse profiteering as a major source of toxicity in the gaming community.
…and as a brief post-script, when one publicly flaunts counsel any attorney worth a fraction of their weight in salt, and advice any halfway competent law enforcement officer, would give which we all by this point know to be the case, while actively antagonizing law enforcement and using the “opportunity” to fund-raise and work the pundit circuit to increase visibility and social capital, one sends an implicit, but obvious, message to critical viewers but more importantly law enforcement itself: one isn’t even taking their own threats seriously. How for the love of God does one expect law enforcement to treat this shit seriously when not even the alleged victim does?
I finally took the time today to watch this video by George Weidman of “Super Bunnyhop”,
you guys might know it as the video for which the now-famous Greg Lisby interview was source material. While watching it, one thing which had been stuck in my craw since the beginning of this jumped out to me, which is the near-singular attention and response to the most extreme, least-informed, and therefore least-credible voices among people who have spoken out on the consumer action-cum-movement.
I’m not calling Mr. Weidman to the mats about this; despite tongue-in-cheek (and, to be honest, somewhat on-point) commentary he was fair to the points made by Gamergate, provided disclosure whenever the situation actually did call for it (for example, disclosing personal relationships with sources), and his source material complete with citations in their entirety. Which, as far as I can tell, puts him head and shoulders above the gaming press proper of no less than the last decade.
Onto the original point, this is of course not a phenomenon restricted to games journalism; it occurs in every level of media, in every field and beat. Jokes about how the evening news finds the biggest redneck in town to talk about the tornado and how it sounded like a freight train, the largest collection of negative African-American stereotypes on legs to talk about city shootings, the most smoked-out hippie to talk about liberal issues, and the dumbest gun-waving lunatic to talk about gun control exist for a reason. It drives viewership, and advertisement revenue, to indulge an audience’s biases for laughs, pander to bigotry, or frame and drive a narrative; it’s that simple. But, we’re here to talk about the gaming press, so the gaming press we shall talk about.
Commentary from the gaming press at large clearly responds to the vocal minority lacking in credibility, something to which I’ve alluded in the past on this very blog,
neglecting if not actively avoided voices in the middle, or voices with experience or knowledge in journalism and journalistic ethics. Invoking Hanlon’s razor on this allows us to conclude the gaming press is merely trying to drive controversy for viewership and page revenue — otherwise known as the “clickbait” phenomenon (a major source of the general degradation of games journalism over the past few years). Attributing this behavior to malice — perfectly understandable, even rational, given social media commentary of the last two months by many of the selfsame individuals — forces us to conclude the gaming press is building straw men, framing Gamergate as indulgent and even malicious in its ignorance of journalism.
The truth is, many of us now speaking out already knew enough about journalism to know the behavior demonstrated by the gaming press is, and has been for years, thoroughly unacceptable. Those of us who didn’t, have received enough of a crash course to know what is and is not acceptable. We already knew gaming journalism has been a joke for years (if ever there was a moment it wasn’t), and precisely why. We know what constitutes conflict of interest, and that professional collegiality does not (and we all know about what we’re complaining well exceeds that); we know appearance of impropriety is what is to be avoided above and beyond real impropriety; we know the wall of separation between reporting, editorial, and advertising is no longer extant and why; and no amount of framing is going to change that.
That is, in itself, emblematic of the very environment of opacity and unaccountability that has been tolerated far too long by, as far as I can tell, the most patient and forgiving (if not tactful) audience of any branch of mass media. Personally, I can’t imagine a fraction of the shenanigans and general malfeasance carried out by the gaming press being considered remotely acceptable by any mainstream outlet. Clutching pearls at what event was “the final straw” for gamers understates this toxic environment existed for years, and ignores that sooner or later, gamers certainly would have said “no more”.
Which brings me to why, I believe, Gamergate is an existential conflict (at least for the gaming press) and there is no possibility for peaceful resolution. First, a bit of general context:
On top of those things I discussed gamers already know, we also know journalism is founded on one core principle from which stems all of these exacting guidelines, standards of conduct, and ethics rules. That core principle is the unspoken compact of trust between journalist and audience; before all else, the audience must trust journalists to investigate, report, and even editorialize factually, with due diligence, and without letting individual bias supersede and compromise produced content.
That trust, once broken, never can exist again. Sure, audiences with careful image management and handling by editorial staff can grow to trust an individual journalist after a breach of trust, but never to an extent that existed prior. Trust is also a fickle, fragile thing, which is why appearance of impropriety is to be avoided as well as real impropriety, especially when breaches of trust can end careers, mar the reputation of their outlet, or even in the most egregious of cases the entire profession.
This is certainly the case with the gaming press in light of Gamergate. Very little if any real trust in the gaming press on their audiences’ parts existed prior to the controversy, and whatever did is now gone…perhaps forevermore. The plural of anecdote is not data, but I can certainly speak for myself in saying I trusted none of these implicated outlets before, and in light of the controversy I am regretting that choice made long ago not in the least; nor will I, even if these outlets undergo extensive restaffing and reform, trust any of the implicated outlets again such is the extent of the bad faith fostered and demonstrated by the gaming press in light of this controversy.
For many of the implicated individuals, their careers as “journalists” (if indeed they ever called themselves such, or held themselves to anything remotely resembling journalists’ standards of conduct) is over. You can see as much for yourself by the ever-so-subtle (sarcasm) shift in narrative divorcing themselves from the word, preferring instead “blogger”. They know that if their outlets reform, or otherwise try to meaningfully advance the field of games criticism or journalism, their heads will be first to rhetorically roll as their audiences not only distrust them, but actively dislike them (and not even in a “love to hate” sense of the word which would see critics playing the heel for ratings or pageviews) on the basis of that distrust and past malfeasance.
This is precisely why many journalists, whether they admit it or not, are outspokenly critical of revised codes of ethical conduct such as those employed by Kotaku or Escapist in response to the controversy.
The Rubicon was crossed with “gamers are dead”; either implicated individuals bludgeon their audiences into quiet submission, or they lose their livelihoods as their names become too radioactive to hire and their names too radioactive to publish. This is why we’ve seen double-down after double-down, ever-elevating levels of angry (and now, violent) rhetoric, and even pleas for help from a mainstream media hungry for controversy and revenue, and eager to stave off their own days of reckoning at the hands of their own audiences, in turn angry for many of the same sins.
ZenJos are discussing. 
A happy Gamer, and 
Eacaraxe 
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