Not joking. It absolutely was about ethics, at first. The initial kickoff was the boyfriend accusing the girl (Zoë Quinn?) of sleeping with someone else for a better review. That’s ethics in a nutshell. I don’t think that anyone really cared about the game, or who was involved, but rather that the state of the industry was such that you could accuse a well known game reviewer of being unethical, and it was more believable than not.
The fact is, reviewers had already sold their souls and a AAA game get anything less than a 90%. Had reviewers had better ethics, probably no one would have believed the boyfriend, and the entire story would have been a nothing-burger.
Of course it went off the rails after that, the fact that the boyfriend was lying didn’t help, but for a brief moment it looked like there might actually be game news/review industry reform. It was a glorious 24 or so hours.
We tried this already - getting ethics in game journalism.
It didn’t work so well.
Can’t tell if you’re joking or not, but gamergate was absolutely not about “ethics in game journalism.”
Did they edit their comment? Neither they nor the article mentioned gamergate.
“It’s about ethics in gaming journalism” was the common refrain for Gamergate proponents.
Not joking. It absolutely was about ethics, at first. The initial kickoff was the boyfriend accusing the girl (Zoë Quinn?) of sleeping with someone else for a better review. That’s ethics in a nutshell. I don’t think that anyone really cared about the game, or who was involved, but rather that the state of the industry was such that you could accuse a well known game reviewer of being unethical, and it was more believable than not.
The fact is, reviewers had already sold their souls and a AAA game get anything less than a 90%. Had reviewers had better ethics, probably no one would have believed the boyfriend, and the entire story would have been a nothing-burger.
Of course it went off the rails after that, the fact that the boyfriend was lying didn’t help, but for a brief moment it looked like there might actually be game news/review industry reform. It was a glorious 24 or so hours.