On GamerGate, ethics and editorial direction
My initial reaction to #GamerGate was reflexive: this is terrible. I argued against it, regardless of the content, because of the misogynistic undertones, the harassment that's been widely pinned on the group, and the level of bile spewed at people like Zoe Quinn and Anita Sarkeesian.
But recently, after reading a piece at Slate, I stopped and really listened to what people posting to the GamerGate hashtag are saying. Lately it's been a lot of "Actually, it's about ethics in journalism."
And it is. Sort of. Except it's also based on a really flawed understanding of what exactly "ethics" in journalism are.
The initial complaints, that game journalists were not disclosing their friendships with sources and developers, or their financial contributions to independent games, were valid. That's why we've seen a lot of the major game sites posting new policies that ask writers to disclose any relationships with developers, and have committed to either disclosing or banning Kickstarter or Patreon donations. Those are the kind of policies that most major journalism outlets have in place already, but haven't always made it into the tech/game sphere because those areas grew from blogs rather than traditional media.
(An aside on the whole collusion issue: Based on the information that's been released from GameJournoPros, I don't think there's enough evidence to say that it occurred. Some people sent some inappropriate messages to the listserv, but I haven't seen anything to suggest that other sites actually based their coverage on the requests or demands of people on the mailing list. I'll get into the "end of the gamer" controversy in a second.)
But there have been a lot of other complaints - many of them based around allegations that game journalists are "bullying" gamers, attacking/alienating/insulting their core audience, or colluding to publish socially progressive content.
That last claim is largely based on a piece written by Leigh Alexander that was posted on Gamasutra. According to GamerGaters, countless other game journalism websites posted nearly identical versions of this story. That's really not true - Leigh's article and a tubmlr post by Dan Golding came out at approximately the same time. I can't tell whether Dan or Golding's post came first, but I suspect that one was inspired by the other.
As for the other supposed copy-cat posts? I looked at more than 12 such posts and found that four of them were recaps or expansions on the posts by Alexander and Golding, directly citing those articles and either summarizing their content or building on them. The rest were either about Anita Sarkeesian, Zoe Quinn or GamerGate in general. Some of them certainly drew their headlines from Alexander's piece, which makes sense from a getting-lots-of-clicks perspective, but they aren't repetitions of the same piece.
They do, however, share a similar perspective. That's not because of collusion, but rather because the people who write about games at these sites tend to have similar perspectives, which makes a fair bit of sense. Which is what gamers are mad about: that game journalists share a perspective they find insulting, and that they often write about gaming through a fairly progressive lens that includes feminism and other social issues. But they mistake that for an ethical issue.
There have been certainly been a lot of posts and tweets characterizing gamers as misogynistic, mouth-breathing basement dwellers. And you know what? That's mean. I get why that's upsetting. But it's not a breach of ethics. Journalists write inflammatory stuff all the time, whether it's about gamers, religious groups, atheists, anti-vaxxers, social progressives, etc.
One person I talked to on Twitter insisted that characterizations of gamers as misogynistic were defamatory, but you can only defame people or groups with legal identities. It's insulting, sure, but you can't slander or libel gamers as a whole.
Ages ago, I read an article about how atheists don't appreciate religion and should study the bible before they decide not to believe in god, and it made me furious, because I am an atheist and I've actually studied religion extensively (as have many other atheists; statistically, atheists are actually more familiar with Christian doctrine than many Christians). That writer was wrong. I've read pieces about how Islam is a religion of hate, or how anti-vaxxers are crazy, or how feminists lie about rape. Whether I agree with them or not, and even if they make me angry, they're not unethical or defamatory. (Just so we're clear, I don't think Islam is a religion of hate, I think the anti-vax movement is stupid and I'm a feminist.)
I've seen GamerGate proponents essentially argue that game journalists "abandoning their core audience" and writing pieces gamers find insulting are unethical, or that inserting a "political agenda" into game coverage is unethical. But that's not a question of ethics - it's a question of editorial direction.
Most of the "ethical issues" initially identified by GamerGate have been resolved. There are absolutely issues left for the industry to discuss and work on, such as how advertising from major publishers impacts reviews of their titles and whether those connections are made obvious to readers.
But what's left is a lot of people angry that the gaming press isn't talking to them anymore, but is instead trying to reach a wider audience of people who don't identify with the gamer subculture. I've never been a part of gaming culture, but when I read one of these supposedly unethical articles that talks about the feminist implications of Grand Theft Auto (a game I love, but the politics of which I can discuss endlessly) or Bayonetta, it makes me happy. It gives me information that is important to how I personally decide which games to buy.
There's no way to really resolve differences over editorial direction, other than maybe asking existing gaming websites to provide multiple kinds of content (maybe marking which reviews are focused on cultural context and which only talk about gameplay) or striking out on your own.