JonCole

That Jordan dude was also thinking about putting the Beat Up Anita Sarkeesian game into the DVD release of their dumb "documentary" Patreon thing. In earnest. And then the negative response got him to turn that around - http://www.patreon.com/creation?hid=856632 Man. I just... ugh. So dumb.

I dunno man, I spent like 40 hours in Watch Dogs and I didn't even think it was that good. I got all of the achievements in ACII. People LOVE Far Cry 3. I really don't know any reason why they would stop.

I didn't come close to saying anything like that.

The harassers are the ones who are presenting the "evidence" that she's doing shitty things. They are not a credible source of information.

Winner gets the best prize, potentially and most likely nothing. Runners-up definitely get nothing. In exchange for probably nothing and nothing, they get to spend their time and effort. That being said, what did Quinn do to not make this thing a possibility? Someone hacked their page, but there's absolutely no evidence that it was Quinn herself and I don't think you could make a compelling argument that she was responsible for it in any way. She's not stopping anyone from participating, but shedding light on a scam. Just like I wouldn't try to stop any artists from spending hours of unpaid time to hope to win a one-time contest on Twitter - people have talent and a lot of artists don't have a steady source of income, so they'll try anything to make some money. But I sure as shit would call out the company that's trying to exploit that need through a "contest" that gives them hundreds of man hours of work at bargain price. This next part is conjecture, but I'll go for it anyways - ideas and producers/directors have almost no value in games. Why? Well, a whole lot of shit has to go into games to make them into reality. Tons of kids want to grow up and make games, but very few of them do because almost nobody just "makes games". I mean, Tom Bissell, Terry Cavanaugh, Phil Fish, and Jonathan Blow did, but they're also insane workaholics who spent thousands of hours making their games. I don't really see what the value could be for a person who has no technical skill to get their ideas out there, because everyone's ideas are out there. I really don't think there's a "get experienced and successful quick" scheme that could work for developing games. You'd have to do a lot to convince me that this project could have "conjured up tons of experience and credentials" that would have magically made it able for these people to make a living selling games. People spend years and years trying to achieve that through education and sweat and they don't succeed.

I hope they do Ursaring with the exact same moveset as Panda.

In addition to what Bjorn said, a "game jam" such as that one exploits women in the same way that artists are exploited in various avenues by people potentially "giving them a chance for people to see their work". There are any number of examples, but one of the most immediate that comes to mind is when a tech startup decides to post a "contest" on social media - design us a logo and the best one gets $100 (or whatever, just imagine this is a fair rate for designing a logo in that industry)! If they manage to sucker 10 artists that each spend two hours designing them a logo, they basically get 20 hours of work for the price of 2 hours. One artist gets paid while nine did a lot of work for nothing. In this case, there's not even a promise of $100 at the end. There's a revenue share agreement that pays a paltry 8% of profits. That's generous if you assume the game even makes a profit. Who are the Fine Young Capitalists to promise that the game will be a success? A massive majority of indie games break even or make a very small profit, particularly if you're talking about a small team with a small scope game. /v/ designed a female character that was tasteful. What is your point in mentioning that? Because honestly, /v/ is so wildly vitriolic that literally the only reason they developed that character is so that suckers who believe that they're being earnest can use it as ammunition to defend them. Or in other words, they did it to piss off their critics and make it so a surface level survey of their intentions reveal "feminism" instead of "attention-whoring scam".

Alexander Sliwinski at Joystiq just posted a link to their ethics policy on Twitter, I found it fairly interesting to compare to Polygon's - http://www.joystiq.com/ethics/ They are much more concise about how they manage review assets and promotional materials, which is nice. They haven't integrated a stance on Kickstarter/Patreon-type things, however.

Use promo code EMCPBHD99 and you might be able to get Tomb Raider for a little more than $4. The same sale that has TR at $5 also is discounting a lot of other Square Enix games - http://www.newegg.com/Product/ProductList.aspx?sdtid=7159540&SID=506cd76a756d40aaa883c940867a64fc&AID=10440897&PID=1225267&Submit=ENE&DEPA=0&Order=BESTMATCH&Description=PPSSPWBVIGMXBD&nm_mc=AFC-C8Junction&cm_mmc=AFC-C8Junction-_-cables-_-na-_-na&cm_sp=

Stephen Totilo at Kotaku has updated their policies, seemingly in response to community feedback, to bar employees from contributing to Patreon campaigns by any developers.

Oh yeah, I'm not trying to say that food/drink serves no role when it comes to publishers courting press. I just think that Polygon's ethical guidelines have both specific language and a general tone that suggests they're attempting not to be influenced by these factors. It's not uncommon to see small blogs staffed by people you can count on your hand say "Activision was kind enough to fly out out to see Advanced Warfare!" without even giving a disclaimer that they accepted that accommodation. Undoubtedly, if they accepted those plane tickets they probably didn't feel like they needed to pack a lunch either. Even when it comes to free games, one of my favorite YouTube personalities Northernlion has openly spoken about how various indie devs just throw their games at him and he frequently turns them away because he just doesn't have the time and interest to cover them all. I have to imagine that people with less scruples are just taking every offered thing without really acknowledging it.

Food and drink is included in the gifts policy, so there'll be no prime rib, lobster, and single malt for any Polygon staff. That was part of my problem with itsamoose's post, it was not representing their policy was written. I do think that the strong-arm tactics are probably the best and most used weapon against game press, not bribery/free stuff. I can think of a lot of times that sites were banned by a certain publisher and all of their reviews were late because they had to buy the games at retail.

I think it's important to note that while in a quantitative sense we can say that men and women can be treated equally (ie, women and men are portrayed in the nude in a game) there is absolutely no qualitative equality when you consider that women have been systemically treated differently from men for practically all of recorded history and the same act doesn't apply in the same way (using the same example, female and male nudity are nowhere near comparable considering the shame women are taught to feel regarding their bodies and the pride men are supposed to have in their bodies).

I think there's a key word you're overlooking and there's a particular context that that section in the conflict section handles. Namely, they sometimes have opinion pieces written by people that don't work for Polygon but function as "contributors" rather than "staffers". These people may have a valid opinion on a topic but have some role in the space on which they're commenting. It doesn't happen often, but I've seen it before. I can look for examples on Polygon if you'd like, I just can't right now. I also think that re: gifts, you're talking about an exception that would obviously require an interpretation of the rule. Sure, if a company showers 100 trinkets all valued $49 on some Polygon staffer, I'm sure they'd have to consult some senior management on how to handle such a situation. I pose again the question, though - if Activision pays for 10 lunches for you in a year, are you somehow then indebted to give them all of their games for that year good scores? I dunno, that seems like a massive stretch.

I don't think that accepting a sandwich, a bag of chips, and a drink is "dirty". Do you seriously think that any reviewer would think more kindly of a product because they got a free lunch? I honestly can't believe that is "pushing the limits of what's acceptable". Another thing that often happens re: samples is that the company accepts the sample, not the individual reviewer. I feel like this is generally much more acceptable, because it's still not personal gain and I think it's odd to think that a company accepting a $60 game would have any influence on anything at all.

You didn't actually link the ethics statement - http://www.polygon.com/pages/ethics-statement Legitimate question - are you regarding ethics as binary? Because compromise seems to be the whole idea around ethics, particularly when it comes to media. Example, "We don't accept gifts, ever" means that if they go to a catered event to cover a product, they have to bring a lunch. Saying "We don't accept gifts in excess of $50" means sure, they'll eat some catered food but if someone wants to give them a gift bag for attending that event that has some games or maybe a console in it they won't accept it because that kind of significant gift could sway their opinion. This is a misunderstanding. They will not accept travel or accommodation, period. They do however have to attend publisher sponsored events to get pre-release coverage, for instance. Activision/Call of Duty is notorious for this (partly because of the potential for leaked copies). In that case, they still do not accept travel or accommodation. They will disclose that they attended an event to cover that game because it's the only way they can cover it and it's responsible to say that. This is so nobody can say "oh look, Polygon attended the review event in Hawaii they must be moneyhats". They'll attend the event in Hawaii, but not accept any payment for travel/accommodation. I could be mistaken in the case of Polygon, but this is actually something that lots of sites do specifically for ethical reasons. Namely, lots of outlets receive weird gifts from game companies like statues, promotional copies of games or branded paraphernalia. Instead of keeping this dumb stuff, they often give it out in contests. For the same reason they don't keep it, their contests also don't endorse the products. I don't see anywhere in the text that they accept samples. Lots of outlets take samples, review them, and then send back the sample copies. This is not uncommon.

It's worth noting that Polygon has a policy (unknown if it's actually written anywhere) that dictates employees can contribute to Kickstarter campaigns but only if one of the reward tiers is for the game itself and their contribution is not to exceed the cost of that tier. Also unknown how this applies to non-specific Kickstaters or Patreons with less clear goals/rewards, but it's something I figured I should mention.

New Feminist Frequency Trops vs Women -

There's a way to generate a report with all of the purchases you ever made on Amazon. If you're anything like me, never do it or you'll end up very disappointed in yourself.

I could see for instance some certain amount of highlights being available to regular people and then if you want full access to someone's archive you need to be a prime subscription. Or yeah, no ads for Prime. Or maybe quality options being available to Prime users. Edit: It's confirmed now.

I kinda read the Gamefly move as this - At the end of last generation, they tried to diversify - editorial + digital sales in the face of console sales numbers kinda tanking and PC taking off. Editorial was hard and not very lucrative, they tried making a mobile app-based emag thing and it didn't take off. Kill that. Hey, Gamefly is like Netflix right? Redbox is doing pretty good! Let's do movies too! Huh, PS4 is selling like gangbusters and we don't sell any preowned PS4 games because there is essentially no shortage of demand? Double down on discs, whoo! Hm, digital is also hard because Steam rules and we're fourth or fifth string after them, Amazon, GOG, Humble, GreenManGaming, etc. Ditch that. ??? - let's buy USPS???

This is just what Garden Warfare needed to appeal to this generation of core gamers.

I realize now that my link without context might have been overlooked. Please direct journalistic ethics talk to the new thread so that this one can get back OT - https://www.idlethumbs.net/forums/topic/9580-ethics-and-journalistic-integrity/

I can't listen to this at work, but I think this is the video - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z8inXYcLUm8 Edit: victory!

Dang, I'm kinda surprised that it works. Brb buying a move nav controller