I do wonder if there is a better way to do games journalism in 2019 than techniques & categories that dont seem to have changed that much over the years.
I suppose definitions might be a good place to start? It strikes me as a market opportunity that almost all games commentary/criticism/journalism follows the rather predictable reviews/commentary/tradeshow coverage structure in one way or another.
It’s not for the lack of trying.
A lot of games journalists would rather write anything else than a review. So there are all these attempts at starting new outlets where reviews are secondary, and it’s all going to be about serious journalism. And then they find out that the traffic for the Anthem review will be 100x larger than the ambitious article series about the opioid crisis and games. So six month later the reviews are back, and a year after that half the content is Game of Thrones episode recaps.
The exception seem to be people whose funding is from subscribers rather than ads. So Giant Bomb might run a review once a month with a staff of 10, Noclip and Digital Antiquarian do only long form documentaries, etc.
Damn right.
Austin Walker posted on Twitter that Waypoint was not shut down or hit by the layoffs.
Cheers for the info. I really dont know much or anything really about the business of games criticism so this is really interesting to me. Thanks!
Russ Pitts decides it’s time to talk about ethics in game journalism (hosted on the rebranded and apolitical Escapist), and then gets into a fight with Zoe Quinn. Nice work!
The Escapist remains a GG shithole.
Not editorially, and not in content (two former contributors, who were decidedly not GG and left in the midst of that, returned with Russ).
As for the user content? Well it gets my standard response.
Comments sections are generally garbage.
“LOL. Sorry. It was a joke.”
3300 words to say nothing new or interesting while still sticking his dick in a hornet’s nest is the Russ Pittsiest editorial ever.
Without any other context—I’m not familiar with Russ, and I didn’t frequent any version of The Escapist so I didn’t realize it was a “gamergate hub”, the article itself seems okay.
He seems to be unequivocally against the gamergate movement, and expressing a justifiable frustration that their cover of being “about ethics in games journalism” has poisoned the well for anyone actually trying to discuss that in any other context. Then he lays out why that topic does actually matter.
That all seems…okay? So my gut reaction is to roll my eyes when Zoe wants to know why she wasn’t contacted. It seemed obvious enough to me that the gamergate movement had to be acknowledged in broaching the topic, but that the whole point was Russ is actually trying to have the conversation that gamergate was never actually about. So yeah, I don’t see why he would reach out to Zoe.
But then the back and forth tweets quoted don’t seem like a very mature response from Russ. And since I don’t know his history (or the Escapist’s), I’m just assuming the…maybe assuming the best is too strong, but I’m assuming the “not worst” about his intentions. Maybe he totally is just trying to stir up controversy for some page views.
I guess I don’t know, and still don’t really care about The Escapist.
This concludes today’s episode of “WhollySchmidt has some thoughts, then some other thoughts, writes them down, and offers no real insight”.
¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Hey, at least you got out in under 3,000 words!
On Ms Quinn, my only thought there is that the abuse she suffered is horrific and inexcusable, and also she is a bit of a crazy person. I’m not terribly inclined to worry about her views on whether her farts were sufficiently sniffed.
I’ll say one good thing about the article: It pointed me to this story, which was quite enlightening. So it’s not all bad!
Russ himself, and many of the people he brought back/ new contributors were very anti GG.
And yeah, the get over it reaction isn’t the most mature response. But what responsibility is there to contact the victims in this situation? In an editorial that is only tangentially about GG, is there some requirement that Zoe be contacted? Or, conversely, would bringing her up specifically perhaps only open old wounds? Should she, and the other targets, be forever tied and identified by this one campaign of terror?
The article is fine. Zoe piping in to make it about her is… well why? Russ’ initial response want good, but it wasn’t malicious either.
Zoe’s position seems to be that the Escapist should never have been revived, which given Alexander Marcais’ role in creating he GG hub isn’t an entirely without merit position. But the people involved and responsible are long gone. The only person still with the site from those days, and beyond, is Yahtzee. Several of the contributors who left because of the site aligning with GG have returned. And it basically has no connection to the old site other than archives, domain, and name. Which the more than a decade of content and rights (they sponsored a ton of original video series, including some I still follow after their departure like Loading Ready Run and Extra Credits) has a value that probably seemed more attractive to the owners than blowing it up and restarting under a new site name.
Criticize the decision, fine. And if people don’t want to visit the site because of the past association? I get that, even though those responsible have been cleared out.
And just because Russ didn’t say anything particularly new or interesting doesn’t make what he said incorrect either. The problems he talks about, such as the YouTube ‘influencer’ scams and undisclosed payments, are legitimate issues given the state of games media.
I think Jason did a great job summing up why Pitts’ received such a strong reaction.
Agreed. If he were writing a compendium on the history of Gamergate it would be essential to contact her. An editorial on journalistic practices, where he brings up the topic because to ignore it would feel like a dishonest dodge, not so.
Now that is fair. We certainly see those conversations here.
I do not think it is accurate, but it is an understandable reaction.
But if you are the editor of a site that did have a place in that fiasco, and you want to talk about those ethics issues, don’t you think that addressing the gorilla in the room might be needed?
I hear that, but I just feel that if you take over a site with that kind of history, one of the biggest mistakes you could make would be to criticize a victim like Zoe in any capacity. There’s no way around that being extremely bad optics. You’re going to deservedly catch a lot of shit. Everyone’s familiar with her story so there’s no excuses (specifically talking about his tweets).
What did Escapist do that was so horrible?
And I mean in specifics, not some vague “they were pro gamergate”. Did they ever support harrasment? Conducted any?
Their editor was an active and intentional participant in the fiasco. Deliberately cultivated and encouraged fanning those flames, and participated in attacking the victims. When writing about the issue, declined to put any perspective from the victims or anti GG authors and developers, and instead used only pro GG developers, alt right firethrowers, and people who were instrumental in arranging the harassment campaigns as sources.
So it wasn’t just a pro GG site, it was a site that deliberately and intentionally positioned itself to incubate and encourage that audience.
Who was that? Are there any articles where he attacked the victims, or some such?