Video Game Journalism

Sorry for bringing up the Quinn debacle again, but this may be important.◊ (Warning: might or might not be accurate because 4Chan.)

It's sad that things have gotten to the point where Poe's Law applies effectively to all the hysteria surrounding PAX now.

edited 31st Aug '14 8:04:03 AM by Raidouthe21st

Important if you want a joyless laugh, maybe.

^^^might or might not be accurate because 4Chan

understatement of the year ;)

Gamers' don't have to be your audience. 'Gamers' are over.'

@Gavs Evans: Well I guess that seals it then. Game journalists hate the gaming commuity :/

It's weird and seems to be some thing unique to game industry. Take 'car culture' or 'gun culture' for example. Both are hobbies that typically are the domains of much the same demographic but you don't see Top Gear or Sons Of Guns expressing open contempt from their audience >_>

edited 31st Aug '14 10:06:53 AM by joeyjojo

Cars and guns have been around a lot longer than video games.

edited 31st Aug '14 10:19:54 AM by VeryMelon

It's kind of ironic, considering "Gamers" are the people that those so-called journalists have been pandering to for years and built up their media centers off of.

The mention of the Washington Post in that 4chan post actually relates to a point I wanted to reiterate: this whole "'gamers' are dead" thing means little to nothing if it doesn't hit the mainstream. Sure, we can be like "Oh, we as a community don't want to be associated to these people under this term", but then it's nothing more than a kid going to his parents saying that he's changed his name. The parents will nod, think "Aww, that's cute", maybe entertain it for a little while, but will ignore it soon enough.

Gaming journalism went to shit for two reasons. News is fucking dead, period, so niche news is double dead.

I mean have you watched mainstream news networks? They have to pander so hard, so fucking hard, that it's just an endless sea of non-neutrality-in-your-face-with-us-or-against-us bullshit. Important things go out the window to make time slots for keeping up with the Kardashians. Print journalism died, and ad space journalism can barely keep your lights on. You need either a patron or controversy, and that's what gaming journalism did.

You have places like 11/10 IGN, where they make their cash by basically handing out paid reviews, you have places like Kotaku who make their money off of click-bait articles, and you have the hybrids like Game Spot.

Now game companies can only sponsor so many places, so most sites get scraps. So those places turned to click-bait to compliment the lack of revenue. They find some writers who have "something" to say. Flavor of the month of last years batch of graduates comes in SJW and oh look, they all "network" and know each other. Now I am not going to imply that there aren't issues with minority representations, there is and maybe it will get the talk it deserves some day, but think about the type of people who are willing to get paid for writing about such causes.

Bit of a conflict of interest in those who get into business to make your money writing about causes, an inherent lack of ethics. It's why Zoe Quinn and the entire thing is blowing up and so many sites are coming under fire right now, because when you find one breach of ethics you will find more. Because that one is connected to that one, who gave that one max reviews because that one knows the friend of that one, and they both share the same PR company, so that one backs up that one when they attack someone, and soon every site is webbed together in an actual conspiracy.

Except IGN, because they only take bribe money. All hail the dorito pope I guess, lol.

So, what do you guys think is the endgame for all of this "gamers are dead" business?

I mean, most people who play video games are either not going to know, not going to care, or celebrate the fact that these journalists and rabble rousers are willingly excising themselves and their toxic attitudes away from the community just to stand on a moral pedestal.

What exactly do journalists get out of trying to stamp down on their own audience? E-fame? Respect? Cause so far, it doesn't sound like their end goal is keeping their jobs or their advertisers happy.

edited 31st Aug '14 11:07:35 AM by Raidouthe21st

They may not have an end game right now. I could be entirely wrong, but it could be that they're just reacting in a panic and haven't thought more than a week or a step ahead.

The endgame? No one with an ounce of brains and self-respect will give a shit, because they're too busy playing viddy games and being cool folks.

The endgame is to get the focus off their curroption and make it about how it's gamers being immature, so the story doesn't go mainstream. Like when gamers complained about Mass Effect 3's ending, and they pretended all the butthurt was about how Bioware had a gay romance and it was actually about gamers being homophobes. lol

The current reaction an discussion says otherwise.

This Gamergate situation reminds me of all those TV and movie plots where a seedy person runs for mayor and nearly wins, until someone goads them into publicly insulting their constituents.

Here's a new part of the series posted earlier.

Really, the more they try to ignore it and/or try to spin the people trying to bring this to light as the villains in this whole story, the more people are gonna talk about it. This isn't gonna go away anytime soon.

Man he's really ripping into them now and I find that awesome, he's not letting the gaming press off the hook for all the crap they've been spewing about gamers lately and not trying to do proper research into the situation.

Even better is how Adam Baldwin is kicking ass on Twitter regarding this situation, he's not taking crap from anybody. He even wrecked Zoe Quinn and Nathan Grayson themselves on there when they both picked a fight with Baldwin, they lost so bad Grayson decided to ragequit and it was hilarious.

It's their fault for thinking they were big enough to take on Animal Mother. Really should have thought twice on that one.

Begun, the game wars have.

Man, Adam Baldwin is just great.

He's pretty much the entire reason I watched Chuck.

I swear, I would pay to have this adapted to film one day. It'd be a cautionary tale for people who want to go into journalism: If you insult your audience, don't be objective in your coverage, let your personal relationships get in the way of your coverage, and censor criticism, you're ultimately gonna lose out on the respect of everybody, to say the very least.

I could definitely see someone making a wonderful dramatic comedy out of the whole thing.

Maybe if I manage to make it big as a writer sometime I can try to make it happen.

I would also love to see a fictionalized version of the GamerGate/Quinnspiracy saga, but I think the narrative hasn't been completely written yet.

True enough. There is a lot that will no doubt happen, but the way things have shaped up thus far is just made to order for a movie or miniseries or some kind of live-action adaptation to be made about it complete with the "based on a true story" bit.

edited 31st Aug '14 6:00:22 PM by TheSpaceJawa

So let me get this straight, this whole thing started the way it did because some guy got cuckolded and pursued petty vengeance on the web, and since one of the guys involved had connections to a game magazine, suddenly the folks harassing her and declaring war on gaming journalism are the GOOD GUYS?

You guys DO realize that it won't just be journalism that'll be harmed by this, right?

There aren't any good guys in this. There usually aren't any good guys in scandals. Certainly not in ones like this. Even if all of it's true, that doesn't give anyone any right to attack or hack anyone involved. THAT is the problem with modern internet culture. There's too much of this cyber vigilante crap that really needs to fucking STOP.