My view on the “Journalism” side of Gamer Gate

I guess looking at a bit of this GamerGate thing really perplexes me. Perhaps I am more skeptical than many out there, but I never thought the gaming press was objective. To me it always seems that gaming journalists are expressing their opinions rather than providing simple facts about the games they report on.

In my view, so much of today's media is opinion rather than journalism. Fox News, CNN, MSNBC, and all the rest are entertainment for whichever slant you prefer. Sure there are tidbits of real news, but in their attempts to maintain ratings and please their audience, there is more opinion than fact in many of their stories.

With the big media outlets motivated by ratings, I find it hard to believe the gaming media is any kind of bastion of good journalism. Not when many receive some form of quid pro quo. Game developers ARE the advertisers that fund these sites so while not all reviews are going to be positive, I hold any review with a bit of skepticism. How many times have reviews about a game been all positive but in reality the game is crap? Too many to believe in the objectivity of gaming journalism.

I suppose I am not the typical audience in any case. I do not drool over the latest uptick of graphics. I grew up when story drove the quality of new games not how many pixels were on the screen, and creativity was shown in new titles rather than how many sequels and clones could be sold to the masses.

In any case, in this aspect of the GamerGate, I do not see the problem. But then, I have never placed so much weight on gaming journalists to feel betrayed by them as I know some do.

September Featured Link

As Belghast mentioned in my featured link yesterday, this article is a pretty good run down about the GamerGate thing. Other than that, the article in Forbes covered things well too. I think between the two, I got a decent idea of what went on even if I only focused on a small part of it.

#Gaming