grassgremlin said:
Well, laudable goal you have of trying to tackle the chief complaint gamergate has against journalists in a way separate from journalists. I think it will fail horribly for several reasons, but I do appreciate the intent behind it.
Not sure I like all your points too much though.
1) Discuss how to improve ethics: Great point, very important.
2) Redefine gamer: No, just enforce the actual the definition. Re-defining suggests the definition changed. It hasn't, it has always remained the same, it is just some people wanted to bastardize language for easy demagoguery.
3) End review scores: Sadly not going to happen and not a worthwhile fight. Scores exist for the lazy to do a quick glance check, and as a comparison to other games on the market. They been around forever, they aren't likely to go away from publication reviews. Hell, even youtube style reviews still use them, such as Angry Joe. At best, I would suggest separating technical skill scores from moral or ideological complaints towards the game when doing scores. Games should be judged on their own merits anyways, not how well they fit within an ideological purity test. And reviews, and by extension scores, exist solely for the audience's benefit. Therefore it makes it even less useful to devalue a score for failing an ideological purity test when not all audience would share that ideological stance and thus it is intentionally tanking a game's score for personal belief rather then relative quality to other games in similar settings or technical execution of skill.
It is like rating a movie poorly because it has an actor who you dislike the politics of, rather then the movie's quality itself.
4) Review relative to own kind. Sort of ties into the above, though I kinda agree. If you are doing score comparisons (and you have to deal with them one way or another a lot of the time), then among games of the same or similar genre, there should be consistency of higher score relating to better execution of the game along technical aspects (mechanics, story, visual appeal, etc). But I think this is not very often an issue until and unless you get people judging games along ideological bents who forget the point of a review is for the audience's sake, not the writer's personal causes.
5) Discuss video games on video games: This may surprise a lot of people, but I disagree. When it comes to discussion of video games, all topics are open. Hell, you want to talk about the sexism in the industry or whatever else, more power to you. You will be challenged and argued with, but the right to do so is there and should be encouraged.
When it comes to reviews, they are meant as a guide to inform the audience in relation to them buying the product. As such, they should be done in the way best able to inform about the quality of the product and the likelihood that people buying the product will like it (when it comes to games, this would relate far more to the technical side of things for most people as history itself has shown that a good game mechanic or story will outweigh a lot of crap, such as poor graphics, character design or even political lean).
But when it comes to discussion itself, then all gloves are off. A discussion can be all about a person pushing an ideological view onto a product and arguing it just fine. And so long as it is not abusing the authority invested in them as reviewers or journalists to do so (such as by, say, using a review and scoring system to judge products on how well they fit an ideological narrative) and instead make the distinction clearly separate (like posting in forums for instance, or to a lesser degree using very clearly marked and known of opinion sections of a publication).
6) Attack critic without saying it is an attack on character. Yeah, this should be so hands down. The less peopl attack criticisms as being "you are just misogyny", the better everyone will be.
7) Don't call out only the press: I see a point often thrown at gamergate that we aren't going after the big dogs. The problems there in are two fold. 1st, it is an outright lie when you realize TotalBiscuit was the one who outed the Mordor thing, and 2nd in order to properly go after the big dogs, gamers need to be informed. That requires a media that can be trusted to be in the best interest of the audience. Which we don't have at the moment. Hence gamergate itself.
I agree we need to call out all corruption, but until we as the audience have a trustworthy representative voice in the news media from which we can be informed and who will actually investigate, going after the big dogs will end up the same as it did with the ME 3 debacle with gamers, not the publications being attacked for daring to speak out. Or when the first signs of something nefarious going down with ZQ leading to gaming press to attack those asking questions.
Bottom line, we need journalism fixed first to make more headway into other corruption.
8) Distance yourself from gamergate: Good luck. This was why I say this will probably fail miserably. We tried to distance ourselves from the lies and slander before in taking the gamergate tag instead of the quinnspiracy tag. It did not work as those implicated still lied and slandered and attacked.
If you really care about this idea and want to see it succeed, I wish you luck. Hell, if it can work I will be right there, fighting the same fight I have from the start. But if you want to ever test just what will happen when you try to start exploring the corruption, just start asking them questions about the unethical and unprofessional behavior. Actually push for the same sort of unethical and unprofessional issues raised and see how you get treated in reply. Even if you publicly decry gamergate, prepare for the same reception gamergate got.
All that said, and I know it is discouraging I imagine, if you want to push for better journalism and to clean up this mess, I have found this online.
http://www.thesentinelwire.com/
Seems o be someone wanting to start up a journalistic watchdog thing.
