Hi Jason.
People have been telling me that you are open to a discussion about ethics, so I’m writing this letter to you. I don’t believe that entirely, but let’s test that out with this letter. Let’s talk ethics. I hope you can take criticisms, because I won’t be going easy on you in this letter. This letter will also be somewhat personal. It will be long, and it will be uneasy.
Let’s talk about DMCA.
Oct 1st 2013, TotalBiscuit put up a “WTF Is…” video of the game Day One: Garry’s Incident:
The video was full of criticisms, which is fair. John Bain (TotalBiscuit) has every right to express his criticisms.
Oct 18th 2013, Wild Games Studio made a DMCA strike on his channel, taking down the “WTF Is…” video to censor his criticisms. This is an unethical practice of developers and publishers in general. Many smaller channels have been receiving DMCA strikes with no way for their voices to be heard. Oct 20th 2013, John countered with a video that broke down the DMCA claim, which in result, had more views than then “WTF Is…” video of Day One itself. This is known as the Streisand Effect. It means that the more you try to cover something up, the more the public will question what are you trying to hide from their eyes. Regardless of the answer, it became an established fact that the person who did the coverup definitely had something to hide.
On the same day, your colleague Luke Plunkett reported on this case (wow, look at that, the old Kotaku layout). I’ll take it that meant (at the time) Kotaku found the topic of developers abusing DMCA strikes to unethically censor criticisms a great interest to its readers.
Jan 26th 2014, shortly after the previous case, John made another “WTF Is…” of the game “Guise of the Wolf”:
Along with another video of his stream. Both of these received a DMCA strike from the developer Fun Creators to once again, silence criticisms. Streisand Effect kicked in again, r/CynicalBrit exploded with threads about this takedown that the mods had to consolidate all of them into 1 thread. Kotaku did not report on this incident, and I questioned why did you guys not find this case in line with your readers’ interest to report on. At least your colleague Leo Wichtowski laid it down not too favorably on the game either. This case however, is nowhere near the scale of what I’m about to discuss.
Aug 16th 2014, Youtuber MundaneMatt uploaded the video “Hell hath no fury like a lover’s scorn (Zoe Quinn & Eron Gjoni)” to question the unethical behaviors of Zoe Quinn, the developer of Depression Quest. The video used a screenshot of Depression Quest on its Steam store page. Now, the topic of her unethical emotional abuse of her boyfriend is worth a separate discussion of its own, regardless of who she had a relationship with, regardless of whether GamerGate happened or not. But I’ll reserve my judgement and leave that discussion to people who actually, genuinely care about social justice. MundaneMatt also touched on other topics in this video:
- Nathan Grayson sensationalizes the events he went to in order to generate clicks.
- The incestuous indie gaming scene.
- Gone Home’s early review coming from Polygon.
Matt had every right to express criticisms over these topics. Despite that, on Aug 17th, his video received a DMCA strike from developer Zoe Quinn to (once again) unethically censor criticisms. John Bain was notified of another case of developer abusing the DMCA system, made a Twitlonger post about it, and that in turn garnered a lot of interest in the topic, to the point the thread discussing it on r/gaming attracted over 20000 comments, all wiped out. Streisand Effect kicked in again. Shortly after John made that Twitlonger post, he was threatened by another developer — Adam “Atomic” Saltsman — to make DMCA strikes on his channel for even criticizing the practice. And how did Kotaku respond to it? Not only did Kotaku not find a developer’s abuse of the DMCA system that was in line with its readers’ interest (despite the number), discussion of this topic on Kotaku was actively shut down, fueling the Streisand Effect even more. I’m asking you, Jason: What part of this was ethical? Luke did not let a developer get off scot-free with abusing DMCA takedown system before, why did he, or in fact, any Kotaku staff let a developer get off scot-free this time around? Your readers demanded answers and you shut them down.
You claimed that this was to protect other people’s privacy life and yet you yourself, Jason, you had no problem reporting on this private Facebook conversation to generate clicks for Kotaku. You had a precedent of exploiting other people’s privacy for sensationalism. And yet when Ryan Smith questioned you about it on GameJournoPros, you dismissed him. All of these excuses were nothing more than a smokescreen to excuse an unethical DMCA strike. Did you, perhaps, think you were accomplishing some kind of… justice when you pitched Josh to a pack of witch-hunters?
There were doubts that somebody had impostered this developer in making the DMCA strike, but the only evidence we have up until now pointed to her. Zoe Quinn had 2 months to put out evidence that she was not the one who made this strike, and so far, there has been none. My benefit of the doubt for her expired after 1 month, unfortunately. I ask again: How was it ethical of game journalists to let a developer abusing DMCA takedown system to silence criticism get off with no consequences? I’m dead serious. I have a firm stance that any abuse of the DMCA system should be called out and condemned. Sega and Nintendo have been called out. Hell, MundaneMatt recently called out this unethical practice once again, this time from Microsoft. Do we have a double standard for indie developers like Zoe Quinn and Adam Atomic now?
Let’s talk more about sensationalism.
Sep 6th 2012, your former colleague Kate Cox made a hit piece on Brad Wardell. Not only was this 100% clickbait and sensational content, this was the spark that led to a terrible chapter in Brad Wardell’s life:
Within days of the article hitting, forum posts, follow-up articles and abuse started flooding the net. I received numerous death threats including one so specific (it was clear they had driven up close to our house) that we called the police. The death threats included rape threats against my wife and disgusting vile threats against my children.
For the past two years since, not a week goes by where someone doesn’t send me a hate message or ensure that one of our products or services being covered somewhere doesn’t get tarnished with the disgusting allegations that were made. Any time I speak on a given topic, this comes up.
Why was Brad Wardell’s lawsuit even a newsworthy story to begin with? His company — Stardock — is a software company first and a game company second. It started out as a software company, and most of the revenue of Stardock comes from software sales, not games. So his company is more relevant in tech field than gaming field. And despite that, no tech journalists found this lawsuit to be newsworthy, while the gaming journalists (particularly in this case, a Kotaku staff) jumped on Brad like a pack of wolves. What is wrong with game journalism? This is it, right here.
This hit piece ruined his relationship with other developers. One case was Zoe Quinn, who developed a prejudice against Brad after reading it. The other case was Damion Schubert of BioWare Austin, who wrote another hit piece against Brad on his personal blog, prompting Brad to make a response on his own blog (linked above). Damion based his post mainly on the Kotaku hit piece.
It has been 2 years since that hit piece was written (Sep 2012 — Oct 2014), and it still comes back to hound Brad Wardell.
For 2 years, a Kotaku hit piece made a developer live with the reputation of a misogynist, despite the fact that his company treats female developers better than many other studios in the industry. For crying out loud:
On top of that, Brad appointed a talented female developer — Cari Begle — to the role of lead programmer of some of the best games in Stardock’s catalogue (wow, look at that, a woman that earned her place in the industry without much interaction with the press!).
Too bad that because of Kate’s hit piece, Brad Wardell’s reputation will be smeared forever. I’m asking you, Jason: What part of this was ethical? I would give credit to you for trying to douse out the flame 1 year after that hit piece, but seeing how Damion Schubert jumped on Brad for that recently, I think this is going to stick with Brad forever. The damage has been done.
In retrospective, was it worth it for all the clicks?
Let’s talk more hit pieces.
For some reason, Kotaku editors seemed to have an obsession with this kind of content.
Feb 7th 2012, earlier in the same year, Kate Cox wrote another hit piece against David Jaffe. First and foremost, this is clickbait material, intended to rouse up heat from the readers. Unlike the one-sided coverage of Brad Wardell’s lawsuit, this article was much more scathing. Second, Kate took out 8 seconds out of an interview and some Twitter drama to make a full-blown article about tone-policing and pinned the charge of misogyny on David:
Crude vulgarity that puts men in the position of manipulating women for sexual gain is misogyny. And perhaps he could indeed have said to the ladies that letting their male partners win would guarantee them sex — but he didn’t.
First of all, that’s incredibly offensive and disrespectful to an old guard like David Jaffe. Second of all, none of this was news-worthy to begin with. I can’t believe anybody would make a big deal out of 8 seconds of an off-handed joke from an interview of another site. GameTrailers itself didn’t have any problem with it and yet Kate took the matter into her own hands to make an article out of it on Kotaku, creating unnecessary drama out of it.
David even tried to make some concession with her in a follow-up call after that article, but Kate seems uninterested in making concessions and David ended up being apologetic instead. Since when did Kotaku editors get so much power that they can tone-police developers? For what? Some political correctness? What part of this was ethical to you, Jason?
Let’s move on to Max Temkin.
Why were we talking about Max Temkin in the first place? I don’t know, Jason. You know Patricia Hernandez, you can ask her. Why did she write a piece on Max Temkin’s rape accusation on Kotaku?
Max Temkin is the creator of Cards Against Humanity, a tabletop game, which right off the bat, makes him even less relevant to video game than Brad Wardell is. You’d think that anything surrounding him would be more suitable for sites like BoardGameGeek, right? Well, they didn’t have anything to say about him, not a single thing. Yet Patricia took the matter into her own hands to exploit this rape accusation for some traffic for Kotaku. Forgot to say that as well, her opinion piece was just as clickbait as Kate’s hit pieces were. Many other video game sites had enough sense to pass on this story because they know better that this is not relevant to the interest of their audiences. I’m serious, check every other gaming site that had editors in GameJournoPros, the only site that ran this story was Rock Paper Shotgun (Nathan’s previous workplace). Don’t you find it weird that these 2 sites don’t talk about Max Temkin at all otherwise, and yet the only time they brought him up was to talk about his rape accusation? This accusation received an abnormal amount of coverage among Gawker assets like Kotaku, Jezebel and Gawker itself.
The Kotaku article itself made a very absurd point: Patricia criticized Max not for being guilty of rape, but for making excuses:
This post about how poorly Max Temkin responded to an accusation of rape, and about what I think his post could — perhaps should — have been about instead.
Patricia then went on a long rant about rape culture, consent and criticized Max for getting it wrong. She got further and further away from the topic of video games (which should have been what Kotaku is for) and basically just turned Kotaku into her personal soapbox. How is this in any way in the interest of Kotaku’s readers? I’m sorry, this editor is talking about an accusation of a person outside of video games and then used it to talk about non-gaming issues on Kotaku. Why does this kind of content belong on a video game site? I thought we already have Jezebel reporting on this story?
This guilt-tripping of Max eventually led him to remove rape jokes from Cards Against Humanity, a game that supposedly, as its whole premise, disregarded political correctness entirely for the sake of dark humor. Max censored his own game because of the pressure from the press, and Patricia Hernandez contributed to it. What part of this was ethical to you, Jason? And more importantly, I don’t want the same kind of censorship to happen in the video game field. I don’t blame the GamerGate proponents for fearing an invasion of political correctness into their hobby at all. Look at what your colleagues were doing, Jason.
Let’s talk more sensationalism.
This time let’s put Patricia Hernandez on focus.
I’m not even going to hold back criticism here. Jason, I can confidently tell you that Patricia is one of the worst colleagues you have at Kotaku. Even discounting the previously undisclosed coverage for Anna Anthropy and Christine Love, even discounting the hit piece against Max Temkin, this editor had some of the worst clickbait, sensational articles on Kotaku. I totally get it when GamerGate proponents want this editor fired after 1 look at this legacy:
These articles are low-quality clickbaits. These are what GamerGate is getting sick of.
And those were not even all, or even the worst of Patricia’s works. The worst article that I’ve seen from her was this (NSFW):
The Sims 4's Nudity Mods Have Gotten Really Detailed
My jaw was agape. It’s so hard to believe that this editor could put up this low-quality of a clickbait article while GamerGate is still ongoing. I have seen people made absurd article titles on #WriteAKotakuArticle, but Patricia’s article just… out-Kotaku’d all of them by a landslide. Jason, there’s no way you could say with a straight face that Kotaku is staffed by journalists while articles like this are being put up in the middle of GamerGate.
Let’s talk about the last straw.
2 weeks of refusing to report on a DMCA takedown case, 2 weeks of shutting down discussion and being dismissive of what your readers unearthed. Firstly, a case of Kotaku investigating Kotaku and finding Kotaku innocent — Nathan Grayson really wants people to believe that a romantic relationship was established within less than a week from that GAME_JAM article based on no existing friendship whatsoever (friendship still qualifies for a disclosure btw). The article itself presented a very skewed, one-sided viewpoint, painting producer Matti Leshem as the bad guy without giving his perspective of the story (and with a convenient but subtle sexism explanation on top of that). That’s enough of a warning sign of manipulating the readers’ opinion. Also, this is what I’d call favorable coverage for people on the “indie” side of the story.
But enough of that, people also found out that a bunch of journalists from different sites, including Kirk Hamilton from Kotaku, were financially supporting Zoe Quinn through Patreon. This was addressed.
Then came the revelations of Patricia Hernandez providing positive coverage for her friends without disclosure. This was not addressed up front. Instead, some disclosures were snuck in the articles themselves. Still looks shady and improper as hell.
Despite 2 weeks of calling out the improper practices of Kotaku editors, despite calling them out for holding a double standard for male figures both in and outside the industry and despite the ongoing clickbait articles. Despite all that, what did Kotaku readers get in return?
An offensive “news” article that announced the “Death of An Identity” by your colleague Luke Plunkett. I’ll list the problems in bulletpoints:
- This is once again, 100% clickbait material. That alone is enough of a reason for it not to exist.
- This article took a self-published source of a Zoe Quinn’s tweet to confirm that she fled her house. No verification, no fact-checking, no investigation. One self-published source, real professional there. Luke can tell me to listen, but he can’t tell me to believe this.
- It linked to another, previous article that repeated the same pattern. One self-published source, no verification. Plus sensationalizing the story to bait more clicks.
- This part:
There has been so much hate. So many angry words, so many accusations, over…what? Video games? Women in video games? People who write about video games?
It would be absurd if it hadn’t forced people out of their homes for fear of their personal safety.
What? There’s no verification of whether these things have happened or not, or who have done them if they did indeed happen. And yet, Luke decided to pin it on the people who play video games? On gamers? As in your own readership?
It was just the first spit in the face to anybody reading it.
- This phrase:
someone horrified by the degree of hostility, bigotry and sheer inhumanity that has been on show
What? Kotaku, among many other sites contributed to the Streisand Effect and then get to stand on soapbox and declared that Streisand Effect “hostility, bigotry and sheer inhumanity”? Was Luke out of his mind? Sheer inhumanity? What did he think he can accomplish by dehumanizing the critics of Kotaku? That radicalized them even more.
- Plugging Dan Golding. First off, who is Dan Golding and why should we listen to him? I just suddenly woke up one day and found out this academic man is a voice we should listen to. Academia is relevant to this medium now? Second of all, Luke specifically highlighted this line: “what we are seeing is the end of gamers, and the viciousness that accompanies the death of an identity”.
- Plugging Leigh Alexander. Leigh’s article (note the URL, it’s under News, not a personal blog post, also note there’s no disclaimer of an opinion piece) was unnecessarily antagonizing and confrontational, especially highlighted this paragraph by Luke:
“These obtuse shitslingers, these wailing hyper-consumers, these childish internet-arguers — they are not my audience. They don’t have to be yours. There is no ‘side’ to be on, there is no ‘debate’ to be had.”
And then tried to gaslight it:
Note they’re not talking about everyone who plays games, or who self-identifies as a “gamer”, as being the worst. It’s being used in these cases as short-hand, a catch-all term for the type of reactionary holdouts that feel so threatened by gaming’s widening horizons.
I’m sorry, what? WHAT? Luke was really endorsing this? How disconnected with their own audiences can these people get? I don’t know how often you go to conventions, Jason, but the fanbase that I know, the Tales fanbase, are damn great people. They are gamers, and they don’t need to be told to their face what their identity is or is not supposed to be:
You are staring “gamer culture” in the eye, Jason. And you should know better, because this is New York Comic Con, it’s your city, Jason (It’s pretty much public knowledge that you’re a New Yorker).
Holdout? Holdout against what? By 2012, gamers are not already a diverse bunch already? Who gave Luke, Dan and Leigh the permission, the soapbox, the authority to decide what the term “gamer” is and is not? “a catch-all term for the type of reactionary holdouts that feel so threatened by gaming’s widening horizons”? I mean, seriously? Luke thinks the solution for this is to end the term “gamer” altogether? Was he out of his mind?
- This closing paragraph:
Once you’re done here, I’ll see you next week, where we can hang out as thoughtful, considerate human beings and enjoy video games as they are, not what some folks feel they can dictate from a dark corner of the internet.
Oh, the same site that drove their readers out and forced them to that “dark corner of the internet” are now blaming them for being on that place. Even if your readers post on /v/ and vent their frustration on that board, they are still your readers, goddamn it. And what did Luke mean by “thoughtful, considerate human beings”? As opposed to what? The sub-humans? The ones with “sheer inhumanity”? My jaw dropped to the floor as I read this line.
The critics of your site’s unprofessionalism were blamed for all sorts of crimes, were dehumanized, radicalized, and smeared for the identity they are proud of and most insulting of all, shut out of discussions. For what? For the clicks? For political correctness? What part of this exploitation of sensationalism was ethical to you, Jason?
And you know what that achieved? Me digging even more on Nathan to find his unprofessionalism.
Let’s talk about blacklisting.
Around Game Developers Conference 2011, David Prassel of Spiral Games Studios fired some developers from his team for theft of money and hardware:
Given they are willing to steal it’s not a far stretch to see that they would also smear the names of the people that prevented them from getting what they wanted. They started the smear campaign against not only me but the entire team who actually was doing great work.
In the end I run a business and part of my job is ensuring the right people are employed and that they are doing the right things. When they aren’t, they are gone.
Even if I’m not a fan of his game, even if I think he was wrong for moderating the Steam forum in a overly aggressive manner (a mistake that David did own up to), there’s no excuse for the blacklisting practice that Kotaku staff deployed on this developer. First off, Luke Plunkett wrote a heavily smearing and one-sided article based entirely off anecdotes of the same fired employees that launched a smear campaign against David. Luke did not give David any space to speak his side of the story, as if he has made up in his mind from hearing his interviewees that David Prassel is a demon. David, on the other hand, had this to say:
We work with PayPal, Task Sheets, Invoices, Integration documents (NDA, CA agreements) AKA a wide variety or proof if anyone really had any. Instead they just used quotes from people claiming whatever it is that they wanted. These rumors included:
That I stole all the Kickstarter money and ran.
That I fired the entire team, or most of it.
That I stole content from games (which weren’t even released)
That I hadn’t paid employees for work
Luke did not report the other side of the story because this post on the Steam forum was what he did not want Kotaku readers to see. It didn’t matter, because Kotaku staffs were dead set on blacklisting David Prassel anyway:
Let’s talk about Brad Wardell again. He had a negative history with the gaming press, Kotaku included. He has been very critical of the press:
And called out Zoe Quinn for being judgmental against him:
Recently on Oct 1st, Stardock made an announcement of a new game: Sorcerer King. How was the coverage of Sorcerer King on Kotaku? Radio silence.
Let’s talk about The Fine Young Capitalists.
A project with a noble goal, and I was interested in the game they were trying to make on top of that. I felt kinda bad that the game I voted for (Lux) did not come out on top, but hey, I look forward to the game that did get voted nonetheless.
What they received in return was a complete media blackout, and Kotaku was no exception.
Now you, Jason, you did try to contact Matthew Rappard to report on his project and wrote this:
@TheRalphRetort The story of what happened between TFYC and Zoe Quinn, from Quinn joking about DDOSing their website to this alleged “peace treaty” that they struck last week, is messy and interesting. There are certainly compelling reasons we might report on it, and normally, I’d contact all involved parties and try to dig into the truth about what happened. But this situation is not normal by any means. And we’re hesitant to A) publish an article that would encourage or facilitate more harassment of ANYONE; B) cover a story that heavily involves someone who had a now-very-public relationship with one of our reporters. Maybe in a few months, when things have simmered down, that will change — and if another outlet writes a thorough, fair, honest account of what happened, we’d certainly consider linking out to that — but for now, I don’t feel comfortable trying to tackle that story on Kotaku. (FYI, I also made it clear to Matt when we spoke that our conversation might not lead to any sort of article.)
What? You refused to cover The Fine Young Capitalists because it involves Zoe Quinn? Why the hell do you even feel the need to drag Zoe Quinn into the coverage of TFYC? I’m sorry, it’s a crowdfunding project for a women’s game-developing contest, end of story. Why do you think that covering TFYC would “encourage or facilitate more harassment of ANYONE”? What kind of accusation against TFYC are you making here, Jason? No, do explain to me. You can just report something on this crowdfunding project with no mention of Zoe Quinn’s name. Don’t turn on GamerGate for bringing her into the coverage.
I have some credits to give to you, Jason (which I’ll do later), but refusing to cover TFYC and as a result, contributed to the blanket media blackout that they have received was so far, your biggest failure as a game journalist. Your audiences have spoken, they voted with their wallets, $71,496 to this project to help After Life Empire get made, and you somehow, didn’t find it in line with the interest of your readership to report on this.
Holy crap, can we just talk about that for a second? A crowdfunding project that got funded under total media blackout, and no mainstream gaming sites reported on it. Because of what? Covering up a friend’s mistake? Give me a break. I have been banned from the Depression Quest Steam forum by its developer simply for promoting this project, by the same person who organized Dames Making Games:
And banned again from Reddit for having the balls to speak about the media blackout:
This is the media blackout of TFYC in progress. Nobody wanted to talk about them, nobody wanted to acknowledge their existence. For the purpose of protecting their friends’ reputation, people have gone this far to impose censorship on the consumers who expressed interest in TFYC’s project. You probably didn’t realize what you’ve contributed to at the time, Jason. You have contributed to this message:
“You, the consumers of the market, the readers of our sites, you have lower priority than our friend here, a developer. If we have to pick who to throw under the bus, our friend or you, we’d throw you under the bus in a heartbeat”.
This was a stab in the back to your audiences, even before the August 28th bombardment. This was the worst anti-consumer action that gaming sites have displayed in a very long time.
Let’s talk about demographics.
Admit it, you have seen the people behind GamerGate: disabled people, black people, Asian people, transgendered people, all kind of nationalities, not to mention the ones who can’t participate in the conversation because of language barrier. Most of them are left-libertarians and even atheist. I am a left-libertarian too, as I found out, and I’m also atheist, pro-choice, pro-immigration reform, pro-background check on gun owners, pro-same sex marriage legalization, and generally a pacifist. And even I am waaay moderate compared to other people behind GamerGate (hell, I’m slightly more of a libertarian than a leftist). GamerGate are the people Kotaku have alienated, just have a moment to consider who they are.
Let’s talk about pressure to self-censor.
I’m still holding a grudge against you for writing that offensive hit piece against George Kamitani on April 12 2013, and then went on to NeoGaf and stated that Dragon’s Crown is a game for “lolicon”. Vanillaware being my secret crush 7 years ago when they first made Odin’s Sphere is just one of the reasons for my grudge. This was just supposed to be a report on a new Dragon’s Crown trailer, and yet you took that chance to take some jab at Kamitani and turned the article into an unnecessary clickbait. This was led up after a string of 2 previous clickbait articles by your colleagues Brian and Luke to hit on Dragon’s Crown before it’s even released. Luke’s piece in particular, led to Atlus censoring their own site at the behest of the ESRB. I had to wonder what kind of contempt did Kotaku staffs have with this particular game?
Regardless, you owned up to your mistake later, but then you went on a rampage about political correctness for the rest of that article. You used your Kotaku article as a platform, as a personal soapbox to perpetuate something outlandish that did not represent the consumers’ interest at all. You stated that you “don’t want to look at this game in a vacuum”, which made me go “What?”. I have a past of dealing with civil rights activism (a story that I told to GGfeminist, and I left it to her to decide whether to share it or not) so don’t even begin to lecture me on social justice stuff. I play video games to find escapism, a vacuum isolated from the stressful real world. The moment you say you don’t want to look at any game in a vacuum, you no longer represent people like-minded to me. And they are not just straight white men either, as #NotYourShield has found out, a lot of people of various background don’t mind this kind of fantasy and escapism. If you want to ramble about the artistic merits and ramifications of the game, make a personal blog and keep your opinions contained there, please. On a platform like Kotaku, you don’t treat it like your personal blog, you represent the consumers’ interest. That’s the job of game journalists in a free market, isn’t it? To protect the consumers and to be their representative, what you tell publishers and developers are indicative of the consumers’ interest. In return, publishers and developers gauge the market’s interest based on the journalists’ feedback.
What you did not realize you were doing, Jason, was sending a false message to the developers, especially Japanese studios. You contributed to and perpetuated an atmosphere of hostility to Japanese studios. They are afraid of the Western market because their bold creations are policed for political correctness whenever their games reach this market. They only hear the voices of journalists like you because you are loud by default. You are loud just by having access to a media outlet, you have a soapbox to stand up on, and have a megaphone (so to speak) to broadcast your voice. When you tell Japanese studios how politically incorrect their games are, using Kotaku as a platform, you are still representing your readership. This is incredibly harmful, because you misrepresented the voices of your readership. And yet Japanese studios would take that as an indication of Western market putting pressure on them to change themselves, they start being afraid of the Western market, they start self-censoring Western versions of their own games to gain acceptance of the Western press, while none of this was asked for by the consumers. Holy crap, how many times has this happened to a Japanese game and we’d have a moral panic over it? In the worst case, there would be no Western release at all because they thought “this stuff would never gain acceptance over there”. This atmosphere has to stop.
How is it in anyway ethical for journalists to use their platforms to manipulate the market to suit their political correctness, not to match the consumers’ interest? The moment your voices no longer represent the consumers’ voices, consider yourselves failures as their representatives, and don’t mind them telling your advertisers about your failure of being their representatives either. Hell, I oppose the very concept of manipulating the market to suit the purpose of the elites — the ones with the loudest voices — simply on the principle of the free market. GamerGate people have a left-libertarian majority, in case you need a reminder. Some GamerGate detractors told me that this is not a democratic system (as in the people in positions of authority to represent gamers are not voted for by the gamers), GamerGate will make it democratic.
I think it’s fair to say these left-libertarians are demanding their free market back. They don’t want the journalists they used to know to be the voices of authority anymore. That’s why they told the advertisers to pull out. That’s why they want to give the journalists that do represent them a louder voice. These are just left-libertarians reforming video game into a free market. That’s funny, isn’t it? Even though I am a GamerGate supporter, I don’t engage in it directly and just looked at it from an observer’s perspective. And from where I’m standing, I can tell you that these people are not even realizing that they are reforming the market. They don’t talk about it, they are not conscious of the changes they’re creating, they are just doing it.
Let’s talk about the hashtag and the label.
You talked about how people should leave the GamerGate hashtag if they want to talk about ethics. What?
You have put up a stance that you will not talk ethics with them unless they leave GamerGate. What made you think that will work? The very reason people rally behind GamerGate is because they are very attached to an identity to begin with. Every attempt to attack that identity is only going to make them even more defensive. It’s not going to work, Jason. Why not talk ethics right here and let them have that GamerGate identity? Or do you want to discredit GamerGate of whatever ethics reformation that came out of it, in order to claim the credits of reforming game journalism to your side? My, that’s going to make the GamerGate proponents even more attached to their name. I suggest you give it up and start addressing them.
Your other excuse is that the name has been tainted and its proponents should not associate with it anymore. This is absurd, Jason. It’s just like the case with the “gamer” identity. Your colleagues endorsed the action of tainting the term “gamer” themselves and then tried to get people to disassociate themselves from the term “gamer”. You let this happen, look at this, I just linked you to the beginning of the DescribeAGamerIn4Words hashtag. All of them were hateful, all of them were just vitriol aimed at tainting the gamer identiy. It sent a very clear message:
“As long as you call yourself a gamer, these 4 words will define you. We will define your identity for you. Leave it now while you still can.”
It didn’t work then, it won’t work now. The GamerGate name was similarly tainted not by the people within it, but by the people opposing it. The people in media, the ones with megaphones fed the trolls with those megaphones and then came back and blamed it on GamerGate for letting the trolls speak too loud.
What?
All of those attacks only made GamerGate proponents more defensive, and then GamerGate proponents are blamed for being defensive.
It’s not going to work, Jason. You will have to talk ethics with the presence of that GamerGate name now.
Let’s talk about objectivity.
In response to a demand for objective reporting, you linked to this article, which retold your investigation into Trendy Entertainment. Supposedly, this studio fell under a case of terrible employee mistreatment from its president Jeremy Stieglitz. The article took testimonies only from the frustrated employees at Trendy, and since some justice has been done out of that (social or not), you used this article to make a case for these arguments:
“Objectivity” leads to bad reporting, obfuscations of truth under the guise of “telling both sides.”
Pursuit of “objectivity” can lead journalists to shy away from the truth, or muddle it.
I believe in fairness. That means calling every party involved for comment. But not blindly echoing.
That last comment was… problematic. But let’s leave that for later.
First off, your example was flawed to begin with. You did not go out of your way to purposefully tell one side of the story in the Trendy investigation (the emphasis is emphasized). You did, in fact, try to reach out to Jeremy to ask for his side of the story. It’s just that he declined it:
Trendy president Stieglitz declined to address any of the specific allegations in this story
Regardless, you still let the readers know what Jeremy of Trendy did not want to comment on the allegations of his staffs. It was not that you didn’t try to pursue objectivity, but rather, you only had that much to let the readers make up their own mind. This case however, did not support the argument that telling the story on both sides leads to “obfuscations of truth” or “shy away from the truth, or muddle it”. The reason I said your last comment was problematic was because what you said effectively means that when you do get both sides to comment, you will choose how much weight you put on each, and you’ll be the one deciding which side receives more weight. That would be what we call bias.
Which brings me to this news piece. This was so disappointing, Jason. In the first several paragraphs, you carefully walked a fine line of objectivity, refraining from commenting on it. But then you slipped up by linking to a terribly-researched article by Stephen Totilo (he did not cite a non-self-published source to provide context for this statement: “users of that board mock her, post details about her husband and ultimately publish her personal information”, I’ll put the full context of that here and unlike Stephen, I’ll let the readers draw their own conclusion). But the moment you really slipped up is this:
Some in Gamergate have condemned the harassment and complained of harassment themselves even as the attacks on these women continue, showing, at best, Gamergate as a community unable to stop it.
What? You presented this sentence as if it is GamerGate proponents’ responsibility to stop the harassment. Why would it be their responsibility? It’s not their responsibility to stop this:
Yet they still do it anyway. They report harassers for free, they are doing the public a favor by taking on the responsibility that they’re never obligated to in the first place. Hell, they’ve been doing this for far longer than they are credited for. This was back when a troll sent child porn to Anita Sarkeesian:
What have the journalists done to stop online harassment, by contrast? With power comes responsibility, so aren’t they the ones with the responsibility to stop the harassment? Apparently not, because what the journalists (both gaming and mainstream)chose to do, instead of dousing out the fire, was to signal boost the trolls. The journalists fed the trolls and gave them the reaction they want. It’s a win-win situation for both the journalists and the trolls: the journalists get more clickbaits, the trolls get more reaction and attention. This is the real toxic culture that needs to be cured, of clickbait, sensational, tabloid journalists and Internet trolls feeding off each other, exchanging clicks and traffic for reaction and attention. GamerGate has constantly called them out for these terrible, unethical, unprofessional conducts. It was so embarrassing to see that only Steve Butts, the editor-in-chief of IGN (out of all sites) stepped up to reject sparing any space on his site to signal boost the trolls, because now, every outlet that fed and fed off the trolls are beneath IGN.
And somehow you, Jason, presented this as GamerGate’s responsibility? You showed your bias by implicating that conclusion for your readers. You contributed nothing to curing the toxicity and you only became part of the problem of the failure of journalism.
The rest of the article was just another instance of disproportionate reporting that did nothing but fueling the flame further.
To put things in perspective, there is one particular article that GamerGate proponents absolutely love: This interview from Mangotron. It’s not a pro-GamerGate article. They love it simply because the interviewer took no side and just let the 2 interviewees do all the talking, and let the readers draw their own conclusions. They loved a neutral article for crying out loud.
Let’s talk about how you should deal with GG, Jason.
So for 2 over months you have retreated to your home forum, NeoGaf, of which the admin, Tyler Malka, has worn his bias (that GamerGate is an anti-woman campaign) on his sleeves. This is the place you retreated to to have discussions. What problems do you think you can solve by staying in such an echo chamber? You have constantly tried to push the dialogue about GamerGate toward “women harassment” and then when it comes to game journalists’ corruption, it’s always about the big publishers’ faults. You actively went out of your way to paint GamerGate in this light because you don’t actually want the conversation to be about corruption & ethics, didn’t you? Because if we were actually talking about ethics, you would have to address all the unethical conducts GamerGate have raised up that I have laid it all out above. You tried to deflect the topic toward the corruption between publishers and journalists to avoid those above issues. That seems disingenuous to me, Jason, because as long as the immediate concerns of GamerGate remain unaddressed, deflecting the conversation somewhere else just seems like you are trying to put up a smokescreen, that’s what’s disingenuous about it. Women harassment, death threats, fear-mongering, all of those were just a smokescreen to avoid talking about ethics. See, the way you joined in with other NeoGaf members to character-assassinate Stephen Williams (Boogie2988) was why nobody on the GamerGate side thinks you are sincere, Jason.
You think GamerGate proponents don’t care about past corruption? They have done far better than anyone else at digging up past corruption, compiling those cases into a comprehensive, jaw-dropping timeline (previously, it was just a long list that 8chan posters collaborated to dig up together). And it’s not even complete. Hell, I myself have been trying to contact the author of that timeline for the last 2 weeks because I still have stuff to add to it! One of which is a recent facepalm-inducing experience of an ex-USGamer journalist about how much disdain that site had for Japanese games that their reviews just turned into personal soapboxes — tools to grind the reviewer’s ax, not to inform the consumers. I still remember the Hatsune Miku Project Diva F review from that site was so offensive to the point they had to edit the review to remove the word “degenerative” from it. Remember what I said about the atmosphere of hostility against Japanese studios?
Now, what are the pains of GamerGate that I have laid out to you in this letter?
- Covering up for unethical actions of your friends. Nepotism in other words.
- Shutting out your critics from discussions, vilifying them, dehumanizing them, tainting their identity and telling them to let go of that tainted identity.
- Exploiting developers to sensationalize a story and to generate clickbaits.
- Clickbaits. Just clickbaits.
- Tone-police developers for the purpose of political correctness.
- Blacklist developers at will. Many instances of this will never be heard of, because journalists have made sure to keep it that way.
- Turn your publishing outlets into your personal soapboxes at the cost of misrepresenting the consumers’ voice.
- Manipulate the market to suit your own purposes by creating pressure of reputation on developers, ending up handing the control of the free market to a few selected people in the positions of authority. Blacklisting also contributes a part in market manipulation.
- Skewed, one-sided, selective reporting. Negligence to fact-check. Drawing conclusions (or implicating them) for your readers instead of letting them draw their own conclusions.
- Collaborating with trolls to give them attention in an exchange of clicks and traffic. Win-win.
- Technically not laid out above, but as a result of all of the above, fear-mongering to potential female developers:
It’s not just about taking bribes from publishers, Jason. Journalists, out of all people, should not be the ones deciding what their own corruption is and is not. The consumers should be the ones with the power to call that out.
These are the ethical problems you have to address if you want to talk to GamerGate proponents, Jason. I still got something else that needs some answer but these are the immediate problems.
And please, do not ask GamerGate proponents to make concession at this stage, this far into the controversy. After all the things they’ve done, donating to charities, hunting down trolls (one of which turned out to be a Brazillian journalist) just to get even more vilified, and bullied in return, you can never ask them to back up any further at this point. They have made so many concessions and received so little in return. They have been so vilified and demonized by certain narcissists that seem to be too respected in video game field for some reason, that they would latch on to anybody who would give them a pet on the head, that’s why they latched on Christina Hoff Sommers, Janet MacKay, Cathy Young, Georgina Young (wait… are they related?). These women are their mother and sister figures. Hell, they even latched on to Liana Kerzner simply for giving them a fair shake.
You are not dealing with a pack of sub-humans lurking anonymous boards, Jason. You are dealing with a bunch of wounded beasts that have to vent their frustration in a way it can’t be attributed to their identity, because as you’ve seen, they’re proud of their identity, they are passionate about their identity. They act tough on anonymous boards to hide their vulnerabilities and to vent their frustration, but who are they fooling? I was an irregular poster on /m/ (EUREKA SEVEN RULES!), I understand them, this comic artist understands them, Extra Credits crew used to understand them (and now they have forgotten their own lesson). The way you deal with these wounded beasts is not to poke at their wounds, but to give them some tiny compassion. Just tiny is enough. Many of these people with autism were once bully victims (hell, I was a bully victim) but instead of choosing to become the bullies when they grow up, they chose to keep their frustration contained within anonymous boards, and then they were pushed against a wall and had no choice but to weaponize their own autism against their backstabbers. Hell, that was why they were so sympathetic to wizardchan when that board got vilified and scapegoated.
Let’s talk ethics, without the “Publisher bribery” smokescreen, shall we?
Let’s talk about a way out.
Is there a way out? It’s a tough question. A common thing GamerGate proponents asked for is an apology from sites that vilified them, which might have sufficed in the early weeks of the controversy. But now that gaming sites have fed their own audiences to mainstream media, stabbed them in the back and pitched them to a pack of wolves, there’s no going back. An apology at this point will be little more than lip service.
Do you remember Geoff Keighley, Jason? He was that passionate, video game-loving kid next to Gabe Newell, eager to conduct an interview with him. He pursued a career in video game journalism.
January 21st 2008, Mass Effect came under attack by Fox News (right-wing outlet) to rouse up moral panic about sexual content in video games:
And Geoff was there, holding the line for us. Clumsily as he might have come off, he fended off the pack of wolves from mainstream media when they were waging a moral crusade on video games. He did not feed us to the wolves. Geoff might have fallen from grace after the DewXP promotional event, but at least he sold us off to the corporations, not to the mainstream media, or at least the right wing mainstream media. I will forever remember Geoff for protecting his audiences from the scrutiny of mainstream media.
This time when it’s the left-wing mainstream media waging a moral crusade, this happened:
No mere apology can undo this damage, any game journalist that fed their own audiences to this pack of wolves in support of their moral panic is really below Geoff Keighley. This is what being back-stabbed feels like, Jason.
Many GamerGate proponents are now firmly believing that there’s no way out for sites and journalists that smeared and vilified them at this point. But I don’t know, Jason, I can tell you that Polygon and their sister sites are unsalvageable, I can’t say anything about other sites, but for Kotaku? There might just be a way out, and I’m about to say some preposterous things to GamerGate proponents in the next few paragraphs. I think there is a way out for Kotaku, albeit it’s going to sound impossible and will require Kotaku to pay a heavy price. But read on.
One aspect of Kotaku that no GamerGate proponent seems to have a problem with is the review system (the Shadow of Mordor review for an example). It’s a system that doesn’t use scores (and hence, doesn’t boil down the quality of the game to a number), it sums up the pros and cons of a game in 2 boxes, a Yes or No recommendation from the reviewer and a tidbit that most sites don’t disclose: how much of the game they have played. This is kind of a brilliant system which draws the attention of the readers to the merits and flaws of the game instead of a number. Also, without scores, a Kotaku review would not be listed on MetaCritic, hence removing the relevance of the review to the marketing departments of publishers. The review now only exists to serve the interest of the readers, free of the pressure from the developer/publisher side. You know, with the score system, one of the methods I use to gauge how much the reviewers represent the consumers is by measuring the disparity between Metacritic’s critic scores and user scores. Try the Mass Effect 3 example. That disparity is how I can tell people still hold grudges against game journalists for misrepresenting how they feel about the game. Without the score system, it puts the reviews into perspective, it lets the readers attach their own weight into each pro and con bulletpoint and let them make up their own mind about the game. Some don’t play games for the story, some do, so they will have different weights attached to the story of a game. Giving a score is no different than telling the readers what to think, that you are attaching the weight of each items for them, that what matters is what you feel, not what your readers may feel about the game.
Also, any bias the reviewer may have as a result of the amount of play time they have invested in the game is worn on their sleeve, which is good.
John Bain credited this system to you, Jason. If that’s true then credit is where credit’s due. I actually voted the “Quality/Depth/Thoroughness of Games Reviews” criteria for Kotaku entry on the 6th Estate site a bit higher than other criteria, simply because of this review system. I really wish every sites would have a review system like this.
Also credit to you, Jason, for being the only Kotaku editor that vocally opposed financial ties with developers via Patreon.
This is why I found something salvageable from Kotaku compared to other sites being called out by GamerGate. This is why out of all sites, I’m giving Kotaku a way out. But it’s not going to be easy. To make peace, Kotaku is going to have to take some really drastic steps, some of which I have never seen a GamerGate proponent suggested. But I think if Kotaku would actually go through these steps, GamerGate proponents would be willing to bury the hatchet. These steps will involve burning a lot of bridges:
- Go independent. Bring this up to Stephen. Gawker Media is falling down, and they are not going to last long. Not even some of the most notable public figures could stand by Gawker. Their sites have some of the worst reputation to advertisers right now. Find a way to buy Kotaku off Gawker so that Kotaku can grow on its own. The site will have to rebuild many of its parts from scratch, but it’s a small price to pay compared to what follow…
- Termination of employment of Nathan Grayson. I don’t care how much of a good friend Nathan was with Kotaku staffs, but this bridge has to burn. Nathan has a terrible tendency to provide undisclosed coverage for his friends. His GAME_JAM article was terrible one-sided reporting. His articles are worthless clickbaits more often than not. In particular, this one recently was an useless hype piece that conveyed a false state of the market to the consumers. First off, Shadow of Mordor is not based on the LotR movies but rather the general Middle Earth universe(that’s why it’s called Middle Earth: SOM, not LOTR: SOM, Warner Bros has been very careful to make this separation). Secondly, out of all licenses, LotR and Alien are the last ones you want to hold up as examples of terrible adaptations. The direct movie adaptation games were cool (especially the Return of the King game), the The Two Towers game on GBA was kinda cool, the War of the Ring game was a decent Warcraft knock off, The Battle for Middle Earth series were cool RTS games, the LEGO LotR and Hobbits games were cool platformers, the LotR Online is a mature, content-rich MMORPG. Alien series has a history of decent to great AvP games, the Alien games in the 5th generation were cool, and recently, Gearbox even co-developed a great Aliens game (Aliens Infestation on the Nintendo DS). He then went on to bring up non-movie-based games as examples of good games based on movies, then went on to hype on other non-movie-based games, such as Legend of Korra, which he ultimately gave a negative review to. Please, spare me of this editor. GamerGate has a point when they constantly insist that this editor is a terrible journalist. Getting rid of Nathan despite how good of a friend he is to Kotaku staffs will do much good to bury the hatchet.
- Termination of employment of Luke Plunkett. Just for writing that offensive “Death of an Identity” article that echoed the voices of Dan Golding (still don’t know who this man is) and Leigh Alexander to have a clickbait, sensational article is enough to cut off this editor. His one-sided reporting on the Spiral Games Studios case and ultimately led to the blacklisting of them at Kotaku was unethical and unacceptable. Clickbaits like that Dragon’s Crown hit piece and (letter update) a hit piece on Daniel Vavra’s Kingdom Come: Deliverance are also unacceptable.
- Termination of employment of Patricia Hernandez. This editor is like a worse version of Nathan Grayson. So many of her articles are low-quality clickbaits, as I laid out above (want more useless clickbait? Here you go). She shamelessly gave coverage to her friends. Most offensively, Patricia turned Kotaku into her personal soapbox to write a hit piece on a non-video game man and talked about non-gaming topics in the same article. GamerGate proponents can’t stand this editor and can’t stand the fact that she still has a job at Kotaku. I say it’s a good idea to let her go.
- Issue an apology on Kate Cox’s hit piece on Brad Wardell, acknowledge the damage it has done to Brad and his reputation in the last 2 years. Actually, just issue an official apology in the place of former staffs for what they’ve done to Brad, from the founding editor-in-chief Matt Gallant’s witch hunt on him to Kate Cox’s hit piece (who is no longer at Kotaku and currently writing for Consumerist)
- Issue a sincere apology for Luke’s offensive hit piece. This is a horrible mistake that Kotaku has to own up to, with some sincerity and humility on Kotaku’s part. I have advised another GamerGate proponent about how to gain acceptance and forgiveness and I really stand by it. It takes a lot to swallow your pride and take some humiliation on your part, but it’ll go a long way. This is a heavy price to pay for Kotaku because the moment you do this, your friends and other journalists from other sites will come down really hard on you. I have seen how GamerGate detractors treat people on their side for even giving a tiny bit of concession, let alone a complete acknowledgement of guilt. This is the step where that will burn a lot of bridges for you. On the other hands, you are very likely to gain forgiveness from GamerGate if you do express some humility in your apology. Just look at MissAngerist’s apology. She was very aggressive at the start of this controversy (hell, she coined the term “cathedral of misogyny”) and yet after doing a thorough research, she fully acknowledged her fault:
And then I thought: why am I against this again? Details emerged. The project was more or less killed by Zoe Quinn claiming that they were anti-trans and exploitative. This was a stance I absolutely believed, and I believed it because Ms Quinn said it. I didn’t do research. Why would I? Obviously someone as awesome as her would know what she’s talking about. And therein lies the problem. It’s so easy to misdirect and deflect blame or scrutiny from yourself by choosing your words carefully. I came to learn that 4chan is the way it is because of anonymity, NOT because of some deep rooted ideology. A friend came to me (not disclosing — seeing a pattern here?) and told me that they browsed their lgbt board. Another explained to me that it’s sort of like reddit in that the overall entity cannot be spoken for by its subdivisions, which have their own culture and often fight amongt themselves to boot. And then I started to get headaches, and sweat, and get cravings for the cigarettes that I gave up years ago, because I just made the kind of errors I constantly lampooned people for making: I did not do my research. For that I am sorry. I am sorry I insulted 4chan and I am sorry I insulted The Fine Young Capitalists. I even gave money, for what it’s worth.
Don’t think this means I’ve ‘defected’ in some way. Anyone making twitter accounts solely to harass people with foul language and insults is a leech. But equally, any ‘SJW’ (shudders at using the term) who blindly defends Ms Quinn and thinks this is just about misogyny is WRONG. WRONG WRONG WRONG. This wouldn’t be going on for over a week if it was and there wouldn’t be THOUSANDS raised for charity and there wouldn’t be people demanding that Nathan Grayson resign (he should) or that Zoe Quinn should apologise for issuing false DMCA requests (she absolutely should).
And /v/ posters (subsequently GamerGate proponents) forgave and embraced her for that. I personally was there when this girl came into /v/ afterward and talked with the anons there. They were showering her with complements for admitting her mistake. Some of the responses were hilariously obvious that they were parodying the stereotype people attached to them (“Gurrrl, u done gud!”).
Imagine how quick peace could have been reached if the people on the other side could swallow their pride like this. I’m telling you, Jason, this is worth it. On top of addressing Luke’s offensive hit piece, the apology should acknowledge all the accomplishment that GamerGate has done and all the damage they have received (the doxx, the bully, the hateful vitriol), and acknowledge the blacklisting of The Fine Young Capitalists as well.
7. Stop treating Kotaku as a personal soapbox for political correctness. Remember, you are here to protect and represent your audiences — the consumers. Just keep anything political contained within your personal blog on Tumblr or something. The megaphone that Kotaku grants its editors should not be used to broadcast your political correctness or to tone-police developers. And your reviews are supposed to inform the consumers as a top priority, not to be another type of soapbox. Also, as the consumers’ representative, it’s not your job to control the market against the consumers’ will.
8. Stop with the tabloid, clickbaiting, sensational articles. GamerGate is fed up with this, I am fed up with this. And yet, everytime I open up Kotaku, the site is flooded with clickbaits. I know how hard this is, I even understand why Kotaku resorted to this kind of content. Gaming sites operate on an ad-based model, and you need traffic from your readers to sustain. But most of the time during the year there are slow news days, so you have to sensationalize stories every chance you got, you have to create useless hype pieces, all for purpose of attracting clicks and traffic. You know what that is gonna turn Kotaku into? A video game-centric version of Cracked, but more tabloid, because Kotaku also puts up a lot of non-gaming stuff when they run out of content to attract clicks. Right now, Kotaku content fits what this video describes to a T:
More clickbaits during a controversy also means more troll-feeding. More clicks and traffic in return. Even IGN is above this stuff.
9. Stop with the “loljapan” attitude. How many times has Kotaku made jabs and jeers at Japanese culture now?
These are just the kind of content that Kotaku put up while GamerGate is still ongoing. Kotaku will always out-Kotaku every parody articles from the WriteAKotakuArticle hashtag. Goddamn it, I am sick of this exploitation of a foreign culture to generate clickbaits. These are not even gaming-related, for crying out loud! Not to mention the fear culture that puts pressure on Japanese studios to gain acceptance in the Western market. You should know this, Jason, you contributed to it.
I’m not even going to dive into why this is subtly racist on top of that.
10. Cut all ties between Kotaku staff and people on the development/publishing side, especially with people in the indie game scene. The people within that scene have been openly saying that it’s a tightly-knitted community where everybody knows everybody. This is dangerous, especially considering that indie games live and die by the amount of exposure they gain from the press. Get out of there, burn all bridges with them. If destroying all of your friendship with the people in that scene is what it takes to maintain a professional distance, then so be it. You have to report on their unethical conducts such as abusing DMCA takedown system no differently from big publishers. I mean hell, journalists hanging out having casual chats with developers with zero professional distance like this is so harmful:
Oh look! They were sitting there with Phil Fish, poisoning and stereotyping the gamer identity 2 years before GamerGate happened on top of that!
Burn all bridges with your friends from other outlets as well. You are supposed to be journalists of competing sites, not friends hanging out cozily like highschool buddies. Don’t think I haven’t noticed. Journalists between the sites that GamerGate has called out: Kotaku, Polygon, RPS, GiantBomb, Destructoid,… they leave one just to join another, basically just cycling staffs between each other and provided no uniqueness. You can’t be having competition and securing each other’s job at the same time. There’s no push for competition between these sites anymore.
If you feel like you would destroy too many relationships with your friends because of this move, get closer to the community. Invite your audiences to talk with you on live podcasts, have conversations with them, build a sense of community with your own audiences instead of shutting them out from the conversations you have with the clique of friends you hang out with in the industry.
Props to you somewhat, Jason, for having enough sense to keep your distance from Andreas Zecher’s deceptive open letter.
11. Start practicing proper journalism, like many GamerGate proponents are saying. Start reporting stories fairly, give space to both sides of the stories, especially when they are controversial. Don’t do selective, deceptive reporting, fact-check and verify your sources, do investigation if you can. Don’t take self-published sources of facts at face-value, no matter your perception, verify them or otherwise, only attribute self-published statements the sources themselves. If your sources are humans and they tell you something, always question “Is that the truth or is that what they want me to believe to be the truth?”. Hell, so-called “Internet detectives” take little effort compared to physical legwork, yet can provide you substantial results if you’re just savvy enough with Google-fu and lurking archives. And especially, for crying out loud, do not draw conclusions or implicate them for your readers.
I told you they were gonna be drastic steps, not just lip-service apology, didn’t I? It’s gonna take a lot of pride-swallowing, and a lot of bridge-burning. But if Kotaku manages to go through all of these steps, the GamerGate detractors will hate the site for it. You and your colleagues may be seen as defectors, traitors, even though all you did was carrying out a major reformation of the site. But I don’t think Kotaku needs their approval, you know. What do you value more? The approval of your audiences, or the approval of your peers? We are in the middle of a free market reformation carried out by left-libertarians, those who don’t represent their interest in the industry are gonna be phased out and vice versa. If you want to be ethical, better start thinking about being their representatives soon. And that means no more shielding friends, no more political correctness pressure, no more clickbait exploitation, no more market manipulation for selfish reasons, no more one-sided, selective reporting and especially no more contempt for the consumers — the people you’re in this job to protect and represent, not slander and back-stab. And regardless of what comes out of this, always keep this in mind: the watchmen are being watched now.
This has been a long recollection of GamerGate’s growing pains, addressed to you, Jason Schreier.
P.S. I hate Tyler.
