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JonCole

"Ethics and Journalistic Integrity"

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Spending days attending meetings that no one else is paying attention to and carefully recording and documenting what goes on, it's almost like...what was that thing a bunch of people were upset about the integrity of? Journalism?

No, I'm sorry. Journalism is a blog post that says, "Ubisoft e-mailed me a link to their newest AssCreed trailer. Here it is."

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It's nice to see proof that Zoe was really being hacked (although the idea that she had doxxed herself for sympathy was always pretty ridiculous) and to see these jerks admitting that the whole claim that Zoe had hacked hacked the FYC group of female game devs (which they refer to as a PR smokescreen to defuse charges of misogyny) was false (they say the supposed DDOS was an accident).

 

But the real smoking gun is to see them saying that the whole #gamergate thing was just a handful of sockpuppets for a few days until other people started assuming there must be a fire behind all that smoke: "a few days of 4-5 of us doing it, but it's taking off."

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I felt utterly elated when I saw that stuff coming up on ZQ's feed earlier.

 

I've already tweeted them myself and this one seems to have gotten a large audience.

 

Thanks, excellent :tup:

 

We've also learned that Twitter will stand by and do nothing while this harassment goes on. I think it's worth discussing, as an industry and community, establishing our own social network that's a lot less awful.

 

That's been obvious to a lot of women for a while, though I guess this has especially underlined it for games people. The most profitable thing for Twitter is not to shut down abusers, but to make it feel like the abused can do just enough in reporting them that they then don't want to leave as a result of the abuse. When you can advertise to a hundred abusers versus one victim, well :( :( :(

 

Edit: The volume of abuse someone like Zoë receives is also an edge case, though far from isolated, and the approach in any case is definitely startup logic rather than moral.

 

I've started messing around with some alternatives. None of them quite have the functionality of Twitter, but Ello is quite promising (I'd send invites, but I only just got into it and don't have any to send).

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I'm disappointed that Giant Bomb didn't have any articles despite Jeff and Patrick talking about it a little elsewhere.

 

On the other hand, that job would almost certainly go to Patrick, since he's almost always the one to write about this kind of shit and almost always gets stuck taking all the shit for it. Even knowing that others (like Zoe) have had it far worse, seeing him get booed at their PAX panel was heartbreaking.

Patrick put up a video Q&A about it (though it was Premium which...I get it, but it's still a bit disappointing) and he and Alex talked for 10-15 minutes on their Friday morning show. Which was, of course, BEFORE all the Quinn stuff.

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I've started messing around with some alternatives. None of them quite have the functionality of Twitter, but Ello is quite promising (I'd send invites, but I only just got into it and don't have any to send).

I accidentally applied for an invitation nine times with the same email address. I hope they don't look on that unfavourably.

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I'm disappointed that Giant Bomb didn't have any articles despite Jeff and Patrick talking about it a little elsewhere.

On the other hand, that job would almost certainly go to Patrick, since he's almost always the one to write about this kind of shit and almost always gets stuck taking all the shit for it. Even knowing that others (like Zoe) have had it far worse, seeing him get booed at their PAX panel was heartbreaking.

I know this sounds like I'm making a Simpsons reference, but they were saying SCOOOOOOOOOOOOOPS.

I hope they do post something and that it doesn't fall to Patrick because they already have him marked as an SJW that is dragging Jeff and the rest of the site unwillingly in his wake, despite everyone's comments to the contrary. Hopefully they would let Jeff take the reins (like the last time this happened with GB, though I don't know what he'd say that he didn't say there).

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Nothing about their stance makes sense. Period. Am I not supposed to trust a White House reporter because they're chummy with some White House staffers? Should I not trust a reporter who's embedded with a squadron in a war zone because they happen to have made some friends among the soldiers? Is a Wall Street reporter not reliable because they sometimes grab a few drinks with people who work in finance? Should a film critic's reviews be called into question because they network at Sundance? If a food critic goes to a private function catered by a chef with a successful restaurant, should I not trust their restaurant reviews anymore?

 

Women in the public eye are always subjected to undue criticism from both inside and outside where they work (see Jill Abramson being criticized because she was "bossy"), but I don't think I've ever seen anything of this magnitude, either in size or in vitriol.

Actually I think that wall street reporter and finance example is a pretty good example of why there is need for disclosure in mainstream media. As I've said before on this thread, authoritarian "News as Truth Givers" is outmoded, and has always been unrealistic to human nature. People are subjective, and so there should be focus on making sure there is transparency rather than objectivity. 

 

I just don't know what to do anymore. Its just heartbreaking. I'm convinced that this is all the work of a no doubt small, but very adept faction that just wants to watch the world burn. And the problem is, they're winning. No matter how few of them there may be, it's enough. It takes far less work to destroy than create, and here I am on the very fringes of the community wondering if there's even any point in continuing to pay attention. On the one hand, I feel like maybe it's my fault and the fault of people like me for not spending more time speaking up. On the other hand it seems like all social media is doing is bringing people pain. No matter how many times I gather the courage to tell someone, "I love your work," or throw them a few dollars on Patreon, it'll never balance the efforts of the people out there who only want to destroy.

 

I want to believe that there's something I can do to help the world be a better place, but I honestly don't see how right now.

I think that progress is being made and people shouldn't give up. Things are changing for the better, people have to keep the struggle in mind in their everyday life and things will continue to change. It's honestly a never ending battle probably but I hope people don't give up. 

 

I forget where it was pointed out recently, but the most profitable thing for Twitter seems to be allowing harassers to largely run free, then having just enough of a sop in place for their targets that they don't desert the platform. Edit: That sounds like a hard thing to balance in practice, but I guess you can bank on people's social networks keeping them there more than abuse is likely to scare most away.

 

I've been in a few discussions today with people looking for an alternative, fed up of a platform that systemically enables harassers.

Twitter is a pretty terrible social media platform. It's character limit basically forces it to be so bite sized and digestible as to make substantial discussion or nuance impossible. It's an oven built out of gunpowder. 

 

I've consistently seen journalists from many of the larger sites, Gamespot, IGN, Polygon*(I originally said Idle Thumbs here but that was a typo, I think I'm getting acclimated to Danielle being on the show regularly), Giantbomb talking about this very topic on podcasts and such. I believe the words Patrick Klepek used to talk about it were something to the effect, "I felt like I needed to learn how to stream because my job will depend on it in the coming years, because the written word is slowly going away."

I think this is the conflict we're seeing between new and old media (or perhaps new and newer media at this point). Things are changing. I forget if I already linked it but Press.Pause.Play. is a really great documentary on this subject sorta as it applies to digital media creators 

 

The thing that upsets me the most about all of this is it should never have been an issue.

 

This whole thing has raised some questions about games journalism which is fine but everything surrounding it was extremely childish and disgusting. I am glad you guys are all every rational and are able to have a nice conversation about it. I hope this is the last time something like this happens because it is super fucked up. For reference when all of this stuff hit my mom called me to ask me about it, which is super gross and not cool.

Also I think it is worth saying, I am sure most of you know this but some people don't. Making games is really hard, takes a lot of time and you tend to close yourself from people who don't make games. So your only real chance at relationships is with other games people. When you spend all of your time traveling or working on your game you need to be close to people who do the same. Also everyone I have become close with in games have been the sweetest people on the planet. 

I hope that things are going to get better and we can start rebuilding from this mess. 

Also I think it's natural that game people are close to game people, but it's also not always the most healthy thing. I understand the mechanics of why insularity exists, and it's not special to games, the same thing happens in the film industry and stuff too, but I think it's still a negative thing that stunts the openness and growth of the medium. 

 

Silence, I feel, ultimately favors the harassers not the harassed.  So while I understand that fear, I'm also a bit more heartless about it when it comes to the big sites.  If you want to call yourself a journalist, and most of the writers for the big sites do, then you don't get to sideline yourself when shit like this goes down.  There's always the option of writing a staff post as well, so no individual writer takes the heat for it. 

Strongly agreed

 

Also, Rami Ismael made a short post about gamer gate this morning, with an absolutely incredible disclosure statement prefacing it  :)

Love this. 

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"It's cool guys, in response to your concerns we've banned our writers from supporting people they like, and now have 'full disclosure' of the most trifling bullshit imaginable", meanwhile the person who is bearing the brunt of the attack, who should be the least able to do so, does actual investigative reporting & exposes the real conspiracy. Cool, cooool :fart:

 

 

[edit:] That's not actually fair of me. The enthusiast press doesn't have apparatus to do investigative reporting. It's not in their remit as it actually practiced, so it's not really fair to judge them for failing to do any. It's still massively disappointing, though.

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"It's cool guys, in response to your concerns we've banned our writers from supporting people they like, and now have 'full disclosure' of the most trifling bullshit imaginable", meanwhile the person who is bearing the brunt of the attack, who should be the least able to do so, does actual investigative reporting & exposes the real conspiracy. Cool, cooool :fart:

 

 

[edit:] That's not actually fair of me. The enthusiast press doesn't have apparatus to do investigative reporting. It's not in their remit as it actually practiced, so it's not really fair to judge them for failing to do any. It's still massively disappointing, though.

 

I think it's fair to point out what appears to have constituted "doing something about it" to the different parties involved. For some, it's manifestos; for some, it's domestic terrorism; for others, well...

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I think Matt Lees said it best when he noted how depressing it was as a journalist that people are so willing to believe that you're corrupt that they'd rather side with MRAs than accept that you might be trying to do a good job.

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 ...seeing him get booed at their PAX panel was heartbreaking.

 

\: \: \:

 

That's really disappointing. 

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I'm pretty sure the majority weren't booing Klepek.  It's like seasleepy said, they were cheering his nickname Scoops (or false Scoops as I prefer to think of him.  I really like the guy but there is only one Scoops and that's Hot Scoops).  There may have been some people booing him, but then they'd have to boo the entire panel because I'm pretty sure all of GB would be considered SJWs.

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\: \: \:

 

That's really disappointing. 

 

I think most of them are saying "Scooooops!", which sounds like booing.

[Edit:] Beaten. So anyway, a silver lining is that with all this intense scrutiny on the games press these past few weeks, there hasn't been any confirmed incidents of corruption unearthed. I think this raises some other disappointing problems with them, but anyone who wasn't already sure can now rest easy that corruption probably isn't something to worry about in the games press. Doesn't really seem worth it, though, like finding a dollar in a bucket of shit.

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The failure to discover any actual corruption is because the intent was never to find any to begin with, along with deliberate misdirection as to where that corruption might lie.

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The failure to discover any actual corruption is because the intent was never to find any to begin with, along with deliberate misdirection as to where that corruption might lie.

I don't know. I think that's far to broad a statement. 

The drama has been blown out of proportion, many people are saying things or taking stands not because of an authentic belief, but rather because of a cultural identification, bigotry, or pure emotional immaturity. I think there's also people who sincerely believe that there is an issue in the games industry worth addressing. Rather than making huge sweeping generalizations I think it's better to be specific and individual, case by case. Those people who believe there is an issue may also be mislead but only by addressing them specifically can you have a substantive discussion. 

This kind of thinking is a problem with how humans think. We can't hold a lot of information in our heads so we simplify it. Dunbar's Number and all that jazz. It's easier to lump everyone into groups and labels, than to deal with individuals because there are too many individuals to deal with. Easy abstractions over concrete individuals

I mean you say there's no corruption but then say there's misdirection where that corruption might lie, right? But obviously, we can agree there's some level of corruption. The way journalists basically pass on press releases as articles, the way the games industry is covered almost like an extension of AAA marketing departments? That's corruption that most people can agree on. So saying there's absolutely no corruption is inaccurate. I would think you would believe that too since you refer to there being misdirection to where the corruption is. You can't have both no corruption and misdirection from corruption. 

I wonder what's going to come of all this. I kind of thought that once Polygon required disclosures it was going to die down, but it seems people are just going to keep going at each other's throats. 

Personally I'm trying to keep focused on the individuals in my life rather than getting too caught up in easy abstractions. And also keep making things. 

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I mean you say there's no corruption but then say there's misdirection where that corruption might lie, right? But obviously, we can agree there's some level of corruption. The way journalists basically pass on press releases as articles, the way the games industry is covered almost like an extension of AAA marketing departments? That's corruption that most people can agree on. So saying there's absolutely no corruption is inaccurate. I would think you would believe that too since you refer to there being misdirection to where the corruption is. You can't have both no corruption and misdirection from corruption. 

I wonder what's going to come of all this. I kind of thought that once Polygon required disclosures it was going to die down, but it seems people are just going to keep going at each other's throats. 

Personally I'm trying to keep focused on the individuals in my life rather than getting too caught up in easy abstractions. And also keep making things. 

 

I don't really see how posting press releases as news is corruption, it's not uncommon in mainstream press and is more prevalent in other kinds of enthusiast press outside of gaming. Also, that kind of coverage is exactly what the seemingly non-conspiratorial branch of #GamerGhazi is asking for - completely unbiased content that isn't garnered from personal relationships within the industry. I saw a "list of demands" going around where people were literally asking that reviews only cover topics that were less likely to be "infected" by "bias", like performance and graphics.

 

The most prescient comments I've seen yet is that the real corruption is the stuff that would never get any kind of play in some Twitter hate campaign - namely, the stuff that goes on where payola is actually a thing because there is actual money involved instead of meager sums of Patreon monthly funding and so on.

 

Also, in my opinion your posts continue to be shotgunning completely unconnected ideas together to somehow attempt to get at conclusion that "corruption is a thing". I still don't see anything convincing in what you're saying that corruption exists in indie/journalist relationships. And really, there's no convincing evidence that there's any corruption in press for bigger games, because someone would have to do some real, actual, journalistic digging to get it.

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I suspect there isn't a lot of corruption in the games press because when there are actual, straight up examples of corruption, basically everyone moves. That does not happen if everyone else is doing it too and someone got caught.

 

The problem, as someone put it, is that the games press cannot be objective because their editorial position is that AAA games are worth writing about.

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I suspect there isn't a lot of corruption in the games press because when there are actual, straight up examples of corruption, basically everyone moves. That does not happen if everyone else is doing it too and someone got caught.

 

The problem, as someone put it, is that the games press cannot be objective because their editorial position is that AAA games are worth writing about.

 

This is an interesting point. I don't really know what that has to do with objectivity in a direct sense, but I do think it is a problem that AAA games are massively over represented in games coverage. That said, like clickbait or other distasteful practices I'm sure that writing about AAA games is getting them traffic and coverage of indie games is getting them proportionally less otherwise they wouldn't do it. I mean, it's not like indies aren't trying to get their games covered.

 

Either way, I think this is something that bigger websites are becoming more aware of and they're adjusting their approach as time goes on. Jeff Gerstmann at GB has never been shy to say that the marketing departments of the AAA companies are starting to get largely autonomous and are doing a much better job than ever covering their own stuff. With video streaming of stuff like Nintendo Direct, events like Blizzcon and Call of Duty XP and company blogs like the PlayStation Blog and Major Nelson, there are lots of direct methods of communicating to gamers and thus gaming websites have a shrinking role in that process.

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I was in Target last night and a GameSpot commercial came on. I was informed that GameSpot is my best source for unbiased reviews while standing in the electronics isle. I would consider that corruption.

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Can you explain what's corrupt about that?

 

I guess GameSpot is paid by Target for that content, right? If so, I suppose it's some form of corruption that the content may then be tailored to sell goods that are available at the store. Sure reviews can be read as buyer's guides, but it does seem less scrupulous to have the reviews (if you can call them that) directly influence buying in the buying environment. That said, I don't really know who this hurts. Having an established editorial outlet give buying advice to people looking to buy games (unless the commercial was being shown somewhere away from the games area) seems preferential to me as a consumer than getting it from some "Target Gaming" advertorial front.

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What's corrupt about it to me is that GameSpot is selling something that doesn't and cannot exist. Claiming that your reviews are unbiased is creating an impossible standard for a fictional reality, and it's implicitly saying "Other reviews are more impure than ours." That standard is then used to impassion consumers enough to make them feel justified in searching through people's private lives to comb for possible breaches of GameSpot's claims. GameSpot has become corrupted.

I made sure to check the definition of "corrupted" and I now feel the need to emphasize that GameSpot is making these claims for profit.

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I see your point, but people also seem to want "unbiased" things that actually do state an opinion, as represented in the "demands" of #GamerGhazi people in many instances. Unbiased reviews in this case just seems to be a super lazy, awful shorthand for "reviews biased in favor of the typical gamer demographic".

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