I used to be a games journalist, AMA!

I haven't followed Gamergate anymore so I'm taking that their main issues still lie with gaming journalism and the lack of transparancy.

I think Gamergate certainly has good sides, but also bad sides. Striving for transparent journalism is good and shouldn't be limited to gaming only, but for journalism in general. It is a complaint I have about journalism myself: many news articles nowadays seem short, lacking in substance/content and are basically a lame copy/paste of whatever a publisher or news agency mailed around.

On the other hand, I think Gamergaters are often too quick to label something as corruption. Do you remember the upheaval about mailing lists? There are many mailing lists. They're created to facilitate easy communication between companies and journalists. The mailling lists I used basically sent me generic news updates about games like release dates, trailers (and accompanying "Look at this amazing A+ innovative game" text), or new announcements. Just because there is communication between game developers, publishers and journalists doesn't mean there's rampant corruption everywhere. It depends on what the journalists do. And if people ask if a company sponsored a review or whatever, it should be possible to answer honestly.

I don't support the people who sent death threats in name of Gamergate. You don't achieve transparancy, better journalism and a more mature gaming industry by acting violent. I think these people, especially with it all easily viewable on social media, have really damaged the Gamergate movement and made it lose track of what it was fighting for.

Anti-Gamergate is laughable and awful. At the time, I saw them pretend to support minorities (women, "people of colour"). I never saw so much racism and sexism when these minorities began to speak up for themselves through #NotYourShield. Women being told they're pandering to men, black people being called Uncle Toms, race traitors and being fired from their jobs after being doxxed.

While I think Gamergate is a noble goal, I completely lost interest in it due to the shitstorms and drama surrounding it.

/r/casualiama Thread Parent