singlespace

There was also Phil Fish exploding at the whole mess then having the worst doxxing in recent memory which drove Fish to quit the industry entirely and put Polytron up for sale.

Well then, Olly Fucking Moss has your back: https://twitter.com/ollymoss/status/504752849415196673/photo/1

Dude, chill out. If you've followed how this discussion has been going, it's largely been academic or rather just musings. No one here is screaming that games journalism is corrupt, or that games have been ruined, or that games media is terrible, or anything of the sort.

I think we can all agree that Idle Thumbs is one of the most interesting pieces of gaming media available today. One of my favourite pieces of video game content has been Steve Gaynor's Tone Control. For me, much of the most interesting content on games is easily the most biased. It's natural that much of the most interesting discourse on any subject comes from those who are most involved. People become increasingly involved in whatever things they love in life and that's a great thing. But I don't think this renders ethical guidelines useless. When Steve Gaynor interview Neil Druckmann, knowledge of who they are and how they relate to the discussion at hand is inherent. We understand who they are and what that means. When we are faced with a journalist, this is not necessarily the case. Ethical guidelines provide a measure of protection to what is often the only lens by which we can view a world that is inaccessible to us. Whether it is due to time, or knowledge, or simply where we find ourselves in life, there are many topics where we must simply take the word of those who relate the news to us. Ethical guidelines serve to give us some small measure of assurance that this lens is fair.

Go back to post #25 and read a few of the subsequent posts, the subject is discussed a bit there, but yeah part of the contention is whether or not Patreon should be viewed as purchasing games or as a material contribution. Ethical issues in general journalism in recent years make any issues in the gaming media look like blemishes on paragons of virtue. I don't think anyone is under the illusion that the issue of Patreon is somehow a Big Deal, or that journalism in general is some kind of perfect machine that the gaming media should aspire to become.

Nah, but I respect establishments more who take the time to consider these issues carefully. Polygon was probably the first site where I took the time to read through their entire policy because at one point Justin McElroy was making a point of how they take issues of journalism seriously. Ever since then I've had this thought, right or wrong, that Polygon was special because they aspired towards something a bit different than other establishments.

That's pretty awesome. Jeremy Parish was brought up earlier in the thread and his more personal discussion of ethics is nice. I feel like most discussions of this nature are more practical, or more academic, but few just layout ethics as part of their own experiences like Parish did.

This is neither here nor there: stop bring up Nathan Grayson and the Internet mob as though it has any bearing on the current discussion. There is no need for hypotheticals, the entire Polygon Ethics Statement is available on their site. There is no insignificant clause applicable to Patreon. In fact, as anthonyRichard pointed out, there is no clause applicable to Patreon at all. You seem pretty bent on making this out to be some kind of witch hunt or anti-feminist discussion: it's just a discussion of specific somewhat ill defined aspects of journalistic ethics. No one here is calling for anyone's head. No one here is saying Kuchera's Patreon donations are some heinous crime or an example of corruption. Most people here, myself included, don't even think that Kuchera donating to a developer he writes about is inherent unethical. My own stance is such things need to be disclosed, but the specific act of materially contributing to someone you're writing about isn't necessarily unethical.

Seems like the choice was driven by practical necessity rather than having an ethical leaning one way or another: "We've also agreed that funding any developers through services such as Patreon introduce needless potential conflicts of interest and are therefore nixing any such contributions by our writers. Some may disagree that Patreons are a conflict. That's a debate for journalism critics." I wonder whether Polygon will discuss their stance on Patreon or not.

That actually is not the same situation. We're talking about a journalist contributing to a developer they are writing about, the example you provided is a developer contributing to a journalist, which seems like a more clear cut issue. I think the discussion is moving towards the more abstract anyways, so from a practical standpoint I don't think it really matters whether the specific example is changed or not.

I don't believe there is any issue with contributing to Patreon, buying special editions, paying a higher value when you have the option, or other such things as long as notable external factors which may affect the writer's disposition towards their subject in ways that would not be obvious unless disclosed are noted. For instance, if a writer was discussing his own wife without disclosing the fact, it would not be ethical because the reader has no way of knowing that the piece was written from the perspective of a husband about his wife rather than from the perspective of a stranger. The same holds true of an artist criticizing their own work, or an investor discussing the viability of company they have invested in, etc. Nothing is objective, but it is important to know if there are relevant situations that may colour the attitude of a writer towards a particular subject. The objectionable part isn't that there is bias — that is a given — but that there is bias that we cannot reasonably account for. I'm sure it was an oversight, but to say that this information was disclosed simply because the records are available to the public is disingenuous at best. The actual text of the ethics policy explicitly states that conflicts will be noted on the writer's profile page, disclosed in context, or made explicit in the footnotes. Are you seriously trying to argue that information that is known strictly internally to an organization can be considered disclosed? Nathan Grayson's situation was that no conflict actually occurred because he recused himself of writing about Quinn, hence there was no reason to disclose any information whatsoever. If Nathan Grayson had written a piece on Quinn after they had been in a relationship, then it would be remiss not to disclose their previous relationship, but that's a hypothetical universe that does not exist. That is an entirely different situation than what we are discussing.

No, there are others being discussed right now on the Interwebs, but the only one that seems to have actual evidence supporting a possible conflict that I've seen has been Kuchera, hence why I limited my discussion only to him.

That is a really good point.

Kickstarter has literal expectations written at each tier as well, but in reality both are realistically just best effort promises. I don't think I've backed a single Kickstarter or Patreon that has delivered to the letter of what they promised, hence in both a practical sense it's better to think of the stated commitments in the same way you would view the promises of a startup looking for venture capital, which is to say with the knowledge that is very likely that plans will change and all the things promised could disappear. In a very real way, when you give money to a Kickstarter or Patreon, you're just giving money to the creators because there is a decent risk that nothing will come of the effort. If you give money with the expectation that there will be returns as described, you will be disappointed sooner rather than later. I suppose if you limit your contributions to only Patreons with exceptional track records, or guaranteed Kickstarters, then your experience will be different than what I described, but usually those people don't really belong on Patreon or Kickstarter in the first place. I don't think it is unethical to contribute, I just think that financial contributions to developers game journalists are writing about should be disclosed because of the possible affects those material contributions can have on the writers perspective. It's not as though giving someone money is inherently wrong, I just feel that it's better to disclose these kinds of things due to the possibility of irrational bias. I don't know if I have an answer for you, but I feel that there is a certain pull that making financial contributions exerts on those who contribute. You feel as though you are part of whatever you contributed towards because there is a link in the form of money between you and those who you are supporting in a very direct way. I think that those kinds of feelings can introduce unexpected bias into a person's disposition towards whatever they're funding in ways that even receiving gifts or experiencing a game in a carefully engineered environment cannot.

Well, yes, you would need to have a material profit for the strict definition of the word. There is a difference between giving someone money with no expectation of material return but to support a cause, is different than a financial investment, but I am not so certain that it is something that need not be disclosed. Maybe it should be considered equivalent to intangible interests of any sort since there is no expectation of material return. Maybe it should be considered equivalent to an investment because a material financial transaction has occurred. The answer is not clear to me, but I know that it does not feel right to me for it not to be acknowledged in anyway. Perhaps I need more time to mull over the issue before I can articulate why I feel that way, but when Junior Mints was talking about Polygon's strict rules on contributing to Kickstarter and limits of $50 on gifts of any sort, it felt right. Overall, it's not a huge deal I guess, it's just a single sentence missed and probably not much money at all, but it just seems wrong.

But he wasn't buying a game, and to me that isn't just a semantic difference. Your redefinition of Patreon sounds like an equivocation of what these services are meant to be: Patreon is literally supporting creators directly instead of on a product basis. I have put maybe $1500 - 2000 into Kickstarters and Patreon combined and I have never once thought of it as paying for a product: I'm supporting a person or team so that they have a chance to do the things they want in life. When I put money into Kickstarter or Patreon, I don't expect anything back. I just expect them to give their best effort at following the things they set out to do. If they fail, that's fine, as long as they gave it their best. That's a very different thing than buying a game.

Seems like this is the latest one making the rounds, this time concerning Polygon: Ben Kuchera didn't disclose that he was a Patreon supporter of Zoe Quinn while he wrote an article directly about Quinn, which may or may not go against Polygon's Ethics Statement under the subsection of Conflict: Polygon's Ethics Statement - http://www.polygon.com/pages/ethics-statement January 6, 2014 - http://www.patreon.com/user?u=66952 March 19, 2014 - http://www.polygon.com/2014/3/19/5526114/developer-zoe-quinn-offers-real-world-advice-support-for-dealing-with If you want to go by the letter, Polygon's Ethics Statement never states that it doesn't cover people in which their writers have an undisclosed financial investment, and you can define investment in such a way that just giving someone money doesn't qualify, but that would seem to go against the spirit of the statement. When I support a project on Kickstarter or person on Patreon, I have a vested interest in seeing them succeed. I think Ben Kuchera just messed up, so now what? I would hazard nothing, and maybe that's alright. I think people will argue that its not a significant investment, and it is not the kind of investment where one will ever receive any kind of financial benefit, but I'm still kind of disappointed: I had the impression that Polygon was ironclad on these kinds of things.

Copying over from the erroneous thread: I never noticed that that, yeah he is! In my mind he inhabits other roles.

Anyone else see Star Trek: Axanar on Kickstarter? They have a 20 minute mock documentary about the events in their film as the pitch video. It's kind of amazing that you can make something like that on the cheap (i.e. $75,000) these days: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/194429923/star-trek-axanar For the Youtube inclined:

And the grizzled captain is Martok from DS9! It's unclear to me what the full Axanar film is going to be — I hope it actually will be a mockumentary at feature length.

Reposting from an erroneously made new thread: Anyone else see Star Trek: Axanar on Kickstarter? They have a 20 minute mock documentary about the events in their film as the pitch video. It's kind of amazing that you can make something like that on the cheap (i.e. $75,000) these days: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/194429923/star-trek-axanar For the Youtube inclined:

Thanks, I couldn't see anything on cursory search, hence why I made a new thread. That's why I made this post actually: the Axanar short was released about a week ago and isn't half bad, rough in spots, but they work within their resources and skill to good effect. It also helps that they have Tony Todd, Kate Vernon and Richard Hatch from Battlestar Galactica, J.G. Hertzler who played Martok from DS9, and Gary Graham who played Ambassador Soval from Enterprise. The fans themselves who are driving the project, along with staff, appear to be primarily composed of professionals as well.

That's the practical reality of the situation in my experience. The fastest way to find good qualified people is by simply knowing someone who is qualified. Selecting from people you don't know is a long laborious process of filtering through hundreds of resumes with dozens of interviews until you find a handful of candidates if anyone at all. Even then, it's not as though someone you suggest isn't interviewed or vetted.

I agreed with your former point that the rhetoric is getting out of hand, but what Zoe Quinn does in her private life is just that: private. Quinn's personal life is none of our concern and irrelevant to any discussion of journalistic integrity. The massive post that everyone seems to want to discuss was not about ethics. It wasn't about journalistic integrity. It wasn't even remotely about the game industry in the least. It was someone hurt and angry lashing out in the most horrible of ways in an effort to destroy someone's life and that is not okay. There were questions of Quinn's relationship with Nathan Grayson, but Grayson did not review any of Quinn's work. He wrote a few articles that mentioned Depression Quest amongst dozens and dozens of other games. He wrote a piece on GAME_JAM, which Quinn amongst many others was involved, but just about every other establishment wrote a similar piece. That's it. There was nothing at all suspicious about Grayson's work and Stephen Totilo specifically addressed concerns as the man responsible for the publication. No one should be beyond criticism, but unsubstantiated speculation is not criticism. I'm not going to sit here and dissect Quinn's personal life as if it were some slab of meat on display for academic curiosity. If you want to talk about nepotism in the games industry fine. If you want to talk about problems with the integrity journalism go ahead, but none of that has anything to do with the details of Quinn's personal life.

I kind of feel the same way. You see the same kinds of dehumanizing rhetoric being spouted by both the people who are harassing Quinn and those who are supporting Quinn. Obviously the hordes that are attacking Quinn are doing far far worse things than spouting rhetoric, really terrible things, but it makes for an uncomfortable situation when you'd rather associate with no one and just stay far away from the entire mess.